New trains coming to Amtrak's route linking Vancouver, Seattle, Portland

New train fleet coming to Amtrak's route linking Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland

Example of a Siemens Venture train on Brightline in Florida. (Shutterstock)

In about four years from now, the passenger experience for the Amtrak Cascades — the rail service linking Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland — will see a complete overhaul from the introduction of a new fleet.

A total of eight new trainsets will be introduced to the service in 2025/2026, a spokesperson for the rail, freight, and ports division of Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) told Daily Hive Urbanized.

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The new fleet deployment to the Amtrak Cascades operations is being acquired from Amtrak’s larger US-wide procurement of US$7.3 billion in train cars and equipment from German manufacturer Siemens Mobility. These trains are being built in the Siemens facility in Sacramento, California.

The Amtrak Cascades service will be the very first Amtrak operation to benefit from the major new fleet order, providing the Pacific Northwest with 48 new passenger rail cars, two locomotives, and one spare cab.

These new modern passenger trains will be the Siemens Venture model, which is also used on Brightline in Florida, and are being introduced to VIA Rail’s Quebec City to Windsor route starting this year.

Siemens Venture train for VIA Rail. (VIA Rail)

Each car has a capacity for up to 74 seated passengers, but after taking into account the required space for business class and food service, the Amtrak Cascades’ configuration of a six-car train would provide a total capacity of up to 350 seated passengers. As well, the flexible interchangeability of the Venture trains allows for cars to be removed or added with ease, so that train lengths can better respond to peak or off-peak demand.

According to Amtrak, its Venture trains feature more comfortable seating, individual power outlets, USB charging, WiFi, enhanced lighting, larger windows, enhanced accessibility, and a more “contemporary food service experience,” including self-service options. There will also be digital displays for passenger information, enhanced HVAC, touchless washroom controls, and automated steps.

WSDOT states the Amtrak Cascades exterior livery colour scheme for the new Venture trains will continue the service’s existing iconic look of “evergreen and mocha.”

The new cars fit about 25% more passengers compared to their discontinued predecessors, which were removed from service in 2020 after more than two decades of use. Amtrak deployed its old Horizon cars to the Amtrak Cascades service for temporary use in 2020, until the new Venture trains arrive.

Siemens Venture train for VIA Rail. (VIA Rail)

The Amtrak Cascades route stretches 752 km (467 miles), largely within Washington State, which has 12 of the 18 stations. Four daily roundtrips are made for the segment between Seattle and Portland, and two daily roundtrips are made for each of the segments between Portland and Eugene, and between Vancouver and Seattle.

Last month, following a prolonged pandemic hiatus, Amtrak indicated it will relaunch the Amtrak Cascades route between Vancouver and Seattle in September 2022 — months earlier than previously planned due to a labour shortage.

And just prior to the pandemic, WDOT indicated it was working with US Customs and Border Protection, Canada Border Services Agency, and the BC provincial government to implement full US customs preclearance of Amtrak Cascades passengers departing from Pacific Central Station near downtown Vancouver. This would eliminate the second southbound US customs inspection stop at the US-Canada border, reducing the scheduled travel time for southbound trains towards Seattle and eliminate additional delay risks.

Amtrak passenger train on the Cascades corridor. (Amtrak)

The entire Amtrak Cascades corridor from Vancouver, BC to Eugene, Oregon. (Amtrak)

According to Amtrak’s new 15-year strategy released in May 2021, it is aligned with the state governments of Washington and Oregon’s plans to significantly boost frequencies on the Amtrak Cascades route.

The segment between Vancouver and Seattle will eventually see double the frequencies, growing from two to four round trips daily.

The segment between Portland to Eugene will see tripled frequencies to six round trips daily.

And the segment between Seattle and Portland will grow to an astonishingly 13 round trips daily, more than tripling current frequencies.

The entire train journey from Vancouver to Eugene is about 10 hours and 30 minutes, including just over three hours in optimal conditions for the segment between Vancouver and Seattle. While the future Venture trains will be capable of traveling at faster speeds, the existing track infrastructure generally does not allow for a narrowing of the travel times.

The future frequency and capacity increases serve to not only capture significant demand, but also to help build up ridership for the future potential high-speed rail service between Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland.

Old train on Amtrak Cascades. (Amtrak)

Based on statistics from WSDOT, ridership on the entire Cascades route from Vancouver to Eugene steadily increased in recent years, with total annual ridership rising from 672,000 in 2015 to 753,000 in 2019.

In the year before the pandemic, about 193,000 passengers travelled on the segment between Vancouver and Seattle, 499,000 between the Seattle and Portland segment, and the remaining 61,000 travelled across both segments.

The segment from Vancouver to Bellingham saw its average capacity utilization grow from 44.9% of seats filled in 2015 to 48.6% in 2019. This capacity utilization rate was the lowest for any of the segments along the Cascades corridor, with the other 12 segments seeing rates of between 52.6% and 64.4% seats filled.

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