SEATTLE — Amtrak Cascades service to Vancouver, British Columbia, is now set to resume in September, according to transportation officials in Washington state and Oregon.
A post on the Amtrak Cascades Facebook page says “Amtrak was able to advance the schedule” from its most recent estimate of December 2022, and that the transportation departments in Washington and Oregon will “share more information as soon as it’s available.”
The cross-border service halted in May 2020 when the Canadian border was closed to non-essential travel. In preparation for resumption of service to Vancouver, Amtrak had begun qualifying runs north from Seattle for crews in February, but then announced the service would not begin until December because of shortages of on-board crew members and mechanics [see “Amtrak Cascades service to Canada pushed back …,” Trains News Wire, May 16, 2022]. Officials in Washington and Oregon protested that decision, saying it was “not acceptable.”
90% Likely the service will be up to VAC and back during the day. That will require 1-1/3 T&E crew. Otherwise a layover would call for anothe whole T&E crew. If train goes thru SEA to PDX OBS can stayymon and even return to SEA.
They can’t cross the border until Amtrak engineers renounce their support for the truck drivers. Until then the RCMP will be performing background checks on all of the union engineers that work the line for Amtrak, looking up their bank accounts, and check their social media to see if they supported the truckers financially or with a “like”. Until the Canadian PM is convinced that Amtrak engineers are not terrorists or anarchists, the service will remain suspended.
It is truly embarrassing.
I was being a bit sarcastic, but for some reason my tags for “sarcasm” didn’t translate into the post with a smiley at the end. Folks, this isnt fact….just a parody based on them.
I figured that John.
Last week the fire chief at Toronto Pearson airport had to publicly state the airport authority, airlines and government are breaking the occupancy laws by allowing so many people to wait in the customs hall, and of course the response from the three parties was to blame each other.
The main problem being the govt insistence on needing to use this silly phone app that everyone in the travel industry is saying get rid of, it’s causing hours of delays for people arrive at customs.
Used at land boarders too.
You an be denied entry without using the app.
Therefore I’m positive arriving passengers on Amtrak at the boarders will be required to use it, expect long delays!
Yeah, I figured this was sarcasm. But not too far off from Canadian government policy.
The best sarcasm is sarcasm that exposes a truth.
I’d bet a hundred loonies that if Justin read the post, he’d say, “Not a bad idea, eh”? He’d order it done.
Progress, I suppose, in that at least the resumption of the Vancouver BC Cascades services won’t be as late as December of this year. Still, they will miss most of the peak summer travel season between Seattle and Vancouver, BC, Canada, alas.
And yes, it would be nice to have the article post a “stock” shot of the Cascades service north of Seattle instead of along the Point Defiance Bypass that is no longer used by Amtrak trains.
@Anthony – Believe they’ve used a “stock” photo – altho I do agree with you. Photo material along the new bypass ROW seems scarce.
I am surprised a picture of the Amtrak train on the Bellingham Subdivision or Scenic subdivision between Seattle and Everett where the SEA-VAC trains actually run was not used. Steilacoom is on the Seattle subdivision south of Tacoma which no longer hosts Amtrak trains due to the Point Defiance bypass on the Lakewood subdivision now used between Tacoma and Nisqually.
Sadly the service will only offer one daily round trip. Two trips operated before the pandemic. No schedule exists yet for the one train. Yes its three months away, but this speaks further to Amtrak’s failure to provide timetable information that riders need to plan.