@smitha The Amtrak station in Vancouver is nowhere near the airport or to my location, and is not connected to local public transit very well. There's also a bus but this isn't an option for me without a car to get to it.

IIRC Sounder only goes to Everett.

@ingalls @smitha Also Amtrak/Sounder doesn't connect well to SeaTac either. The Tukwila station is closest to the airport but you need to take a bus to connect to the terminal. Getting off Amtrak at King Street Station in downtown Seattle and connecting to Link light rail to get to SeaTac is arguably better.

Your point is a good one, all three major airports are connected to local rail transit but are very much not connected to Amtrak.

@ingalls @smitha Although I disagree that all three airports are "near" to the city centers... for each one it feels pretty long on local transit to get downtown! 47 min from PDX, 40 min from SEA, 26 min from YVR.

When we build a new #HighSpeedRail alignment, we only need to hook up to one airport in the region. All other HSR stations should be placed closer to the city centers. Rail passengers from all over the region could use that one airport for medium & long haul flights.

#CascadiaRail

@alan @smitha my point about airports is to also use this to offload some demand from Seattle so they don’t build a brand new intl airport nearby.

I disagree that they are far from the city centers. It only takes a long time because the transit isn’t optimized. YVR is 10 km from downtown, SEA 17 km, and PDX 10 km.

I’m not fully opposed to BLI but it is a tough sell for me because too many stops and it can’t be HSR. There will already have to be a stop at the border.