It’s a three-hour drive from Edmonton to Calgary – maybe less with Alberta Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen’s new higher speed limits. So does it really make sense to spend $38 billion or more to build a high-speed passenger-only rail system between the two cities?
Of course it doesn’t.
But – what the hell? – Canadians love trains! Trains are just so romantic. In the 19th Century they tied the country together – never mind for a moment that the country in question was Canada, which Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is making us all vote whether or not we want to leave on Oct. 19.
Ms. Smith really loves trains, especially when talking about them provides an opportunity for a nice distraction from the fine mess she’s gotten herself into with the separation referendum that everybody hates almost as much as we all love trains.
Apparently Mr. Dreeshen loves trains too – even though he’s working hard to let us all drive faster on even more of the Queen Elizabeth II Highway, which is how plain old Alberta Highway 2 is now known since Ms. Smith’s UCP predecessor, Jason Kenney, renamed it in 2005 in a fit royalist enthusiasm. (Not sure what the Alberta separatists he invited into the UCP, who want to set up a republic, think of that. They’d probably rename it the Donald J. Trump MAGAway if they could.)
Plus, of course, Ms. Smith’s best-known rail advisor, David Moretta, also happens to be her husband. Indeed, the two of them used to run a restaurant in an old railcar in High River, although it sure sounds as if that didn’t work out all that well, what with the pandemic and everything.
Anyway, now it even turns out that those formerly hated Liberals in Ottawa – still despised by the separatist base of Ms. Smith’s United Conservative Party, of course – also want to build high-speed passenger trains. After all, they’re what Prime Minister Mark Carney calls big nation-building projects, especially when they cost a fortune. (Environmental assessments? There’s a plan for that, so you can stop worrying about ’em!)
So Ms. Smith and a phalanx of Alberta and federal officials got together at Heritage Park in Calgary Monday to pose for pictures and announce that “Alberta’s government is preparing to launch a formal Request for Proposal (RFP) process this fall, inviting private-sector proponents to submit proposals for a downtown Calgary-Red Deer-downtown Edmonton high-speed rail project that also includes service to Alberta’s two largest airports and the City of Airdrie.”
Which, when you think about it is a wordy way of announcing that nothing much at all is happening, but … Look over there! High-speed train!
Continuing with the grand-sounding but not-really-all-that-impactful announcement, Ms. Smith said that a proponent will be named by next spring and the feds have promised the putative project will be referred to Ottawa’s Major Projects Office.
“We are taking the next steps toward a project that could strengthen one of Canada’s fastest-growing economic corridors and support Alberta’s growth for decades to come,” the premier enthused in her canned quote in the press release.
Just for toots and giggles, let’s think about this idea.
If the train stops at Edmonton International Airport in Leduc, Red Deer for refreshments at the Donut Mill, Airdrie for reasons no one has thought up yet, Calgary International Airport, and maybe somewhere in downtown Calgary, there’s just no way you’ll be able to get from one terminus city to the other faster on the train than you could in your car. And that doesn’t count the time you’ll need to spend going through airport-style security.
Plus, you’ll still have to rent a car when you get where you’re going, because there’s not going to be a public transit system that works in either city for a very, very long time. (This is true notwithstanding the government’s claim in its news release that the fast trains will “be integrated into existing passenger rail systems in Calgary and Edmonton.”)
So it’s unlikely the train can succeed commercially without billions of dollars of infrastructure at either end. A big parking lot in Edmonton and Calgary isn’t going to do the trick.
And, remember, you can’t carry freight on a super-fast passenger train, and you can’t have slow freight trains using the same tracks.
Moreover, and a fossil fuel enthusiast like Ms. Smith may want to think about this too, modern high-speed trains run on electricity. Isn’t all the electricity we can generate from Alberta natural gas going to be used to run AI data centres that’ll be busy sending out swarms of AI-powered killer drones to help destroy humanity?
Modern high-speed trains are almost unimaginably fast. The older ones run at about 250 kilometres per hour. There are deer in Alberta. They can jump high fences. Can you imagine what happens when a train hits a deer – let alone a moose, or a pickup truck – at that speed? So forget about level crossings anywhere between Calgary and Edmonton – and add that to the cost. Expect significant impacts on animal migration, surface roads and existing rail lines.
Now, about that $38-billion cost estimate, what you hear from the government now will be much lower, of course. At Monday’s newser, responding to a reporter’s question, Mr. Dreeshen refused to estimate what the true cost would be, insisting funding from the province would be “minimal.” But it’s ludicrous to believe the private sector will agree to finance such a project on its own.
In 2008 – 18 inflationary years ago – a proposal for a similar line in California between San Francisco and Los Angeles, 614 kilometres, put the cost at $33 billion US. By 2014, that had soared to $68.4 billion. By last spring, projected costs were up to $231 billion!
Of course, whenever you start talking mega-projects, you’re entering the kingdom of the cost overrun. If it ever gets built, we can expect it to be a massive boondoggle and a commercial failure.
Think of all the schools and hospitals that could be built with the money it would take to build a high-speed rail link. Or we could spend a few billions on public transit in cities and a government-run bus system for rural areas, both of which would offer huge environmental and financial benefits at a much more modest cost, with less risk they’d fail commercially.
Which brings us to the Hon. Member for Battle River Crowfoot. Pierre Poilievre, who also happens to be the leader of the federal Conservative Party, last spring assailed Ottawa’s proposed high-speed rail project between Toronto and Quebec City as a “monstrosity” and a “boondoggle.” Somebody ought to ask him what he thinks of the Calgary-to-Edmonton idea.
After all, while he may be right the eastern project is a boondoggle, with 1,000 kilometres of track and a population through the corridor of about 14 million people, it’s got to make more economic sense than a 300-kilometre megaproject that would serve a population of about 3.2 million.
Well, if no other good comes from this, Alberta is now a world leader in high-speed passenger rail feasibility studies. There have been at least six major studies done since the 1970s, five of them in the past 25 years.
So far, none of them have resulted in a high-speed rail line.