Rail line to Canada possible by August

A second round-trip rail connection will begin rolling between Washington state and Vancouver, B.C., as soon as next month.

It will mark the first direct rail connection between the two Vancouvers. Amtrak’s other train to British Columbia begins and ends its run in Seattle. The new service will extend the Amtrak Cascades train route between Portland and Bellingham.

"Obviously, this is great news for us," said Vernae Graham, an Amtrak spokeswoman in Oakland. "We’ve been waiting for this service to start up for a while."

Establishing a permanent train still remains a thorny proposition.

The Canada Border Services Agency wants Amtrak or the state of Washington to provide $1,500 a day — almost $550,000 annually — to pay border agents who will be needed to handle the late-arriving train. Mystified Washington officials produced their own report in May pointing out that the second train would boost tourist spending in Vancouver between $16 million and $33 million per year.

"The CBSA must take into account the costs of providing additional resources to clear travelers outside of its core hours of service," according to a statement prepared by the agency.

The Canadians had only agreed to cover the cost of border agents "for a suitable period of time immediately before, during and for a short time after the 2010 Winter Games."

On Friday, the Canadians notified Washington state authorities that their Olympics waiver would take effect beginning next month.

"They’ve just decided that ‘just before’ was in August," said Vickie Sheehan, a spokeswoman for the Washington Department of Transportation.

The Canadians are chalking it up as a pilot project.

Sheehan said the DOT is working with Amtrak to push the second train through to Vancouver, B.C., as soon as possible. The northbound Cascades train departs Vancouver at 3:05 p.m., arriving in Bellingham six hours later. Its southbound counterpart currently departs Bellingham at 8:35 a.m., arriving in Vancouver USA at 2:19 p.m. The train terminates its southbound journey in Portland.

Amtrak is working through some minor issues related to staffing and equipment necessary to push the train through to Canada, Graham said.

"We are being very diligent right now to make sure this thing happens," she said. "Sometime in August, that’d be great for all of us."

Erik Robinson: 360-735-4551 or erik.robinson@columbian.com.