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I live downtown. The cart food is brilliant. But sitting on a rickety plastic chair in the rain while people desperate for a table glare at you--not so much. What can be done to provide comfortable, year-round spaces, protected from the elements, where customers can enjoy their meals? What stands in the way of the city providing infrastructure in support of this flourishing, grassroots industry?

posted 2 years, 9 months ago
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Currently, Portland-to-Vancouver BC train travel requires an overnight layover in Seattle in order to make a 7:40 AM connection to Vancouver. (There are several other Portland-to-Seattle runs each day but they require transfer to an AMTRAK bus for the Seattle-to-Vancouver leg of the trip.)

Track upgrades were finally completed a year ago that will allow several direct Portland-to-Vancouver trains per day. When the new runs are added to the daily schedule, it will be possible, for the first time, to board a train at Union Station in Portland and get off 6.5 hours later at Pacific Central Station in downtown Vancouver.

However, bureaucratic foot-dragging within the Canada Border Services Agency [CBSA] has prevented additional Seattle-Vancouver trains from being added to the daily Cascades schedule. According to the Canadian paper, 'The Province' all of the necessary track upgrades were completed a year ago, but the CBSA has demanded additional staff and funding, supposedly needed to cope with the increased border-inspection workload.

Why has it taken a year to work out this bureaucratic squabble? When will this be resolved?

posted 4 years ago
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