Portland State University students working with students at the University of Washington have completed a fifth volume report on the possibilities of High Speed Rail in the Northwest.

Working with Ethan Seltzer of Portland State and Daniel Carlson of the University of Washington, the students have spent the past months traveling between Seattle and Portland, attending workshops, and researching the impacts and benefits of High Speed Rail development. OTREC helped the students and professors put together several charettes in Portland and Seattle, and also provided funds for student travel between cities, according to John MacArthur, OTREC Sustainable Transportation Program Manager.

The resulting report, Ecolopolis 5.0: High Speed Rail in Cascadia (Read The Full Report Here), gives an in-depth look at how investment in High Speed Rail could tie together the region from Eugene all the way to Vancouver B.C. Carlson, senior lecturer of public affairs in the Evans School of Public Affairs at UW, said the report goes into more detail than most government research into High Speed Rail ever has before.

“We looked at the impacts (of High Speed Rail) in a broader range than most Departments of Transportation would look at,” Carlson said. “We wanted to understand the impact of development around stations, commerce exchange, and the environmental impact...

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Portland State University students visited Seattle March 4 for the second leg of a high-speed rail workshop begun in February in Portland. Daniel Carlson of the University of Washington and Ethan Seltzer of Portland State put together the two-campus workshop to link and enhance courses at their respective universities.

Carlson teaches the transportation and land-use policy course at the University of Washington. The course explores federal and local policies on land use and transportation and focuses on the Puget Sound area as a case study in how a metro area’s growth affects how people get around.

Seltzer, an urban studies and planning professor at Portland State, explores the history and practice of regional planning in his regional planning and metropolitan growth management course. The course includes an individual paper and a group project examining the benefits of high-speed rail in the Cascadia region.

On Feb. 4, both classes met in Portland to examine the Portland State students’ work. On Friday, the University of Washington students reciprocate. A report will synthesize the products of both classes and will be posted on the America 2050 website, www.america2050.org.