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 it was renamed it in 2005 by Ralph Klein’s Progressive Conservative Government in a fit of royalist enthusiasm. (Not sure what the UCP’s many Alberta separatists, who now 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.
CORRECTION: Alberta’s north-south Highway 2 was renamed the Queen Elizabeth II Highway in 2005 by then premier Ralph Klein’s Progressive Conservative Government. Incorrect information appeared in an earlier version of this story – to wit, attribution of the change to UCP premier Jason Kenney. AlbertaPolitics.ca sincerely regrets this silly error, but Mr. Kenney, an ardent royalist, will probably be pleased to go down in history as the premier who changed the highway’s name. My apologies to him nevertheless. DJC
I don’t know, can’t a girl dream? After all, the Prairie Economic Gateway project located east of Calgary is listed in the Marine and Port Infrastructure sector of the major projects list. Do the Separatists know something we don’t? Or are we talking climate change? One less worry getting that pipeline to tidewater. Edmonton lefties can take the train to Calgary to greet the orcas and the protestors in kayaks instead of schlepping out to Vancouver via VIA Rail. Romantic, sure. High speed? Not. But you can load your kayak on. Does Mr. Moretta know if I can bring my kayak on the Prairie Express? speedgreethttps://open.substack.com/pub/sanityproject/p/the-167-projects?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2di3z9
Danielle Smith’s husband loves trains very much. This is going to be another very costly boondoggle from the UCP. Almost two decades ago, the Alberta PCs were thinking about getting a high speed rail line between Edmonton and Calgary. It was shot down, because of the costs, and also risk factors. This isn’t a priority, because as it is, from the same Alberta PCs, with premier Ralph Klein, Alberta has an infrastructure deficit that is likely $40 billion. The UCP haven’t helped with this either. Public education, public healthcare, AISH, restoring seniors supports, among other things, matter more, not some expensive toys from the UCP that we will be paying for.
Albertans do love talking about high speed rail and MAGA Marlaina loves a good distraction, especially when one is so desperately needed by her. Like now, when her referendum idea seems to be turning into a bad distraction instead.
As a bonus, talk is cheap, although actually building high speed rail is not. However that is likely more a problem for Smith’s successors to deal with. The near term pressing problem is saving her political career from the annoyed Federalists who don’t want all the referendum questions she is forcing on us and the upset separatists who want her to boost them even more.
So we got a nice sidecar diversion to which party pooper Poilievre was of course not invited. It probably doesn’t hurt for Smith that her husband is a rail enthusiast. Fortunately, even though their rail car diner didn’t work out, she found a good paying government job soon after, which is yet another irony for the peripatetic former libertarian. Like her MAGA mentor, she does seem to escape her own disasters again and again. Some may say it is good fortune, I feel is is more calculated cunning.
Canada was built on governments funding private rail companies, which interestingly conservatives out did the liberals at. Although they over did it so the resulting scandal caused more damage than Smith’s AHS private health deals and got them booted from office for a bit. While I am skeptical high speed rail will happen anytime soon, Smith always loves to talk and talking about it now at least gives Smith a nice break from all her other troubles right now.
the entire project between edmonton & calgary is camouflage for the true goal of the regime – the line between calgary & banff.
there are significant members of the alberta elites who have been pushing this project for 30 years, but don’t have the capital or deep pockets to tackle it.
pay attention – the “private sector investment” will be attached to the line between the urban centres while the provincial funding will support the calgary – banff line. the eventual names behind it won’t be new to long time albertans.
I always thought that a train between Calgary and Banff was a cool idea. It wouldn’t need to be high speed, just an alternative for tourists between the 2 locations. It might even cut down the congestion in Banff. A highspeed train between Calgary and Edmonton is also a good idea, but as you stated, not practical. Businessmen wouldn’t use it, because they’d have too many stops on the way and between getting on and off, as well as ubering to calls, it would be a waste of time. Sports teams might and the public would, but other than that, we’d have spend all that money for nothing, unless fuel hit 10 bucks a litre.
These are good points, Jones. A couple of thoughts: Even if fuel reaches $10 per litre, if the UCP is still in the driver’s seat, the power for the electricity will have to be generated from fossil fuels, viz., natural gas. Ergo, costs will go up for ordinary Albertans and savings will be small. If the plan for the side line to Banff is for high speed, or just passenger-dedicated slow speed rail, it’s far from clear that a new line will be able to be constructed inside the national park. If it’s high-speed rail, you can add grizzly bears to the list of potential collision targets. DJC
Eliminating The Boss could pave the way for future rail developments. However, that might make him a martyr. Looking at the popular Fat Bear Week, people on this continent like their bears.
Alberta has bandied about a grizzly hunt for years outside the national parks, so this rail line idea might be the way to kill two birds with one stone.
Speaking of birds, rude double-breasted cormorants are wrongfully eating fish meant for humans in the heart of separatist country, the thieving snitches. No worries. It’s perfectly legal to cull them under certain conditions and “management” programs.
I wonder if the sporting goods stores in Lac La Biche and Bonnyville benefited.
Anyways, I’m sure tourists will love the pristine views of the wildlife-free wilderness on the way to Banff. Critters should not get in the way of a train.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/calgary/article/could-the-boss-be-euthanized-parks-canada-addresses-plans-for-bear-122/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/double-crested-cormorant-bird-alberta-9.7361391
You can’t make this stuff up because Alberta already did.
Well said. Yes of course you’d have to rent a car once you’ve arrived in Edmonton or Calgary because neither city has the European style of public transit that makes inter-city trains viable. So why not just take your car with you in the first place?
It is the standard operating procedure behind everyone’s favorite political/theatrical production:
Field of Schemes, If you build them, they will go overbudget and profits will remain private and personal; while, losses are guaranteed to remain public and social.
So, it continues to be a case of damn the evidence, full speed ahead, because what is really important is consistency and whose pockets are going to be lined in the usual process of taking the public out to the cleaners.
1. “THE IRON LAW OF MEGAPROJECTS”
“Professor Flyvbjerg calls it the “Iron Law”: megaprojects are delivered over budget, over time, and under benefits, over and over again. Fewer than 1% of megaprojects are completed on time, on budget, and deliver the benefits promised. This is not a new phenomenon: the pattern has held for the 70+ years for which comparable data exist.”
2. “Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg has spent decades studying megaproject performance. His database, the world’s largest, covering more than 16,000 projects across 136 countries, reveals a stark finding: nine out of ten megaprojects run over budget. Rail projects are among the worst
offenders, with an average cost overrun of 44.7% and ridership shortfalls averaging 51.4%. These patterns hold across countries, decades, and political systems.”
3. “The reasons are consistent: optimism bias in early estimates, political pressure to lowball costs to gain approval, scope changes once construction begins, land acquisition complications, environmental mitigation requirements, and inflation over multi-decade build timelines. As McKinsey’s research notes, project managers competing for funding tend to present costs at the floor of what’s plausible, a dynamic Flyvbjerg calls “strategic misrepresentation.””
https://citizenresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/What-HSR-Really-Costs-.pdf
Every comedy act needs a straight man and every swindle or confidence game needs a sucker, mark, or victim.
None of these findings, depressing as they may be, are arguments against mega projects. Without them, where would be be?
Obscuratio viae.
I don’t know what that means.
I’ve always known this as “Cheops’ Law”, which simply states, “nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget”. Attributed to fictional character Lazarus Long, a creation of famed sf author Robert A Heinlein.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheops_law
All for the low low price of $7500 per Albertan.
For business travellers, the phone/computer lines travel at the speed of light!!!
A great idea – on paper. However, Canada is not Europe, where high population density and far less of a car culture make rail travel a real alternative.
“This project could no more have a deficit than a man could have a baby.”
I generally disagree. I’m not saying a high speed train will be a profitable endeavour, but I do think it’s needed and long past when it should have been in the works.
However, the benefits of the train depend on it being designed and built properly, not slap-dash on the cheap. And I do not trust Smith or anyone around her to do anything properly.
A state with an advanced economy would have high-speed rail to link two population centres like Edmonton and Calgary. Such a state would build locomotives and passenger cars and batteries and rails. Canada is the richest third-world country on earth, one that has de-developed since 1945. Derpberta, with the fourth largest hydrocarbon reserves on earth, would be an economic driver in an advanced economy, but this country has been reduced to a neoliberal toilet dependent upon primary resource exports, a massive real estate scam, and immigration to keep the real estate scam operating. (the Green New Deal, and its necessitating impending climate catastrophe are apparently no longer a thing in the neoliberal world) Nationalism is the passion of imbeciles, but the nation state remains a significant technology for managing socio-economic relations in a given region. Unfortunately for Canadians, that technology is in the hands of international financiers, represented by folks like ol’ Elbows Up the Carny Banker, with bewildered and deluded Canadians being driven into the waiting arms of BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, Blackstone, etc., the people who already own the tarsands, by the absurd synthetic right-wing boogeyman, (or men, in the words of the illustrious Homer J.). Good ol’ free markets ensure that the juicy portion of dividends and share buybacks go to the US. Ol’ Elbows Up says we’re at war with the hegemon, but as we speak the independent armed forces of Canada is acquiring its first dozen-and-a-half members of its F-35 White Elephant herd. As a function of the US downloading the burden of the wars against Russia, Iran and the coming one with China to its vassals, the Carny Banker continues to “threaten” the US with the purchase of jet fighters from fellow neoliberal US vassal Sweden, airplanes that are to a great extent built from US-sourced parts. Meanwhile, Canada will take delivery of a cornucopia of US weapons systems that have generally proven to do nothing beyond lining the pockets of share-holders in the imperial military industrial complex. The clapped-out US industrial base can’t get its act together well enough to turn out the multi-kajillion-dollar P8 aircraft that the Canadian state already bought. Likewise the US-made MQ9 drones which also cost lots o’ loot don’t seem to work very well either. Probably all just teething problems as the Energy Superpower gets ready to destroy the state apparatus of the next country with the highest standard of living in Africa or bomb a sovereign European state trying to fend off its dismantling by western finance and NATO.
The Connecting Communities Foundation of Alberta ( connectingcommunities.foundation ) recommends High Performance Rail where CPKC ,CN and the government transportation agencies increase freight capacity & safety first.
Once bottlenecks are removed, there is adequate capacity to operate conventional 135-160 kph passenger rail services. In the short term, commuter rail needs to feed into transit systems before HSR has any chance of success.
HSR (the spine) requires the muscle from Transit and High Performance Rail to be viable. Transit Authorities in Calgary and Edmonton during the morning rush are at full capacity. Additional LRT consists are needed today to replace 4 decade old cars. Commuter rail into Calgary, Red Deer and Edmonton is viable.
In Germany 95% of ridership is attributed to regional and commuter rail service. Less than 5% of passenger volume is for High Speed Rail.
The game plan is straight forward:
– Increase Transit Capacity and frequency
– Remove at grade crossings and provide commuter rail service pilot projects by 2030
– Use the Commuter ridership intel to “right-size” and build out the system within each mega region.
– Tie together the commuter services within inter-city rail services by 2035
West Coast Express (Lower Mainland) , The Sounder (Puget Sound) , and Go Transit (Ontario) prove that this strategy will be successful.
Check out several regional and high speed rail studies conducted by ITRD since 2022 at the Integrated.Travel website
Something else to consider: what would be the cost of a ticket? Unless it costs less than a tank of gas, or at least the equivalent of an old Greyhound ticket (remember those?) you can forget about your Average Joe taking the train and overall ridership will be low. Doesn’t exactly make a great case for private investment, right?
Danni and David (Choo & Choo) had a dream to become rail magnates. Instead, they flipped burgers until the railcar derailed. So they rise again with another no-brainer: Alberta’s Petticoat Junction. A convenient diversion from the Bubbleville debacle with Sylvestre on the prowl.
The oil companies lined up to get her on their boards better hope she will learn to shut up and just bag the proceeds, to happily ever after with all the stashed cash in “Connubial bliss”.
You have to love how stupid these Reformers are don’t you. Wasting taxpayers money is all they care about. If this failed like it did before would they take it over and run it like Klein did with the Grace Hospital that he destroyed?
Too stupid to look at why the Dayliner failed and using it to get people’s minds off what they are doing to them.
Did the Evironmental Assessment take into the winds that occur on the QEll. Or are they planning ahead without one . Again. In some places it can blow a vehicle off the highway. They have watched too many episodes of The Jetsons
Does the environmental assessment take into consideration, the high winds that are frequent on the QEII between Edmonton and Calgary. Or are they just throwing it out there with out the Environmental Assessments as they are doing with the Wonder Valley Alberta Data Center being pushed through south of Grande Prairie Ab ? Which has a direct connection to wonder Valley Utah !! Many vehicles have been forced off the highway. They have watched too many episodes of the Jetsons.
“There was a time in this fair land…” (to paraphrase Lightfoot’s immortal railroad trilogy) when the average Canadian could travel affordably and in clean comfortable surroundings from BC to the east coast.
THAT’s what I’d like to see in this country today, especially since all our airlines seem to be embracing the protocols made infamous by RyanAir!!
Hey all you, You See yellow snow types, can you say “pee 3 partnership.” Woo ha.
Is this like the Trump family, where “All in the Family” is the name of the game? Surely the Smith-Morettas won’t benefit from government largesse. That would be a conflict of interest etc. I guess we’ll have to trust that everything is above board, fair and lawful, like all government deals in this province.
I’m a “train guy” and would be delighted if they just brought back the Budd Rail Diesel Car, commonly known as a Budd car or Dayliner, the self-propelled diesel railcar used extensively for passenger service in Alberta by both the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and Canadian National Railway (CN) from the 1950s to the early 1970s.
However, vehicles and roads improved, and the Budd cars had a big problem with the many uncontrolled level crossings, which resulted in a lot of T-boned pickup trucks, not to mention the random rail-kill T-bones produced from splatted wild and domestic animals. The cost of installing proper signals and control arms on the crossings was deemed prohibitive. No one even considered high fences and bypasses for animals like those now used in national parks.
To avoid the level-crossing and splatted-animal problems, a new passenger rail line would likely have to be elevated and so would its cost. Maybe we should just wait until Elon Musk perfects his “hyperloop” system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop
Perhaps Danielle Smith plans to call on the Taggart Transcontinental Railroad people to handle this job. The new line could be named the John Galt Line, and the rails could be made of Rearden metal so the trains would go really fast.
You beat me to it. She DEFINITELY is cosplaying as Dagny Taggert.
She even dresses like Dagny, IMO. DJC
Many years ago there used to be an airbus between Edmonton and Calgary. That went from the muni to Calgary advise versa. Even that was slower than diving because of security, check in and parking and car rentals. So the cost was way more than driving and did not really save any time. While this might sound like a good idea, it’s more about a a gig and consulting money for dingy Smith’s husband, nothing more.
Two dear friends enjoying retirement safe at home now after taking in two Blue Jays games in Hogtown to which they travelled by transcontinental train. I know the routes well having clickety-clacked across our vast country a number of times—at least parts west of Montreal. The Crows Nest, Jasper, the Algoma, the Fraser Canyon. Ahhh, yes…
They flew home from Toronto, but for the romance of rail on their adventure in the levantine direction they booked a stateroom and splurged on the finest fare in the dining car—a far cry from my coach experiences of yesteryear, camouflaging myself as baggage so’s to get a good night’s sleep stretched out in the overhead luggage rack, or playing fetch with my hound, or cards with the porters in the mail car on the four-day rattle-trap trip. Sure better ‘n’ forty-below toes hitchhiking across the Prairies in winter, and relatively cheap too. But that was then. My friends’ tab for the whole trip, including plush accommodations in T.O. was close to five figures…
Whoa! It’s been a while!
One of my earliest memories is putting a penny on the railway track and waiting for the Peterborough train to flatten it, a special time with my dad who swore me to secrecy, just between the two of us, because it was “illegal”—both for defacing legal tender and for potentially derailing the train. It was daring and exciting. We disguised our nefarious conspiracy by giving the engineer a friendly wave as the caboose clanged by—or, in retrospect, chugged off into history.
That Merle Haggard song, “Mama Tried,” always reminds me of the Peterborough train; I can still hear that lonesome whistle blow at the Highway 7 crossing a mile and a quarter north of my childhood bedroom window. On hot summer nights the clang of every steel wheel was as clear as a bell. Several decades later I’m reminded of the E&N passenger train which isn’t there.
It wasn’t there yesterday and again today; I know because the one-o’clock whistle as it crossed the Tsable River trestle just before stopping at Buckley Bay hasn’t sounded for years now. Then I’m reminded that when Brian Mulroney tried to decommission the then-VIA version of the Esquimalt-Nanaimo Railway, premier Bill Vander Zalm asked him which part of “in perpetuity” the PM didn’t understand. The massive E&N Land Grant, almost the whole east coast of the Big Island, was to compensate CPR for the 15-mile “extra” it was asked to build in addition to the transcontinental contract that induced BC to confederate with Canada thousands of miles to the east: this obscenely disproportionate trade was only slightly sweetened by the stipulation that CPR also build and run the E&N railway “in perpetuity.” Although not exactly a formal Term of Union in 1871, Vander Zalm’s citation of the deal prevailed and the E&N passenger service continued for a number of years more before being shut down for safety reasons: VIA simply stopped maintaining the crossings, rail-beds and tracks.
Mulroney succeeded in mothballing some 30% of Canadian railway branch-lines, but the E&N survived—albeit with the most user-unfriendly schedule and begrudged accoutrements possible. All that remains of the E&N today is the continuous right-of-way between our nations’s two Canadian Forces Bases on the West Coast (navy in Esquimalt and airforce in Comox), neglect having achieving what ideological privatizers could not. However, a dedicated movement to restore Island Rail is teamed with a number of Island municipalities and First Nations along the route to keep the R/W continuous for the day when the E&N whistle can be heard again in the fastest-growing and rapidly urbanizing region of the province.
Unlike high population-density Europe and Asia, sparsely populated North American jurisdictions are dismissive of high-speed passenger rail as infeasible. National policies once afforded by federal largess can be traced by connecting the ghost towns dotted across continental vastness after the strategic value of certain stretches of canals, roads, and railways became obsolete; rural moribundity spoiled any “build it and they will come” optimism local governments might have had back in the day. US Interstate Route 66 illustrates the short history of progress and the Anglo-Saxmaniacal boom-and-bust ethos. Where population makes feasible, the cost of expropriation makes infeasible—another of the Anglo-Saxon ethoi which even today many on the partisan right interpret as a “right to own private property” when instead it is the right to sue if expropriated.
Low-inventory, Big-Box and Just-In-Time logistics prefer rubber-tire delivery. Restorationist grain farmers tried, post-Mulroney, to maintain prairie branch-lines on their own within the Canadian Wheat Pool context —until the HarperCons destroyed farmers’ marketing cooperative on ideological grounds. BC Liberal opposition leader Gordon Campbell promised to privatize publicly-owned BC Rail during the 1996 provincial election and lost; campaigning in 2001, he promised NOT to privatize BCR and won, thence quickly breaking his promise on the spurious rationale that the Crown Corp was losing money, thereby embarking on a track of criminal corruption which led to the conviction of two sacrificial BC Liberal party hacks and ultimately contributed to Campbell’s political demise. The citizens of BC lost a billion-dollar railway.
For CNR, the “purchaser” and sole beneficiary of the proven insider-trading scandal, the 999-year “lease” has proved so profitable that it regularly exceeds the safe-design limit on freight-train length, increasing the risk of chemical spills into waterways always nearby in the mountains which, when they happen, are written off as a cost of doing business. That was sufficient rationalization for Campbell to privatize BC Rail which [” only”] operated within a close tolerance of break-even without taking such risks.
But then some green-bean counter compared the freight rates of rubber-tire and rail delivery systems in terms of greenhouse gasses produced per unit of freight and, dang!—wouldn’t you know it! Turns out rail produces a tiny fraction of the pollution that rubber-tired freighting does, the magic goo of diesel fuel being equal. And just when a growing minority of people are really starting to worry about climate-change, too, a battle the petro-industry has been unsuccessfully waging for decades. Big Oil can deny it’s pollution-caused climate-change is happening all it wants, but it can’t deny that EV sales, though still a small share of the car market, are growing at an accelerating rate. It even might occur to the the most MAGAfied climate-change-denying mind idling in the heat-domed rush-hour gridlock of any number of cities smothered in toxic wildfire smoke from thousands of miles away after filling up the tank at Iran-War-inflated gasoline prices that, yeah, maybe playing with the phone or relaxing to calming Ai-New-Country with eyes shut on a nice, air-conditioned, publicly-owned commuter train would be a better way of getting home after work. Don’t even need to be “woke.”
High-speed trains are for moving passengers who are speedily boarded and speedily unloaded at either end of relatively long stretches reduced by high speed between stations so the train can speedily resume travel at high speed. It’s all about speed. It is suited for interurban transit, not urban transit; it must get from station to station without intermediate slowing or stopping. Passenger trains cannot do freight which requires near-boggling freight-yard logistics that can’t be applied to passengers in any timely way. But with a lot of freight and ports from which to export it (otherwise freighting is by rubber-tire), a few mainlines can produce handsome profits. Yet in deference to profit not only were peripheral tracks decommissioned, red-tape-reduction was also rationalized by bottomline thinking which correlates to chemical spills and Lytton-style wildfires in BC, and the tragedy of Lac-Megantic in Quebec, among other lesser accidents).
Europe’s more socialistic philosophy contrasts with North America’s more capitalistic ideals where 45 years of market fundamentalism have deformed governments’ primary responsibilities for social welfare into a bottomline ethos which more properly belongs in private capitalism. With regard railways, freight and passengers “hitchhiked” on large government investment in transcontinental railways when the primary purpose was strategic (eg Canada’s first transcontinental railway was built to induce BC to confederate and secure strategic counter to America’s West Coast development). Projects like the Alaska Highway were almost entirely strategic, with no expectation of profit at all. As strategic necessity slackened, rail steadily devolved, losing unprofitable peripheral track and much of its passenger service as government left the sector to the private enterprise which focused instead on freighting high volumes of uniform raw materials. 45 years if neo-rightism minimized public enterprise by reducing taxes; beggared governments are generally afraid to raise them and consequently tend to duck petitions to increase public spending—really the only kind that can finance such huge capital investments as railways. We’re still petitioning to restore the old, slow-poke E&N railway on the Big Island which already has the right-of-way and track in place; what are the odds government wants to take on building a high-speed railway at infinitely greater cost? A fortiori, not very big odds. Or so it should seem.
So what’s up with high-speed proposals in Ontario and, now, Alberta? I can tell you my grandson lives and works on Kingston, Ontario, and they sure don’t like the controversy the proposal has sparked in those parts. His father and I are quite familiar with the expropriations that destroyed generations of rural culture where we’re from: a new international airport was to be built in the wake of that social tragedy —and then it never was. I lived in Montreal for a time, and one thing I had in common with the locals was Mirabel where the same thing happened. Probably why we don’t trust government all that much.
You can probably guess how I feel about high-speed between Edmonton and Calgary (where I’ve resided a number of times). I wouldn’t trust a proposal like that as far as I could throw a steam locomotive.
But I remain curious.
Scotty: As a lad, I confess, I too have laid a penny on the tracks, somewhere in Saskatchewan, as I recall. There was no derailment. As a wee lad, my mother and I rode CP’s The Dominion (the slow train) from Vancouver to Moose Jaw at least twice. So I have seen Swift Current by night, from the rail yards. In the 1970s, I rode the CN train from Smithers to Toronto. I have a memory of riding The Canadian from Calgary to Vancouver in the 1970s, although I’m not certain it’s a fully accurate one. Smithers to Toronto was cheap, although I had to sleep sitting up, and I can’t recall how cheap. Since I got a summer job in Toronto, I bought a really shitty car – a Peugeot – and drove back to B.C. with a stop a Gull Lake, Sask., for repairs, where the garage owner berated me for being an easterner. I told him I was from B.C. Same difference, it turned out. But he fixed the car OK. I have taken the E&N from Victoria and Qualicum Beach, and taken the Pacific Great Eastern from Vancouver to Prince George. They were all great rides. But they are all in the past. DJC
I always thought Smith wasn’t the brightest Premier in the country but I’ve changed my mind. I now consider her bat shit crazy. $38 BILLION to build a fast train to replace a 3 hr drive? Does Smith actually know what $38 billion looks like and what it can be used for? If Alberta has that much money to toss around on the “little train that won’t” she should use the $38B for improvements to health care, expanding educational services so people could go to university, technicals schools to become researchers, nurses, doctors, pysios, etc It would enable to government to actually permit some students to not to have to pay tutition. Provide better public schools and more teachers; build affordable housing for seniors, low income families, handicapped people, etc. Grants to low income home owners and small businesses who need to repair their buildings. A few more social workers would help things in Alberta.
What does Smith think? They’ll name it after her? Given how well she and hers have dealt with all the toxic abondoned oil/gas wells I don’t thing that rail way will be successful. the contract would most likely go to a MAGA affilliate, non union workers, unqualified people building it, but their employer is a good friend of whomever. Yes by all means go ahead and flush $38B down the toilet. It w0uld most likely finish off the political party forever.
While I agree with many of the arguments against the high speed rail, I think that we should be looking at building a commuter railway system that will allow Albertans to travel anywhere in the province without automobiles. High Speed Rail would be good for travelling in high travelled corridors like Toronto to Montreal.
I think the main argument against “high speed” rail is the “lack of albertans” how many people could possibly be riding this train on a daily basis. Are they going to frog March every man woman and child onto the train in shifts just to make sure it gets used ? There is no cost basis, period.
Conventional rail sure, but I believe the main obstacle is the tracks that run at grade along the highway belong to either CN or CPR with a lease that is basically free and eternal, so you have to overturn that first. I dunno about Calgary to Banff but I bet it’s similar, railroads were one of the first cartels on this continent, so good luck with that.
Sure, it sounds good on paper that you could live in Red deer and work in Calgary and not have to drive but you’re going to have to drive anyway, unless you walk to the station. Also, those commuters don’t exist yet, so you’re building a solution for a problem that isn’t there.
A brief aside about Data centres, I wouldn’t hold my breath about them being built anytime soon either. Ed Zitron has been doing take down after take down of the AI bros but his latest research shows they haven’t built much of anything yet, because it’s incredibly difficult. He repeatedly calls it the most ambitious infrastructure project on the history of the planet, and I think he may be onto something. His big claim is that most of the chips are still sitting in warehouses and he thinks that’s unlikely to change. Most of them don’t even have servers to be placed in, and most of those places they’re claiming to be installing servers don’t have power, many of them haven’t finished the BUILDING. They need MOUs and building announcements to look busy but they’re not building much of anything.
Interview here for those that are curious, but his logic seems very sound to me https://youtu.be/1CbvhJO8Nfo?si=wjq-_nMWTweMd-gj