Washington state legislators make pitch for high speed rail funding
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Democratic members of the Washington state congressional delegation have written Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to lobby for federal funding to support development of a high speed rail route in the Pacific Northwest.
The Cascadia High Speed Rail proposal calls for developing a route from Vancouver, British Columbia through Seattle to Portland, Ore. The Washington State Department of Transportation submitted an application to the Federal Railroad Administration for a $198 million Federal-State Partnership grant to help fund planning of the project; the Washington state legislature has already provided $50 million in funding and committed $100 million more in the future, the Seattle Times reports.
The letter to Buttigieg is signed by 10 members of Congress — U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, and U.S. Reps. Suzan K. DelBene, Rick Larsen, Marilyn Strickland, Adam Smith, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Pramila Javapal, Kim Schrier, and Derek Kilmer. It says the federal funding will support technical and advisory study planning requirements that precede environmental impact reports and advance the project to the design phase, and that the project “has the potential to transform the Pacific Northwest. It allows us to create a better-connected economic megaregion—stretching from Vancouver, British Columbia to Seattle, Washington to Portland, Oregon—that will be poised for global competitiveness and future prosperity.” The full letter is available here.
The Seattle Times article says the federal funds would go toward a planning study expected to cost $348 million, which would help determine the exact route of an approximately 290-mile corridor for trains capable of 250 mph.
This is the latest effort to build a true high-speed route in the U.S., following the California project that is far behind schedule and well over budget and the Texas Central effort to build a Dallas-Houston system using Japanese Shinkansen equipment. The Texas project, which appeared all but dead, returned to the spotlight last week when Amtrak announced it was partnering with Texas Central to pursue some federal funding [see “Amtrak working with Texas Central …,” Trains News Wire, Aug. 9, 2023].
Source: Trains.com