Transportation News

New Report Shows Benefits of Long Term Commitment to High Speed Rail in the State

Seattle, Feb. 9 – The Obama administration’s recent decision to award over $590 million in high speed rail funds to the Pacific Northwest is the first step towards a stronger, faster rail system that will reduce congestion, oil use, and carbon emissions, but much remains to be done.

That was the message that Washington Public Interest Research Group (WashPIRG) Advocate Blair Anundson made clear today at a press event at King Street Station to release The Right Track, a new research report from WashPIRG.

The new report analyzes the potential of high speed rail in nine different regions, including the Pacific Northwest, and presents eleven public-interest recommendations on how to spend high speed rail investments in the future.  According to data cited in the report, the completion of a national high-speed rail network would reduce car travel by 29 million trips and air travel by nearly 500,000 flights annually.   

“High-speed rail offers solutions to our economic, energy, and environmental problems. It will put people to work, cut our energy-consumption, improve travel and assist in the resurgence of American manufacturing,” stated Anundson.

Last month, the Obama administration announced that 31 states will receive a portion of $8 billion in funding to build and plan for high speed rail under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Washington state will receive $590 million for improvements focused on lines running from Seattle to Portland.  According to the WashPIRG, short term plans will allow trains to reach speeds of up to 110 miles per hour on designated “straightaways” and on-time departures will increase from two-thirds to around 90 percent.  

These new investments in public transit will offer consumers more choices and save travelers money in addition to curbing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing pollution. These benefits are especially important for college students, who deal with increasing financial pressure and the worst effects of man-made climate change. “Students at UW are very pleased about President Obama’s investment in public transit.  Sustainability is important to our student body, shown by how UW is one of the greenest campuses in the country,” stated Madeleine McKenna, Vice President of ASUW and Co-Coordinator of the U-Pass Taskforce in ASUW. “University of Washington students are working hard to build a culture of using public transit, for example by promoting use of the U-Pass program.  Creating a high speed rail line in Washington is one more step toward a greener country and citizens that see themselves as stewards of the environment.”

Anundson pointed out that these new projects need to be the beginning, and not the end, of investment in passenger rail. “This project might one day be part of a national network of high speed rail on par with the bullet trains of Europe and Asia, but it is going to take a long-term commitment from all levels of government to plan and fund the system,” Anundson said. “Without such a commitment, this recent momentum could be lost. We simply cannot afford a false start on high speed rail.”

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The-Right-Track-vWA.pdf