The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) this week provided railfans with a glimpse of the future of Amtrak Cascades, providing the first photos of the new “Airo” trainsets coming off the line as they head to Colorado for testing. Set to go into service along the Cascades corridor between Vancouver, B.C. and Eugene, Oregon by next year, these eight new trains will be the first to be delivered as part of a larger, nationwide order of 83 trainsets.

The new trains include a suite of features intended to increase passenger comfort and accessibility and will be welcome replacements for Cascades riders. This spring, the majority of the Cascades fleet was pulled from service after the discovery of widespread corrosion within the aging Horizons cars, with older Amfleet I cars dispatched cross-country to fill in. While all of the seven daily round trips on the Cascades schedule were quickly restored, the smaller trains mean passenger capacity has been more constrained than before.

Along with a fully revamped cafe car, the Airo trains come with more ergonomic seats, dedicated power outlets, USB-C charging ports, and adjustable cup holders. New or improved accessibility features include integrated boarding equipment and inductive hearing technology to assist with onboard announcements. The restrooms on trains will come with touchless controls to improve sanitation.

Cascades riders have been clamoring for the new trainsets ever since Amtrak revealed preview renderings in 2022, as the manufacturer — Siemens — ramped up work.

The $7.3 billion national purchase order for new Amtrak trains was largely funded by the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). That federal cash infusion also funded nearly $300 million in upgrades to Amtrak’s SoDo rail yard, just south Seattle’s King Street Station — a project that the incoming Trump Administration tried to take credit for with a new sign along a SoDo street. When complete, the new maintenance facility will handle the new Airo trains, and will be able to accommodate future expansion of the Cascades fleet.

While the new cars will provide significantly improved fuel efficiency, the Airo cars are not expected to dramatically improve travel times, with most of the current Cascades corridor limited to 79 miles per hour under current federal regulations — partly a reaction to a deadly 2017 derailment during the maiden voyage under a higher speed limit. Despite the fact that the new Siemens trains can achieve a top speed of 125 mph, that’s unlikely to be realized without significant track improvements, which would have to be negotiated with BNSF, which owns much of the right-of-way.

Having to negotiate with BSNF for use of the corridor remains a main reason that Amtrak Cascades boasts incredibly poor performance when it comes to staying on time. The most recent performance report released by WSDOT, from 2024, showed on-time performance had once again slipped below the 50% mark after a brief increase to 55% in 2023.

Earlier this year, the Washington State Legislature signaled an interest in exploring upgrades to the Amtrak Cascades routes, with the passage of House Bill 1837. Signed by Governor Bob Ferguson in May, that law sets an on-time performance benchmark of 88% and a goal of providing 14 daily round trips between Seattle and Portland, double the current number. Goals to improve train speed, however, were removed from the bill after concerns were raised by Republican lawmakers about creating an unfunded mandate.

Despite the relatively ambitious targets, the state likely won’t achieve its vision for Amtrak Cascades without federal help, and there’s considerable doubt about future federal funding levels for Amtrak. Earlier this month, a U.S. Senate committee approved an appropriations bill that included a 35% cut to freight and passenger rail compared to the amount authorized in the BIL. Congress is beginning to weigh a sequel to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, but the momentum — at least under Republican leadership — seems to be away from rail investments.

As that debate plays out, the new Airo trainsets are coming, and Cascades riders will be able to tout riding them before railfans in other areas of the country. Whether a foretaste of a feast to come or crumbs before a famine, their arrival on Pacific Northwest tracks will mark the beginning of a new era.

The post Sneak Peek: New Airo Trains Coming to Amtrak Cascades in 2026 first appeared on The Urbanist.

Earlier this year, the Olympia School District released an audit of its public communications. This document offers a fascinating look into not only the district’s recent history and public narratives but also the general flow of information within our community.

Typically, such audits seek to understand how people perceive what’s happening in their community. The Olympia audit, for example, asked, “How do you learn about the Olympia School District?” with options like “local media,” “word of mouth,” and “social media.”

Across the country, a clear trend has emerged: responses indicating “local media” are declining, while those pointing to “social media” are increasing.

However, the broad conclusion that more people are getting their local news from “social media” is problematic because the term itself is poorly defined. Few comprehensive surveys that include this question ask for specific examples. Is “social media” referring to posts from established news organizations? If so, shouldn’t that fall under the “local media” category? Or is it truly just individuals posting on various platforms? If so, which ones? The wild, woolly frontier of social media needs to be understood, not just broadly categorized.

To genuinely understand how information flows through our community, to do the real work of helping people grasp “the news,” we need to comprehend the entire ecosystem. Simply categorizing it as “social media” feels like shrugging and walking away. This isn’t an accusation but a call for a more precise framework for approaching the question.

Analyzing the Local News Landscape

Similar to the communications audit, there have been a couple of attempts to understand the changing shape and decline of local media.

I have significant concerns with the Washington State University (WSU) research. While their approach is sound, they make some simple categorization mistakes. For instance, Olympia, as the state capital, naturally has more news sources (like TVW and the Washington State Standard). However, the WSU study also includes two North America Talks platforms in our Olympia count that do not cover local Olympia news. Thurston Talk is their local brand here, but South Sound Talk covers Pierce County. While “South Sound Talk” might be vaguely interpreted, “Whatcom Talk” clearly covers Whatcom County, a detail they should have identified.

Another study, using Muckrack data, tracks the decline of local journalism over the past two decades. In Thurston County, it estimates approximately 6.3 “Local Journalist Equivalents” per 100,000 residents, which would mean nearly 20 local reporters. This number feels a bit high, but their methodology section is clear, so I plan to delve into their data further for a better understanding.

However, these analyses often overlook the entire other section of where people report getting their local news: social media. When I conducted a back-of-the-napkin analysis for Thurston Community Media on the local media landscape, I generally found what others did: a decline in established, professional local media (e.g., the loss of the KGY newsroom, the decline of The Olympian), the rise of digital-only platforms that approach news differently, and the creation of several social media forums that seemingly replace traditional news. Specifically, I noted r/Olympia on Reddit, the Thurston Scanner Facebook page, and the now-private Olympia Looks like Shit Facebook group.

The Dangers of Misinformation in a Fragmented Ecosystem

An incident just yesterday highlighted how this evolving dynamic, particularly with newly established digital platforms, can spark misinformation and how quickly that misinformation can become political fuel. A recent article from The JOLT at best poorly described, at worst mischaracterized a key point in an Olympia City Council meeting. The JOLT’s practice is to outsource most of its reporting to overseas reporters, relying on video footage rather than on-the-ground context.

The topic was a state-funded program designed to move unhoused individuals off state highway rights-of-way within city limits into more stable housing, think of the Interstate 5 embankment next to Hobby Lobby on Sleater-Kinney, which is inside Olympia but on state-owned land. Councilmember Dani Madrone described the situation as one where the state essentially handed local governments money and said:

“…local governments are in this position of, you know, the state said, “Here’s some money to get the folks without housing off state lands, bring them into your jurisdiction, and then, you know, you better hope we continue to fund it.”

However, the reporter misunderstood and misquoted her, framing it as though Olympia was intentionally bringing in unhoused people from outside the city:

“Madrone pointed out that local governments were encouraged to bring unhoused individuals into their jurisdictions with the promise of continued state funding. “

The reporter heard Councilmember Madrone say something about the city “bringing people into the jurisdiction,” but misinterpreted it in a way that what they wrote meant to the reader Olympia was importing people from outside city. Had they been present in the room, they would have been able to follow up and understand she was referring to unhoused individuals already living on state rights-of-way within the city. A simple clarification could have prevented significant confusion.

This misquote quickly took on a life of its own. A city council candidate picked up the inaccurate paraphrase and incorporated it into a version of the “magnet theory,” the unfounded idea that Olympia is importing unhoused people to boost its budget.

In reality, the right-of-way program aims to help cities manage homelessness that already exists within their boundaries, but on state-owned land. As of the following day, the post had been shared 43 times on Facebook, and I could only see a handful of those shares, some of which might be in active Facebook groups I’m not part of. This only tracks the story’s spread via Facebook on its first day.

This situation highlights a dangerous chain reaction: poor paraphrasing by an out-of-area reporter led to a public misconception, which was then used to fuel a misleading political narrative. It serves as a stark reminder that local journalism requires both proximity and precision, especially when reporting on sensitive, politicized issues like homelessness.

This incident also underscores a larger problem: the way we talk about “social media” as if it were a single entity. It’s not. Local Facebook groups operate differently from Nextdoor or a subreddit. And for each community, these local online communities are different. Understanding how information and misinformation flow through these distinct channels, and how it is received and reframed by different audiences, is as crucial as getting the facts right in the first place. We cannot mend local news if we don’t understand how people perceive it, and that perception is increasingly shaped by a fragmented, algorithmic media landscape.

Despite the practices of one seemingly legitimate online news organization, local journalism matters. So does understanding the ecosystem that surrounds it. If we are serious about either, we need to be more precise in our reporting and in our analysis of how that reporting moves through our communities.

The Future of Local Information

We are in the midst of a transitional moment for local news and information ecosystems, and we need better tools and frameworks, not just to fix the supply of local journalism but to understand how people receive and reprocess that information in a fragmented digital world.

The mangled “right-of-way” quote was misunderstood, amplified by a local candidate, and reframed as part of a broader narrative about Olympia intentionally importing unhoused people. A single reporting error, left unchallenged, became political fodder across local social channels.

This isn’t just a failure of journalism; it’s a failure of how we understand the local information ecosystem. As traditional newsrooms shrink, digital-only platforms emerge, and community conversations shift to increasingly opaque or siloed online spaces, we need new approaches to track and support the health of our local discourse.

Pulling back from Olympia, we’re seeing this debate occur on a national scale as people reading the tea leaves of the last Presidential race implore Democrats not to depend so heavily on legacy media strategies but to engage in the influencer space more.

We’re also seeing the promise of closed, walled garden social media pay off as the broader media industry is facing a “web traffic apocalypse.” The usual sources of online readership like Google Search, Facebook, and Twitter, have either deprioritized news or made algorithmic changes that dramatically reduce referral traffic.

Hope

There are also options to not just bring more reporters to town, but to grow and heal local social media. Organizations like New_Public are exploring how to treat digital public spaces like parks or libraries, shared infrastructure that communities must tend to, not just scroll past.

If we want to strengthen local journalism and civic trust, we can’t just ask where people get their news; we have to understand how that news is distorted, reshaped, or ignored once it enters the digital bloodstream. The future of local news doesn’t just depend on reporters. It depends on recognizing the complexity of the ecosystem we’re already in.