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Seattle to Portland in Under an Hour
If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you’ve probably heard some murmurings about the Cascadia High Speed Rail project (CHSR). Behind the scenes, folks have been working tirelessly since 2016 through impact studies, economic analyses, and funding proposals to bring an incredibly convenient, cost-effective, environmentally friendly — and frankly, just plain awesome — high-speed rail line to get you from Portland to Seattle to Vancouver, BC, each in under an hour.
But the time for action has arrived. We need your help and support to make it happen.
Make Travel Enjoyable Again
Picture this: You’re driving from Portland to Seattle for the weekend. You pack up your car and make your way out of the city to get on I-5, crawling through Friday afternoon traffic. Nearly four hours later, you finally arrive, but you still have to navigate the city in your car, looking for parking or paying for an overpriced garage.
Or maybe you decide to fly. You pay for a taxi to the airport so you don’t have to deal with parking. The flight is only an hour, but you had to leave your house 2.5 hours before to give yourself enough time to arrive and check in and go through security. You were sure to pack your toiletries into tiny bottles so you didn’t have to pay the checked bag fee, but the overhead bins are full once again. By the time you finally land in Seattle, collect your luggage from the baggage claim, and take a taxi into the city, it’s no faster than if you had driven.
Now imagine the trip with Cascadia high speed rail. You arrive at the conveniently located station about 20 minutes before your train departs. Seated in a wide, comfortable seat with plenty of legroom, you gaze out the picture window as the stunning PNW countryside rolls past. It hardly feels like you’re moving at all, much less like you’re pushing 220mph. You take a stroll through the cars and grab a drink at the bar. Before you know it, your train pulls into the station in Seattle. Less than an hour has passed since you stepped onto the train, and you’re just minutes from your hotel.
Turn 90 Minutes of Rush Hour Into 15 Minutes of Relaxation
Of course, most of those cars on the I-5 aren’t travelers—they’re commuters. Seattle currently boasts the third largest population of “mega-commuters” in the country. That means people who spend more than 90 minutes each way, or 3+ hours each day, getting to and from the office. And even with the vast increase in people working from home, the average commute time just keeps going up.
The 30-mile commute from Everett to Seattle should take just 24 minutes at the posted speed limit. Yet, according to WSDOT, travel times in 2018 averaged 56–87 minutes during morning rush hour. If you spend 90 minutes commuting each way, that’s 780 hours annually, or 33 entire days, stuck in traffic. The Cascadia train would make that journey in just 15 minutes. Which means high-speed rail could give you back 27 days of your life each year.
High-Speed Rail Is Cheaper Than Highways
Sure, that all sounds great, but at what cost?
It may surprise you to learn that high-speed rail is cheaper to build than expanding existing interstates. The plans to add one lane (in each direction) to the overly congested eyesore that is I-5 are estimated at $108 billion . . . for years of never-ending construction and complicated lane closures exacerbating congestion over nearly 500 miles of highway.
For the CHSR? The cost is estimated at just $31.7 billion, with an upper-range estimate of $42 billion (in 2017 dollars). Seriously. It will cost less than 40% as much to build 466 miles of high-speed rail that is better than highways in pretty much every way imaginable.
If you factor in that one high-speed rail line can offer up to five times the capacity of a two-lane highway, then the math is staggering. Measured on productivity, the train costs less than 10% of the cost to expand the highway.
The worst part about spending $108 billion to expand the interstate? It doesn’t even work. Adding a lane incentivizes more cars to use the road, and by the time it’s finished, it’s already just as backed up as the day construction started. The more lanes you build; the more congestion you get.
Going Green Just Got Easier
High-speed rail is one of the easiest ways to drastically decrease carbon emissions, both on an individual and state level, while actively improving your life.
In 2019, Washington State was responsible for 102.1 million metric tons of CO2, 39% of which was from the transportation sector. That’s 40.3 million metric tons, the largest contributor to Washington State’s carbon footprint.
Every time a person flies from Portland to Seattle in economy class, it generates about 600 pounds of CO2 per passenger per flight.
Every time you get on that flight from Portland to Seattle, the carbon you emit weighs as much as a grizzly bear.
And that flight leaves 18 times each day, or 129 times per week, moving a hundred people per flight, each one spewing out 600 pounds of carbon. Each way.
Driving your car is much better, producing only 180 pounds of carbon each way for a vehicle with a single passenger and decent gas mileage. But that’s still a lot of carbon.
How does high-speed rail stack up? HSR is 20x less carbon-intensive per passenger mile than flying, and still 7x less than road travel. And as the Cascadia Corridor transitions to fully renewable energy, high-speed rail has the power to be completely carbon neutral—generating zero emissions per passenger mile.
How Does an 800% ROI Sound?
As if all that wasn’t enough to convince you, building high-speed rail isn’t just cheaper than expanding an interstate…it actually pays for itself. The Cascadia High Speed Rail project is estimated to have an 800% ROI, bringing $355 billion in economic growth for a construction cost of $24-42 billion.
Between skilled labor for construction, operations, and maintenance, Cascadia high speed rail is estimated to create 200,000 jobs while bolstering American manufacturing and high-grade steel production. But the benefits of bringing high-speed rail to the Cascadia corridor expand far beyond the transportation sector. When easily accessible transportation comes to smaller rural and suburban areas previously only accessible by car, economic development occurs naturally. Shops, stores, and more affordable homes replace a handful of gas stations and fast food joints clustered around exits on the highway.
This kind of development gives towns and municipalities the opportunity to grow their communities with intention. To create more liveable, accessible areas while offering fast, easy access to the jobs and economic opportunities of the mega-region hubs of Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver, BC.
At the end of the day, building high-speed rail isn’t just about building better transportation. It’s about building a better life, and a better tomorrow.
Get Involved
Tell the United States Congress: It’s time to reconnect the country with high-speed and regional rail!
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