Thought this was an interesting take, does anyone know more about this?
Biden should have sided with the rail-workers. But instead safety measures were reduced and the rail companies want even more dangerous railways.
That is the same ones that AMTRAK rolls on FYI.
And the dude that wrote that opinion serves on the “Transportation Research Board’s Standing Committee on Freight” which wants those federal dollars on “their” rails.
But whatever. This is all a dog and pony show to get more businesses on board with a new airport that is being pitched for western Washington.
As i understand it, we have 70mph trains now. This guy’s group is proposing we spend a 10s of billions straightening out current sharp curves so we can go up to 110mph rail. Then, we run those trains way more often than we currently do. So it would take 2.5hrs to Portland instead of the 3.5hrs now, but if ran every 2 hours it would be useful and cheaper than spending 100billion on a separated track bullet train that did portland in 1hr.
Personally, based on taking the current sea+pdx amway train and being sidelined for at least 30min total for freight leasing to a 4+ trip, I think we should do both. Start work on the bullet train and correct the current one. Then we can have a good and excellent option that connect the region, and long term, the bullet train can connect to California’s network to form a pacific line.
my whole concern is landslides - will the corrected route or bullet route genuinely stop the insane number of outages? Every time I’ve had the opportunity to take the train it’s been a bus route.