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Alberta High Speed Rail Link
#1
This sounds like an April Fools joke:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/...-1.6095304
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#2
Well I’ll believe it when I see it, but there actually is a lot to say for it.

If you look at where everything is in Alberta, it quickly becomes pretty obvious there should be stops at Edmonton downtown, YEG, Red Deer, YYC, and Calgary downtown, in that order.

The downtown terminii should give high-quality transfers to the LRT systems in the two largest cities in Alberta. The Red Deer station gives the third-largest city in Alberta excellent rail service. You get high-quality airport-downtown rail links for both cities, and also eliminate the need for Calgary-Edmonton airplane flights.

The total distance is almost exactly 300km, so the number of trainsets/vehicles required to provide service is not too great and the amount of track to build is relatively manageable. I’m pretty sure there is even an existing reasonably straight rail corridor which could be widened and improved to provide most of the right-of-way.

In short, outside of your favourite subset of the Windsor-Québec corridor, this is probably the best choice in Canada for a high-speed rail project.
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#3
(07-08-2021, 09:11 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Well I’ll believe it when I see it, but there actually is a lot to say for it.

If you look at where everything is in Alberta, it quickly becomes pretty obvious there should be stops at Edmonton downtown, YEG, Red Deer, YYC, and Calgary downtown, in that order.

The downtown terminii should give high-quality transfers to the LRT systems in the two largest cities in Alberta. The Red Deer station gives the third-largest city in Alberta excellent rail service. You get high-quality airport-downtown rail links for both cities, and also eliminate the need for Calgary-Edmonton airplane flights.

The total distance is almost exactly 300km, so the number of trainsets/vehicles required to provide service is not too great and the amount of track to build is relatively manageable. I’m pretty sure there is even an existing reasonably straight rail corridor which could be widened and improved to provide most of the right-of-way.

In short, outside of your favourite subset of the Windsor-Québec corridor, this is probably the best choice in Canada for a high-speed rail project.

I mean, yeah, its the two largest population centres in Canada separated by 300-500 km.  Not many other options.  To me it seems obvious...I was surprised that the transportation links were so weak.

But it also seems like a pipe dream given the proclivity of the government of the province.
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#4
Quote:the project would be funded entirely through the private sector


There's the magic words to get the government on side.
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#5
(07-09-2021, 11:25 AM)KevinL Wrote:
Quote:the project would be funded entirely through the private sector


There's the magic words to get the government on side.

Unfortunately it’s probably nonsense. Nobody in politics would ever complain that a road project “loses money” (i.e., requires government subsidy in order to keep operating), but it’s perfectly normal to complain about transit projects not breaking even. Point being, as long as a significant competitor (the highway from Calgary to Edmonton) is funded by the taxpayer, an entirely user-paid alternate is unlikely to be able to make money.

Now with it being high-speed it’s just barely conceivable that it could provide service so much better that even with having to pay all its own costs it would still attract enough ridership, but I’m skeptical. There just aren’t that many people for whom time is so valuable that they will pay for the fast trip rather than driving.

I could actually go either way on the question of government funding of intercity travel. On the one hand, having subsidized transport between cities obviously makes it cheaper to move people and goods between cities; but on the other hand if charging the full economic cost of the transport would make it not happen, maybe it’s not really that important. But what we need is to be consistent between modes; either transport needs to pay its way, which for roads means that all highways would be toll roads, or it doesn’t, in which case government support for railways, where warranted, should be expected.
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