following a six-week delay due to an issue with the seat designs on the Talgo trainsets. Amtrak extended a second train to Eugene in late 2000. From the mid-1990s to the May 12, 2008 Amtrak system timetable, full service dining was available on trains going north out of Seattle's King Street Station to Vancouver. The southern trains to Portland briefly had full dining services until the May 16, 1999 system timetable. In 2004, the Rail Plus program began, allowing cross-ticketing between Sound Transit's Sounder commuter rail and Amtrak between Seattle and Everett on some Cascades trains. The corridor continued to grow, with another Portland–Seattle train arriving in 2006, and the long-awaited through service between Vancouver, BC and Portland, eliminating the need to transfer in Seattle, beginning on August 19, 2009 as a pilot project to determine whether a train permanently operating on the route would be feasible. With the Canadian federal government requesting Amtrak to pay for border control costs for the second daily train, the train was scheduled to be discontinued on October 31, 2010. However, Washington State and Canadian officials held discussions in an attempt to continue the service, which resulted in the Canadian government permanently waiving the fee. Two additional round trips between Seattle and Portland were added on December 18, 2017; an early morning departure from each city and a late evening return, enabling same-day business travel between the two cities. On the first day of service, a train derailed outside of DuPont, Washington, south of Tacoma. COVID-19 pandemic In March 2020, Amtrak Cascades service north of Seattle was suspended indefinitely after all non-essential travel across the Canada–United States border was restricted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Amtrak crews ran practice trips between Seattle and Vancouver, BC, in February 2022, and service between those two cities resumed on September 26, 2022. , a second round trip between Seattle and Vancouver is scheduled to resume on March 7, 2023. Seattle–Portland service is planned to increase later in 2023. Route Stations Ridership Total ridership for 2008 was 774,421, the highest annual ridership since inception of the service in 1993. Ridership declined in 2009 to 740,154 but rose 13% in fiscal year 2010 to 836,499 riders, and to 847,709 riders in 2011. Ridership declined steadily between 2011 and 2015, attributed in part to competition from low-cost bus carrier BoltBus, which opened a non-stop Seattle–Portland route in May 2012.