On Wednesday, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) awarded the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) $49.7 million in grant funding to advance planning work on the Cascadia High-Speed Rail program, Washington Governor Jay Inslee announced. The states of Oregon and Washington and the Canadian province of British Columbia have been studying a possible high-speed rail line to connect the metropolitan areas of the Cascadia megaregion, particularly Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, B.C. — the three largest metropolises.
“We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to plan for future growth and transform how our region moves, and this funding keeps us on track to seize it,” Washington Governor Jay Inslee said in a statement. “Such a project has enormous potential for reducing emissions and improving quality of life for people across the Cascadia region.”
The award from the Federal Railroad Administration’s Corridor Identification and Development Program will advance plans into a less theoretical sphere. A joint press release from Inslee, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, and British Columbia Premier David Eby noted that the grant will support “technical planning across the Cascadia region and robust engagement and collaboration with local and regional elected officials, Tribal governments and Canadian First Nations, and communities along the corridor to understand their priorities for the future transportation system.”
WSDOT and its partners had sought $198 million planning grant in 2023, but secured only $1 million. The $49.7 million award still falls short of that request, but provides enough funding to advance plans a lot farther along.
The grant gets in the door just before a rail-friendly President Joe Biden passes the reins to a far more transit-averse president in Donald Trump. Federal administrators often delayed transit grants or blocked them entirely under Trump’s previous administration. Unless Republicans change their tune and back rail transit investments, Cascadia rail boosters may need to time their next round of funding requests to a Democratic administration.
“Since 2017, leaders in Washington, Oregon and British Columbia have explored how high-speed rail could better connect the Cascadia region, boost economic competitiveness, and mitigate climate change,” the Governor’s Office noted. “This is the first significant investment that will advance the technical and engagement work needed to explore potential route options.
A 2017 feasibility study estimated that a Cascadia high-speed rail line in the I-5 corridor would cost between $24 billion and $42 billion to construct, but likely operate at a profit once fully up and running. The study projected that conventional high-speed rail could achieve top speeds of 250 miles per hour, and even higher for maglev technology.
Those capital costs estimates were formulated before a period of high inflation, particularly in the construction sector, which is straining infrastructure project budgets across North America. But since expanding I-5 freeway capacity also faces similar constraints and cost escalation issues, it could well be that high-speed rail remains a prudent investment to meet transportation needs in the region, even at higher costs.
The Washington State Legislature approved $5 million in matching funds for the high-speed rail program. The FRA requires 10% local matching funds to advance the project through Step 2 of the FRA’s Corridor Identification and Development Program, which ultimately could make it competitive for construction grants that make the project a reality. The new award may be sufficient to complete the entirety of Step 2 of the process, though The Urbanist has reached out to an Inslee spokesperson to confirm this. Step 3 would be preliminary engineering and environmental review study work under the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), which requires a 20% local match.
Governor Inslee and the state legislature also added high-speed rail planning to a broader “I-5 Master Plan” effort, toward which they allocated $16 million in their last budget. “These funds are essential to drive the next phase of work, including extensive community engagement and tribal and agency coordination throughout the 277-mile-long corridor spanning nine counties,” WSDOT noted. “This engagement, extensive technical analysis, and coordination with Cascadia High-Speed Rail, Amtrak Cascades, and air mobility planning will inform the safety, equity, mobility, and resiliency benefits identified for the corridor under the I-5 Master Plan.”
While I-5 repair work has sought to incorporate high-speed rail into its designs, the Interstate Bridge Replacement megaproject in Clark County has not. This oversight could leave the high-speed rail project needing to add another costly multi-billion-dollar bridge over the Columbia River.
With some sections in a deteriorated state, I-5 faces considerable maintenance needs which have a high price tag, even before considering expansion. Outgoing WSDOT Secretary Roger Millar recently warned lawmakers they need to invest in maintenance rather than continuing to focus on highway expansion in order to prevent the system from degrading.
Millar has long advocated for high-speed rail, noting it would be more effective at meeting rising trip demand due to the geometric efficiencies of transit over private automobiles — not to mention the greater speeds.
“If you were to direct us to add a lane in each direction to I-5 between the Oregon border and British Columbia. that would be $110 billion-ish to build and would probably take as long as it would take to build a high-speed rail system between the communities,” Millar told state legislators during a 2019 briefing. “And it would add a lane of travel in each direction and would probably be full of traffic by the time we got finished building it. And it would still take you all day to get from Portland to Vancouver, B.C. With the investment in ultra high-speed rail, we’re talking about an hour to Vancouver or maybe an hour and a half down to Portland, and that would be a gamechanger.”
A 2021 poll found that 67% of Washingtonians support connecting the major cities of the region with development of high-speed rail.
“Our transportation system, and how we use it, must change as our technology and workforce needs evolve,” Oregon Governor Tina Kotek said in the release. “High-speed rail should be part of our region’s future. These federal dollars are a smart, proactive investment — not only in a transportation option, but in new opportunities for building more housing and creating family-wage jobs across our two states.”
The Cascadia region is expected to experience major population growth over coming decades, due to strong economies and a temperate climate that may attract climate refugees from other states. The three metro areas are already home to around nine million residents and expected to collectively add three to four million by 2050, according to governmental projections.
The three jurisdictions under the Cascadia rail umbrella share not just similar climates, but also similarly strong creative economies. Tying the region together with high-speed rail could strengthen those economies, a 2019 business case analysis found. That study’s analysis of wider economic benefit estimated building high-speed rail would support 160,000 additional permanent jobs.
“Our unique partnership to advance high-speed rail — representing two countries, two U.S. states and one Canadian province — enables us to make visionary investments in our region’s future through a sustained commitment to collaboration with our neighbors,” British Columbia Premier David Eby said in a statement.
A 2020 report looked at the cross-jurisdictional governance entity that would be need to build and operate a Cascadia high-speed rail line. Leaders appear to be leaning toward a public-private partnership model.
Plenty of steps remain to build Cascadia high speed rail a reality, but the grant adds a bit of momentum to tide the project over during a new federal administration that may not be offering much help.
Doug Trumm is publisher of The Urbanist. An Urbanist writer since 2015, he dreams of pedestrianizing streets, blanketing the city in bus lanes, and unleashing a mass timber building spree to end the affordable housing shortage and avert our coming climate catastrophe. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington in 2019. He lives in East Fremont and loves to explore the city on his bike.