EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - INTRODUCTION

 

This Oregon Rail Plan is the first comprehensive assessment of the state’s rail planning, freight rail, and passenger rail systems since the 1992 Oregon Rail Passenger Policy and Plan and the 1994 Oregon Rail Freight Plan. The Plan contains three elements, which summarize the state’s goals and objectives, measure the state’s performance to-date and refines the projected costs, revenues and investment needs with regard to rail transportation of people and goods. The elements are:

 

• Rail Policies and the Planning Process

• Freight Element

• Passenger Element

 

The passenger element of the rail plan concentrates on intercity passenger service with some mention of commuter rail operations. It does not include light rail or other rail transit type services.

 

 

 

 

The Portland/Vancouver I-5 Transportation and Trade Partnership initiated a study to look at rail capacity issues in the Portland and Vancouver areas. The analysis used a sophisticated computer models to estimate the existing and future capacity of the Portland/Vancouver rail network and determined the improvements that could improve capacity of both freight and passenger services.

 

The study posed several key questions. The questions and the answers to those questions are both sobering and encouraging: sobering because the capacity of the system turned out to be worse than anticipated when the study commenced and encouraging because the improvements needed to correct the situation are incremental in nature and less expensive than expected given the severity of existing restrictions.

 

The link to the two attached files presents the information developed in this study. It consists of two parts: