The US state of Washington has approved a spending measure of 150 million dollars to proceed with advanced planning work on a high-speed rail service between Vancouver, Seattle and Portland. The funding is part of MoveAhead Washington, an approved 16-year comprehensive transportation expansion and improvement plan worth 17 million dollars, according to an article in the Canadian online newspaper Daily Hive.
As many as 30 round trips could be made every day on the proposed Cascadia high-speed rail passenger service, equating to 2.1 million annual passengers. With speeds of up to 400 kilometres per hour, the trains could travel between Vancouver and Seattle in an estimated one hour, writes the article. Early studies for the service received financial support from major corporate players in the region. Among them was Microsoft, which is headquartered in Redmond in the Greater Seattle Area, and the online retailer Amazon, also based in Seattle.
Speaking following the state legislature’s decision, as reported in the article, Amazon vice-president and general counsel David Zapolsky said: “As Washington’s largest private employer and the operator of an expansive logistics network, we at Amazon are especially interested in the transportation system and have a long history of advocating for its maintenance and expansion.”
