High Speed Rail on the Horizon

[d.wylie]

From www.canada.com, "Albertans on board for high-speed rai":

"We don't subsidize WestJet. We don't subsidize them to fly between Calgary and Edmonton," argues Scott Hennig, of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel is just as skeptical, insisting the money could be better spent on schools and hospitals. "I'm concerned we have too many other priorities," Mandel said.

Roger Gibbins, president of the Canada West Foundation, a public policy think-tank, said the government subsidy on a bullet train "would be incredible."

However, he noted the poll suggests a "surprising degree" of support for government spending on the project, which likely indicates the public wants the province to think big when spending its oil and gas wealth.

"We have the opportunity in this province to make a transformative investment," Gibbins said.

More:

• On Track: Alberta's Bullet Train Debate (calgary herald)
  
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Canada#Edmonton-Calgary

I liked the poll choices you used Cleis' so, I'm gonna copy them! Reminds me very much of Soc100. Anyways, I think it'd be great to be able to hope on a train and get to the other city within an hour or two. Secretly I hate driving on the highway - stresses me out!

What do you guys think?

[Cleisthenis]

I'd like to see the province spend money on this project as an investment. The route was shown to be profitable in terms of potential ridership already ten years ago. That will only increase as gas prices go up. P3 is for suckers.

[Raos]

And the benefit of eliminating that many car and plane trips!  It's kind of obscene not to invest in HSR. 

[inquisitum]

High speed rail is needed. As a legacy project for our bonus oil profits, nothing could be better.

[Raos]

I really like the idea of making a legacy project for oil profits.  It would provide a lot of good publicity for whatever politician made it happen, giving them a little of incentive to actually get it done.  Great idea.

[Cleisthenis]

The AB government just released a new report that had been completed over a year ago. It's really heavy on numbers and data, but local blogger extraordinaire Mastermaq has the highlights here.

Unfortunately though, it looks like we're probably still a ways away from seeing this turn into a reality, from the Journal:

A report commissioned by the province says a high-speed train that could travel between Calgary and Edmonton in an hour would attract as many as six million riders a year by 2021, but the Stelmach government doesn't appear ready to back the project just yet.

The market assessment report makes no recommendations on the feasibility of the project or whether government money should go into it, but Conservative cabinet ministers gave the concept only a lukewarm endorsement Monday.

Employment Minister Hec Goudreau was the biggest supporter of the project, but doesn't think it's time to proceed.

"If we look at environmental issues, if we look at the distances and the time involved, I think there's a fit for high-speed rail, and there's a fit for more movement of goods and products by rail," he said.

"Are we ready for it? Is our population base large enough for it?Maybe not at this stage, but eventually it will be, so we need to be ready and we need to start doing some of the long-term planning."

Finance Minister Iris Evans said she's not opposed to the idea, but there's no money for it now.

"We've got a lot of other needs that will have to come first," she said. "If the population in the future would support it, certainly I am not averse to it, but I would just simply say we've got a lot of other infrastructure needs. Let's finish Highway 63 to Fort McMurray."

Speaking of twinning hwy 63, how many lives/insurance dollars/carbon emissions/litres of gasoline would we save if we built the HSR all the way to Fort Mac?

Heck, we could even get the Big International Oil Companies to help pay for that stretch of it.

[Raos]

I definitely think this is something the government should move on sooner, rather than later.  There's over 9 million trips between Edmonton and Calgary per year, and there's still doubt that we have the population base to support a high speed rail line?  That's almost 25000 car trips per day.

Even in the Journal article one of the biggest criticisms against the line is that projects like high-speed links between each city's downtown and intentional airport is a more pressing issue.  So why not build the terminals of the Edmonton-Calgary line from each city's downtown to it's airport in the short term, and start planning on connecting the airports to each other through Red Deer in the longer term, once those terminals are finished and operating, to complete the line.  It's not like the entire line could be built overnight if the province committed to the whole project now.  And downtown Edmonton and EIA stations makes more sense to me than downtown Edmonton and suburban Edmonton stations, with the same situation in Calgary.

As far as the actual technology, I think the overhead electric TGV is the only viable option.  Maglev would be cool and impressive (and oh so sexy) but is too expensive to be reasonable.  There is some merit to the criticism that we don't have the density of Europe and Japan to justify the same infrastructure, and even they haven't built a commercial Maglev yet, although it is starting to get off the ground (hehehe,  ) in Japan.  TGV, however, is proven and a lot more economically viable to get off the ground.  The other two would be just be a huge mistake.  Diesel?  Really?  And the speeds?  This needs to go fast or go home.

[optimistic.bob]

I don't understand the subsidy argument. We do subsidize every road in the province (tax dollars build them and maintain them). We do subsidize airlines by providing them with public or psuedo public facilities to operate from (airports) at costs that are shared between public and private sources. (If YYc and YEG didn't exist westjet wouldn't either).We subsidize oil and its production into gasoline, we subsidize industry by having the public bear the environmental and social problems that are created.
This isn't a partisan decision. It should be made with one eye to the future transportation possibilities and one eye to the rest of the world that has embraced rail transportation.

[Raos]

Absolute bang on the money.  But therein lies the essence of a FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) campaign.  It's not about fair or rational comparison, it's just about obfuscating the truth enough that the issue seems controversial.  The subsidy argument isn't meant to hold up to close inspection, it's meant to keep people and politicians from seeing enough to bother with close inspection of the real issues. 

It's what the cigarette companies did with medical evidence of smoking being related to lung cancer, and it's what oil related industries have more recently been doing to dispute climate change, and now fossil-fuel alternatives.  Any controversy or uncertainty favours the status quo, it inhibits change.

[Cleisthenis]

We should craft a counter-campaign formula to fight against those FUD's Raos!

What would the opposite of FUD be?

Back on topic: Here is THE facebook group for HSR in alberta.

[d.wylie]

What would the opposite of FUD be?

Knowledge, Confidence and Honesty?

[Raos]

Facebook group: joined.  I love it!  This could be such groundbreaking infrastructure for the province.

Ooh, I really like the Honesty in the anti-FUD.  It really is all about honesty, isn't it?

[Cleisthenis]

Knowledge, Confidence and Honesty?

All that's missing is an 'A' and a rearrangement of the letter to form the acronym: "HACK" - as in Hacker's Ethic... anyone?

Back on topic...


From the Western Standard, comes a really strong argument for fast-tracking the HSR line:

The release, on July 6, of the Government of Alberta’s report on a Market Assessment of High Speed Rail Service in the Calgary-Edmonton Corridor leads to the consideration of a number of political and policy issues, both provincially and nationally, that might be resolved or, at least, substantially mitigated by a high speed train project.

The Alberta Government faces several problems that could be solved by introducing high speed train service in the Edmonton-Calgary Corridor. Alberta has to show the world that it is committed to a greener economy; it has to improve its transportation infrastructure; and, it has to develop more economic alternatives to the oil and gas industry.

An electrified high speed train service between Edmonton and Calgary would take passengers from downtown Calgary to downtown Edmonton in about an hour or an hour and a half, depending on the technology chosen. This would reduce green house emissions by millions of tonnes, as travellers switch from cars that take at least three hours to make the trip or planes that take as long, including time for check-in and security and time to get to and from the airports.

The transportation infrastructure, particularly in the Edmonton-Calgary Corridor, will need massive upgrading as the population of Alberta continues to grow rapidly. Highway 2 can be endlessly expanded in to a “401 West” or be transformed into a true transportation corridor by the addition of high speed rail. A fast, frequent and reliable rail service linking downtown Calgary, Red Deer and downtown Edmonton, with suburban stations at or near Calgary International Airport and Edmonton International Airport, would be an enormous improvement to Alberta’s transportation network.

[d.wylie]

All that's missing is an 'A' and a rearrangement of the letter to form the acronym: "HACK" - as in Hacker's Ethic... anyone?

Back on topic...


From the Western Standard, comes a really strong argument for fast-tracking the HSR line:

How about Honesty, Altruism, Confidence and Knowledge?

I suppose this is kind of a meta tangent hey Cleis?

[Raos]

I like it.  I like them; both the HACK acronym (and associated implication) and the Western Standard op ed.  And that's strange, I don't often find myself agreeing with the Western Standard.