High-Speed Rail in Canada? Too expensive when better rail investment alternatives exist.

I participated in a TVO Agenda discussion on Tuesday about the engineering and economics behind high-speed rail (HSR) in the Montreal-Toronto corridor. I believe HSR will be too expensive and not solve an unmet need. A wise man once wrote that high-speed rail in Canada is situated somewhere between "groundless conviction" and "bureaucratic obsession."

I advocated for regional fast trains connecting towns located between 100 and 300 kilometres from large urban centers like Toronto and Montreal to disperse the population from concentrated urban centers to sparsely populated smaller towns, from which workers may commute to urban labour markets within one hour or less.

This will help mitigate housing affordability and traffic congestion in populous cities and help grow the tax base in smaller towns that were shrinking before the pandemic hit in 2020.

The video is available at the following link: https://x.com/TheAgenda/status/1851775844366143533

Background readings:

My earlier assessment from this year is available at:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/case-against-high-speed-rail-financial-disaster-waiting-haider-zkyzc/

And the text of an op-ed I wrote in 2003 for the Montreal Gazette is reproduced below.

Slow down that fast train

By Murtaza Haider

21 July 2003

Montreal Gazette

Federal Transport Minister David Collenette has declared work on a $3-billion high-speed rail (HSR) system in the Quebec-Windsor corridor might begin by this fall. However, the government's proposal contradicts its own analyses, offers little bang for the buck and will leave taxpayers footing the bill for a service few of us can afford to ride. HSR needs to slow down.

In the past 30-odd years, governments have spent millions to study the feasibility of HSR only to conclude more studies are required. In 1995, Transport Canada and its provincial counterparts in Ontario and Quebec published a feasibility report saying "any future work should only consider very fast technology" - meaning trains that operate at speeds over 300 km/h. But Collenette's latest proposal describes a 200 km/h service, far below the feasibility threshold his own ministry established eight years ago.

Details on Collenette's latest plan are sketchy, but his $3 billion cost estimate is unrealistically low and again contradicts previous estimates by Transport Canada. The 1993 estimate of capital cost for an electrically-powered, 200 km/h HSR system was around $9.5 billion. Add to this inflation and capitalized interest costs, and the number swells to about $17 billion.

If the goals are to reduce traffic congestion, cut emissions and expand affordable transportation choices, urban transit - not a shiny new intercity service - is the solution

The proposed HSR would operate Bombardier's "Jet Train," which runs on diesel fuel and could use existing tracks. Even when costs for track improvements, electrification and right of way are cut, the HSR capital costs (in 1993 dollars) exceed $6.5 billion.

In spite of Bombardier's promises, the existing rail track cannot sustain service at 200 km/h - the enormous expense of building a new, dedicated line would be inevitable. These and other astronomical sums prompted Transport Canada in 1995 to conclude HSR "presents a high financing risk for each party involved."

The government (read taxpayers) will have to foot at least 70 per cent of the construction cost.

With our urban-transit infrastructure falling apart and our cities facing gridlock, it would be prudent for the federal government to direct its resources to urban transit. Though intercity routes are open, the bridges of Montreal and highways of Toronto turn into parking lots during rush hour.

The solution is more urban transit. Although transit isn't cheap, its cost pales beside the impact clogged cities have on the economic and environmental bottom line of businesses, governments and households. Canada's transit operators and municipal governments, after a decade of provincial cost cutting and "downloading," can't do it alone.

Sure, intercity rail is environmentally friendly. But so is urban transit. Intercity trips by car and light truck are the second largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Canada, second only to auto-based trips in urban centres.

John Lawson at Transport Canada has estimated the impact of a shift from the automobile to public transport. Doubling intercity rail service in Canada would save 6 million litres of fuel. Doubling intercity bus service would save 490 million litres of fuel and 1.2 million tonnes of GHG emissions. A two fold increase in urban transit service, though, would save 690 million litres of fuel and 1.8 million tonnes of GHG emissions.

Rehabilitating urban transit would have the greatest impact on our GHG emissions and deserves a share of the $2 billion Kyoto fund.

Collenette's HSR proposal assumes an unmet demand for downtown-to-downtown service. This might have been true a few decades ago, but Canada's contemporary suburban realities suggest otherwise. The latest figures show a rapid increase in the suburban population, meaning relatively few intercity trips start or end in downtowns.

Given years of underinvestment in transit - and overinvestment in the urban highways that drive suburban sprawl - getting downtown isn't getting easier. For those who live in our fast-growing outer suburbs, such as Markham in Toronto or Laval in Montreal, a trip to a downtown train station would be the biggest hassle of a high-speed intercity commute.

The proposal for HSR also assumes 80 per cent of the potential HSR ridership will switch over from other modes of intercity transport. But these projections have overlooked the freedom of mobility offered by the automobile, a powerful attraction for North American consumers. Why haul downtown and shell out for a train ticket when your car is waiting in the garage?

Scarce resources should always be put to their best use. If the goals are to reduce traffic congestion, cut emissions and expand affordable transportation choices, urban transit - not a shiny new intercity service - is the solution.

Murtaza Haider teaches transportation planning and urban infrastructure investment at McGill University.

https://youtu.be/jpQ0hdLXgNY