Cascadia Megaregion · Portland — Seattle — Vancouver BC

Build
the line.

150-mph high-speed rail on the corridor we already have. Faster than I-5 will ever be, for a tenth of the price tag you've heard — and the public comment window is open now.

Vancouver, BC
north leg
Seattle
south leg
Portland  ·  2H 15M end to end
Email WSDOT in support

Why now

This project is real — and it's being shaped today

Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia are formal partners on Cascadia High-Speed Rail, backed by a $49.7 million federal grant. In 2026, planners are studying route and service options — how fast, which corridor, what it costs — and they are taking public input. The single most useful thing you can do is tell them, on the record, that you support building it.

The math

Why $11 billion is the real number

The scary "$100 billion" estimates price 220-mph tunnels bored through mountains. The pragmatic path upgrades, electrifies, and grade-separates the flat coastal corridor that already exists — dedicated passenger tracks built alongside the freight line, no mass land seizures.

315 miles × $35M/mile = $11.025 billion

Base-year dollars · shared-corridor methodology (LucidStew infrastructure analysis)

What the region gets

More than just speed

12 lanes

of I-5 capacity replaced — one double-tracked line moves 15,000 people per hour.

3,800 acres

of forests, farms, and homes spared versus widening the highway.

Zero

passenger fatalities on dedicated high-speed lines in Japan and France — for decades.

264,000

job-years of union work in construction, engineering, and manufacturing.

And the 99% pay nothing. Spread over a 30-year bond and split between the top 1% of earners and corporations in WA, OR, and BC, the project costs them an effective tax increase of roughly a tenth of one percent — while returning an estimated $50 billion to the regional economy.

Take action — one minute

Tell WSDOT you want this built

The button below opens a ready-to-send email to the Cascadia Program team. Before you hit send:

  1. Replace [your name] and [your city].
  2. Add one sentence about what this line would mean for you — personal comments count the most.
  3. Send it. That's it. You're on the public record.
✉  Email WSDOT now

Opens in your mail app, pre-addressed to CascadiaProgram@wsdot.wa.gov with the message written for you. Edit freely — it's your voice that matters.

The Cascadia Rail Brief · Full version

Beating I-5 traffic.

While I-5 chokes on gridlock, the rest of the world glides between its major tech hubs. Upgrading the Cascadia Corridor to 0.75 HSR — 150 mph — delivers a faster, safer, and radically more efficient connection between Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, BC. This is the engineering and the economics, in full.

Select your trip

What 150 mph actually feels like

Distance

315 mi

Top speed

150 mph

I-5 driving time

~6h 00m

0.75 HSR time

2h 15m

Saves 3h 45m of driving

Leg figures are estimates at the corridor's ~140-mph average speed.

The LucidStew math

Why $11 billion is realistic

When opponents cite "$100 billion" price tags for Pacific Northwest rail, they're calculating 220-mph tunnels bored straight through mountains. This brief uses the proven infrastructure calculus of high-speed rail analyst LucidStew to price what 0.75 HSR actually costs:

Base-year dollars

Stripping away hypothetical "year of expenditure" inflation reveals what the steel and labor actually cost today.

The shared-corridor multiplier

By upgrading, electrifying, and grade-separating the existing flat coastal corridors — like the BNSF right-of-way — instead of buying new land through eminent domain, costs plummet.

The standard metric

True 0.75 HSR — 150-mph targets with 100% grade separation — on existing flat corridors costs roughly $35 million per mile.

315 miles × $35M/mile = $11.025 billion

The total capital cost to wire Cascadia for 150-mph rail.

The economic engine

More than just transit

An $11 billion infrastructure investment isn't just about moving people — it's a massive stimulus package for the Pacific Northwest.

264,000 jobs

At the standard industry metric of 24,000 job-years per billion invested: a quarter-million good-paying jobs in engineering, construction, and manufacturing.

$50 billion

APTA finds every $1 invested in transit returns $4.50. Linking the Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver tech hubs ignites an economic super-region.

How we pay for it

The 1% solution

Amortized over a standard 30-year bond, the $11.025 billion project costs $367.5 million per year region-wide. Split that between the top 1% of earners and the top 1% of corporations in WA, OR, and BC, and the tax impact on the remaining 99% of working residents is strictly zero.

Adjust the burden split

Top 1% individuals: 50% Top 1% corps: 50%

Top 1% effective tax increase

0.071%

Corporate effective tax increase

0.123%

Move the slider to reallocate the $367.5M annual burden and watch how microscopic the percentages stay.

Project delivery

The 8-year timeline

Mega-projects take decades. Upgrades take years. Building within existing flat corridors bypasses massive eminent-domain battles and drastically accelerates delivery.

YRS 1–2

NEPA & negotiation. Because tracks already exist, environmental reviews are streamlined. Primary focus: shared-corridor agreements with freight operators (BNSF/UP).

YRS 3–4

Engineering & order. Finalizing curve-straightening geometry, designing road grade separations, and bulk-ordering standardized 150-mph trainsets.

YRS 4–7

Active construction. Crews work concurrently across the 315-mile route laying continuous welded rail, erecting catenary, and building overpasses.

YR 8

Launch. Testing signaling (Positive Train Control), proving track stability at speed, and opening for revenue service.

Fix the system

The engineering, honestly

The BNSF double-stack dilemma

BNSF and Union Pacific run double-stacked cargo trains needing 22–23 feet of vertical clearance. High-speed catenary wires hang at 17–18 feet. You cannot electrify active double-stack freight lines — and this plan doesn't try to.

Shared corridor, not shared track

This proposal uses the existing BNSF right-of-way — often 100+ feet wide — to build dedicated, parallel passenger tracks. The new passenger tracks get the overhead wires; the freight tracks stay un-electrified.

The superelevation problem, solved

Taking a curve at 150 mph requires heavily banked track. Freight trains are too slow and heavy for banked curves. Dedicated parallel tracks solve the physics, not just the politics.

Proven policy fixes

Streamlined NEPA: firm 2-year deadlines for environmental review of rail built within existing rights-of-way. Standardized designs: bulk-order track components and rolling stock instead of bespoke solutions for every state.