Amtrak Had A Good Idea? Well, Cancel It!

A year or so back, to coincide with the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Amtrak began a second daily round trip for their Cascades service between Portland, Oregon and Vancouver by way of Seattle.

Any increase in rail service is a good idea, of course, but this one proved to be an instant success that is continuing long after the Olympics have ended.

In fact, as is so often the case, the second train seems to have increased ridership on the first one because the twice-daily schedule now permits people in both Vancouver and Seattle to visit the other city and return home the same day.

City officials in Vancouver love it, too, because the additional visitors means almost $12 million more dollars brought into the local economy every year.

So … everybody’s happy, right?

Well … uh … no. The Canadian government way back east in Ottawa doesn’t want to keep on paying their customs and immigration people to process all those people bringing dollars into Canada. After all, the estimated cost for those border officials is just over half a million dollars a year.

You got that? The Ottawa politicians aren’t willing to invest $500,000 to make sure $12 million U.S. dollars keep on flowing into one of their major cities?

As our local expression goes, How you figgah??