[PeteMoss]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

So I looked at the 2006 study here for hs railroad

In terms of people traveling from Calgary to Edmonton every year.

By Car 5,037,000
By Air 616,000
By bus 236,000

I would assume that things have shifted a bit, but would it have grown by much. As it stands right now WestJet has reduced flights between the cities because of reduced need.

I very much doubt that all of the drivers are going to give up driving, they want their mobility when they get to the city without adding the additional cost of a rental car.

How much do you charge to take this train. $100.00? Right now Westjet is running calgary to edmonton round trips for $196.00.

so lets say that you do well enough to suck half the communters to train so slightly over 3 million. So you're generating about $300 million a year. Sounds like a lot until we find out that not only are we trying to pay it off, but you have to pay salaries, infrastructure and maintenance and all the little costs to keep this thing going including building the back infrastructure for things like power.

So, because you don't want the tax payers to eat the whole cost of a 10 or 20 billion dollar government railroad construction, (I say 20 because we all know that governments will tax any estimate and double it). So we make the costs $150.00 for a two way trip.

Westjet because a railroad is direct competition moves in to squash them as do the other airlines.

If high speed railroads between Calgary and Edmonton were a profitable or smart venture, someone from the private sector would have stepped up and bought the corridor land and went to the government and said, subsidize this byatch.

I think the only way it works is if you stop in Red Deer and gain commuters that way. Just not enough people travel daily between the two cities. You need commuters to make it worthwhile.