A worthy and thoughtful commentary, with which I fully agree (as a transportation engineering consultant). It's hard to imagine an effective construction process, if it even launches. Of course, having studied this issue for fifty years, Transport Canada should have it all figured out by now. On the other hand, they are probably as shocked as anybody that the government has finally decided to move ahead with HSR.
I haven't looked yet, but am somewhat surprised that the proposed line does not extend past Toronto to Waterloo; there is great interest in tying "Silicon Valley North" more effectively to Pearson and Toronto in this manner. A future phase? Of course, serving Pearson with such an HSR line (which I studied) is a pretty big challenge that will take a lot of $ to create, but it's doable.
I will disagree on the Gordon Lightfoot front, though; there are some shockingly laborious rhymes in "Edmund Fitzgerald" that I can't get past, so "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" gets top billing from me (a practicing folk-rock musician).
Thanks, Steve! Given your background, your endorsement means a lot.
I can only presume there was no interest in going west from Toronto because that might seem a gift to Ontario rather than something that was in the national interest. If so, it's an indictment of what Canadians see as a 'national' concern.
As for Gordon Lightfoot, I celebrate his entire catalogue!
I’d like to know your example of “shockingly laborious rhymes” in “Edmund Fitzgerald.” I’m a musician a and sometime songwriter and hear nothing of the kind.
Granted, writing about a rusty, sinking iron ore carrier doesn't lend itself to flowery turns of phrase, but.... four references to November in the first six verses, including "the gales of November came early" followed a few verses later by "the gales of November came slashin" then later on "the gales of November remembered" seems a bit lazy to me. And pairing the poetic ring of "Superior sings in the rooms of her ice-water mansion" with the mundane Lake Michigan tourist brochure line "The islands and bays are for sportsmen" is pretty clunky. The "rhyme" of "weighed empty" and "came early" also seems like he could have spent a bit more time on. Then "As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most" is another line that sounds lazy. Anyway, a great song, but I do wish he had spent a bit more time and effort in writing it. Perhaps part of its million-selling charm is the plain-spoken "regular guy" lyrics taking the place of cliched rhymes or obvious highfalutin' poetic intent.
Also, it had entirely American place-names for the American radio audience. Yes, I know she was the pride of the American side, but still....
This was one of the knocks against Railroad Trilogy that hurt its commercial success: all the place-names are (appropriately) Canadian and American listeners had no idea what they were listening to. (And of course the CPR never went "up [down, really] the St. Lawrence all the way to Gaspé". It started in Montréal and went west.)
But it's still a great song. "Behind the blue Rockies, the sun is declining...."
Well, CBC commissioned Lightfoot to compose "Trilogy" in order to kick off Centennial celebrations, so I don't think there was any intent to pander to or create American interest in this purely-Canadian effort. Interestingly, "Trilogy" was a failure as a single (it didn't chart anywhere), whereas his next single, the US-related "Black Day In July" (about the Detroit race riots), got significant Top 40 action in Toronto and Vancouver. BTW, "Edmund Fitzgerald" hit #1 in both Canada and the US (Cashbox).
I'll add that the song just has an issue with sacrificing poetry for being a factual account of the event, which makes it kind of clumsy. In the category of songs about Great lakes merchant shipwrecks I think White Squall is better.
Toronto hasn't even put a shovel in the ground for a north south subway line it had been planning for decades, and finally said it would start building six years ago. This HSR fantasy doesn't even promise that much, just 4 - 5 years of planning. It will never be built in our lifetimes, if ever. This isn't Europe. Their cities are compact, and have good intra city transit. Toronto? It would take me an hour to get to a station, plus another 30 minutes buffer time. I can just drive directly to my destination in Ottawa almost certainly in less time in aggregate. And if I'm really in a hurry, or want to go further, it's actually easier to get to an airport. I'll be in Ottawa or Montreal in a hour. Quebec City, 90 minutes.
Great and enlightening column, thank you. Why does it leave Toronto and immediately leave for Peterborough, that centre of population? Is it to start building Peterborough into a population centre? Why is it leaving out the Toronto to Kingston corridor? No mention of how this will greatly increase our productivity when it only moves people. As a Westerner I question the expense of probably $80-$100B to solve transportation problems in a small area of Ontario and Quebec that will not likely have a great affect on the country as a whole. We have other large infrastructure projects and national building expenditures to make before this project. This speaks to a Canadian inferiority complex: “They have one so we should have one too.l
(Leslie here. Substack gets us mixed up even though we have different e-mail addresses.)
I think the plan is trying to make use of the existing CPR route that goes from Toronto thru P'boro to Havelock which is still active. Not heavily used and perhaps CPR would sell it, which would be much easier than buying land piecemeal. Beyond Havelock there is a long stretch now long abandoned, rails pulled up, through Sharbot Lake to Smiths Falls where the present CPR mainline comes north from the St. Lawrence River to run into Ottawa. (A long time ago, in steam days, the CPR ran overnight trains from Toronto to Ottawa along this route through P'boro because there were few station stops to wake up the sleeping passengers. There was even a CP Hotel in P'boro. Not like the Banff Springs or anything but my wife used to hang out there during her nursing school days.) Not saying they'd build the line actually on or beside the existing or abandoned line but it gives a general idea of a practical, already surveyed route. Re-grading it to high-speed standards would be a big job of course.
This country between P'boro and Ottawa is thinly populated to this day -- rocky soil, lots of granite and swamps, not like what we think of S. Ontario farmland at all. Land will surely be cheaper to acquire than along the existing CN corridor along the shore of Lake Ontario and St. Lawrence River where there are many towns and cities with very expensive land. Building a new rail line in settled country is frightfully expensive. Almost all rail lines in North America were built in undeveloped country and settlement followed. Also, all those little towns currently served by VIA would want the HSR to stop for them, too, and this would slow down the lawyers and civil servants speeding between Toronto and Ottawa. And yes, there are very few roads in those parts that would need to cross the railway on grade separations. That is likely another consideration as Andrew alludes to.
The thing in Europe is the HSR service runs to major stops from which one takes regular rail to get to more locations. It’s all quite efficient. We have no such system. This would be a point to point run. Like you stated the original rail attracted development; whereas, HSR only attracts development at the stops. Between stops no one wants to develop. The other point is it includes Quebec City, but leaves out SW Ontario . HSR would make more sense from London to Toronto than Montreal to Quebec City. Waste of money until we have $100B sitting around with nothing to spend it on. If we were to become an energy superpower then maybe that day might come.
There was no way that a good chunk of Québec was ever not going to be in the plan. If that meant Ontario cities with a better business case were going to be left out, too bad. That's how this country rolls. Remember the point of the project is to benefit Québec businesspeople and construction unions first, Québec élite travelers a distant second, and everybody else benefits only enough to make it not painfully obvious that the first two desiderata were the only ones. That most of the line will still be built in Ontario is supposed to distract you from the real goals. Just be thankful Québec doesn't want HSR to Rivière-du-Loup or Chicoutimi and maybe just to Ottawa from Montréal. Seriously, don't discount the possibility that Ottawa - Montréal is all that ever will be built before it runs out of money. Then with great threats of huffing and puffing about broken promises it will get extended to Québec City to run gloriously empty. But fast!
Of course a government dedicated to pleasing the Laurentian elite will focus on Quebec first and those of us in the so-called ‘have’ provinces will send Quebec it’s $13B equalization payments and pay for a rail line mostly to it’s benefit. I’m still of the opinion that this is a Trudeau legacy project and the fact that all of the Liberal leadership hopefuls support it at this time in our history is downright frightening.
Given the rail vs. car numbers on that corridor, it made me wonder how much rail exists in those cities now. A pretty persistent problem in the Bay Area is that it's kind of a hassle to take the BART somewhere if you just have to take a car on the other side. I debate this constantly if I visit friends in San Diego, it's way better to just fly but I still end up driving around the city because of limited public transportation there. Uber/Waymo change that equation a lot, but it seems like a country has to earn the right to do HSR by doing local public transportation well to begin with.
An element I didn't get into, but will explore in a future piece, is that the value of HSR versus other modes *depends on the rail station being downtown*. And it often is; certainly in Toronto or Montreal, one disembarks from one's train into the heart of the city, as well as into a subway station, so no private car is necessary.
It is not clear to me whether HSR will run directly to the Union Station / Gare Centrale of either Toronto or Montreal. It should, though it will have to run on low speeds on traditional trackage in the downtown cores, and then accelerate to high speed for the non-urban leg of the trip. If it does NOT do this, but instead goes to some dedicated station way out in the periphery—which is possible, we have no detail yet—then the value of the project plummets... if people need a car or a taxi trip on both ends, they will simply fly instead.
Even as a political stunt I think HSR is a disaster. It's not so much that such a shower of ill-considered pork-barrel spending in "Laurentian Canada" will cost them votes in Alberta (because they're dead there anyway), but it could do something even worse, by fanning the flames of actual Alberta separatism, which, considering the current situation w.r.t. the United States' naked territorial ambitions, I think people should be a lot more worried about than they are.
The only infrastructure projects which should be considered right now are those that improve Canada's economic and political resilience in the face of the threat from the United States. I thought the Liberals were the party that understood that, but seems like they aren't. This HSR proposal has me reconsidering my support for the Liberals (and given my view of the other candidates in the face of the current threats to Canada, it takes a lot to do that).
Really good article and spot on criticism, thank you for this. This seems like another situation of our eyes being more hungry than what our stomach can handle. I dont understand the obsession with high speed rail when the current rail situation is broken. Lets start by giving priority to via rail so passengers can at least have some consistency in arrival times. Improving this will at least increase ridership numbers on this corridor. Here in Austria trains operating between all major cities at roughly 200km/h. Not necessarily high speed, but they depart at multiple times within the hour, the on time performance is exceptional (except when impacted by international trains) and the pricing is very decent. I have a "Klimaticket" which grants me unlimited access to these trains + all publicly operated transit for about 1100 euros annually. It might seem like a high price but think about that, it includes all rail within the borders of the country and all transit systems included Vienna's. This situation happened because of clear direction from public authorities...a great takeaway from your article!
You can't expect CN to give priority to VIA trains. First, some of the sidings aren't long enough for a modern freight train of 150 85' cars to fit in so they have to make the passenger train take the hole and wait. Freight trains are carrying millions of dollars worth of cargo, especially the container and TOFC trains which have just-in-time schedules to keep, too, and freight trains actually make money, so they aren't going to stop for passenger trains which need government subsidy. When a big heavy train has to stop quickly it wears down the brakes -- when a freight train comes to a planned stop at the end of the run the engineer usually just cuts the throttle and lets it drift to a stop over a couple of miles and doesn't use the brakes except at the very end. And to get it going again from a standing stop takes a lot of fuel to overcome static friction in all those hundreds of wheel bearings. CN owns the tracks as its private property, so VIA can suck it up. VIA should build its own tracks if it wants priority on them. Or if it wants priority scheduling over CN's freights, it should expect to pay a lot more in rent to use the tracks.
The thing about Europe's rail system is that you hardly ever see freight trains on them, and when you do they are only about 20 or 30 cars, so easy to dodge in and out of passenger trains. The contribution that North America's freight railways make to the economy is truly amazing. They are the lifeblood. Passenger trains are like mosquitos: annoying nuisances.
In the 'thank heavens for small mercies' file at least it's not stopping in Smiths Falls [!] anymore (population less than ten thousand).
Are there issues with changing the HSR route have a longer arc from Toronto to Ottawa, so more track but going through less populated areas, less need to disrupt local residents, roads etc?
I presume this is is why the Toronto to Ottawa leg passes through Peterborough rather than Kingston, as one might have expected: it will be easier and cheaper to build a new ROW through that part of Ontario
I agree with most of what you said here, but Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was not one of Gordon Lightfoot's best songs. I agree with all your praise of him WorEF just isn't his best work.
We have extensive (and already paid for) airports around the country. If the Feds want to improve intra-Canadian travel, they should drop the land rents they charge the airport operators.
Whg Peterborough? It lost its train station in the 60s and barely supports buses to Toronto. Folks scoot down 35/115 to the 407 and are in downtown Toronto in 75 minutes. Finally, it doesn't have a train station at all. It was torn down in the 70s.
My wife and i think of this article every time we hear about HSR these days. And we look at the light rail system that replaced the perfectly good bus rapid transit in our neighborhood, instead of supplementing it. Why such poor planning?
It won't get built in my lifetime, but let's never mind the implementation. In Toronto I need 1 hour plus a buffer time to get to a station, in Ottawa, figure the reverse to get to wherever I'm going. Call it two hours for train time, it'll be longer. I can drive to Ottawa in 3.25 hours. Further afield, like Montreal or Quebec City? I'll fly.
Both things can be true: (1) the way this project has been structured augurs cost and schedule overruns and possibly an expensive disaster, and (2) we should stop putting passenger rail onto freight lines and plan to use the best technology in the world on new tracks. In a smarter way.
Some good points, but there's a fundamental misunderstanding of demand, particularly as it relates to motonormativity and forced car dependency. Following your logic, people want to drive so let's keep building highway – and you've arrived at "one more lane, bro."
Understand that car dependency has been forced upon people. No one wants to spend hours in traffic – Toronto and Vancouver have some of the worst in North America. They do it because there are no other options. And it's not scalable. LA and Toronto are terrible places to live because of these infrastructure choices. The ONLY proven way to improve traffic is to offer safe, convenient, affordable alternatives. Something Doug Ford is too thick to understand.
Demand is created. It's manufactured. No one wanted to trade in their compact for a monster SUV. The car industry ordered them to do it and they complied. The fashion industry is the same way. So the driver supremacist status quo didn't appear organically.
Lastly, rail infrastructure shapes communities PROACTIVELY. It should not just respond to current needs, it creates need and shapes the form of communities and how we live. It is essential to lowering our world worst per capita carbon footprint and finally startig to pay down our enormous carbon debt.
1. I have European relatives and I have regular insight into their travel plans. Europeans have ample access to rail (including HSR) and still choose to fly or drive for intra-European trips *all the time*, for all the same reasons we do. (if they're in a real hurry and the trip is a longer one, South of France to Sweden for example, the plane is still faster, and if they need their car at the other hand, driving is still better). Rail may have changed the mode share somewhat, but not that much. If you're imagining that Alto will empty out the 401 you may be in for a disappointment.
2. If we have $90B to spend on "reducing our carbon debt" it is fair to ask if this boondoggle in the making should be on the list of ways to spend it.
Population density of Western Europe: 184 people/km^2
Population density of Canada: 5 people/km^2
This isn't "driver supremecist nonsense", it's reality.
Of course, some places in Canada are denser than others, but guess what... some places in Europe are less dense than others too! I'm familiar with the remote Ardeche region of Southern France (reminds me of the populous part of the interior of BC actually). Guess what everybody does there? They drive! I guess they don't have you there to tell them to take electric trains.
"Take BC for example. Around 600km of electric rail would serve three quarters of the population." - define "serve", and ask yourself why not even Europeans would live that way.
Thinking about this more… I assume that “600km of electric rail in BC” would run in part from the coast to Kamloops/Kelowna. There is no way that would pass any kind of cost/benefit analysis. After Hope there is essentially nothing until Kamloops (I have done that drive many times, it’s practically empty for 200km). There is no way the infrastructure of electrified rail could possibly make sense on that route, it would either be 90% empty or run twice a week, and nobody wants either of those. There is nothing like such remoteness anywhere in Europe…. even the most “remote” parts of France (like the Ardeche) are practically teeming with people by comparison, and even it doesn’t have rail service.
Of course, you probably don’t believe that cost/benefit analysis is the way to make such decisions. You wishcast what might be, not what is. The problem is that the resources to create “what might be” are not limitless.
So you make a number of false assumptions. Here’s some of what you’re missing.
Infrastructure induces demand. “If you build it, they will come” is literally true. Trains: car-free travel. Highways: more cars.
Highways aren’t free. The latest BC budget allocates $5B for expanding highways. Money that wasted to induce more traffic and sprawl.
Infrastructure induces modal shift. People don’t want to drive. Boomers losing their vision don’t want to endanger others. They are FORCED to because they do not want to be shut-ins. Forced driving dependency is a real issue.
Infrastructure induces cultural shift. Driver supremacism was learned and can be unlearned. Paris 20 years ago is almost unrecognisable from what it is today.
Diesel trains are slower, more expensive and breakdown way more than electric. Electrifying and doubling/expanding the route would have massive costs and that would be over decades.
Infrastructure planning should be proactive not just reactive. Your cost-benefit nonsense fails the fact that railways shape a century or more of urban development. So BC can not do it and continue to become another LA or Toronto as the population grows (a car sprawling shithole), or we can do it now, create thousands of permanent green jobs, and create a much more livable, greener, sociable and progressive future society.
Really? You rate car culture higher as a cause than, say, extreme cold weather requiring carbon-intensive heating; or oil-sands extraction, the most carbon-intensive in the world?
Norway, Finland, Sweden are all nearly as cold, and most Canadians live near the border, so that argument is out. Fossil fuel economic distortions and false finances is inextricably linked to driver supremacist culture and manifested by forced car dependency and monster SUVs. Look at any electoral results map from the last 50 years. Suburbanites with the world's worst levels of car ownership, car bloat and forced car dependency vote in anti-science, extinctionist leaders (Doug Ford, etc). There's an obvious vicious cycle at work. Cherry picking out "oil sands extraction" misses the century long socio-cultural project of big oil. Yes, it's tied to driver supremacism. And yes, no people on earth are more indoctrinated than Canadians. (You know how rare it is globally for ripping out bike lanes to be an election issue?)
Depending on the definition of "Western Europe", Norway/Finland/Sweden are about 7% of the population of that region, so that's not a very compelling argument. Canada, is, on average, significantly colder than Western Europe. That's just geography.
But anyway, the relevant comparison is transportation-related emissions, and ChatGPT tells me that Canada has roughly 1.7 times the transport emissions per capita as Western Europe. So Western Europe isn't "half" Canada, more like 60%, though that is still a significant difference.
Why? I've spent lots of time in Europe. We're not Europe. The usual explanations of bigger roads, longer flights, more spread out cities, and to some extent larger vehicles. Some of that really is just geography (the two biggest cities in English Canada are Toronto and Vancouver which are as far apart as Dublin and Athens... no HSR in the world could beat flying that distance) and the path dependence of building cities after the invention of the automobile.
I know progressives like to attribute everything to the sinister wiles of Big Bad Oil Companies That Convince People To Want The Wrong Things Against Their Better Judgement, but I have never found those explanations particularly persuasive.
You also didn't answer the broader point. Even if we grant that our transportation infrastructure choices have an effect over time on our built environment, and that we'd like that built environment to look different, and we'd like our carbon emissions per capita to go down, is *this* the best way to spend $90B on this problem? Is this going to make Canadian vehicles any smaller? Is it going to make people stop driving or flying? Is it going to make the commute in Toronto any better?
A worthy and thoughtful commentary, with which I fully agree (as a transportation engineering consultant). It's hard to imagine an effective construction process, if it even launches. Of course, having studied this issue for fifty years, Transport Canada should have it all figured out by now. On the other hand, they are probably as shocked as anybody that the government has finally decided to move ahead with HSR.
I haven't looked yet, but am somewhat surprised that the proposed line does not extend past Toronto to Waterloo; there is great interest in tying "Silicon Valley North" more effectively to Pearson and Toronto in this manner. A future phase? Of course, serving Pearson with such an HSR line (which I studied) is a pretty big challenge that will take a lot of $ to create, but it's doable.
I will disagree on the Gordon Lightfoot front, though; there are some shockingly laborious rhymes in "Edmund Fitzgerald" that I can't get past, so "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" gets top billing from me (a practicing folk-rock musician).
Thanks, Steve! Given your background, your endorsement means a lot.
I can only presume there was no interest in going west from Toronto because that might seem a gift to Ontario rather than something that was in the national interest. If so, it's an indictment of what Canadians see as a 'national' concern.
As for Gordon Lightfoot, I celebrate his entire catalogue!
I’d like to know your example of “shockingly laborious rhymes” in “Edmund Fitzgerald.” I’m a musician a and sometime songwriter and hear nothing of the kind.
Granted, writing about a rusty, sinking iron ore carrier doesn't lend itself to flowery turns of phrase, but.... four references to November in the first six verses, including "the gales of November came early" followed a few verses later by "the gales of November came slashin" then later on "the gales of November remembered" seems a bit lazy to me. And pairing the poetic ring of "Superior sings in the rooms of her ice-water mansion" with the mundane Lake Michigan tourist brochure line "The islands and bays are for sportsmen" is pretty clunky. The "rhyme" of "weighed empty" and "came early" also seems like he could have spent a bit more time on. Then "As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most" is another line that sounds lazy. Anyway, a great song, but I do wish he had spent a bit more time and effort in writing it. Perhaps part of its million-selling charm is the plain-spoken "regular guy" lyrics taking the place of cliched rhymes or obvious highfalutin' poetic intent.
Also, it had entirely American place-names for the American radio audience. Yes, I know she was the pride of the American side, but still....
This was one of the knocks against Railroad Trilogy that hurt its commercial success: all the place-names are (appropriately) Canadian and American listeners had no idea what they were listening to. (And of course the CPR never went "up [down, really] the St. Lawrence all the way to Gaspé". It started in Montréal and went west.)
But it's still a great song. "Behind the blue Rockies, the sun is declining...."
Well, CBC commissioned Lightfoot to compose "Trilogy" in order to kick off Centennial celebrations, so I don't think there was any intent to pander to or create American interest in this purely-Canadian effort. Interestingly, "Trilogy" was a failure as a single (it didn't chart anywhere), whereas his next single, the US-related "Black Day In July" (about the Detroit race riots), got significant Top 40 action in Toronto and Vancouver. BTW, "Edmund Fitzgerald" hit #1 in both Canada and the US (Cashbox).
Thus proving my point.
‘Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?’ Now there’s a lyric!
I'll add that the song just has an issue with sacrificing poetry for being a factual account of the event, which makes it kind of clumsy. In the category of songs about Great lakes merchant shipwrecks I think White Squall is better.
It’s a motif!
Toronto hasn't even put a shovel in the ground for a north south subway line it had been planning for decades, and finally said it would start building six years ago. This HSR fantasy doesn't even promise that much, just 4 - 5 years of planning. It will never be built in our lifetimes, if ever. This isn't Europe. Their cities are compact, and have good intra city transit. Toronto? It would take me an hour to get to a station, plus another 30 minutes buffer time. I can just drive directly to my destination in Ottawa almost certainly in less time in aggregate. And if I'm really in a hurry, or want to go further, it's actually easier to get to an airport. I'll be in Ottawa or Montreal in a hour. Quebec City, 90 minutes.
Great and enlightening column, thank you. Why does it leave Toronto and immediately leave for Peterborough, that centre of population? Is it to start building Peterborough into a population centre? Why is it leaving out the Toronto to Kingston corridor? No mention of how this will greatly increase our productivity when it only moves people. As a Westerner I question the expense of probably $80-$100B to solve transportation problems in a small area of Ontario and Quebec that will not likely have a great affect on the country as a whole. We have other large infrastructure projects and national building expenditures to make before this project. This speaks to a Canadian inferiority complex: “They have one so we should have one too.l
(Leslie here. Substack gets us mixed up even though we have different e-mail addresses.)
I think the plan is trying to make use of the existing CPR route that goes from Toronto thru P'boro to Havelock which is still active. Not heavily used and perhaps CPR would sell it, which would be much easier than buying land piecemeal. Beyond Havelock there is a long stretch now long abandoned, rails pulled up, through Sharbot Lake to Smiths Falls where the present CPR mainline comes north from the St. Lawrence River to run into Ottawa. (A long time ago, in steam days, the CPR ran overnight trains from Toronto to Ottawa along this route through P'boro because there were few station stops to wake up the sleeping passengers. There was even a CP Hotel in P'boro. Not like the Banff Springs or anything but my wife used to hang out there during her nursing school days.) Not saying they'd build the line actually on or beside the existing or abandoned line but it gives a general idea of a practical, already surveyed route. Re-grading it to high-speed standards would be a big job of course.
This country between P'boro and Ottawa is thinly populated to this day -- rocky soil, lots of granite and swamps, not like what we think of S. Ontario farmland at all. Land will surely be cheaper to acquire than along the existing CN corridor along the shore of Lake Ontario and St. Lawrence River where there are many towns and cities with very expensive land. Building a new rail line in settled country is frightfully expensive. Almost all rail lines in North America were built in undeveloped country and settlement followed. Also, all those little towns currently served by VIA would want the HSR to stop for them, too, and this would slow down the lawyers and civil servants speeding between Toronto and Ottawa. And yes, there are very few roads in those parts that would need to cross the railway on grade separations. That is likely another consideration as Andrew alludes to.
It's still a stupid plan that shouldn't be built.
The thing in Europe is the HSR service runs to major stops from which one takes regular rail to get to more locations. It’s all quite efficient. We have no such system. This would be a point to point run. Like you stated the original rail attracted development; whereas, HSR only attracts development at the stops. Between stops no one wants to develop. The other point is it includes Quebec City, but leaves out SW Ontario . HSR would make more sense from London to Toronto than Montreal to Quebec City. Waste of money until we have $100B sitting around with nothing to spend it on. If we were to become an energy superpower then maybe that day might come.
There was no way that a good chunk of Québec was ever not going to be in the plan. If that meant Ontario cities with a better business case were going to be left out, too bad. That's how this country rolls. Remember the point of the project is to benefit Québec businesspeople and construction unions first, Québec élite travelers a distant second, and everybody else benefits only enough to make it not painfully obvious that the first two desiderata were the only ones. That most of the line will still be built in Ontario is supposed to distract you from the real goals. Just be thankful Québec doesn't want HSR to Rivière-du-Loup or Chicoutimi and maybe just to Ottawa from Montréal. Seriously, don't discount the possibility that Ottawa - Montréal is all that ever will be built before it runs out of money. Then with great threats of huffing and puffing about broken promises it will get extended to Québec City to run gloriously empty. But fast!
Of course a government dedicated to pleasing the Laurentian elite will focus on Quebec first and those of us in the so-called ‘have’ provinces will send Quebec it’s $13B equalization payments and pay for a rail line mostly to it’s benefit. I’m still of the opinion that this is a Trudeau legacy project and the fact that all of the Liberal leadership hopefuls support it at this time in our history is downright frightening.
Given the rail vs. car numbers on that corridor, it made me wonder how much rail exists in those cities now. A pretty persistent problem in the Bay Area is that it's kind of a hassle to take the BART somewhere if you just have to take a car on the other side. I debate this constantly if I visit friends in San Diego, it's way better to just fly but I still end up driving around the city because of limited public transportation there. Uber/Waymo change that equation a lot, but it seems like a country has to earn the right to do HSR by doing local public transportation well to begin with.
An element I didn't get into, but will explore in a future piece, is that the value of HSR versus other modes *depends on the rail station being downtown*. And it often is; certainly in Toronto or Montreal, one disembarks from one's train into the heart of the city, as well as into a subway station, so no private car is necessary.
It is not clear to me whether HSR will run directly to the Union Station / Gare Centrale of either Toronto or Montreal. It should, though it will have to run on low speeds on traditional trackage in the downtown cores, and then accelerate to high speed for the non-urban leg of the trip. If it does NOT do this, but instead goes to some dedicated station way out in the periphery—which is possible, we have no detail yet—then the value of the project plummets... if people need a car or a taxi trip on both ends, they will simply fly instead.
Even as a political stunt I think HSR is a disaster. It's not so much that such a shower of ill-considered pork-barrel spending in "Laurentian Canada" will cost them votes in Alberta (because they're dead there anyway), but it could do something even worse, by fanning the flames of actual Alberta separatism, which, considering the current situation w.r.t. the United States' naked territorial ambitions, I think people should be a lot more worried about than they are.
The only infrastructure projects which should be considered right now are those that improve Canada's economic and political resilience in the face of the threat from the United States. I thought the Liberals were the party that understood that, but seems like they aren't. This HSR proposal has me reconsidering my support for the Liberals (and given my view of the other candidates in the face of the current threats to Canada, it takes a lot to do that).
Really good article and spot on criticism, thank you for this. This seems like another situation of our eyes being more hungry than what our stomach can handle. I dont understand the obsession with high speed rail when the current rail situation is broken. Lets start by giving priority to via rail so passengers can at least have some consistency in arrival times. Improving this will at least increase ridership numbers on this corridor. Here in Austria trains operating between all major cities at roughly 200km/h. Not necessarily high speed, but they depart at multiple times within the hour, the on time performance is exceptional (except when impacted by international trains) and the pricing is very decent. I have a "Klimaticket" which grants me unlimited access to these trains + all publicly operated transit for about 1100 euros annually. It might seem like a high price but think about that, it includes all rail within the borders of the country and all transit systems included Vienna's. This situation happened because of clear direction from public authorities...a great takeaway from your article!
You can't expect CN to give priority to VIA trains. First, some of the sidings aren't long enough for a modern freight train of 150 85' cars to fit in so they have to make the passenger train take the hole and wait. Freight trains are carrying millions of dollars worth of cargo, especially the container and TOFC trains which have just-in-time schedules to keep, too, and freight trains actually make money, so they aren't going to stop for passenger trains which need government subsidy. When a big heavy train has to stop quickly it wears down the brakes -- when a freight train comes to a planned stop at the end of the run the engineer usually just cuts the throttle and lets it drift to a stop over a couple of miles and doesn't use the brakes except at the very end. And to get it going again from a standing stop takes a lot of fuel to overcome static friction in all those hundreds of wheel bearings. CN owns the tracks as its private property, so VIA can suck it up. VIA should build its own tracks if it wants priority on them. Or if it wants priority scheduling over CN's freights, it should expect to pay a lot more in rent to use the tracks.
The thing about Europe's rail system is that you hardly ever see freight trains on them, and when you do they are only about 20 or 30 cars, so easy to dodge in and out of passenger trains. The contribution that North America's freight railways make to the economy is truly amazing. They are the lifeblood. Passenger trains are like mosquitos: annoying nuisances.
In the 'thank heavens for small mercies' file at least it's not stopping in Smiths Falls [!] anymore (population less than ten thousand).
Are there issues with changing the HSR route have a longer arc from Toronto to Ottawa, so more track but going through less populated areas, less need to disrupt local residents, roads etc?
I presume this is is why the Toronto to Ottawa leg passes through Peterborough rather than Kingston, as one might have expected: it will be easier and cheaper to build a new ROW through that part of Ontario
I agree with most of what you said here, but Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was not one of Gordon Lightfoot's best songs. I agree with all your praise of him WorEF just isn't his best work.
I celebrate his entire catalogue!
We have extensive (and already paid for) airports around the country. If the Feds want to improve intra-Canadian travel, they should drop the land rents they charge the airport operators.
Whg Peterborough? It lost its train station in the 60s and barely supports buses to Toronto. Folks scoot down 35/115 to the 407 and are in downtown Toronto in 75 minutes. Finally, it doesn't have a train station at all. It was torn down in the 70s.
They must have a reliably Liberal MP.
As a Californian, good luck and Godspeed. We can't even get the boondoggle cancelled.
My wife and i think of this article every time we hear about HSR these days. And we look at the light rail system that replaced the perfectly good bus rapid transit in our neighborhood, instead of supplementing it. Why such poor planning?
It won't get built in my lifetime, but let's never mind the implementation. In Toronto I need 1 hour plus a buffer time to get to a station, in Ottawa, figure the reverse to get to wherever I'm going. Call it two hours for train time, it'll be longer. I can drive to Ottawa in 3.25 hours. Further afield, like Montreal or Quebec City? I'll fly.
You mentioned California and I fear Canada would be the same.
I saw a discussion on Reddit about the CA HSR project, in which one person commented:
"When I graduated from college, my buddy got a job working on route planning for the high speed rail authority.
The problem is I graduated in 1995."
Both things can be true: (1) the way this project has been structured augurs cost and schedule overruns and possibly an expensive disaster, and (2) we should stop putting passenger rail onto freight lines and plan to use the best technology in the world on new tracks. In a smarter way.
Lib/NDP
1. We can pick a project that serves only On & QC, that the whole country will pay for, & will lose money = high speed rail line.
2. We could build a pipeline across Canada that serves all Canadians, provides national energy security & makes money.
Lib/NDP = let’s do the rail line.
Some good points, but there's a fundamental misunderstanding of demand, particularly as it relates to motonormativity and forced car dependency. Following your logic, people want to drive so let's keep building highway – and you've arrived at "one more lane, bro."
Understand that car dependency has been forced upon people. No one wants to spend hours in traffic – Toronto and Vancouver have some of the worst in North America. They do it because there are no other options. And it's not scalable. LA and Toronto are terrible places to live because of these infrastructure choices. The ONLY proven way to improve traffic is to offer safe, convenient, affordable alternatives. Something Doug Ford is too thick to understand.
Demand is created. It's manufactured. No one wanted to trade in their compact for a monster SUV. The car industry ordered them to do it and they complied. The fashion industry is the same way. So the driver supremacist status quo didn't appear organically.
Lastly, rail infrastructure shapes communities PROACTIVELY. It should not just respond to current needs, it creates need and shapes the form of communities and how we live. It is essential to lowering our world worst per capita carbon footprint and finally startig to pay down our enormous carbon debt.
A couple of observations:
1. I have European relatives and I have regular insight into their travel plans. Europeans have ample access to rail (including HSR) and still choose to fly or drive for intra-European trips *all the time*, for all the same reasons we do. (if they're in a real hurry and the trip is a longer one, South of France to Sweden for example, the plane is still faster, and if they need their car at the other hand, driving is still better). Rail may have changed the mode share somewhat, but not that much. If you're imagining that Alto will empty out the 401 you may be in for a disappointment.
2. If we have $90B to spend on "reducing our carbon debt" it is fair to ask if this boondoggle in the making should be on the list of ways to spend it.
The per capita carbon emissions of the Average western European is LESS THAN HALF that of the average Canadian. Why? Driver supremacist nonsense.
I'd probably take a look at relative population densities of the two regions before I tossed around words like "nonsense".
You would? Then what's stopping you? Why not shift from theory into practice instead of wallowing in nonsense?
Take BC for example. Around 600km of electric rail would serve three quarters of the population.
Since you asked so nicely:
Population density of Western Europe: 184 people/km^2
Population density of Canada: 5 people/km^2
This isn't "driver supremecist nonsense", it's reality.
Of course, some places in Canada are denser than others, but guess what... some places in Europe are less dense than others too! I'm familiar with the remote Ardeche region of Southern France (reminds me of the populous part of the interior of BC actually). Guess what everybody does there? They drive! I guess they don't have you there to tell them to take electric trains.
"Take BC for example. Around 600km of electric rail would serve three quarters of the population." - define "serve", and ask yourself why not even Europeans would live that way.
Thinking about this more… I assume that “600km of electric rail in BC” would run in part from the coast to Kamloops/Kelowna. There is no way that would pass any kind of cost/benefit analysis. After Hope there is essentially nothing until Kamloops (I have done that drive many times, it’s practically empty for 200km). There is no way the infrastructure of electrified rail could possibly make sense on that route, it would either be 90% empty or run twice a week, and nobody wants either of those. There is nothing like such remoteness anywhere in Europe…. even the most “remote” parts of France (like the Ardeche) are practically teeming with people by comparison, and even it doesn’t have rail service.
Of course, you probably don’t believe that cost/benefit analysis is the way to make such decisions. You wishcast what might be, not what is. The problem is that the resources to create “what might be” are not limitless.
So you make a number of false assumptions. Here’s some of what you’re missing.
Infrastructure induces demand. “If you build it, they will come” is literally true. Trains: car-free travel. Highways: more cars.
Highways aren’t free. The latest BC budget allocates $5B for expanding highways. Money that wasted to induce more traffic and sprawl.
Infrastructure induces modal shift. People don’t want to drive. Boomers losing their vision don’t want to endanger others. They are FORCED to because they do not want to be shut-ins. Forced driving dependency is a real issue.
Infrastructure induces cultural shift. Driver supremacism was learned and can be unlearned. Paris 20 years ago is almost unrecognisable from what it is today.
Diesel trains are slower, more expensive and breakdown way more than electric. Electrifying and doubling/expanding the route would have massive costs and that would be over decades.
Infrastructure planning should be proactive not just reactive. Your cost-benefit nonsense fails the fact that railways shape a century or more of urban development. So BC can not do it and continue to become another LA or Toronto as the population grows (a car sprawling shithole), or we can do it now, create thousands of permanent green jobs, and create a much more livable, greener, sociable and progressive future society.
Really? You rate car culture higher as a cause than, say, extreme cold weather requiring carbon-intensive heating; or oil-sands extraction, the most carbon-intensive in the world?
Norway, Finland, Sweden are all nearly as cold, and most Canadians live near the border, so that argument is out. Fossil fuel economic distortions and false finances is inextricably linked to driver supremacist culture and manifested by forced car dependency and monster SUVs. Look at any electoral results map from the last 50 years. Suburbanites with the world's worst levels of car ownership, car bloat and forced car dependency vote in anti-science, extinctionist leaders (Doug Ford, etc). There's an obvious vicious cycle at work. Cherry picking out "oil sands extraction" misses the century long socio-cultural project of big oil. Yes, it's tied to driver supremacism. And yes, no people on earth are more indoctrinated than Canadians. (You know how rare it is globally for ripping out bike lanes to be an election issue?)
Depending on the definition of "Western Europe", Norway/Finland/Sweden are about 7% of the population of that region, so that's not a very compelling argument. Canada, is, on average, significantly colder than Western Europe. That's just geography.
But anyway, the relevant comparison is transportation-related emissions, and ChatGPT tells me that Canada has roughly 1.7 times the transport emissions per capita as Western Europe. So Western Europe isn't "half" Canada, more like 60%, though that is still a significant difference.
Why? I've spent lots of time in Europe. We're not Europe. The usual explanations of bigger roads, longer flights, more spread out cities, and to some extent larger vehicles. Some of that really is just geography (the two biggest cities in English Canada are Toronto and Vancouver which are as far apart as Dublin and Athens... no HSR in the world could beat flying that distance) and the path dependence of building cities after the invention of the automobile.
I know progressives like to attribute everything to the sinister wiles of Big Bad Oil Companies That Convince People To Want The Wrong Things Against Their Better Judgement, but I have never found those explanations particularly persuasive.
You also didn't answer the broader point. Even if we grant that our transportation infrastructure choices have an effect over time on our built environment, and that we'd like that built environment to look different, and we'd like our carbon emissions per capita to go down, is *this* the best way to spend $90B on this problem? Is this going to make Canadian vehicles any smaller? Is it going to make people stop driving or flying? Is it going to make the commute in Toronto any better?
I dunno man, Natural Resources Canada says oil and gas extraction is the single greatest cause of Canadian emissions: https://natural-resources.canada.ca/climate-change/roadmap-decarbonization-canada-s-oil-gas-sector
So economic sectors aren't inter-related and are also disconnected from society? That's a weird take.