Amtrak adding 2nd train to Vancouver-Seattle run

A plan to run a second train between Seattle and Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games is back on track.

Talks to extend Amtrak's Cascades service to British Columbia had been stalled for more than a year because the Canada Border Services Agency wanted to charge the company $1,500 a day to cover the costs of processing additional passengers.

But that fee will be waived for the pilot project, which begins in August 2009 and runs until the end of March 2010.

"This will allow an assessment of traffic well outside the actual Olympic Games themselves," Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan said in an interview.

The fee was being levied as part of a policy that requires users to pay for a new service they've requested while it's being studied, Van Loan said.

"Because of the circumstances — with the Games coming and willingness to create this potential new traffic — we thought it made sense to encourage it a little bit so that's what we're doing," Van Loan said.

Currently, one train a day capable of carrying 220 passengers travels between Seattle and Vancouver. A second train will have the same capacity but leave Seattle later in the day and bring passengers back from Vancouver in the morning.

In 2008, the B.C. government spent $4.5 million upgrading rail infrastructure specifically to accommodate the second Seattle-Vancouver run, as the additional train was supposed to be running by August 2008.

That plan was derailed by the bill from CBSA and since then, both B.C. and Washington state officials had been lobbying hard since for the federal government to step in.

After the pilot period there will be an evaluation of the second train, which some B.C. officials say could add as much as $14 million a year to the provincial economy.