Amtrak Cascades Service Development Plan

Planning for the future of Amtrak Cascades

The Amtrak Cascades Preliminary Service Development Plan provides a summary of possible alternatives to improve the Amtrak Cascades service in the Washington segment of the corridor over the next 20 years. It offers a blueprint for future capital improvements and service changes and is at the core of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) requirements for improving and expanding passenger rail service on the corridor. Preparing a Preliminary SDP improves our ability to compete for federal funds for future infrastructure and service improvements.

The Preliminary SDP includes these components:

• Intercity passenger travel demand research to identify travel trends likely to affect ridership and develop future scenarios that reflect these trends.
• Preliminary Purpose and Need development to explain the goals of the project and the needs it is intended to address.
• Service option development to define options for changing Amtrak Cascades to address future travel trends and analyze how the current route would need to be modified to accommodate them.
• Alternative development to forecast ridership for the service options under the different scenarios we developed, then use a screening process to determine which ones should be the focus of further SDP analysis.

The final version of the Preliminary SDP was published June 28, 2024.

Amtrak Cascades 2024 Preliminary Service Development Plan (PDF 3478KB)

Next steps

In December 2023, WSDOT was awarded a Corridor Identification and Development grant from the Federal Railroad Administration. This application was submitted by WSDOT in conjunction with the Oregon Department of Transportation. The $500,000 award designates Amtrak Cascades as a  national rail corridor that is now part of the federal funding pipeline for future intercity passenger rail projects. The CID funding will support preparation of the next phase of the process which is an integrated service-development plan for both Washington and Oregon that creates a blueprint for improvements along the entire corridor over the next 20 years. 

Information in other languages

• Español - Spanish (PDF 97KB)

• русский - Russian (PDF 312KB)

• tiếng Việt - Vietnamese (PDF 236KB)

• 한국어 - Korean (PDF 440KB)

• 中文 - Chinese (PDF 429KB)

• Af-soomaaliga - Somali (PDF 235KB)

• Arabic (PDF 241KB)

Service partners

Several partners are directly involved in developing, funding, or operating Amtrak Cascades. They are closely involved in developing plans for the future improvement of Amtrak Cascades, contributing their expertise to the work.

• Federal Railroad Administration
• Oregon Department of Transportation
• BNSF Railway
• Amtrak
• Sound Transit

Get involved

To be notified by email of updates as we continue planning for the future of Amtrak Cascades sign up for our Amtrak Cascades Future Planning mailing list.