Amtrak has started practice runs through Bellingham. When will service return?
For those noticing the Amtrak train zipping through Bellingham, it’s just practice as it attempts to reestablish its north Cascades service later this spring.
In a Facebook post Amtrak Cascades announced that it will be doing practice runs between Seattle and Vancouver, B.C., over the next few weeks. The practice runs are necessary for crews to re-qualify in order to start the service back up again.
The route was suspended in March 2020 as the COVID-19 outbreak took hold and the Canadian border was closed to nonessential travel.
The route, which goes from Vancouver, B.C., to Eugene, Oregon, had an annual ridership of more than 800,000 in each of the four years prior to the arrival of the pandemic. In 2019 the number of people who got on or off at the Bellingham station totaled 54,000, according to data from the Washington State Department of Transportation. The Bellingham station also generated $928,000 in ticket sales in 2019.
