High speed rail on the #1 highway?

[Azure]

So, after looking at worth's pictures....and his comments about the high speed trains, I was wondering why Canada couldn't do something similar.

The #1 already goes through most major cities.......so, the route would be planned.

Because of the distance, and the technology available today, it could be possible to hit speeds up to 500km/h, which makes a trip from Winnipeg to Calgary about 3 hours long.

If possible, it would also be great to be able to drive your own car onto the train, go for a hour ride, and get off in Regina, for example.

It would hugely cut down on emissions, pollutions, cut back on the amount of gas being using, fossil fuels...and increase traveling time, and even possibly increase productivity.

Because of the way our country is set up....I think we're at a huge advantage to build something like this.

[Zarathustra]

Originally Posted by Azure

So, after looking at worth's pictures....and his comments about the high speed trains, I was wondering why Canada couldn't do something similar.

The #1 already goes through most major cities.......so, the route would be planned.

Because of the distance, and the technology available today, it could be possible to hit speeds up to 500km/h, which makes a trip from Winnipeg to Calgary about 3 hours long.

If possible, it would also be great to be able to drive your own car onto the train, go for a hour ride, and get off in Regina, for example.

It would hugely cut down on emissions, pollutions, cut back on the amount of gas being using, fossil fuels...and increase traveling time, and even possibly increase productivity.

Because of the way our country is set up....I think we're at a huge advantage to build something like this.

A proposed high speed train from Calgary to Edmonton would cost between $3-20 billion dollars to build.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/sto...-edmonton.html

So a high speed train from say Montreal to Vancouver would cost hundreds of billions of dollars. How economical is this? The country is too big and the population is too small for this type of project.

[FireFly]

Originally Posted by Zarathustra

A proposed high speed train from Calgary to Edmonton would cost between $3-20 billion dollars to build.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/sto...-edmonton.html

So a high speed train from say Montreal to Vancouver would cost hundreds of billions of dollars. How economical is this? The country is too big and the population is too small for this type of project.

Does anyone else have issues with cost projections like this? I mean, for real, I can see giving a few million, even hundred million for cost overruns, but a gap of 17 BILLION between the low estimate and high estimate is HUGE. Why don't we just find out how much it will actually cost and go from there?

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by FireFly

Does anyone else have issues with cost projections like this? I mean, for real, I can see giving a few million, even hundred million for cost overruns, but a gap of 17 BILLION between the low estimate and high estimate is HUGE. Why don't we just find out how much it will actually cost and go from there?

The cost projections are based on types of rail to use. On the low end would be your regular run of the mill train that hits speeds of 240KM/hr and may not require any tracks and at the top end of the scale would be a magnetic train which could hit 500KM/hr..and require it's own tracks...Once the method is decided upon, the cost projections would be more clear

[MelBridgeman]

Canada is too big and does not have the population to support a european type train system...besides...you can take the train from vancouver to montreal already and the cost is in the thousands, cheaper to fly

[FireFly]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

The cost projections are based on types of rail to use. On the low end would be your regular run of the mill train that hits speeds of 240KM/hr and may not require any tracks and at the top end of the scale would be a magnetic train which could hit 500KM/hr..and require it's own tracks...Once the method is decided upon, the cost projections would be more clear

That's still a huge gap, but that makes a little more sense. However, of COURSE they're going to need new lines... There are still trains running on the existing tracks and every train needs a set of tracks...

[Zarathustra]

Originally Posted by FireFly

Does anyone else have issues with cost projections like this? I mean, for real, I can see giving a few million, even hundred million for cost overruns, but a gap of 17 BILLION between the low estimate and high estimate is HUGE. Why don't we just find out how much it will actually cost and go from there?

It seems like whenever huge projects are undertaken, government/builder estimates are always much lower than the actual cost, so maybe the government is taking this into account with their estimates. Another factor is that a high speed line from Cal to Edm is a ways away and it is tough to make an estimate at this point in time.

However I agree it is pretty ridiculous. To put things into perspective, the Canadian military spending budget was around 18 billion dollars last year.

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by FireFly

That's still a huge gap, but that makes a little more sense. However, of COURSE they're going to need new lines... There are still trains running on the existing tracks and every train needs a set of tracks...

That's cause a magentic train system would cost 20 billion, everything else is prolly on the lower end of those numbers.

Also depending on how often the trains run, they prolly don't need to add a new track the entire route, i highly doubt they would be running every hour, at most maybe a morning, afternoon, evening and night schedule..

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by Azure

If possible, it would also be great to be able to drive your own car onto the train, go for a hour ride, and get off in Regina.

haha maybe if you are from Regina..otherwise I don't see many people spending the money to do that...but i see your point

[Bownesian]

We would need about a hundred million more Canadians fairly evenly distributed across the Prairies (not to mention a couple hundred million more elsewhere) before we had European-scale population densities needed to command such a project. What would be the environmental and greenhouse gas cost of spending billions in resources and labour to run 10 half-full trains a week across the empty wasteland that is the middle part of Canada.

It would be better to do this kind of a project in pieces where it makes sense. Connect the high-density centers first (Windsor-Montreal), then the moderate lines if it makes sense (Edmonton-Calgary) then look at extensions elsewhere (Quebec City, Calgary-Vancouver or Calgary-Winnipeg-Southern Ontario)

[Azure]

Well, obviously you wouldn't start by building a link between Medicine Hat and Swift Current first.

Like you said....start with links between high population areas, but do it with the plan of connecting everything eventually down the road.

It will eventually happen. Oil is a finite resource, and as an extension, gas won't be around forever. Having a high speed magnetic rail take the place of cars for most people would help a lot with resource scarcity.

[CrusaderPi]

I love this idea!

If this was the 1880's Canada would be all over it. Unfortunately it's 2009, Canada no longer has the stones or wherewithal to take something like this on.

I wonder how many people sat around in 1880 and said $25M was too expensive and too scary.

[ken0042]

The other problem is where does this high speed rail line go? Calgary to Vacouver would be expensive and couldn't just be put beside the #1 because of the mountains. Going east; between Calgary and Toronto you have one city over 500K people. (Winnipeg.) And as was pointed out in one of my recent threads, who would want to go to Winnipeg?

Besides, a flight from Calgary to Edmonton takes about the same time as driving. Assuming checking in 45 minutes early, waiting for your bags, and getting a rental car. So an alternative makes sense there. But Calgary to Winnipeg, the flight saves you a good 9 hours over driving.

[Resolute 14]

More importantly, Canada has absolutely no need to take something like this on. Air travel already provides exactly the service that is proposed here. So why waste hundreds, if not thousands, of billions of dollars to build a massive white elephant - nevermind the costs to maintain it - for absolutely no benefit?

[Fire]

If this high speed rail was a great idea then a private company would be willing do it on their own. I don't see that happening. If the government gets involved it would just turn into a huge boondoggle.

Money would be better spent on city transit.

[browna]

Originally Posted by CrusaderPi

I love this idea!

If this was the 1880's Canada would be all over it. Unfortunately it's 2009, Canada no longer has the stones or wherewithal to take something like this on.

I wonder how many people sat around in 1880 and said $25M was too expensive and too scary.

Stones? No politician in the world has the stones to build the biggest white elephant since Olympic Stadium in this country.

Plus, no longer are the costs minimized by exploiting thousands of asian workers on the line...and no longer are the costs of land (or in this case, land use access) anywhere near the $2 per acre that CP got granted back then.

As for the business model, one only has to look to Via Rail anywhere west of Ontario, to see why such an idea is a non profit idea.

As for the Edmonton link, really, let the city of Edmonton build thier own Airport to City Centre link, as that's where 60% of the traffic is going to be on this line.

A lot of the other traffic would be Edmontonian travelling to the Calgary airport to get more choice in flight destination and non-stop options. The poor souls that have to do business from Calgary in Edmonton regularly may very well not even do business in that excuse that is Edmonton's downtown anyway.

I think this is, and always has been, a push from Edmonton, both for their ridiculous Leduc airport being in the middle of nowhere, more than Calgarians clamouring to rush to get to anywhere in Edmonton.

Overall, a much cheaper alternative is to re-open the Edmonton Muncipal airport to domestic public commerical airtraffic (to serve both Calgary and Leduc's airport) then uselessly spend billions on a train.

[photon]

Let's just work this out.

From what I can tell the cost of high speed rail varies anywhere from $20 million to over $100 million per km. Let's go with $50M.

So it's what, 4500km from Vancouver to Montreal?

That's $225B dollars.

That would also give Canada the second largest high speed rail network in the world, China being the first (China also a has a lot more people).

What's a reasonable lifespan for this kind of system.. 50 years? Probably less, but lets say 50 years. So the rail system has to earn $4.5 billion per year to pay for itself in its lifespan (assuming no maintenance costs), or $12 million a day.

Lets say a one way ticket from Vancouver to Montreal costs $500, more than flying but lets say people will pay it. This assumes the maximum value per trip too, when most trips will be shorter and cost less, but again this is just best case scenario. At that rate, 25,000 people will have to ride the train every single day.

And I don't think a maglev type train is well suited for freight due to technology.

Yeah, I don't see this working on anything other than maybe a regional level.

EDIT: It's expensive enough you might as well take it out of the tax system over the next 50 years and give every Canadian a free lifetime ticket.

Interesting though:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China

[octothorp]

The failing is that the Canadian rail industry fell behind other forms of transportation and rail networks in other parts of the world, destroyed their own market, and made it essentially impossible to run an economically viable passenger rail network. If rail travel was as much a part of our culture as it was 50 years ago, constructing a few high-speed rail links would be a no-brainer and pay for itself rapidly, while still being cheaper and more energy efficient than either automobile or air travel.

[Claeren]

City rail transit (LRT in Calgary's case) is the much better use of the same finite dollars.

It moves many many many times more people each and every day and is far from built-out in any city in Canada.

(Calgary's LRT alone is good for what, 36,000,000 trips per year at todays ridership? With Calgary Transit in general supplying over 95,000,000 trips/year? Not to mention with more routes and more cars and more people, etc it would grow from there.)

The comparative cost benefit is not even close, transit makes a bigger difference to ALL stakeholders each and every time you run the numbers, and by a significant margin at that, using proven technologies and based on accepted local travel patterns.



Claeren.

[BlackArcher101]

Not feasible in my opinion... even the proposed one in Alberta isn't feasible at this time, a cross Canada one would be even less.

When we reach the population density that's not widespread like Eastern USA, Europe, or parts of Asia, then it will be cost effective. The only way this would work is if it's funded by the government each year to cover costs, and there is no way taxpayers would allow that to pass.

Even VIA rail going through Calgary was no longer economical, and that uses existing technology and infrastructure. The cost of new land, track, and road reworks would make the high speed rail cost a lot more than a plane ticket.