I've taken the Amtrak from Vancouver to Seattle and Portland and various stops in between. Excepting the low speeds and infrequent departure times it's such a g

I've taken the Amtrak from Vancouver to Seattle and Portland and various stops in between. Excepting the low speeds and infrequent departure times it's such a great service. A HSR train that would fix these problems would be a dream and there would surely be a big tourism boost along the corridor. One of the benefits of rail would be that you have the ability to have downtown to downtown service and you potentially take a lot of cars off the road. Seattle is dramatically improving its transportation system and it's pretty reasonable to think that in the near future it could be totally viable to travel between Vancouver, Seattle and Portland without a car, leveraging public transit and bike share (oh wait Seattle killed theirs...) to get around. Another big advantage of the train is that it's pretty simple and easy to take a bike along. Pretty useful if you want to go on a bike touring trip in Washington or Oregon or just dash into Portland for a weekend but have your bike along so that you can move about the city easily. Vancouver is currently undergoing the a planning process for the Flats industrial neighbourhood, which includes the old central rail station. I was the nerd that went to the transportation meeting and stuck the "keep the door open to HSR" post it note on the ideas board. I was happy to see that there was a mention of the potential for HSR in the area in the draft plan, though I doubt city planners really believe that strongly that it's a potential reality.