It's official: Amtrak to restart Vancouver to Seattle service in late September

Amtrak passenger train on the Cascades corridor. (Amtrak)

After a prolonged pandemic service shutdown of more than two years, Amtrak has established a precise date for when it will resume its Amtrak Cascades passenger train service from downtown Vancouver to downtown Seattle.

Daily roundtrip services will restart on Monday, September 26, with the Canada-bound train leaving Seattle’s King Station at 7:45 am and arriving at Vancouver’s Pacific Central Station at 11:45 am. US-bound trains will leave Pacific Central Station at 5:45 pm and arrive at Seattle’s King Street Station at 10:10 pm. The route entails five stops along the way, including in Bellingham.

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Fares each way between Vancouver to Seattle start at US$34 for economy class and US$83 for business class.

A second daily trip will be added in the future when Amtrak’s staffing and equipment allow for the return of full pre-pandemic service levels. Amtrak initially indicated it would not be able to restart the Vancouver-Seattle route until December due to its staffing shortage, but it was able to do this months earlier.

Amtrak Cascades route segment from Vancouver, BC to Seattle, Washington. (Amtrak)

Amtrak has already restarted its busier Amtrak Cascades route between Seattle and Portland, with three daily round trips between both cities, and two daily round trips between Eugene and Portland. It also operates two daily buses between Seattle and Bellingham, and four daily buses between Seattle and Vancouver.

Cross-border travel regulations and requirements on the Amtrak Cascades are similar to flying.

Non-US citizen passengers must be fully vaccinated to travel into the United States. For entering Canada, all passengers must use the ArriveCAN app before travel and wear a mask in Canadian stations and onboard trains traveling within Canadian jurisdiction. Non-Canadian citizens must also be fully vaccinated and carry the vaccination record that was uploaded into ArriveCAN.

The onboard features of Amtrak Cascades trains include access to the Bistro menu, free WiFi on the Washington state segment of the trip, large spacious seats with ample leg room, and generous bag policies — two personal items and two carry-on bags per passenger.

Towards the middle of this decade, Amtrak Cascades will boast an entirely new modern fleet of passenger trains.

The full Amtrak Cascades train corridor runs a distance of 752 km (467 miles) between Pacific Central Station and Eugene, Oregon, with a total of 18 stops. The entire train journey from Vancouver to Eugene is about 10 hours and 30 minutes.

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

Earlier this year, economical coach bus service FlixBus launched a new service between the downtowns of Vancouver and Seattle, operating five days per week. Its fares are comparable to Amtrak Cascades.

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

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