There has been much talk of late (again) about the potential for high-speed rail, à la France’s TGV or Spain’s Avé, being built between Calgary and Edmonton, or from Windsor to Quebec.
In my opinion, neither of these makes a lot of sense, and doesn’t seem to me to be a good use of public money – since it doesn’t look at all like any private corporation is interested in such a mega-project.
My first problem with these dreams is that even if you could get 5000 people to take a train between Calgary and Edmonton every day, that might take 3000 cars off of Hwy 2. Assuming most people drive during daylight, that is only about 200-250 cars per hour, or 2 cars per minute each way. That doesn’t sound like much of a reduction based on my experience on that roadway and isn’t going to reduce the need to add lanes to Highway 2 in the near future.
Second, if the project costs a few billion dollars to construct, the ticket prices are going to have to be relatively high to recoup the investment and cover operating costs. I don’t have all the numbers, but from what I’ve read and heard on the radio it seems to me that rail prices will be comparable to airline ticket prices – too high to get people out of their cars – so it will mostly steal customer from the airlines.
Finally – the public purse isn’t exactly overflowing with excess cash. And if we want to spend public money on transportation that might actually reduce automobile traffic, I would think that improving public transit with more light rail / subway lines in Calgary, Edmonton and other cities across Canada would be far more beneficial than high-speed rail.
The only reason for politicians to support high-speed rail is that it sounds more exciting. But that is not a good reason to waste my money.
4 comments
Cool Blue says:
10 July 2009 at 17:24 (UTC -7 )
How long would the train between Edmonton and Alberta take compared to driving?
Personally, I would consider a train between Quebec-Windsor.
I’m near Ottawa so to go to Toronto I could fly there in an hour, or drive it in around 7 hours.
If there was a train that would get me there in 3 hours or so I’d definitely consider it.
Taliesyn says:
10 July 2009 at 23:27 (UTC -7 )
Edmonton Calgary is 25 minutes in the air (plus airport time), or 2.5 hours by car. A TGV could probably do it in 1 hour, perhaps a little more.
Quebec-Windsor might make sense – but again you can’t have it stopping very often. Quebec, Montreal, Kingston, Toronto and Windsor would have to be it to keep the travel time low enough to make it attractive.
Rabbit says:
10 July 2009 at 17:28 (UTC -7 )
The Windor-Quebec route makes the most sense. There are about 18 million people living in this corridor.
The Calgary-Edmonton corridor has only about 2.5 million. I don’t see how it could ever pay for itself.
I’ve taken the Grande Vitesse in France, and was very impressed. I prefer it to flying for distances under 800 km.
Taliesyn says:
10 July 2009 at 23:28 (UTC -7 )
Even 18 million is too low. In that distance in Europe are 60-80 million people… In Japan even more.