Market demand, not government or the private sector, must ultimately decide whether a Calgary-Edmonton high-speed rail link gets built, says former Canadian Alliance leader Preston Manning.
“If the consumers want it and are prepared to pay for it, that has to be the backbone of it,” said Manning.
Speaking to reporters last Friday after a two-day Canada West Foundation conference on the future of transportation, Manning said there is also a role for government and the private sector, “particularly in these public-private projects where they do it together” – but the market demand must come first.
“If you did it today, of course, the traffic is not enough to sustain it,” said Manning, who co-chaired the conference titled Building the New Dream.
“The further you get down the road, where there’s three, four million, five million people in Alberta, then, of course, the viability from the farebox becomes higher.
But I think it’s too soon to tell. . . . But it’s something that’s exciting and interesting and should be looked at. You shouldn’t just ignore it.”
Talk of a Calgary-Edmonton high-speed train system is gathering steam as the federal government introduces a new Via Rail bill designed to bolster passenger train travel in Eastern Canada, and Montreal-based Bombardier Inc. promotes a new, less expensive jet-propelled train that travels 240 kilometres per hour.
On April 7, as part of a North American tour, Bombardier will bring its new JetTrain to Calgary. Meanwhile, Bombardier, the Calgary-based Van Horne Institute, the Alberta government, CP, CN Rail and other groups are participating in a feasibility study that is expected to be complete in a year.
Lecia Stewart, Bombardier’s vice-president responsible for high-speed rail, said the Calgary-Edmonton link will only be built if there’s enough market demand. But she expressed confidence that consumers will come on board after they see high-speed rail’s benefits.
“People are people,” Stewart told reporters after speaking Thursday on the first day of the transportation conference. “If you offer them an alternative and you offer consumers choices, they’ll make choices.”
Bombardier, which laid off 3,000 employees last week and is showing a shift in direction from its aerospace core business, has already introduced a high-speed rail system in the Washington, D.C.-Boston transportation corridor after identifying 13 potential North American high-speed train markets.
Federal Transportation Minister David Collenette said recently that he hopes to see a high-speed rail link in the Quebec City-Windsor corridor, which spans Montreal and Toronto, within five or six years.
But Collenette said the Calgary-Edmonton market, the only other one in Canada considered large enough for high-speed passenger train service, is “not mature enough.”
Citing Collenette’s comment, Alberta Transportation Minister Ed Stelmach expressed doubt that the province will help fund high-speed train service between Calgary and Edmonton any time soon. But he said the Alberta government will continue to study the possibility.
According to Stewart, the JetTrain costs 60 per cent less than previous technology, but a high-speed rail system will still cost billions. Under the current regulatory rules, railway operators pay for any upgrades to tracks.
Marcella Szel, vice-president of strategy and law for the Canadian Pacific Railway, estimated upgrades to the Calgary-Edmonton track will cost $1 billion in today’s dollars.
Dennis Apedaile, CPR’s assistant vice-president of government affairs, said the Alberta government will ultimately decide whether the Calgary-Edmonton high-speed system is built.
“Why will they decide?” asked Apedaile in an interview with Business Edge. “Because it won’t pay for itself if we do it on our own.”
Apedaile said Canadian passenger train travel has been “a money-losing proposition” since the federal government established Via Rail, an amalgamation of CP and CN passenger services, as a Crown corporation in 1977.
“People say: ‘If you build it, they will come.’ They don’t necessarily come,” said Apedaile.
However, Pat Jacobsen, CEO of the Greater Vancouver Transit Authority, who led a group that studied urban transport for the Building the New Dream conference, said the growth of cities will force railways to make “significant shifts” and increase passenger service by 2030.
Jacobsen said passenger trains will play an important role in linking people and cities as seven out of 10 people live in cities and eight of 10 jobs are based in cities.
Her group determined that by 2030 Calgary must spend $4 billion and Edmonton must spend $9 billion to maintain existing roads and build new roads in new subdivisions.
Vancouver-based economist Mike Tretheway, who led a group that examined the future of aviation for the conference, said in a speech that a Calgary-Edmonton high-speed rail link must pass through the two cities’ airports. However, in an interview, Tretheway said he opposes the idea of high-speed rail service between Calgary and Edmonton. He said there is no need for an inter-city high-speed rail link, but there is a strong need for each city’s light rail transit system to connect to their respective airports.
Canada West Foundation president Roger Gibbins, who co-chaired the conference with Manning, said a Calgary-Edmonton high-speed rail link makes sense if the corridor is viewed as an “urban region” that can help the two cities compete globally.
“If we think it’s Calgary versus Edmonton on the world stage, then having a high-speed link between the two communities makes much less sense,” said Gibbins. The conference brought together groups that spent the last six months examining the future of Canada’s air, marine, rail, trucking, urban transit, oil and gas pipeline, and electricity transmission sectors with industry and government representatives.
Like many speakers, Manning and Gibbins called on the federal government to establish a clear national transportation spending policy.
Contrary to the United States, Ottawa has never established a transportation funding formula, said Gibbins.
“So we’ve allowed the provincial governments and the private sector to carry the ball,” he said.
“The federal government steps into the regulatory role, but we’ve lost that sense of a national vision.”
