It’s not high-speed rail yet, and the improvements will take several years, but faster train trips are likely coming to Washington.
The federal government has awarded $590 million in rail improvement projects in Washington state to enable Amtrak trains to travel faster and more frequently, eventually reducing travel times for riders.
The grant for Washington and another $8 million for Oregon cover the rail corridor between Blaine and Eugene, Ore. Much of the money will go to build short stretches of parallel tracks, called siders, where freight trains can pull over and let faster passenger trains go by.
Money also could go toward overpasses, underpasses, and engines and passenger cars.
Officials say the money could generate 6,500 jobs in Washington state.
The grant is part of $8 billion to be distributed to 13 rail corridors around the country. Washington is getting the fifth highest amount on the list, after the California, Florida, Chicago-St. Louis, and Chicago-Minneapolis corridors.
The state applied last summer for improvements to the railway, and this money will be steered to pay for some of those projects. It’s not known which will be funded, said Scott Witt, rail and marine director for the state Department of Transportation.
In its original application, the state listed five projects in the north corridor between Everett and Blaine. These include $58.4 million for track improvements on the entire corridor; $5.3 million to straighten a curve in a track in Everett, enabling trains to increase their speed; and $3.6 million to add tracks in Everett’s Delta storage yard.
Witt said he expects to know in a few days which projects will make the cut.
The improvements will enable Amtrak to add two trains to the four now running daily between Seattle and Portland, Ore., and one train to the two now running between Seattle and Vancouver, B.C.
Filling seats on two more trains won’t be a problem, said state Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island.
“I can tell you the riders are ahead of us. They want it,” she said, adding every day people are at the new Amtrak platform in Stanwood awaiting a train.
Work could begin later this year, but it will probably be 2013 before the additional trains are in place, said Lloyd Brown, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation.
Travel times would be reduced by only 5 percent to start, according to an estimate from the office of U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. Eventually, with more improvements and higher speeds, a three-hour trip from Everett to Vancouver, B.C., could be reduced to less than two hours and the five-hour trip to Portland reduced to about 3 ½, officials have said.
The $590 million is only half of what the state asked for last summer when it sent a request to the Obama administration for $1.3 billion, officials said. No state got more than half of what it requested, said Scott
Still, it’s an important start, said Bruce Agnew, policy director of the Cascadia Center for Regional Development, a Seattle transportation policy group. Agnew also is a former Edmonds resident and two-term Snohomish County councilman.
The projects “eliminate scheduling delays that happen when you have too many freight trains on the same track,” he said. “You’re getting an increase in average speed.”
The Talgo trains operating on the Amtrak Cascades route are capable of traveling up to 150 mph but are limited to 79 mph because of road crossings, geography and other safety factors.
Washington’s trains will be considered “higher speed,” Witt said. “In fact it will be bursts of speed that we can do.”
While high-speed trains have been running for decades in Europe and Japan, Amtrak’s Acela route on the Eastern seaboard is the only one in the U.S. that runs trains at high speed, up to 135 mph, Agnew said.
To go that fast, trains need a dedicated track and bridges to separate them from freight trains and automobile traffic, officials say. Between Seattle and Portland there are double tracks but many crossings and other obstacles.
To the north, between Everett and the Canadian border, there are fewer crossings but only a single track.
Creating the siders in certain places means trains can run more often, increasing ridership, Agnew said.
“Then you’ve got enough critical mass to start the discussion of double tracking,” he said.
Without separate tracks, other improvements can get trains into the 90 mph to 110 mph range, officials say.
The state will have another chance to apply for funds later in the year, Agnew said. The region stands a good chance because of the investment that’s already been made, he said. Washington, Oregon and British Columbia have spent $1.1 billion in local money on improvements to the Amtrak Cascades line that has run between Eugene and Vancouver since 1994, officials have said.
Herald writer Jerry Cornfield contributed to this story.
Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439, sheets@heraldnet.com.
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