I think one of the biggest questions here is autonomous vehicles...an investment of this size has a looooong payback period. You might be able to purchase a self-driving car by the time construction on this is complete (if not by the time it starts).
However, I am not convinced AV's are going to be the answer for high speed travel with variable conditions. If an AV computes the safe speed to be 60 kph on icy roads, it's a recipe for disaster when humans are still operating at 120kph...Even in ideal conditions, I wonder what the speed limit will be for AV's?
Not sure if any experts foresee this, but I've always imagined we might end up with two grids/systems:
1. a slower speed but higher efficiency open system in urban areas - reactive to a nearly infinite number of variables
2. a higher speed closed system for distance travel that focuses on reducing variables
All vehicles would operate in system 1, only AV's would be in system 2.
I imagine it might look a little bit like a toll highway in terms of entrances/exits, but they are also 'queue up' areas where you transition into the closed system. I program my destination as Banff, then put my feet up and relax. Over the next few minutes, the system physically links my vehicle with ~5-10 others going to the same destination, and then slots our caterpillar into a space, and merges us into the super highway, where get up to 200+kph.
As we approach the destination, our caterpillar merges off the system, slows down and breaks apart our caterpillar, leaving each user with their own vehicle to go wherever/whenever they'd like.
Obviously we're a long way from a personal vehicle being economical to operate at such speeds, but it can begin to make sense as you break it down between more users and achieve aerodynamic and frictional efficiencies.
We're probably an even longer way off from Calgary-Banff being a great candidate for this kind of thing. Then again, maybe the tourism demand (ie. lots of car rentals), relatively short distance without many land-use conflicts, and fact that this route isn't already served by rail makes it a good option for an early route (and/or Calgary-Red Deer-Edmonton) - compared to super populated cities in the East where it's much harder to make a new ROW.
Even if it's not super-high speed, I'd be all over a special toll-highway if it lets my version 1.0 AV drive me to Lake Louise while I recline and snooze.
TLDR: I'm not keen on a 19th century solution to a 21st century problem.
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