Quote:
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.
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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.