Is This the New High-Speed Rail Nightmare on the American Continent?
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- Опубликовано: 7 июн 2024
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In today's video, we are unwrapping an exciting new initiative: constructing an ultra-high-speed rail in the Cascadia region of the USA and parts of Canada!
This ambitious project aims to connect the major metropolitan areas of Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland with a ground transportation system capable of reaching speeds up to 350 kph (220 mph).
The existing rail service in the Cascadia megaregion is limited to Amtrak, which operates at a maximum speed of 127 kmh (79 mph) and shares tracks with BNSF freight trains. The service is infrequent, with only two daily round-trip journeys between Seattle and Vancouver. Traveling the entire 538 km (334 miles) route from Portland to Vancouver by rail currently takes a minimum of 8.5 hours. By comparison, bus or car travel can take around 5 to 6 hours, accounting for unpredictable traffic conditions in metropolitan areas.
So, the pressing need is evident for additional transportation infrastructure in the Cascadia megaregion...
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#railway #usa #construction
People always underestimate that a highspeed rail line between big cities will make car travel also way more pleasant. So any driver should support it
Have you ever been in a car on a motorway next to a high-speed railway line? It's a bit discouraging. 🙂
@@SeverityOne what do you mean?
@@E11or Well, you're doing a leisurely 130 km/h (80 mph) on the French péage, and then a train overtakes you at 300 km/h (190 mph).
@@SeverityOne and that is so discouraging?
@@SeverityOnebut no traffic to worry about cus everyone else is on the train. That was the point. Alternatives to car travel make car travel better for people who want to drive. 😊
For the HSR to be really effective, the stations will need good local mass transportation connections inside of the cities.
True. A centrally located station with good local transit connections is a must for intercity rail to work well. Which should be possible for all 4 cities? And for 3 of them you could get stations at the main airports as well with not unreasonable investments.
No it really doesn’t, or at least not right away. This is just another excuse that people bring up when as for why we don’t have HSR. Why can’t people just rent cars when they get to their destination to get around (until better public transportation is available). We do it all the time with planes, why not with HSR as well? They could also use rideshare services or call a Uber or taxi. Or they could just carpool with a friend if that’s available. We really don’t need to have to have good transit surrounding the stations, we just need to have HSR. It could theoretically survive without good public transport.
@@highway2heaven91 People won't want to use HSR if they're going to need a car once they get there anyway. Not just to get to their destination, but to move about the area while they're there. They'll just take their own car.
@@dpg227 Why do we use a car after we get off the plane then? Because by that logic, we could just drive to our destination as well (Barring overseas or cross-country flights). Why isn’t public transportation assumed to be automatically necessary in that situation?
Because just like with planes, if rail is a significantly faster option, people will still use it. Many high speed trains can run at twice the speed of the speed limit of an interstate, and some can go even faster than that (outside of North America). The only real disadvantage that rail has in North America against planes is that it’s expensive and difficult (for Americans) to construct.
At least 3 of the cities (Portland, Seattle, Vancouver) have pretty good local transit by north American standards.
British Columbia, Washington and Oregon should invite HSR experts from Western Europe (France, Germany, Italy and Spain) and East Asia (China and Japan) and have them work alongside the Cascadian engineers and experts. They would learn a lot about how other countries plan and construct their HSR. Especially Japan, because Cascadia is also in the ring of fire and according to a 2012 USGS study, there is a an increasing risk of a major earthquake (magnitude 7.1+) happening in the next 50 years, and by 2060 the possibility will have increased to 85%. That means, it will happen either before, during or not too long after construction of the Cascadian HSR. The Japanese are experts when it comes to earthquake resistant infrastructure, including HSR. Additionally, both Cascadia and Japan are mountainous, which would make the Japanese expertise even more useful.
We are not inviting China. Absolutely not.
COMPLETELY agree with this. America does not have the experience in building high speed rail, except for California, and as much as I support that project, we really should not have allowed the "buy America" clause to dictate who builds our railways when we don't have the experience.
If only engineering knowledge was the issue, rather than funding and legal and cultural hurdles
@@crazy808ish Well, engineering knowledge is part of it, but I agree with you irt funding, legal and culture.
One major problem would be rolling stock. If the federal govt insists on keeping Buy America, the only choices will be mostly European rolling stock companies that have already set up factories inside the US.
The Cascadian HSR needs its own rail tracks, as to avoid other passenger and especially freight rail. This would make the Cascadian HSR way more efficient than Amtrack. It would also give the HSR more independence.
Italy and Spain have earthquakes too so their engineers would also be very helpful.
@@highway2heaven91and Japan
@@counterfit5 Oops, this response was meant for another comment
The goal, based on the WSDOT study, is to have the HSR have its own tracks, but also build it in a way that the Amtrak Cascades (and most likely Sounder) can also use it in certain sections so it indirectly improves Amtrak service as well.
It also needs to NOT be GROUND transit, aka, at-grade. That's a massive mistake. It has to have its own tracks and right of way in order to be truly viable and worth it to implement. It can't be allowed to have any grade crossings.
This is such an obvious corridor for HSR.
Three large cities in a straight line, with a fourth smaller (but still significant enough) city a bit further on. The cities are an ideal distance apart for HSR. The Cities all have (or are building) decent local rail transit. If the line existed today, and ticket prices were reasonable, it'd be hailed as a great success and as a model for more HSR in North America. You could even make the line go via stations at the airports in 3 out of the 4 cities with a reasonable alignment! (I'm all for reducing flying harshly until flying is actually fully Green, but let's be realistic: HSR via the airports over-all probably reduces flying regionally)
But instead there's a deeply entrenched pro-car & pro-airline politics controlling the politics of it all. And thus the budgets. Plus the issue of crazy high construction costs for infrastructure in North America. If it could be built at Spanish costs it'd probably be much easier to get the politics aligned.
Oh, and obviously the stations have to go downtown at the main transit hubs. Anything else is just wrong & a waste of money.
And in the US, the only way you typically can get the airline lobbies to allow you to go through with planning and building a HSR line is to put a station at the airport (they see this as their way of ensuring and almost enforcing a bias to having business class and higher riders on the train than lower class folks). So its a neat little trick to get ahead of that stonewalling they love to do to such projects.
@@TheCriminalViolin As I see it, it would have benefited passenger rail if the airports had originally been located right on/by the rail lines. Imagine if both LA's and San Diego's main airports had been right on the rail line connecting the two somehow. So all the trains (intercity, regional, & commuter) had been stopping at stations part of the airports all these years. Sure would have made for a different outlook for rail transit in the region.
the thing that gives everyone pause is that California tried to start, thinking it would cost $33B, and that cost has since quintupled. Despite having some similarities to California, Washington and Oregon have realized that they don't want to go down that route, since they each have only one method of collecting taxes (WA has no income tax and OR has no sales tax), and they don't want to have to foot an ever-increasing bill
@@jwil4286 The cost increase of CaHSR should give people pause! No matter how they collect taxes. The huge cost of building infrastructure in the US is really holding back a lot of good initiatives.
about your last point, not neccesarely, connectiing it with a new metro extension is also okay
As someone who lived for a long time in Portland and am now in Vancouver and still travels between the two cities frequently, I can't tell you how much I would love to have HSR in this region.
Driving is a huge pain, dealing with traffic in not just PDX and Vancouver, but trying to get through or around Seattle.
To fly, there are only about a half dozen direct flights a day, and over 50 that make travelers change planes in Seattle, which adds a minimum of 90 minutes to the travel time.
Amtrak is a joke between the two cities. The video got one thing wrong: there is only one train in each direction that goes all the way from PDX to YVR. Anything else requires a switch from the train to an Amtrak Thruway Bus service. The train journey leaves Vancouver at 6:30 am and the return gets in at 11pm, spending from 2:30-3:00 in Portland before heading back north.
The $170 price tag is about half of what a direct flight would cost, and if their 2h45m travel time is right, it means that flying would be about the same amount of time as traveling by rail, faster if the air travel means stopping in Seattle. I'd definitely travel more between these three beautiful cities if train speeds and frequency improve, and I don't think it would take much to get a lot of us in the region to get out of our cars and onto the train for these kinds of trips. Thanks for a great video!
which Vancouver?
Your last paragraph, you made a mistake that likely will confuse some readers, as you said "it means that flying would be about the same amount of time as traveling by air" when it seems clear you meant to say rail in place of flying.
@@jwil4286 Clearly BC, as he's referring to YVR (Vancouver BC's IATA code)
@@TheCriminalViolin Ahhh... thanks!
@@jwil4286 British Columbia!
I live in Vancouver. I believe that our first goal should be to have a regular and ok speed downtown-to-downtown rail connection that does not get held up by freight. This would likely be faster than a cheap suburb-to-suburb HSR because Surrey just isnt the metropolitan destination everyone thinks of.
As for HSR to downtown, Vancouver will have the side benefiet that we dont have a very good regional rail system and having medium and high-speed regional rail trains share tracks would go a long way to improving connectivity in our local region.
First step is consistent and frequent service.
Surrey is a fabricated city - horribly planned, no cultural anchor, fueled by developer financial motivation, and horridly car-centric.
Amtrak cascades long range plan would have been a good start.
Washington state did the engineering and planning work at the time to estimate that it would cost up to a little under $10 Billion in today’s dollars to create bypass track, widen corridors, and straighten greenfield alignments to 110mph top speed which would have resulted in Seattle to Vancouver trips taking 2 hours and 30 minutes and 13 round trips a day
After the 2017 DuPont derailment though the plans haven’t been revisited. Very tragic incident at the time that resulted in the track owner of the curve (Sound Transit) firing their top safety chief at the time and opened up the conversation for positive train control
@@jarjarbinks6018 Yeah, I still wish this was being implemented.
An extension to Whistler seems like an obvious choice. Imagine this scenario, someone from Seattle wants to get some skiing in, but they have some work to do. On their trip to Whistler they check their emails and get some work in. Once they get to Whistler, they put their bag in a locker and get 4 hours of skiing in before doing some more work on their way back.
I think the Cascadian HSR should primarily focus on the downtowns of Portland, Seattle and Vancouver and in later years open stations in smaller cities along the route, creating new lines to cities outside of the main route and open stations outside of the downtowns of Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. It should offer express service for the larger cities.
What? No. The HSR Line connects the different cities it should stop at. It may use old corridors in the cites at lower speeds. The most important part is the high speed track between the cities and track and electrification up to spec everywhere.
If you electrify and upgrade an old rail line in a city, you can build a station with it. The price of the smaller stations is probably negligible to the rest of the project. If the HSR loses too much time on the old tracks, you can build tunnels afterwards to get straight to the station without delays.
Yeah, it would make sense to leave Eugene and Spokane for a phase 2, just build it between the big metro areas first.
It would be next to impossible to build on the surface in Seattle - even temporarily.
It would require tunneling.
@@5ch4cht3l7 It doesn't sound like what you're saying even disagree with Tashi's comment on the HSR line, but you start yours as if it does. What's with that?
@@rorymcmanama3286 Or, working to gain the means to have the right of way elevated.
Seattle-area rail advocate here. This covers a lot of the important points on the current project, but worth adding is that Washington had actually started a statewide (Vancouver-Seattle-Portland-Spokane) project back in the early 1990s around the same time the corridor received its federal high-speed designation. This initial HSR effort was what ended up producing Amtrak Cascades, and might have created an East-West route too had early 2000s transportation funding politics worked out better.
With the current project, my take is that it’s awesome but needs to feature an interim plan for Amtrak and commuter rail. These local services will be needed as bridges between smaller communities and the more spaced-out HSR stops. And capacity + speed improvements to the existing lines would do wonders to shift people to riding trains, helping to build the long-term support the HSR will need to survive the difficulties it will experience during construction. Existing infrastructure and services should be invested in alongside the new stuff; they should complement (rather than compete with) each other.
As a Californian, I really hope this gets done ASAP. I support any HSR project in the USA. The sooner the better.
And the federal government can subsidize the service for a few years like they do for other nascent industries like EV technology and vehicles. Why not HSR?
1:34 to skip sponsor, thank me later.
When I hear "350 km/h", I already know it will never happen.
Wait... They actually had plans for HSR and not just the poorly made Cascades service?
I never knew about this, only some information off Wikipedia.
Only Brightline can succesfully build HSR in the US…
@@ncard00 Brightline will not, and cannot, build an actual HSR service. The current service in Florida, that they dear to call "high speed", should (if they manage to get there in the promised time of 3h) provide an average speed of 73mi/h while the Brightline West promises to provide an average speed of 100mi/h - those are in no way high speeds. That's what happens when you try to provide "high speed" without actually investing the necessary money. You cannot build real HSR with almost 300 at grade crossing, non electrifies shared with freight insufficiently aligned tracks (in Florida) or with a single insufficiently aligned track, in the median, and on the same gradient of a highway, without tunnels or bridges through the mountains (Brightline West - "LA" to Las Vegas, which before it even started already went from $8B to $12B. In any case, why do you lat private companies build, and fully own, rail lines that end up mostly financed by public funds? Bright line works with tax deducted government loans and huge government grants, if tax payers end up paying most of it they should own it.
When leaving it to the private sector what you get is an unreliable lower quality service, I'm talking about the actual important things, like speed, quality of ride and safety, and reliable and constant service, not a snack and coffee that they might give. For a private company profit is the most important thing, thats why Brightline Florida completely fired most employees and stopped service for 18 month during Covid while real government owned services continued, under hard conditions, to provide service - as public transport must do. As they did during Covid Brightline will not hesitate to cut off service and even completely stop it if it's not profitable.
@@ncard00Brightline hasn’t even built an HSR line. They’re slower than Amtrak. By your logic Amtrak is superior(not that I disagree with that premise).
Brightline is learning step by step how to build an HSR Line. By the time they connect Orlando to Atlanta they will be on stride. Compare this to CHSR that built then learned they didn't know how to build a train.
Why is this not being built yet? It's such an obvious win, especially in a region that is generally more supportive of public investment anyways. I get that trying to build a line between states, let alone countries, is pretty difficult, but the benefits are so plain that it's maddening that dirt isn't being moved for this yet.
Everyone loves ragging on California, and especially California high speed rail, but at least they're out there building it, even if there's a question of finishing it still in the air. Let's at least get this thing started!
The title doesn't really reflect the main substance of the video. I know hyperbole sells on youtube, but I don't think it looks good on educational channels like yours. Nice video still though. :)
Yeah, they didn't really explain why it's a disaster, although given how a lot of money has been spent on feasibility studies instead of actual construction, I fully expect that this is true. In my country, Romania, that's what the politicians usually do to pretend to do something while awarding some contracts to their party clientele: do endless feasibility studies with no results.
Honestly as someone who lives along the proposed corridor, it would be awesome if cascadia hsr would become a reality. And there are definitely a LOT of challenges but I think high speed rail between Seattle and Portland is totally possible because the terrain in between the two cities actually isn’t that bad. The only spots I could find that would be more difficult to build would be just west of Tacoma Dome station, where there’s a big hill, maybe the Nisqually valley and the slope from chehalis to napavine and especially the part between winlock and the cowlitz river. And there’s also the new bridge over the columbia. But overall I think hsr from Portland to Seattle is doable if the hsr alignment roughly follows BNSF’s seattle subdivision. I’m not even sure it’s possible to build hsr up to vancouver bc though. It’s really a shame but there are so many mountains and steep slopes blocking the path of new hsr tracks. Just north of downtown seattle the current BNSF tracks follow a very curvy path along the shores of Puget Sound, which would not allow for high speeds. But the rest of North Seattle is up on a big hill/plateau with no clear right of way for hsr to follow. An alignment following I-5 is also too curvy for high speeds and there isn’t much room there anymore because of the Lynnwood and the future Everett link light rail extension projects. The only way I could see hsr going north of Seattle is underneath downtown in a new expensive tunnel, over the ship canal on a huge bridge, and then running elevated in the middle of Aurora Ave N for 20 miles all the way to South Everett. This would already be crazy expensive but then after South Everett the tracks would need to go back down to sea level, and the grades here are just too steep for trains. This would require a massively long tunnel underneath South Everett to decrease the grade. Then after that it gets better. I think the tracks could roughly follow BNSF’s Bellingham subdivision all the way to Mt Vernon/Burlington. Then after that the tracks would either go underneath the Chuckanut mtns south of Bellingham in a tunnel longer than any other on the whole system or go way off to the east and follow BNSF’s Sumas subdivison to the canadian border. I think the latter option makes more sense but it would add travel time and avoid Bellingham, which is a city of 90,000 people and has a large university. Once the tracks get to Sumas or Lynden and cross into Canada the alignment will have more problems as it will need to find a way through Surrey, which would probably need a tunnel too, and across the Fraser river on a new bridge, but then there is a right of way to get from New Westminster to Vancouver, BNSF’s New Westminster subdivison, but it just isn’t very high speed and I don’t think there’s any room to build a high speed alignment into Vancouver, the trains would have to slow down. It really sucks that it’s so difficult to build hsr from Seattle to Vancouver, and I do actually think a lot of the challenges could be overcome with enough capital and political will, but I don’t think high speed tracks are possible between downtown Seattle and downtown Everett. The challenges are just too great and I don’t think an elevated alignment on top of Aurora Ave N would ever be built or be able to be connected to downtown Seattle or downtown Everett. But maybe high speed trains could just follow the existing BNSF tracks along Puget Sound. The tracks could be upgraded a little of course and it would add a lot to travel time but I think it may be the only real option. Then north of Everett a new hsr alignment could be built all the way to Surrey, at least speeding up travel time in the more rural areas. I think upgraded train service to Vancouver bc might end up being more like a faster, upgraded Amtrak Cascades service instead of a completely new high speed rail service. But it still would be a lot faster than what we have now that’s for sure. But we should still totally build hsr from Seattle to Portland, I think in a lot of ways it is probably even easier to build than California hsr.
Silly train people, just drive Seattle to Portland 2.5 hours or TAKE THE DAMN GREYHOUND BUS 3 HOURS $30, or fly 1 hour $60. I bet you never took a Greyhound bus this route, yet magically you'll take the HSR, what a huge mental leap.... Greyhound for family of 4 is $120, for 4 HSR will be $300 at $75 each, or it's $30 of gasoline, BE HONEST at these costs very few will take HSR, what a bunch of liars y'all are, most will still drive so what's the effing point.. build local bus routes not dumb HSR few will leave their cars for!!!! Silly morons .. I'm a moron too for hot chicks but I don't ask for govt to pay for my dumbness!! Dummies...
@@mostlyguesses8385Not everyone is up for taking their two-ton death box a hundred miles, flying and the greyhound also suck. Brightline’s first operational profit proves people will use trains when you do them right. The only “dummy” is you.
You would need tilting trains for those curves
Just build maglev and forget the existing alignment
Tip: change the title
To what?
@@darynvoss7883 They already changed the title. The previous one was informing that this project was going to be a disaster.
@@thgserra oh, yeah, good call
I live in Portland and like to visit both Seattle and Vancouver. Looks like Amtrak cascades tickets from PDX to VAC run between 51 - $110 depending on how far ahead you book, lets call it $81 on average. $81 for 8 hours vs $170 2.75 hours is saving 5 hours and 15 mins of train time for $89. So, it should be worth it if people value their time on train vs whatever else they'd be doing at $17 an hour or more. I think that pencils well for most people. I enjoy time on trains so I'm not sure if I'd pay the extra money other than to experience it a few times, but I think I'm in the minority.
Take Greyhound bus Seattle - Portland, $30 2.5 hour, but you yuppies are too racist and spoiled to ride with us brown people. It really is racism, you are scared away from Greyhound by all the brown people. HSR is for racists, weird but true, otherwise y'all would ride Greyhound .. Think a minute and admit, shit, us yuppies are scared away from Greyhound by it's riders, we want a new separate system.. Truth hurts. I'm not kidding. To save 1 hour and avoid scary people you want govt billions and $90 ticket to keep the brown poor people away from you. .. Again this really is true, yuppies are scared of certain looking people, so don't take the adequate Greyhound and whine how they want a HSR.... Be honest and reflect, why haven't you looked into and ridden Greyhound, cuz it has scary brown people... I felt this way, but blacks don't bother Asians I had to learn and internalize, but whites never so this they just avoid Greyhound and whine about trains . Racism, honestly.. stereotypes and fear exist, don't deny and claim otherwise... Sucks but true...
It should be public transportation but it won't be; it should be affordable. Count on being at least 30 years older before you experience the ride.
Thanks for the vid. I had heard of these proposals before but never got round to examining them in more detail. This video summed it up perfectly. Hopefully, the project progresses effectively and doesn't become another California HSR. Keep up the good work👍
I have lived in this region my whole life, including the cities of Vancouver, BC, Bellingham, WA and now Bend, Oregon (3 hr drive from Portland) and I would love to see this project approved and built quicklly. It would increase travel options for millions in the region and would remove vehicles from the roadway helping reduce congestion and emissions. I would definitely take the Cascadia HSR for the estimated ticket price. When comparing to gas/flight costs and time saved, this option is a no brainer. Thank you for the video!
As someone on the other side of the country, I definitely hope it succeeds. Hopefully it get more places to consider intercity rail (doesn't necessarily even need to be high speed) and intracity transit.
Interesting project, I hope the US will invest a little more in the future in railways..
I can see cascadian HSR meshing perfectly with Tri-Met rail services in Portland. We already have inter-city light rail systems that can take you almost anywhere. $170 for a ticket to Vancouver is nothing when considering the danger, time, and focus required to drive all the way there.
Damn, this is an extremely detailed and comprehensive video! Great work. This puts everything you need to know about Cascadia HSR into one place. Shame about having "nightmare" in the title, though! Every time I share this with someone I'm going to have to explain this is not an anti-HSR video.
Don't know what a similar car or air journey costs, but $170 is a lot of money for a 2h45 trip. Even in Switzerland you'd pay about half of that.
Ikr. Currently airfares between Seattle and Portland are only about 1/4 to 1/3 that price and even with air travel in Canada being much more expensive, flights from Seattle to Vancouver generally 1/2 of that, realistically, travel can’t cost more than $50 and should likely cost much less if it’s actually going to attract riders
A ticket for business class on a 90% full Acela a few days out will run you north of $300. And that's just Providence to NYC
@metrofilmer8894 is 280 for portland to vancouver air flights in the next few weeks.
That's more then 170
Thanks for including our region's light rail progress on the Federal Way extension, although it would've been nicer to use the May/July 2023 drone footage instead of the January/October 2022 drone footage. :)
I am unawares of the details of the cascadia region, however,
it seems like they could avoid many land acquisition issues by just keeping the lines within the highway right of way, and building stations along near the highway to minimize costs and delays. is that feasible?/is there any demand near the highways?
170 Portland Vancouver, super. Cant wait for this scenic high speed line!
I hope that local transit systems are given a serious upgrade and overhaul for seamless integration with HSR. I know for a fact that Translink and the BC Government would do everything in their power to ensure a day-one bus loop, skytrain station, and dense TOD adjacent to a Cascadia HSR station, as they're very forward looking like that. Hopefully Seattle and Portland would do the same, though I have a lot more faith in the former than the latter.
I would also love if they developed Cascadia HSR as a highspeed mainline from Portland to Vancouver, with lower speed branches to locations such as Spokane, Eugene, Bend, Whistler, and Kelowna, and Kamloops. These branches would be upgraded and expanded overtime, with some eventually meeting other HSR systems for a larger North American Network - a few examples would be the California HSR joining Cascadia HSR at Medford, or a branch off of the proposed Lethbridge to Edmonton HSR corridor that would connect Kamloops with Calgary via Banff and connect the two rail systems.
Canada is growing by a million people a year, so we need bold infrastructure projects such as this in order to keep up with demand, or our country will become so unaffordable that it collapses. Along with our major cities, we need to build out and densify our smaller cities with lots of housing, good transit, and functional urban design with walkability in mind - and we need to connect them with more than just private vehicles.
The only problem with this project is that everyone working on it are underestimating the challenges to build HSR in that geography. The price they propose is gross underestimation of what it will really cost.
True. California has learned that lesson the hard way, but it's over the hump now in many ways. Now it's about getting the funding to build it as fast as possible.
@@mrxman581 CAHSR is a trash fire. It's a good example of terrible project management.
@@libshastra yes, it has had issues but it's not all due to management. There were growing pains due to CAHSR being the first HSR project in the USA, but also obstacles they had to overcome due to outside special interest forces that cost both time and money. Things are moving along a lot better over the last 2-3 years.
Dimentia. CHSR has made no progress in the last 2-3 years. Nothing! They have completed 4 bridges. Whoopie do dah!
@@tonyburzio4107 They've done way more than that. It's also pretty difficult when you've only received $9 billion which is less than 10% of what's required to complete it. Doesn't help that politicians are trying to derail it, delaying completion even further into the future (which inevitably increases costs even further).
They need to actually commit, fund it, and get going. Yanking them around for political brownie points is just making it slower & more expensive.
Building a high speed train need to study? and they took this must of time and money to study. Sounds like corruption.
China and some European countries put the US to shame on HSR. Even Germany with its hodge-podge of discontinuous high speed lines.
How do you build a high speed train service without first doing the study?
Required by federal law to do certain amounts of environmental and impact studies, especially if theyre going to expect funding from the federal government.
The potential $170 ticket price between Oregon-Vancouver would be very competitive and reasonable. I am no econ expert but if it gets completed would be economically quite viable and life enhancing to that region and its tourists.
Quick question. Whenever you pay for your ticket you pay depending on your destination, right? Meaning, they’re shorter your trip, the cheaper your commute, or do you pay a flat fee? And if you do get to pay per stop, how does the company ensure people get off at the right station ?
You pay per stop. This can be ensured by people going through the train and checking your tickets or some kind of barricade at your station that you can only get through with a viable ticket. So if you travel further your ticket won't let you get out of the station and you have to pay extra
A major determining factor in whether Cascadia HSR will have similar delay & cost issues as California HSR has had is, how much opposition it will face from organizations and individuals with deep pockets - whether the economic interests and ideologues that oppose _every_ rail project, _every_ mass transportation project, _every_ bicycle lane, *anything that isn't for cars,* will be able to throw frivolous lawsuit after frivolous lawsuit at the project for year after year after year, only to then complain that the project is taking too long and costing too much & should be scrapped.
Honestly, everyone talks about how badly California HSR has done, and _nobody_ talks about the well-funded, coordinated campaign to kill it from the very beginning. Having watched it play out in real time, it's frustrating as hell that it just gets ignored, and the blame for the results of that anti-rail campaign laid at the feet of the project itself.
From a Washington State local point of view, I don't believe funding will be as big of an issue here. Since a majority of the project scope will be in Washington State, the voters here largely support introducing new taxes to fund major infrastructure projects which helps establish a funding baseline. The recent tax programs that were introduced here this year are also overperforming and are bringing in more state revenue than initially projected (cap and invest program and capital gains tax), which is another possible source of funding.
On the corporation side, the large corporations here (Microsoft, Amazon, etc.) have a history of supporting public transportation projects in the region and have helped fund studies and TOD projects as well.
One thing that I really like about the recent study that WSDOT has done with the Cascadia HSR is that they are leveraging CAHSR as a case study and lessons learned, and there seems to be an emphasis of coming up with a solid plan before moving forward with anything.
@@TheTikeySauceCalifornia has much of the same mindset you describe which is why voters approved the CAHSR in 2008. However, that doesn't negate all the NIMBYs that come out from under a rock to protest it.
Since CAHSR was first to the HSR party they should use them as a lessons learned example. In fact, they can also learn how to best deal with all the obstacles political, environmental, technical, and legal roadblocks.
And they could use CAHSR' s track to test their rolling stock too. Currently, there is no place in the USA to test trainsets at 200+ mph.
I think they should use the existing centrally located stations in Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. It’s worth sacrificing a few minutes of travel time due to slow approach tracks to have a centrally located station, and all three stations have a lot of unused capacity
How are they going to come into and exit those stations from a remote alignment? Cost estimates and timeline and station locations and route are all things that are still up in the air after 6 years of study already and many millions of dollars. They will spend hundreds of millions more in planning, I mean even before any engineering, and way before any construction. The current unused capacity would be filled up if we #InducedDemandForRail
Hopefully after they build the Cascadia HSR they can build another HSR line that connects between Seattle, Vancouver and the cities of Juneau and Anchorage in Alaska since alot of ppl in BC and PNW migrate there for seasonal work.
yeay! new railways explained video 😍
The US government is not even willing to renovate the subway, will they be willing to spend money to repair the high-speed rail? Those politicians would rather increase military spending than build public transportation facilities. This will even affect the interests of airlines, and airline lobbyists will continue to stop it.
Great video, thank you!
This is an excellent opportunity for Cascadia to show the rest of North America how HSR should be implemented.
I think the project aims too high regarding speed. 220 mph is good if the distance between stop is 200+ miles. If it is 40 to 60 miles as it is in a regional network, 150 mph will be sufficient. Travel times will not be much higher, but costs will be much lower.
How do you get partnerships like this? Like no one that watches this video is going to buy anything from Harting. They are highly specialized and their products don't target individuals, their customers are mostly other big companies that buy their technology to increase efficiency. I just doubt that a CEO of a company that would buy something from Harting is watching any RUclips videos at all
Honestly, we wonder the same thing 😅
This may need to follow SNCF where the high-speed lines exist outside of cities, but the trains switch to local existing rail lines to use existing stations. All 3 cities already have excellently located stations, no need to reinvent the wheel.
One problem existing lines are clogged with freight
If built - and with the kind of speed envisioned - the Seattle-Vancouver leg would be among the most heroic and expensive railroad projects ever undertaken on a per-mile basis.. I think they should save it for later, as the ability to achieve things like this is still improving rapidly. For instance we're still relying on overhead wires and pantographs, whereas linear induction will take conventional steel-wheel railroading out of the Dark Ages, obviating the more bulky and inelegant maglev technologies.
They tried running a train on this rout 5 or 10 years ago. It went off the rails and fell off the bridge, on first trip, killed some people.
It would be really nice if the high speed rail went to Bellevue. There is currently 0 railway in Bellevue, and it will definitely be nice to have a high speed rail
One problem with high-speed rail is that if it stops at very many places, it's no longer high-speed. Amtrak is currently struggling with the fact that more and more formerly small towns have become cities that need rail service. So it's making it harder to maintain their service on long routes when they have to stop every 20 miles.
We need that corridor so bad
So I’m a resident of an outskirt of portland and I would definitely rather ride HSR than fly. I don’t know if I would go all the way to Vancouver very often and the price would be a huge factor in how often I would go to Seattle with it, but I do have a lot of friends and things I would want to do there. If it’s affordable it would be a multiple trips a year type of situation. Obviously it being near the city center would be a huge deal for me too as I’m a car free person and renting a car to get around when I get there isn’t an option. I figure a lot of people who will choose rail over driving would be in a similar situation. All of those things would impact if I would use it for just like regular weekend trips out of it would be like a whole thing where I’d probably only do it like once a year when I can get time off. Affordability being the biggest factor there, followed by frequency. If it’s frequent enough that I can just go after work and come back at a reasonable time to go straight to work from the trains.
Nice to see the US finally build some high speed lines, but the projected ticket prices for all of those lines are out of this world. If the government subsidizes highways so heavily, why not rail lines?
The Baltimore-Washington MagLev project is a waste of public dollars. Its more productive to focus more funds upgrade Northeast Corridor to 185-220 mph.
$170 USD one way from Vancouver to Portland seems okay, though not super competitive with flying. Governments should subsidize it to make it more competitive. I would also consider just placing the HSR station in surrey rather than Vancouver, since Surrey has good connectivity to the rest of Vancouver metro via the skytrain network.
Video start 1:29
I see it working with some caveats -- 220mph is excessive, and 300kph (186mph) is surely sufficient and will yield big savings compared to a 220 project; and trains should be able to run on in some capacity -- let's say 100 to 125mph on line paralleling existing freight tracks, or even on the freight tracks themselves if they can do a deal with the host railroad on electrification -- to Portland's southern suburbs and to Eugene and Salem, Oregon.
USA HSR is so behind and under building for ease of construction rather than ease of use and future scaling it seems like it might be prudent to except that situation and skip the current generation of HSR and look towards new maglev double width high speed trains that might become affordable in 30 to 40 years. That development might be pushed forward with advancements.
hahahaha maglev? yeah right.
WHY does the US consideration of this infrastructure project have to include the revenue generated? The video referenced $108B to add an extra highway lane on I-5 without showing how much revenue that would generate. *Good to Great infrastructure will increase GDP for all, it doesn't have to produce revenue for some features, but not others...*
as an American I support California high-speed rail because we need high-speed rail and we need to take cars off the highways and rely less on cars and more on public transport infrastructure
Im still looking for the part where you explain why it's a disaster.
Just again one of their clickbait titles. It's a shame since they really don't need to do that 😢
Does anyone know what happened to Texas central?
Looks like it got held up by lawsuits and attempted legislation from property owners, but it appears that the legislation has, at least partially, Texas Central still seems intent on building though so hopefully they’ll be able to move forward despite the constant roadblocks
@@metrofilmer8894 Ugh!
I am curious how they will do the border crossing controls from BC to WA .. I read that you need to plan 45 minutes to cross, for any mode . .
The other way around would be quicker ...
The border crossing is done in Vancouver like at the airport so there is no delay to the train. This can be done because there is only one stop on the Canadian side.
Private funding?! You don't need private funds when you got the military budget to cut 😂
I really hope this happens
4:35 what would you be driving for the car cost to be $92? You would be getting 9 mpg
High speed rail Moscow - Kazan when will work start? I heard 2028 or 2030 will be finished construction. I think Railways Explained know about this
As a primer, I spent 35+ years in heavy industry, the last ten of which were in pax rail. I've studied proposals such as this since the 1996 Florida Overland eXpress misfire. You intend to hand over a high-speed railroad to the same bunch that left a 30-mph curve in the Point Defiance bypass. Don't. Make. Me. Laugh. This would be like handing a toddler a loaded handgun; someone will get hurt. There was a news piece today about an electric bus that Amtrak (no C) runs from Seattle to Bellingham instead of the train. So why are we talking about high-speed when running a bus instead of regular speed trains? The real litmus test will be with Brightline Florida when it (eventually) gets to Central Florida. Conventional speed trains. A deal with the host railroad for capacity and speeds they don't need nor pay for. Planning for first/last mile of travel. If this works (we shall see) then in a generation or two we can talk about the next step, high-speed. Until then this is just blowing smoke.
That price certainly isn't aimed at getting people out of their cars, except perhaps business travelers. They should have a slower lower cost service too.
Despite the massive amount of videos criticizing America's High Speed Rail infrastructure or lack thereof, they always leave out the fact that most Americans have no major desire for one, unlike China, 93% of American households own at least 1 car. Here in Florida, we voted to by 63% in 2004 to not build high speed rail.
You never hear in these videos that the US has largest domestic network of airports and that the ratio of direct flights to domestic cities is 3.5 times greater than any country in the world, and despite only having 30% of China's population, we have 3 times the domestic air passenger travel.
Our Canadian friends and neighbours to the north don't ever get criticized for their lack of a high-speed rail network, despite having the 8th largest economy in the world and 2nd biggest area of land after Russia.
A country can have lots of cars and still have a decent and extensive intercity high-speed railway network. Japan, France, and Germany are great examples of these.
Also, Canada actually gets criticized as often as the US. Just look at videos by Not Just Bikes and RMTransit, who are both from there. Because if there is one rail company that is worse than Amtrak, it's VIA Rail. Yes, they also have to share with freight rail, namely CN and CP. Yes, they're also grossly underfunded.
@@ianhomerpura8937
Just so you have a more complete picture, l just would like to share a quick background that is not shown in these videos and by the end you might have a more clear picture of the truth.
I was alive in the US in 1970's & 80's when globalization was shutting down manufacturing around the US, I watched the freight rail lines get shut down by the dozens as they shifted to mostly servicing ports. These lines became an eyesore of unmaintained rail lines, states and cities had to file lawsuits demanding they remove the rusting tracks and perform landscaping for the out of control brush & weeds. As a result, many Freight companies donated or sold them very cheap to the states which in turn created dozens of nature trails or also known as rail trails.
Why is this important? The most expensive cost in building any rail line is the cost of land acquisition, and this is a cost China doesn't have to deal with because they are a communist authoritarian state, their real estate is leased, not owned. They can take this land anytime with little to no compensation and with little to no fight.
In the US, only so much land is owned by the Federal or State governments, usually national or state parks, government buildings, military bases and nature preserves. So, it takes a substantial amount of time to acquire privately owned land through the required public meetings & legal battles. The US Constitution requires the government to pay a fair market value and that is where astronomical costs come from before the first piece of infrastructure is laid.
So with that explained, I can make my main point...
Amtrak executives are a bunch of con-artists when they complain about being forced to use the freight lines because they had decades available to them to acquire the abandoned rail lines at a tiny cost, some of which were offered completely free in exchange for maintaining them.
Amtrak is just a horribly mismanaged company with no incentive to do better because they are subsidized by the government! They send their lobbyists to Washington every year to complain about the freight lines, demanding billions from Congress to cover their mismanaged company, while they get away with paying their executives and employees ridiculous wages for a company that has never made a profit in it's 50+ years.
In contrast, while Florida voters voted against paying for high speed rail in 2004, Brightline created a public/private partnership with Florida and the Federal government and they built a semi-high speed rail line between Miami & Orlando in less than 2 years, that opens this week and they are already expanding to Tampa from Orlando. If they get they can prove the ridership is there, there will be more investment to build full high speed infrastructure with elevated tracks.
It's not viable, not even close. 10 million people is a tiny population, you'll need 5x-10x times of that. And even then it would probably fail, because the majority of outbound traffic is not between these 3 cities, but to other major population centers across the USA or abroad. The most sensible (and cheap, and fast) option is already mentioned in this video: expand airports!
People who push rail lines don't care about whether they make sense or not, their support is just ideologically driven. They see trains as transport for poor people, and cars and planes as transport for rich people. It's totally stupid and illogical, but that's about as deep as their "thinking" ever goes. It never dawns on these idiots that hi speed rail is so expensive that the tickets end up costing more than "poor" people can afford anyway.
First!!!!!!!!!!!!
Btw keep up with the videos. People need to know the use of public transport
The automobile will lobby against any HSR.
The seeming insistence on putting a station at Kelso/Longview, but no consideration of putting across the Columbia in the Vancouver side of the metro is a major error and would be long term logistical nightmare for everyone. I understand apprehension toward the idea of doing such a thing, given the proximity to Portland, and the likely much lower speeds required exiting/entering Portland, but with the egregious lack of options to get across the river either way, you're guaranteeing the majority of users of the HSR from their side will pour over the bridges, which will further cripple the already horrid traffic situation present there. And then long term it isn't viable for these people to use it much if at all because of that, as they'd be perpetually missing their trains for being for too late, and no, you can't just leave early to beat traffic because you'd have to go early enough you'd be stuck doing nothing waiting for 2 hours at least, as that's genuinely how bad the traffic congestion issue is. So then you're boxing yourself out of maximizing the potential for the ridership of the system. A small few will likely opt to go to the Kelso-Longview station if they continue with said plan, but I know most will remain reliant on their cars to make their commutes otherwise.
So it only makes sense to scrap Kelso/Longview station and move it south to if not Vancouver proper, somewhere like Salmon Creek. MAYBE Ridgefield, but then you're once again extending people's commutes to and from the station. They have got to recognize this and put a station there instead. Logistics clearly dictate this as well.
Now of course for local service, they then could have a K/L station for that. But for the actual proper HSR service, it simply does not make any sense.
The maps used in the video are from a route concept from the 2019 WSDOT study. There has not been any official decision on route and station placement yet as WSDOT hasn't even started planning the project design yet.
@@TheTikeySauce I get that, but my point with the Kelso/Longview station is that it was repeated across each concept design for the route from them, which seems they're set on putting a station there for some reason.
Nice idea but I can’t see how it would ever be cost effective. At any of these destinations you’d have to rent a car upon arrival, so might as well just save the money and drive your own car in the first place.
Extraordinery
Why is it a disaster? I don't think the title quite reflects the content of the video
Clickbait
After more than five years, they don't know how much the project costs, they don't have any engineering drawings, and the most they achieved was that they connected cities with lines on satellite layouts 😅
@@RailwaysExplained With this argumentation everything is a disaster. The first high-speed connection in France has been talked about since the late 1950s, but the service itself only started operating in the 1980s. So TGV/LGV is a disaster?
That's such a clickbait name for a video. So no 👍 this time.
Of course, but you are talking about the period 70 years ago. Things are a little different today 😅 but yes, the title is a bit clickbait. We have to admit 😅
@@RailwaysExplained To be fair a lot of European HSR projects stay in planning/funding limbo for decades.
These cities need be revitalized and made safe again. Otherwise these are just commuter trains.
When I listen to your voice in the background it sounds like a text-to-speech.
Why is it repeatedly called "ULTRA High Speed Rail" for the US while it is just "High Speed Rail" for the rest of the world? Similarly with the "MEGA Region" corridor while it seems very comparable to the European counter areas with High Speed Rail? Why the exaggerations without reason, warranted?
I think the "Ultra" is something that only Cascadia is talking about, and yes it's stupid. They say that because they're proposing top speeds of 250mph (which is beyond even the already-state-of-the-art 220mph that California HSR is planning). I think they did that because they wanted to study Maglev and Hyperloop too, and that's probably because techies from Microsoft were paying from some of the early studies and they want shiny new technology. Luckily, I think they'll drop the Maglev and Hyperloop nonsense as soon as the studies start getting into more detail.
Hello from south of Skwayways aka Vancouver BC, in the northwest corner of Turtle Island.
1--Cali HSR makes our HSR super feasible. 2-- YVR-PDX in 6-7h? No way. 3--This ain't "Cascadia"
1) HSR in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) is completely doable. Thank you for reminding us that our leaders know that HSR will be more effective than just-one-more-lane-bro AND it needs to be 100% gov't owned and funded. Govt keeps pumping out studies instead of planning stages because they look at Cali HSR and lose their confidence to confront car culture and cost overruns.
Thank you again for reminding us of the correct--positive--conclusion from Cali HSR. If it's twice as long as HSR PNW, then we'll only need half the money and we can get it finished in half the time.
The other positive is that we won't be starting from scratch. HSR PNW can hire contractors and use tech and practices from Cali HSR. As Reece at RMTransit likes to say, transit systems get cheaper when you have some practice building'em in your region.
2) The only way anyone drives YVR-PDX in 6-7h is if:
a) they're wealthy and squeaky clean enough for a NEXUS card; or
b) they cross the USA/CDN between 1-6am.
3. No one I know in the PNW says that they're from "Cascadia."
Cascadia is a small town in Oregon. I don't know anyone there BTW.
Biologists and geologists do study Cascadian flora, fauna, rocks and earthquake zones.
White nationalists started a Cascadian movement to create an ethno-state in the PNW.
Capitalists appropriated "Cascadia" as a convenient data point so they can get govt to cover costs of pet projects in the name of efficient integration. Strangely enough, very few capitalists are supporting HSR PNW... I guess cars and planes are more profitable?
(real) capitalists are in the (competitive) business of increasing supply until it meets demand at cost while driving down prices to cost.. the people you are thinking of are monopolists - they are interested in controlling the supply so it can't meet demand (see IP in the form of patents, copyrights, licenses, tariffs, etc. or regulatory capture or similar constructs) so that the price can be kept well above cost - which is earning them profit (which the customer is forced to provide as he doesn't have a competitive alternative to chose from).
you right pnw rail sounds way better
Let’s just do it 👍
Proof that if you throw enough money down the rathole, anything can get done.
year 2222,hopefully !
I don't know why the negative spin. All the facts presented in this video were very promising
$179 ticket price for Portland to Vancouver seems high, especially when compared to European and Japanese HSR. If HSR costs close to or the same as driving, most people would rather have the benefit that comes with your own vehicle. The cost of driving is the same with one or four people on the trip plus you can drive around after getting where you're going. HSR's value proposition diminishes quickly even with the time savings. I think fares that high in the US will result in a system that won't have the same ridership as European systems. Airlines will likely chop fares to $30 to $50 in a price war to compete with HSR in that corridor.
A ticket on high speed rail from Seville to Barcelona can cost less than $100 and, can be had for less than $10, it's twice as far as Portland to Vancouver. A ticket from Paris to Madrid can costs about $200 but can be found for less than $100 and that's 4x farther than Portland to Vancouver. Kyoto to Tokyo on the Shinkansen costs about $100-150, about the same distance as Portland to Vancouver.
I'm sure Japan's first HSR train tickets were also more expensive than comparable modes of transit at the time
But, if we had the political will, the HSR service could be subsidized by the federal government for several years like they have with EV technology.
Air flights from Portland to Vancouver in a couple weeks start at 280.
This price would be cost competitive regionally
👍
Good info. Pity about the computer voice. Maybe you could at least get a computer voice with an English accent. How does this rail project fit in with 15min cities?
There will never be a highspeed rail in US. Maybe they will do that in the next century when cost of building it today is like 100 fold.
Did you pull a bait-and switch with that doomer clickbait headline? That's very naughty. I see you've changed the headline, but this is what it said initially:
"New High-Speed Rail between the US and Canada is a Disaster. Here's Why"
Why is someone who talks about railways for a living calls them failures?
Seattle never gonna have a high speed line, it will be a fentanyl speed line. Everyone high, and homeless people camping on trains.
Who would want to go to Portland though?
Have a nice new week! 🚅🚅
The more competition to complete the US's first HSR corridor the better, CHSR has gotten to lazy, too lax and way too confident. Right now it's a two way race between Brightline west and Texas central.
I would say, that Americans, "as always", overcomplicate everything, which skyrockets the costs - and it may end up with cancelling the whole project... What they should do, in the first place, is to nationalize all rail networks, because otherwise - long-distance train travel will take even longer than usual, if you have to pass all those mammoth freight trains first. The main reason, why the rail in Europe is so successful is because all rail network is nationalized, and there are the same rules everywhere across the country.
I wonder if they are going to go with diesel traction like they did in Florida on the Brightline corridor 🤣 Probably not though, since 350 km/h is not possible with the top high-speed diesel locomotives, like the ones the UK has.
I don’t think a high speed corridor between Seattle and Everett bypassing the BNSF Scenic subdivision could be easily built due to lack of greenfield to take advantage of
At best you could appropriate a right of way from I-5 but that in and of itself would cost billions of dollars due to engineering difficulties. Not to say the project isn’t worth exploring but it would be expensive
Yeah, I-5 between Seattle and Everett is the best place to put it. It won't allow true high-speed rail service, but it could allow the Sounder commuter rail to be moved to this new line instead of being along the water where it is not as useful and doesn't get much ridership.
The main problem I foresee is the confusion of having terminals named Vancouver at both the north and south ends of the line.
Not really? Vancouver in Canada is always referenced as "Vancouver, BC" here. You can even check the Amtrak Cascades route which more or less has the same stops.
It’ll most likely be fine. For interstate train stations on Amtrak, the town name, as well as the state abbreviation is posted on information displays (Vancouver Washington for example is displayed as “Vancouver, WA”) so HSR would use that same way finding
They have different nicknames. They could just use those. The older, smaller Vancouver is "the Couve" and then much more well-known Vancouver is "Van."
Everything is examined: Ridership, Revenue, Capital and Operating Costs, Technology Options, Funding and Financing, and "Institutional Issues" - BUT NOT THE ROUTE. Which - excuse me - is the only thing that matters, and they've got it wrong. These "Projections" are subject to wide variability and are generally useless, but are nevertheless included in every major study for high speed rail, as the "experts" - who've got a good thing going, and being fused at the hip with the US railroad racketeering industry, represent the only accessible source as "authorities" which the spendthrift politicos and appointees are able to go to for consultation. Not a very encouraging picture.
How about connecting Eugene to Sacramento via railway?
Highspeed rail must fist be built within a megaregion before the megaregions can be connected. That's why LA to Sacramento is a thick line on the America 2050 map at 3:30 but Eugene to Sacramento is a thin line.
4 whom?
why does everyone on earth as soon as a new american HSR line is announced immediately call it a failure, easily the most uninformed claim you could make
High speed rail way