Washingtonians favor both improving Amtrak Cascades and building ultra high speed rail

Ever­green State vot­ers are sup­port­ive of mak­ing major invest­ments to improve Amtrak Cas­cades inter­ci­ty rail ser­vice as well as build­ing a more expen­sive ultra high speed rail line to con­nect the region’s major met­ro­pol­i­tan hubs, recent polling con­duct­ed for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute has found.

62% of vot­ers who par­tic­i­pat­ed in NPI’s Novem­ber 2021 poll of the Wash­ing­ton State elec­torate said they would sup­port updat­ing and imple­ment­ing Amtrak Cas­cades’ Long Range Plan to elec­tri­fy exist­ing inter­ci­ty rail ser­vice at a cost of about $10 bil­lion, while 51% said they would sup­port a long-term project to build a new ultra high speed rail line cost­ing between $24 and $2 billion.

34% of respon­dents said they were opposed to updat­ing and imple­ment­ing Amtrak Cas­cades’ Long Term Plan and 9% are not sure, while 41% said they were opposed to build­ing a new ultra high speed rail line and 8% were not sure.

These find­ings rein­force pre­vi­ous research con­duct­ed by Fair­bank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Asso­ciates (FM3) for the Seat­tle Met­ro­pol­i­tan Cham­ber of Com­merce and oth­er part­ners show­ing that vot­ers want to con­struct high qual­i­ty, high fre­quen­cy inter­ci­ty rail ser­vice to con­nect Cas­ca­di­a’s major cities.

Here’s the ques­tion FM3 asked last sum­mer:

Here is some infor­ma­tion about a project in the Pacif­ic North­west that would cre­ate a Cas­ca­dia high-speed rail sys­tem with trains that trav­el at 250 miles per hour on average.

This would make 1‑hour, direct trips between each major city between Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia, and Eugene, Ore­gon — with stops in Seat­tle, Taco­ma, Port­land and poten­tial­ly oth­er cities in between. Sta­tions in each city would be locat­ed with easy access to oth­er tran­sit modes and airports.

This pro­pos­al would trans­form our pas­sen­ger rail net­work into a faster, more inte­grat­ed sys­tem that pro­vides a safe, effi­cient, equi­table, and afford­able means of trav­el. Fund­ing would come from fed­er­al infra­struc­ture invest­ment, as well as state and local trans­porta­tion fund­ing sources.

Would you sup­port or oppose this high-speed rail project con­nect­ing cities in the Northwest?

67% (two-thirds) of respon­dents from Wash­ing­ton expressed sup­port for high speed rail after being asked this ques­tion. 60% of Ore­gon­ian respon­dents were also sup­port­ive. Just 27% of respon­dents across the two states indi­cat­ed oppo­si­tion. The total sam­ple con­sist­ed of 1,616 par­tic­i­pants from both states.

After review­ing the very encour­ag­ing results of FM3’s sur­vey, we decid­ed to craft a rig­or­ous fol­low-up ques­tion for our poll sum­ma­riz­ing impor­tant imple­men­ta­tion details as well as describ­ing the end result. While FM3’s ques­tion did not men­tion costs (say­ing only that fund­ing would come from fed­er­al, state, and local sources) our ques­tion includ­ed cost esti­mates. It also not­ed that quite a bit of right of way would have to be acquired in order to lay new tracks.

Here’s the text of our ques­tion and the answers we received:

QUESTION: Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon are study­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of build­ing an ultra high-speed rail line between Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia and Eugene, Ore­gon cost­ing between $24 and $42 bil­lion that could sup­port trains trav­el­ing at speeds of up to two hun­dred and twen­ty (220) miles per hour. Build­ing the line would require pur­chas­ing a sig­nif­i­cant amount of land to con­struct brand new tracks, but it would allow for faster trips between major Pacif­ic North­west cities. Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose or strong­ly oppose build­ing an ultra high-speed rail line between Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia and Eugene?

ANSWERS:

• Sup­port: 51% 
  • Strong­ly sup­port: 25%
  • Some­what sup­port: 26%
• Oppose: 41%
  • Some­what oppose: 16%
  • Strong­ly oppose: 25%
• Not sure: 8%

Notice that even with­out hear­ing the expla­na­tion of the ben­e­fits of high speed rail that FM3 pro­vid­ed in their ques­tion, Wash­ing­to­ni­ans are still supportive.

That’s very reassuring.

It sug­gests that major­i­ty sup­port will still exist for mov­ing for­ward with ultra high speed rail even after the inevitable cost and logis­ti­cal objec­tions are raised.

Those who par­tic­i­pat­ed in our sur­vey saw or heard the ultra high speed rail ques­tion first. Then we asked them about updat­ing and imple­ment­ing the Amtrak Cas­cades Long Range Plan, a relat­ed idea that’s being discussed.

Here’s the text of our ques­tion and the answers:

QUESTION: Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose or strong­ly oppose updat­ing and imple­ment­ing Amtrak Cas­cades’ Long Range Plan to elec­tri­fy exist­ing inter­ci­ty rail ser­vice, allow­ing trains to trav­el at up to one hun­dred and ten (110) miles per hour on exist­ing tracks with loco­mo­tives that do not pol­lute, at an esti­mat­ed cost of about $10 bil­lion in state and fed­er­al funds?

ANSWERS:

• Sup­port: 62% 
  • Strong­ly sup­port: 34%
  • Some­what sup­port: 28%
• Oppose: 28%
  • Some­what oppose: 11%
  • Strong­ly oppose: 17%
• Not sure: 9%

In this sec­ond ques­tion, the num­ber of not sure respons­es was about the same, but sup­port was high­er and oppo­si­tion was low­er. As in the ultra high speed rail ques­tion, we pro­vid­ed an esti­mat­ed cost for the project.

Our sur­vey of 909 like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Wednes­day, Novem­ber 10th through Thurs­day, Novem­ber 11th, 2021.

It uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (50%) and text mes­sage answers from cell phone only respon­dents (50%).

The poll was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.3% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

More infor­ma­tion about the survey’s method­ol­o­gy is avail­able here.

We at the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute believe that our region should both invest in bet­ter Amtrak Cas­cades ser­vice as well as a new ultra high speed rail line that can enable peo­ple to trav­el quick­ly between Pacif­ic North­west cities.

Because Cas­cades makes use of tracks that are owned by pri­vate­ly held freight rail­roads such as BNSF Rail­way and Union Pacif­ic (UP), there’s a lim­it to what we can do with Cas­cades ser­vice on the exist­ing cor­ri­dor. Build­ing a brand new line will cer­tain­ly be expen­sive, but it will also be a sound invest­ment that will last. Once we have the right of way, we’ll be able to con­tin­ue invest­ing in it.

Europe and Asia have demon­strat­ed that mod­ern, high speed rail is a pub­lic ser­vice worth hav­ing. Let’s make Amtrak Cas­cades the best it can be as soon as pos­si­ble, while doing the work need­ed to get ultra high speed rail off the draw­ing board and into the nec­es­sary advance and design work phase.