The Case for Portland-to-Vancouver High-Speed Rail | Hacker News Reader

The Case for Portland-to-Vancouver High-Speed Rail

citylab.com

70 pointspseudolus96 comments

When "Sea Plane" seems like a good alternative to commuting between two metros you have to chuckle.

High speed passenger rail has so many benefits past commute time alone. It's fast and easy to get tickets, board and depart. It's consistent, predictable and you can reliably plan around travel times. Done well, you can be at the platform 5 minutes before you depart and be moving 5 minutes later. You can bring luggage with no fuss, just pop it in the overhead. They are generally well equipped, with full bathrooms.

It's nearly the speed of air travel, with none of the major downsides of air travel. I would happily take rail over planes and spend an extra hour underway than spend that extra hour dealing with airports either side of the flight.

> Done well, you can be at the platform 5 minutes before you depart and be moving 5 minutes later.

All it would take to change that would be one terrorist incident and we would have TSA lines at the train station. I sure wouldn't count on quick to board being a lasting feature.

You might be right, but I don't think it would be the right choice. There's a point where you trade off total security for usability. America is no stranger to trains and metros, yet the majority of those run without TSA like security.

I noted while in Japan, that they have no bins. If I'm not mistaken, they were removed due to a terror attack in the 90s. However, Japan train stations all have coin lockers. Now in NYC, you've got no coin lockers, due to a terrorist attack, but you do have bins. I don't believe either measure actually reduces the likelihood of a terror attack, it's just security theater.

And you can cut down on cleaning staff

But add significant amounts of litter.

At least in North America, people will just toss their trash on the ground if there isn't a garbage can available, but if there is a bin around they will make use of it. Might be able to chalk that up to cultural differences when discussing Japan, however.

The city of Portland did a study once where they removed trash cans in some parking garages and the amount of litter went down. The theory was that if there's trash on the ground (as there often is around trash cans, especially when they are full) people will throw more trash onto the pile. Get rid of the trash can and people will carry their trash out.

"in North America, people will just toss their trash on the ground if there isn't a garbage can available, but if there is a bin around they will make use of it."

Better than in the UK, where many people toss their rubbish on the ground if there isn't a bin available. If there is a bin available, they still toss it on the ground.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I think it's pretty analogous to writing a test to cover that bug that happened in your app.

Sure, but the same is true with airplanes, and we have TSA for airplanes.

TSA for planes is political theater. TSA for any HSR would depend on incidents and political climate.

Needs more of this: [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z02zi1S8vZQ

(Total Recall X-ray scene)

NYC tried removing their trash cans in a few stations but people just threw their trash on the tracks, increasing the number of track fires.

My understanding is that after the sarin gas attack in Tokyo, people there are much less likely to eat or drink in the train system as almost everyone who died in that attack was consuming something. So there’s less trash in general over there.

The French thought about the bin problem and replaced them all with transparent plastic bags mounted on frames to support them and hold them open. The best of both worlds.

At the risk of being put on even more watchlists than the average person-

I wonder if it would be quite as easy to wreck similar havoc on a commuter rail as on an airplane. It seems that it is easier to induce catastrophic failure to a plane than it is to a train.

Interestingly, there have been attempts[1], specifically in North America, with no major addition of security checks to train boarding. I suppose it would take a full scale, 9/11 style event to induce the same sort of worry about travel. I'd say that trains have a pretty good safeguard built in: they're stuck on tracks. That makes them significantly harder to ram into buildings, by my reckoning.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Via_Rail_Canada_terrorism...

It would be harder to ram a train into a building, of course, but a derailment of a high speed train full of passengers would be a plenty bad enough incident to create a perceived need for TSA-style person and baggage screening.

What happens when a fast train hits a moose or other large animal? Is the mass difference so huge that it's effectively like a car running over a squirrel?

Most countries solve that issue by separating the high speed rail lines from the land much better than you would bother with low speed rail. A mind boggling amount of infrastructure goes into separating the Shinkansen from the rest of the world. Hundreds of kilometers of it is raised up on bridges, the rest is inside tunnels or strongly fenced off by wire fences or concrete walls. No level crossings either.

I imagine part of the design of the front of the trains is also to minimize damage by deflecting impacts. Although I think the major design drive for their long noses is entering and exiting tunnels without creating sonic booms and air pressure issues for passengers.

Adding security checks to train boarding is very costly because most trains stop at a dozen or more stations, oftentimes open air platforms without any real infrastructure or place to do security.

I think that’s the main thing that has protected them from TSA nonsense so far. The TSA does occasionally do baggage screening on train passengers at large stations but it’s rare and mainly to flex their power I think.

US CBP officers pre-clear travelers in Vancouver on the existing Amtrak route; however, the train is stopped anyway just across the border to give those agents a reason to exist as well. The existing Amtrak experience is terribly slow - like five hours from Vancouver to Seattle.

A high speed rail service would conceivably use pre-clearing as well.

It's worth mentioning that this exists in Beijing down to the subway station level. Every station (at least the ones I passed through) had a security booth with an xray machine. It felt distinctly dystopian, but it was a fairly quick affair - bag in, bag out.

International rail from the UK to the Schengen area also requires an airport style security check, though it's much more laid back.

The government can’t afford it because it can’t afford basic healthcare or social-security. Trains are great but not financially viable, so the money comes from somewhere else. Trains are not worth turning our backs on the poor, the old and the sick.

Trains benefit the poor a lot more than a road ever could. Trains enable cheaper mobility, opening up way more job opportunities and access to services in the process.

The article alludes to the enterprise being state/private partnership anyway, the federal government doesn't need to pay for it. Many high speed rail systems are public/private partnerships.

The rail network in the article is proposed at 50billion. There are individuals worth more than the US. The US spent 55 billion developing a single fighter jet platform, and that was just the R&D. If the US needs to cut from anywhere, it's definitely not infrastructure initiatives that should be cut. Infrastructure creates jobs, and increases economic opportunities for everyone.

I’m going off what I know about Amtrak, the California high speed rail project and local municipal transportation. It’s all a waste; not enough ridership to stay profitable, massive and unpredictable costs (California high speed rail is a great example) and ultimately not able to move the needle at all in terms of environmental concerns. These are feel good efforts, vanity driven or genuine expressions of a vision for the future which naively and irresponsibly refuse the accept the truth about ridership and costs that any competent political decision maker knows to be the sad truth.

We can afford those things perfectly well—we just choose not to.

Prove it. Start with California’s attempt to build high speed rail. That’s a case where we explicitly didn’t “choose not to.” We went all in and spent money that could have gone to poor children, the homeless and healthcare and gave it to business men who said what you say, “we can afford this and should.” Boondoggles hurt the poor and needy and redistribute money to well paid consultants, lawyers and developers. And the environmental impact of “green” rail projects is actually worse than not taking them on in the first place.

> And the environmental impact of “green” rail projects is actually worse than not taking them on in the first place.

While that's true, these propositions should be getting brought up to solve a particular commuting problem. In this case it's the highway between the three cities being clogged and slow. If not rail, then how do you solve the existing problem of car commuting not working in these areas?

I understand you see California's attempt resulting in low ridership as a failure of the rail system, but rail is a long term commitment to solve the commuting problem. Car commutes won't go away, and eventually they'll get so bad people will need, not want, a replacement service. If trains can be that service instead of planes, then that's a long term win environmentally (and I would argue as a community, getting out of cars is a net benefit for all kinds of metrics).

Perhaps the idea of commuting long distance for work in the first place is the real issue. But our communities have forgotten how to be local centric I think, especially in the more sprawling suburbias and car clogged metros.

Japan's high-speed trains are very impressive, departing some stations on a 12-minute interval, going 275 km/h and stopping only occasionally. Kyoto to Tokyo is what, 3 hours and there are 4 stops iirc.

But the trains go in all directions and are back-stopped by many local trains including express trains with inter-city service as well.

By contrast, a single dual-track system with only cars or nothing as a back-stop is not going to be reliable enough. What happens when a few days of repairs are needed on tunnels or bridges?

The other issue is political: does anyone think that Washington State is going to spend $50 billion on a transportation system in Boeing's back yard that is not made of airplanes?

On maintenance, the rail companies work very hard to not interrupt the service, pulling off some incredible feats of planning and engineering in overnight operations. I think America is plagued a bit by the same issue we have in Australia, where we are frankly just not willing to solve hard problems if there is an available status quo. Also because long distance high speed rail is generally about replacing short distance air and long distance road travel those methods would still be options. But the reliability is still going to be higher than plane or road could ever offer.

> The other issue is political: does anyone think that Washington State is going to spend $50 billion on a transportation system in Boeing's back yard that is not made of airplanes?

The article addresses this, saying there is currently a unique political climate that is in support of rail projects. But I hear you, it will take some persistence.

The choices here are to spend $100bn adding a lane to I-5 or a $50bn high speed rail between the cities. Adding a lane doesn’t reduce traffic in the long term, and doesn’t reduce drive time even in the best of traffic conditions. (You still can’t go as fast as the bullet train). I think even at double the price it would still be the superior choice. But how will the highway construction companies lobby to get the work for the extra lane?

Car-centric lifestyle has to go. It is maddeningly stupid and wasteful.

It would cost far more than 50B. If you think that cost is accurate, I have a boat to sell you.

In my comment I noted that I think that even at double the price I still think it would be worth it.

That's pretty much true for everything related to construction...

It's true for every major project, of any type. I can't think of any multi-year, >$10B software projects that ended up being completed on-time and on-budget, either.

Do you think the 100B number for the highway is aaccurate?

I would wager it's closer to reality than the number for rail. We've built enough highways that we have a pretty good idea what the costs are. High speed rail has fewer companies bidding on it and less experienced overseers.

My guess would be that the rail line would need entirely new right of way which would radically increase the variability of the cost and may result in it being down right impossible. (Speaking as someone who closely watched the drama around getting new right away along I5 for high voltage transmission) While the highway expansion probably already has the land they need for most of the project.

Interstate 5 goes many places other than just Portland and Vancouver. Of course the train can add in additional stops, reducing its speed advantage but will never be able to compete with a road in terms of destination count or the network effect. Which doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad idea, just that there needs to be enough people going between just the destinations served to compare to the number that would the additional road lane. Induced demand exists but is a sign of success of utility of the road. The comparisons even when everyone is being honest aren't all that clear cut and involve a huge number of variables. Also consider most companies that build roads can also build rail infrastructure or at least parts of it. A rail line isn't starvation for them and they would likely get a piece of that pie.

“ Induced demand exists but is a sign of success of utility of the road. ”

Oh boy. That’s one way of putting it. I’d argue, however, that it’s a dangerous perversion of what induced demand is because it doesn’t respect the negative externalities of the action.

The US, especially the NW, is not that dense which means the infrastructure must accommodate automobiles. The country is simply way too spread out to implement something that resembles rail systems in EU and Japan. While I would like to see high speed rails in the states, I believe the focus is rather myopic considering that it doesn't necessarily solve the underlying transportation problems.

I-5 will still be there. They are talking about adding a $100bn lane to the highway vs a stated cost $50bn bullet train.

Adding lanes to freeways only encourages and perpetuates such lack of density. Cars will do just as well with the current number of lanes. Induced demand is a real thing.

The infrastructure in the US, especially the NW, is built to accommodate automobiles, which means it is not that dense.

> The country is simply way too spread out to implement something that resembles rail systems in EU and Japan

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China

The only thing that’s lacking is political will to invest in public infrastructure.

Well I would argue that there’s also a significant cultural difference. The American car culture is not going to go away. People here love their cars. In addition, people in China didn’t have broad access to cars until 1990s. Even now, it’s likely below 30% per HH. So in that sense investing in alternative transportation infrastructure makes a lot of sense. I just think we are expecting almost an insurmountable change in our culture if we were to actually utilize a fully flushed out rail system.

This is a tautological argument that can always be used to defend the status quo. No one loved rural electrification, social security, medicare, or even car culture itself until those things were in place and made part of our cultural fabric. It’s all “if you build it, they will come.” Do you think high speed rail wouldn’t integrate itself into American life were it put in place?

Correct! The numbers are clear not enough people use rail to make it viable and the are numerous examples of the same experiment: dump a few billion into public transport because “if you build it, riders will come”. They don’t. It’s the opposite of green or progressive, it takes tax funds from poor people and gives it to engineering firms to build vanity projects that nobody uses.

The only comparable example to rail networks are rail networks in other wealthy countries, which are great, heavily used systems (barring maybe the UK, where conservatives intentionally sabotaged the system through a badly-implemented privatization scheme).

There are numerous feasibility studies in regards to high speed rail system connecting the Pacific NW corridor. You can go see for yourself. Just because you build a rail network doesn’t mean people will stop driving cars. In fact, proliferation of autonomous cars eliminates any prospect of high speed rail in the US. We are talking about investing in a system that could be made obsolete in 20 years.

Autonomous cars are wildly inefficient compared to high-speed rail and would likely require similar sized infrastructure upgrades and ongoing maintenance in order to operate at scale. Assuming the 20 year timeline us actually feasible, their better suited for short distance trace anyway.

I generally agree that one-off projects are a bad investment and that we should be building a nationwide network of high speed rail. But your original comment was to the broader concern of high speed rail’s viability relative to the size of the IIS.

because like any of these proposals supporting high speed rail the numbers are always bullshit. first they don't even have their route down and even when they do it will be years in courts as every little concerned group gets a word in edgewise and their payout. the road costs are pretty much safer and likely cheaper as right of way is already secured and unlike rail you don't need to complete it all at once to have service nor complete it in connected stages. plus you have all those wonderful exits which will always be in greater frequency than train depots and they all have industry or other features using them

then comes the one aspect of rail they always love to leave out, maintenance and ongoing costs. part of the reason the rail transit systems used by Amtrak and even those in cities have nearly a hundred billion dollar deficit. rail is always cheaper when you don't maintain it.

then of course passenger numbers are always dream state numbers. Oh its quite fun to dream up stuff, rail always has this odd romanticism about it, but in the end who does it serve?

Actually the reason Amtrak runs a huge deficit is their long haul routes (cross country). Their local routes like the eastern corridor and even the ones on the west coast are profitable. Even their regional routes either break even or are very close.

I would point you to the following Wendover Productions video that gives a great analysis.

Amtrak’s Grand Plan for Profitability

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSw7fWCrDk0

Worth noting that Seattle, Portland and Vancouver all have made significant investments in public transit, so once you're in the city, you also can do pretty well without a car.

You certainly can - I have. We moved to downtown Seattle and sold both of our cars. Almost everything is available within a few blocks of walking, I bike commute to the office and can take bus/light rail to most places we need to go. About once a month we rent a car for a day to do further out errands - there are many options for this downtown - ShareNow, Zipcar, Avis etc. It typically costs < $200/mo including insurance etc.

The chance that this train will cost just $50b? None. Look at CA HSR. The price started out with a $40B cost and now it’s trending towards over $100B, with reduced coverage and service compared to what voters expected. It will probably end up being 4-5x its original cost in the end, if the original promise is delivered. I have higher confidence that the road will be significantly closer to its original cost estimate.

People have been saying the same thing about a route between DC, Philadelphia, NYC, and Boston for as long as high-speed rail has existed. Great population density, and the distances look good.

But it never seems to pan out. My pet theory is that frequent air travel is not nearly as miserable for people who are wealthy enough to be decision-makers as it is for most of us, so the political will never reaches a breaking point.

Plus, the existing rail transport options are already viable options for people who have time. It takes about 9-12 times longer to go across the whole country (72 vs 6-8 hours), but rail is already competitive between major East Coast cities on both time and price. And it's worlds ahead in comfort.

So you'd wind up spending a ton of money for...what? Trimming 45 minutes off of a trip which is already fairly pleasant?

How about a case for three high-speed rail lines belting the North, Center, and South of the nation? Maybe connections between them could pass through Denver or St. Louis.

Trim 45 min? That would barely account for the commute to the airport in most cities. Most train stations are right in the city, as opposed to airports.

in France high speed rail between Paris and other cities has pretty much killed the local plane routes.

Yes, exactly. Amtrak is already an option that gets you between city centers, and it's fairly quick and cheap between nearby coastal cities. It's not "high-speed", but passenger trains do exist in the US, and any proposed high-speed rail project will have to compete with them. "We get you there an hour quicker, but still slightly slower than an airplane" is not necessarily a hugely appealing differentiator which would justify charging much more.

Amtrak is wildly unreliably because of how much it shares rails with freight trains, which is the real problem with it more than just travel time.

Most of the time high speed rail wins out vs planes for short to medium distances due to travel time to the airport, the need to arrive early to the airport and the amount of time it takes to get past security check points and so on in airports.

Typically as far as I've seen it's only once the travel time exceeds 3 hours by high speed rail that the plane starts to win.

Please please please can we have this? I would be willing to pay so much more for a service like this than any number of new lanes added to I5. I would love to see the US have a decent rail network

All Americans have been in a car before and could potentially see themselves using that road. Conversely, there are a lot of Americans that have never been on a high speed train or train of any type. It's a lot easier to convince the population of voters to build roads than rail.

...or they've taken Amtrak out of NYC. :-P

A recent development that went under the radar a bit is the rule change to allow for light weight train cars on the tracks in the USA. The Acela line in the Northeast has been plagued with problems even going 125 MPH due to the large increase in weight needed for US crash standards that dictate they basically need to come out pretty intact colliding with a freight train.

This made for very expensive, and heavy cars. And it also meant that using other high speed rail stock in the world could not be done without significant modification. The Acela train had problems with the brakes cracking from the weight. With increasing urbanization, some areas with close cities could very well be served by high speed rail. Even in Europe, larger distances are covered by low cost airlines now. But with increasing airport crowding and the fact that most train station are in city centers vs the fringes like most airports it could be very useful.

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/11/23/u-s-finally-legalizes...

The Link light rail project won't even reach Everett until 2036. That's about 40 miles of track in the 40 years since the project was approved. How is this supposed to work?

It’s not. This is a pork project for anyone paying attention. If approved, this would be another disastrous boondoggle.

Isn't that worrying? That your country cannot do large infrastructure projects anymore. The US mamaged to build the interstates in the past and other poorer countries like Spain have successfully built extensive high speed railway networks.

Not really, the reality is there isn't enough demand for this kind of project. Between the fact there isn't that much traffic between these cities daily already and the terrain I have a hard time seeing this being worth it over air travel.

>That your country cannot do large infrastructure projects anymore. The US mamaged to build the interstates in the past

The political right has convinced a large portion of the US population that _any_ government spending is wasteful and unnecessary. Those people don't see government spending as an investment, they see it as theft.

That's a pretty ridiculous strawmen argument.

>Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist famously declared, "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

And his name is often invoked because he's such a fringe extremist. I doubt even 5% of Americans would agree with him, much less the ~40% who identify as right-leaning as you seem to imply.

He holds a massive amount of sway within the Republican party.

It does not really matter whether those ~40% would agree. It only matter what portion of those would vote for someone who does. As a floor for that number I would submit that the Freedom Caucus has 32 of the 198 Republican seats in the house (~16% or Republican seats). Those Representatives have pretty much declared that they agree with him. So some percentage above that.

Definitely and it highlights issues all around from the pork vehicles such that road budget proportion is a proxy for corruption to the idiot racist NIMBYs who block public transit claiming it will bring burglars to the neighborhood - when anyone can tell you trying to move furniture on a train is not easy, and a train with police on board and in phone contact is pretty much the worst escape vehicle you can choose.

Yes that is worrying and true. And it means that the upcoming century won't be America's the way that the previous ~century was. But that doesn't mean that we should just embark on the boondoggle anyways. If a once-capable professional athlete is aching and in pain and can't perform the way he used to, the solution isn't to step out on to the field and just give it a go. It's to fix what's ailing him first, or to just accept that his career is over.

High speed rail could share track with commuter lines in some cases, as acela does in the northeast corridor. And building through the rural parts of the state is generally easier, California essentially decided to only build the rural segment of their high speed rail due to cost.

But in general you're correct that projects requiring new right of way are very challenging and expensive. Especially high speed rail with limited turn radius. Since the article mentioned a low-usage rail link between the cities, I would prefer to see a campaign to increase ridership. Maybe you could incrementally upgrade segments of that route that could support high speed rail.

it's not one of the problems with the us rail system, that the infrastructure is owned by private transport companies?

how could you improve those railways if they are not yours to modify on first place?

Does sharing track ever work? Amtrak already has to share track with freight, and that's why Seattle to Portland is officially "3.5 hours" but the margin of error on that is +hours.

Not from the PNW, but it sounds like amtrak rents track from a freight line to run this route. So it works in the sense that they got something resembling inter-city rail service for a tiny fraction of the capital costs up front.

Even so, I'm guessing that there are options other than $50B of high speed track to improve the route. Maybe there's a few segments of track where a large fraction of the delays happen, and 30 miles of amtrak-owned track would really improve on-timliness. Just getting it from +hours to +minutes might draw some new users.

> High speed rail could share track with commuter lines in some cases

Having ridden those very commuter lines, I can say that is not an option here. They are limited to 40mph along those routes because they follow a very windy path along the shoreline. There have been derailments from trains going too fast.

You cannot share track. Take a look at the ICE lines in Germany. The high speed sections are dedicated, with no level crossings and fencing the entire way to eliminate collision risk.

When a train is going 400kph, you can’t share track.

> When a train is going 400kph, you can't share track.

Correct, you would be traveling at normal train speed on shared track. This is workable in some systems because you can build cheap (relatively) rural segments of high speed rail without needing new right of way through urban areas. Obviously wouldn't work everywhere, and maybe it's not the right solution here. But it is done some places, and places like California are considering building new blended systems [1.

[1] http://www.caltrain.com/projectsplans/CaltrainModernization/...

$100 billion? Maybe it's in there somewhere, but I didn't see the projected ridership for this. At 10,000 riders each day for 10,000 days, ($10^11/10^8) that's $1000 per rider-trip.

Even neglecting interest, maintenance and fueling, and the optimism, that's pricey.

How, for example, does that $100B compare to taking one lane of existing pavement to move a 'train' of CPU-coupled, road-powered electric vehicles at half that (250mph) speed?

Funny caption beneath the title picture. Like this, but in Seattle.

Further down: But Roger Millar, Washington State’s secretary of transportation, sees a better way: a trans-national, ultra-high-speed rail line that can hit 250 mph and put the three booming cities within super-commuting range.

While THIS [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadler_EC250 is new in rail development time frames, it tops out at 160 mph and is permitted to only 125mph so far.

Anyways, why choose a picture of of something like THIS [1] when it can't reach the goal?

I hope this becomes a reality. Driving over the border can be a nightmare without a NEXUS pass for all car occupants. During high traffic periods it's common to get stuck at the border for 2+ hours.

Also, Vancouver is beautiful - if you've never been, do yourself a favor and check it out!

Sigh. While I'm a huge fan of high speed rail, and in fact Portland-Seattle-Vancouver is close to the ideal distance for it to compete with air travel, two things make this really hard to justify in cost-benefit, at least for the near-term:

1. Low density of population in this area, low absolute demand

2. High cost of rail development in the US

These 2 factors just structurally disadvantage any such venture to create a high speed rail line between these cities, as sexy an idea as it may sound at first.

Speaking only of present demand, there is not really a huge enough sustained daily ridership between even Portland and Seattle. There are approx. 2600 daily airplane seats one-way between the cities between the hours of 6am and 12 midnight, or 150 passengers per hour. There are very frequent (sub-hourly) departures on very small planes, because people value frequency for such a short trip.

For a top of the line rail service they're talking about (and to most utilize the high fixed cost of the infrastructure), you would expect there to be at least hourly (or even be generous, 2-hourly) service to call it a true frequent high speed rail solution. You don't build a high speed rail to have it run only every 3 hours.

The 150-300 people taking planes now just doesn't fill a 700-900 seat train, and hope as you may to say that you can displace car vehicle passengers onto the train, it seems like a big stretch to think you'll stimulate 700 people per hour to take the train, especially at probably >$100 per ticket.

This is not to say that having such a service couldn't start to stimulate demand over several years between the 2 cities. But would the public be willing to foot the bill to make that bet, and for how long?

Secondly, the cost to acquire rights of way and get the expertise to built such a high speed rail line is just way too high in the US. There have been good articles wondering why this is, and that deserves a thread of its own, it's so complex. We don't have a good track (hah) record of being able to source the talent and the property rights and engineering leverage / cost efficiency to do this affordably. Other countries have 1000s of rail planning engineers who work on this stuff every day. It would be hard for us to fill a single train car with such expertise.

Much as I wish such a thing could be possible, the cost-benefits of high speed rail in the US really point you to spending your transportation $ elsewhere for more positive impact. If it could be built at 1/10 the cost, it would be a no-brainer, and for sure I would say take that bet. But that's not the reality we've created for ourselves in this country.

High-speed train would displace not just flights, but also buses, private cars and the existing (admittedly pathetic) rail service, plus it would also induce new demand since it would make currently awkward trips (eg. flying from Seattle to Vancouver for a single meeting and flying back) much more feasible.

Studies of other new HSRs over similar distances indicate quite consistently that they take about equal shares (~30%) from planes and buses/cars, with the remaining ~40% passengers from replaced rail service and induced demand.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222774085_High-spee...

The cost / time savings isn't what's the important factor in determining whether the service is sustainable, once you are in the competitive territory. It's how many people will take the service. Even if you assume that you'll double the ridership from my numbers above, that doesn't fill a train reliably.

SEA-YVR is even worse. There are 1350 passengers per day one way air between those cities. Even if you think that there's hidden demand traveling by car that you could convert, the volume just isn't there.

Interesting I wonder about the displacement and induced demand in other scenarios like say adding another highway lane when there already is a high speed railway.

How many car trips are there between the two cities per day? It could also compete with cars if it is faster.

Additionally when you are at your destination, you are most likely going to be needing your car too. Most American cities require a car to get anywhere you want to go.

E.g. I can technically take the bus to get to work where I live, but it would take 2 hours one way. It is a 20 minutes in my car.

Cities and towns need to start changing. The argument I always hear is that because things are unwalkable now that they have to be forever.

Vancouver is just over the Columbia. I don't think we need a high-speed rail. What we need is a new I-5 bridge that includes a light rail line and many more lanes. It's such a bottleneck between Portland and Vancouver.

Vancouver, British Columbia.

This might work in Europe or Japan but what are these people thinking? They can't get a train between Portland and Vancouver Washington going, have wasted hundreds of millions on it already with nothing to show for it multiple times, and now they want to build this? So let's waste a few tens of billions of dollars, get nowhere like California, and then give up? Fuck that. It's impossible. This is America. We should try to live up to our own potential and our own potential is not much these days. No one seems to have told these idiots. I'd bet money right now this doesn't happen in my lifetime (I'm late thirties). So let's stop with the fantasy cause the mere fantasy of a replacement or new bridge over the Columbia (which this project would absolutely require) is fantasy enough for me.

The Vancouver, WA thing is especially ridiculous given the whole Columbia River Crossing fiasco, where the Washington legislature wasted a ton of money by shutting it all down out of fear that Vancouver might have to pay to operate a single rail stop on their side of the river.

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