Portland, OR - Eugene/Springfield Study

Progressive Railroading

Not sure if this is related to Tri-Met?

Oregon DOT to host January open houses for Eugene-Portland passenger-rail project

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) will host several open-house meetings this month as part of a study of possible improvements to intercity passenger-rail service between the Eugene-Springfield and Portland areas.

Information gathered at the meetings will be used to develop preliminary alternatives to the study, which will help select a general passenger route and evaluate options for train frequency and trip times, and improve on-time performance, ODOT officials said in the agency's Winter 2012/13 Newsletter.

...

The goals of the project are to improve passenger-rail mobility and accessibility in the Willamette Valley; protect freight-rail capacity and investments in the corridor and maintain safety; plan, design and build a cost-effective project; provide an affordable and equitable travel alternative; be compatible with passenger-rail investments planned in the state of Washington; promote community health and quality of life along the corridor; and protect and preserve the environment.

Too many NIMBY's and tree huggers for anything to ever happen.

CarterB wrote:Too many NIMBY's and tree huggers for anything to ever happen.

Shouldn't so-called "tree-huggers" be in favor of passenger rail as it takes cars off of the road and encourages denser, more enviornmentally-friendly patterns of land development (allowing more open space to remain continuous, untouched, and natural)?

Aren't Cascade trains already running between Eugene and Portland?

Asking the public in general to come up with ideas to make the trains go faster will not accomplish much, they need to be asking Amtrak and UP locomotive engineers what's needed.

All opinions respected; let's not turn this into an environmental issue until someone actually does.

electricron wrote:Aren't Cascade trains already running between Eugene and Portland?

Asking the public in general to come up with ideas to make the trains go faster will not accomplish much, they need to be asking Amtrak and UP locomotive engineers what's needed.

I don't get the impression, they're creating a new service, just trying to improve existing Cascade service within the state. I don't think asking a locomotive engineer about how to make the service faster will help. That's a job for civil, mechanical, and industrial engineers. But these kind of solicitations to the public are just to meet a legal requirement to get public feedback (ie, asking what the public might think of grade seperation). They're not actually asking the public for advice on how to make the trains faster.

Arent they trying to decide on wether to keep the existing route , or up grade a parrallel route ? . perhaps they are trying to gauge public support/ opposition for either route .

Definitely not a TriMet project, but it could involve TriMet if this actually gets off the ground AND involves using the Oregon Electric alternative north of Wilsonville (on trackage owned by TriMet).

To me this is just another "yawn" study, probably the fifth time ODOT has put together such a study in the last 30 or so years. Each time there's some pie-in-the-sky proposal (tracks down the middle of I-5, some elaborate tunnel somewhere), and in the end ridership does not justify the expense, the state is broke and has no money... Even today - even after ten plus years of Amtrak Cascades - those trains barely manage an average of 100 riders per train per day south of Portland. That's the equivalent of two buses - or, two and a half Talgo coaches, out of nine that have to be hauled each day to Eugene and back with a 3200 horsepower locomotive, with a full crew of five or six.

For the money ODOT spent on the two ugly Talgo trains sitting somewhere in the midwest, ODOT could have bought an entire fleet of luxury motorcoaches, leased them to private operators, and began a very comprehensive intercity transit system throughout the western part of the state, including hourly (or better!) service between Portland and Eugene. Instead...most cities in Oregon to this day lack any significant intercity transit service, and those that do have it are very poor systems. And we'll be paying tens of thousands for yet another rehash of a study that will get us right to the exact same study I read last night - from 1977.

"Yawn" Sustainable Business Oregon

Comments on high-speed rail in Oregon roll in

A series of public and online forums about a proposed high-speed rail line from Eugene to Portland has attracted about 1,000 public comments over the past several weeks, as Oregonians continue to debate a challenging expansion of passenger rail.

The forums were part of a publicly funded $10 million initiative to create an Environmental Impact Statement for a rail project that the state has been studying since the 1990s. Planners are trying to determine how many daily trains to accommodate and where exactly to route them. Cost estimates, likely to be high, will come later.

Oregon Department of Transportation project manager Jim Cox said the state heard directly from about 380 people in person and another 700 or so who have commented online. “There’s a lot of interest in this project,” he said, “and a lot of enthusiasm.”

There are also large, heavy, steel objects blocking the path. The company that owns the tracks currently used for Amtrak passenger rail between Portland and Eugene, Union Pacific Railroad, is a freight company, not a passenger rail company. UP has raised safety and liability concerns about expanding passenger rail and stated publicly that it will never allow speeds above 79 miles per hour on its tracks, nor will it alter its line to accommodate the all-electric trains that reach tops speeds in Asia and Europe.

“If (high-speed rail) is something that the public wants to pursue, we would coach you to find a different right of way,” Union Pacific spokesman Brock Nelson said at a December public meeting.

this must be a different union pacific from the one that allows 110 mph in Illinois .

David Benton wrote:this must be a different union pacific from the one that allows 110 mph in Illinois .

If the UP could renege on a previous merger agreement, they wouldn't allow 110 mph operations in Illinois. But that agreement is on paper, and Illinois politicians will never forget it.
The UP is making FWTA lay brand new tracks for TexRail, including a new bridge over the Trinity River, 25 feet away from any existing tracks on their Duncan subdivision in downtown Fort Worth. That's the UP we all know.

And i think that UP, unless it changes its way of thinking , will be history in 20 years time .

David Benton wrote:And i think that UP, unless it changes its way of thinking , will be history in 20 years time .

Naah. Union Pacific knows how to play the game. And ODOT is willing to play the game, following UP's rulebook. The winner is anyone who owns UNP stock. The loser are Oregon's taxpayers.

When TriMet/ODOT/Washington County/Metro all decided to go along with the WES Commuter Rail project, they had everything lined up, the construction equipment at the ready, and were starting work. After all ODOT owned the railroad - right?

Well - almost. The stretch from Beaverton to Tigard was owned by Union Pacific. South of Tigard, is in fact owned by ODOT. And it was too late to turn around. In a last minute frenzy, Washington County sent a delegation to Omaha. $24 million later, they owned five miles of railroad track. A track that UP has not ever, ever operated their own train on (it is heritage Southern Pacific track, and SP last operated the line in 1995 having leased it to the Portland & Western Railroad.) A track UP will have zero interest ever in owning or operating. Yet UP was able to milk $24 million in pure profit selling that line.

UP still owns the line west of Beaverton, to Hillsboro and points beyond. UP still owns the line from Tigard to Lake Oswego and to Milwaukie (to the UP mainline.) UP still owns the railroad from Lake Oswego to Sherwood, Newberg, McMinnville and beyond. And UP is just waiting for the right moment, and the right buyer, to unload at a very good price - for UP.

UP knows this game. They aren't going to give up their Portland-Eugene mainline, even if it only hosts four through trains a day and is so incredibly full of excess capacity. They don't have to. Because at some point, ODOT will give UP a huge stash of cash. All UP has to do is sit and be patient. And right now the stockholders are rewarding UP for this strategy. And UP will keep playing this game for 20, 30, 40 years...as long as there's still real estate to sell.

David Benton wrote:This must be a different Union Pacific from the one that allows 110 mph in Illinois

"Allows"? There is only one way to "allow" such and that is to build Class 6 track and upgrade the signals, and it is not the railroad company doing the "allow(ing)" but the federal government. Where has UP done any of that kind of upgrading out of pocket, especially to benefit a foreign entity on its tracks?

ok , so Up allowed the state to pay for its tracks to be upgraded to 110 mph . Noone is expecting Up to pay for the cost of upgrading the track . read the whole thread to get the context .