Posts Tagged ‘high speed rail’
High-performance rail service is a solid intercity solution for Canada
by Tony Turrittin. Originally published on Policy Options
August 16, 2021
Canada can have a network of modern, swift, affordable and efficient passenger trains, like virtually every other industrialized nation. Yet it doesn’t.
In the 1970s, both the American and Canadian passenger train systems were taken over by their federal governments. Since then, Canada has slowly dismantled most of the VIA Rail system while Amtrak, the U.S. national train system, has been improved and stabilized. Amtrak’s growing network of regional rail corridors has been especially remarkable.
Greg Gormick, an analyst and policy adviser, has suggested that high-performance rail (HPR) is the best means to improve and expand our skeletal network of deteriorating rail service. Canadian politicians and advocates at both federal and provincial levels have made calls for high-speed rail (HSR) like France’s TGV and Japan’s bullet trains.
High-speed rail operates on all-new electrified lines built from scratch at a very high cost because it operates on tracks with no grade-crossings and must be separated from freight. High-performance rail, in contrast, incrementally improves all aspects of the existing service and builds on what little public funds have already been invested in it. Operating at progressively higher speeds with modern trains on tracks shared with freight trains, high-performance rail offers increased frequency, reduced travel times, better on-time performance, all-weather reliability and enhanced comfort and onboard amenities.
High-performance rail delivers improvements each step along a phased pathway to vastly improved service. Because it isn’t a “big bang” approach that takes years to deliver any benefits, high-performance rail is a practical and affordable “higher speed” option for today that may lead the way to building the more costly high-speed rail in the future.
Canada has not participated in the global move to high-performance rail. This failure is largely due to government interference and lack of political will. Passenger rail the world over requires subsidies for operating costs and capital improvements, but Canadian governments have cut back VIA since its founding in 1977. The Mulroney cuts of 1989 eliminated most trains in Western Canada and Atlantic Canada, and removed passenger service from the historic and well-used transcontinental route over the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). These cuts were decided in the Privy Council Office, not by VIA. In other countries, it was government commitment as much as technology and funding that helped to develop the high-performance rail networks.
In the U.S., high-performance rail is now at work on 15 corridors (see Table 1). Extensions are underway on several of these routes, and more are under construction or being planned.
https://infogram.com/turrittin-table-1-1hd12yxn0vxwx6k
The opportunities for high-performance rail in Canada are illustrated in Table 2, demonstrating its potential from coast to coast. High-performance rail trip times assume substantially upgraded track and signaling. Given its positive attributes, high-performance rail as solid conventional railroading should be a major form of interurban mobility in Canada.
https://infogram.com/turrittin-table-2-1h7g6k09300go2o
Ironically, the first wave of equipment to implement a Canadian high-performance rail solution is on order for a wildly improbable scheme cooked up by a politically manipulated VIA. In 2011, the later-defrocked Peterborough MP Dean Del Mastro proposed to return trains between Toronto and Peterborough. The plan morphed into using a long-abandoned CPR backwoods line and extending it to Smiths Falls and to Ottawa, which bypasses the heavily populated Lake Ontario shoreline. The plan changed again when a former VIA Rail CEO made this impractical route the centrepiece of what VIA calls 160-km/hour high-frequency rail (HFR) for the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto triangle. To increase its political attractiveness, VIA extended the HFR plan to Quebec City without increasing its cost estimate.
The stated objective of VIA’s proposal is separating passenger and freight traffic to eliminate conflicts that arise because of competition for track time and capacity, as well as differences in operating speeds. This is good in theory; however, implementing this would be expensive, time consuming and largely unnecessary. The key is to add capacity to existing lines incrementally and economically for both types of traffic. On high-performance rail routes around the world, freight and passenger trains share tracks at speeds of more than 200-km/hour.
Given constantly evolving estimates for California’s all-electric high-speed rail project and another linking Vancouver with Seattle, Portland and Eugene, and taking the lowest cost-estimates, a new passenger-only route for the Quebec-Windsor Corridor alone would cost more than $135 billion. Even applying VIA’s proposal to build only a single-track line with passing sidings instead of a double-track line that is standard for these types of projects, the cost wouldn’t decrease by much.
VIA wisely placed an order in 2018 with Germany’s Siemens Mobility for 32 five-car Venture trains each powered by a state-of-the-art Siemens Charger locomotive. Delivery starts in 2022. This $1.5 billion contract is part of a wave of North American orders for these 200-km/hour diesel-electric trains, 10 of which are already operating between Miami and West Palm Beach. Amtrak will use these train sets for high-performance rail routes in California, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Venture#/media/File:Venture_test_train_at_Oakland_Maintenance_Facility_(2),_July_2020.JPG
In the end, it’s governance, not hardware or software, that’s the roadblock to improved high-performance rail service in Canada. Here, too, the proven approach is on display in daily service in the U.S., particularly California. Using a combination of federal and state funding to fuel locally managed, cross-jurisdictional projects, the joint powers authorities (JPAs) employed on three routes in the Golden State are incrementally revolutionizing rail transportation in one of the most car-centric regions of America.
The Capitol Corridor JPA describes this governance structure’s application on the San Jose-Oakland-Sacramento route as “a partnership among the six local transit agencies in the eight-county service area, which shares the administration and management of the Capitol Corridor.” The Capitol Corridor offers hourly daytime trains serving all stops on its 213-km route. This allows for convenient travel between all city pairs. The route has a high concentration of universities and colleges. Amtrak operates the trains on Union Pacific track that also carries numerous freights.
It’s time for Canadians to cease being taken in by rail schemes politicians dangle in front of voters and then drop. In its top-down, politically dominated form, VIA hasn’t worked out and never will. New JPA-style governance, new equipment, a new high-performance rail approach and political will are required to give Canada a network of modern, efficient and effective rail passenger services.
How likely is this to occur?
The Trudeau government’s 2020 speech from the throne announced that “to further link our communities together, the Government will work with partners to support regional routes for airlines. It is essential that Canadians have access to reliable and affordable regional air services. This is an issue of equity, of jobs, and of economic development. The Government will work to support this.”
On the subject of rail passenger service – high-performance rail or otherwise – there was not a word.
Meanwhile, high-performance rail investment and growth strategy continues south of the border. One month after Ottawa was mute about rail’s role in a post-pandemic Canada, the U.S. Federal Transit Administration awarded the Michigan Department of Transportation funding for further improvements to its diesel-powered, 176-km/hour Pontiac-Detroit-Chicago Wolverine Corridor.
The upgrade for faster more frequent train service is now approaching completion.
Amtrak’s 15-year growth proposal unveiled early this year would expand its regional routes substantially, adding about 160 communities to its system. Gormick has suggested that high-performance rail can be applied to an Ontario region with very poor public transportation as well. Given an approaching federal election, expect government announcements of more rail projects to come, but they will still be missing the mark.
This article first appeared on Policy Options and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Tony Turrittin is a retired York University sociology professor. His research centred on social inequality, social mobility and their links to education. For four decades he has actively participated in national, regional and local citizen groups advocating for public transportation.
The Case for Ultra-high-speed Rail Across Cascadia
An article in the Georgia Strait summarizes a report to Washington State Department of Transportation which examines the case for a new very high speed rail link between Vancouver BC and Portland OR. The potential for hyperloop is also mentioned but quickly discarded as the technology is not yet ready for implementation.
Happily the Strait includes a link to the report itself – a 94 page pdf which includes some very general maps but no actual alignments. Instead it shows where the freeways are, and also suggests that a link between Seattle and Spokane needs to be assessed as well.
This appears to be the favoured choice at present. Though I was struck by the apparently quite small advantage in terms of ridership between the MAGLEV and HSR model results
Of course a lot more work needs to be done, and the report identifies these next steps. Not the least of these is the analysis of what needs to happen at the border. This is, of course, completely outside of the state jurisdiction and we can only hope that by the time any of this comes to pass, that a more sensible approach to border “security” between Canada and the US will have also come about. I won’t hold my breath on either account.
And here is a picture of a High Speed Train – which was not included in the original report
My photo on Flickr
Technology Differentiation Results
7. In 2035, maglev seems to cover O&M costs in most alternatives; a small subsidy may be needed in the earlier period (2035) for HSR. By 2055, all corridor technological alternatives cover O&M and assist in capital carrying costs to various degrees.
8. While maglev and HSR have different capital and operating benefits over time, the CONNECT tool does not provide sufficient data to choose a specific technology at this time. More detailed technical analysis is required to select among the feasible technologies being examined.
Intercity Travel Mode Share Results
9. Both technologies have the potential to shift a significant share of the intercity travel market torail. For these technologies at 12 round trips, 12 to 17 percent of the travel market by 2035 could be diverted to UHSGT.
10. Conversely, the utilization of capacity is relatively low, indicating an immature market or a model input limitation. As noted in #1, a more detailed analysis of how the market economies are changing needs to be completed to adequately predict future ridership and revenue.
POSTSCRIPT
For context, the introduction of a direct high speed rail service between London and Amsterdam shows why trains can compete with air. In this case the flight time is around an hour and the new train will be closer to four. But add in the security line ups and this is actually competitive. Plus the train is actually comfortable, and the stations are usually much closer to where you are or want to be compared to the airport. But read through to the end to see how the British have managed to make getting in to Britain much harder – long before Brexit.
Friday round up
Three tabs are open in my browser right now. All about transport and relevant to this region. But none actually qualifying for the full blog post treatment since I have nothing much to say about any of them, other than my readers ought to be aware of them.
The Auditor General has released a report about the Evergreen Line
In his audit, Doyle said that the business cases developed by the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, TransLink and Partnerships B.C. and reviewed by the Ministry of Finance omitted information needed to understand the costs, benefits and risks when comparing SkyTrain, light rail and bus rapid transit options; did not explain ridership forecasts were based on assumptions that placed them at the upper end of the estimated range; and did not describe the risks from changes in complementary and competing transit services.
Actually no-one is going to be very surprised by the report. The idea that Translink might actually consider different options for the technology based on actual data seems to be quite foreign to the way things are now done in BC. The line itself was part of the regional transportation plan for years, but the NDP decided to only build the Millennium – which served Burnaby – but not the long promised link to the TriCities. Of course, in places where they do these things rationally, the line would have been built before the area was opened up for massive population growth, so of course it has been, up to now, car oriented. And there have been significant expansions to the road system – including the expansion of Highway #1 and the replacement of the Pitt River bridge. The Evergreen Line was the highest priority for the region, but the province decided to build the Canada Line instead and tied that to the Olympics.
“Meaningful consultation with the private sector and significant due diligence is required and we are taking the time to get it right,” the province said.
Which seems to me to be an admission that it was not done right, and that consultation with anyone other than business is not important.
Crosscut takes a look at High Speed Trains between here and Seattle as result of Jay Inslee (the Washington state governor) announcing a budget request for a $1m study in response to pressure from the private sector.
This one happens to be Italian – they developed the Pendolino tilting trains after British Rail abandoned the Advanced Passenger Train after attacks by the press on the “vomit comet”. BR did build a very successful 125mph HST forty years ago which did not tilt and runs on conventional tracks unlike the French TGV or the Shinkansen which need purpose built rights of way – fewer curves but can cope with quite steep grades – to achieve higher speeds. Indeed the current Cascades Talgo sets could run faster, if they did not have to fit into slots between slow freight trains.
And of course the cost of a new railway is going to be the biggest issue (“$20-$30 billion to build and equip the system”) but that does not mean that much better passenger train service is not entirely feasible at lower cost, and hopefully some kind of incremental strategy will be identified, rather than blowing the budget on the unachievable “best” when “good enough” is going to win plenty of people away from terrible traffic on I5 and appalling inconvenience and discomfort of short distance international air travel.
Needless to say, others think that self driving cars are going to be the answer, although realistically are probably further off into the future than self driving trucks as this graphic piece makes clear.
As for the hyperloop, that seems like science fiction to me and even more claustrophobic than space travel. How do you get to your seat? Or use the bathroom?
UPDATE Feb 21 The Seattle Transit blog has taken a long hard look at what a high speed rail line might look like – the link takes you to the first of four parts
“so it’s a third of the cost for two-thirds of the benefit,”
The title is a direct quote from Yves Desjardins-Siciliano who is the CEO of VIA Rail. The story comes from the Huffington Post citing the Financial Post and the Windsor Star. It sets out the case for a separate passenger only railway between Toronto and Montreal, which would significantly increase the speed and reliability of rail service but would not be as expensive a full blown High Speed Rail (HSR). Given the financial position of VIA, and the nature of the demand in the corridor, this proposal would be Good Enough. HSR is a good example of the best being the enemy of the good. It has been studied extensively – I worked on one such study as a consultant back in the 1990’s – and so far nothing has been done in terms of improving VIA rail’s current service or winning people back to rail from short distance air or driving. It did surprise me, when I first came to Canada, that intercity buses were often faster than passenger trains.
It pains me a little that electrification is still seen as a dispensable option but actually I have to admit that a modern diesel electric locomotive can be very energy efficient. I just happen to think that since Ontario has done such a good job of getting rid of its coal fired power stations, the greenhouse gas reduction argument should be given much more weight. There are also a couple of considerable advantages of an electric train. First, electric trains can climb much better than diesels: they don’t weigh nearly as much, as they don’t have to carry the generator or the fuel. So lines purpose built for modern electric trains can have steeper grades, and often that means they can be straighter, which also helps increase speeds. Secondly, the energy used in braking can be captured and returned to the power supply line for the the use of other trains. Regenerative braking captures a lot of the energy that is otherwise lost as heat. Electric trains can also decelerate and accelerate much better than diesels, so dealing with intermediate stops is not such an issue in overall travel time. I would hope that the design of intermediate stations would permit fast trains to pass stationary ones, so that even if it is not actual HSR, there could still be some non-stop service between the two major centres, to improve competitiveness with air. However, given the way that the population is distributed across sprawling suburbs, centre to centre may not be the most important tool to attract traffic. Large Park and Ride lots, on the other hand, will be essential.
I have not seen any of the analysis that VIA has used to come up with the costs of its proposed separate line compared to a HSR, but there has to be a lot in common between the two. Land costs will be very similar, I think. It also seems sensible to eliminate level crossings – and to fence the entire line – just to increase safety. You have to do that for HSR, but if those components were omitted for a conventional speed line that might explain some of the price difference. While I am in favour of getting the costs down, this would seem to me to be very hard to defend when it comes to public consultation.
California’s Bullet Train Hobbled by Fresh Legal, Fiscal and Political Uncertainties
This post is taken from an email newsletter I subscribe to. In very small, pale grey italic print at the bottom of each issue appears the following statement “Please feel free to forward or reprint this item with appropriate citation” So that is what I am doing.
Much of the rest of the “first world” enjoys High Speed Rail. Japan lead the way – still does – China is building lots of it. France has been very successful – and has pretty much eliminated internal passenger air traffic. Electric trains produce a lot less ghg than jet aircraft – and they are competitive both on time and price. Only North America seems immune. About the closest we can get is the Acela service Amtrak provides in the North East Corridor – though nowhere else would regard that as “high speed”. Ken Orski provides insight into why changing this situation looks very much like Mission Impossible. California HSR is not dead yet. But it sure looks like it faces some formidable obstacles.
Amtrak Cascades, being operated by Spanish Talgo trains could be a lot faster than they are – but they are on freight railways. Given their own right of way they could be very competitive with I5. There are good cases for high speed trains between several city pairs in Canada including Calgary – Edmonton, Toronto – Ottawa – Montreal. Possibly even Toronto – Chicago or Toronto – New York. But given this analysis, I am not going to expect to ride one of these on my lifetime. Pity.
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Barely recovered from the damaging effects of the Sacramento Court ruling denying the California High Speed Rail Authority access to Prop 1A bond funding, the bullet train project has had to face fresh challenges.
First came the news that Congress has zeroed out any funds for high speed rail in the FY 2014 omnibus appropriation bill, the fourth straight year no new monies have been provided. This put to rest any lingering hopes of a future resumption of congressional funding for the California bullet train. But it has not deterred the California High Speed Rail Authority from officially still expressing a hope for federal subsidies. “We believe that it is reasonable for the federal government to continue investing in intercity and high speed passenger rail systems, like California,” Authority Chairman Dan Richard stated in his recent congressional testimony.
Next came a House Subcommittee on Railroads hearing on “The Challenges Facing California High Speed Rail.” Committee chairman Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA) wanted some “straightforward answers to straightforward questions” as he put it in his opening statement. Specifically, how was the Authority going to match the $2.25 billion the Federal Government has provided to the project, now that the court has foreclosed the possibility of using Proposition 1A bond funds? And where would the remaining funds to complete the entire 300-mile Initial Operating Segment (IOS) come from?
Cap-and-Trade Funds as State Matching Contribution
Authority Chairman Dan Richard had some straightforward though not necessarily satisfying (to Rep. Denham) answers. Governor Brown, Richard said, has sent a letter to FRA reaffirming the State’s commitment to honor California’s obligation to match the federal spending. The matching money would come from the cap-and-trade pollution trading funds.
Richard confessed he could not predict whether the state legislature would approve the use of cap-and-trade funds for the project. Even if those funds were to be approved, they would not become available by the April 1 deadline when the state must start matching the federal grant. The Chairman did not elaborate how the Authority would handle its obligation, come April 1.(However, in the Governor’s proposed new budget there is a provision to advance $29 million to keep the project moving. The loan, which would come from the state transportation account, could presumably be used as a first down payment in the required matching funds).
Nor did Chairman Richard mention the strong opposition by environmental groups, notably the Sierra Club. “The problem with taking that money and applying it to high-speed rail,” said Kathryn Phillips, head of California’s Sierra Club, “is that we don’t anticipate that we’re going to get the benefits of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the short term. … It is irresponsible to not apply that money to those programs that will get you greenhouse gas emission reductions now.” Other critics alleged that the HSR project does not meet the legal test that it would result in reductions of greenhouse gas emission that are “real, quantifiable, verifiable and enforceable” as the law requires. Editorial opinion of some California newspapers (San Jose Mercury News, U-T San Diego) echoed these criticisms.Even the LA Times, a steadfast supporter of the project, expressed some doubts (“Yet the delays, the rising cost, the judge’s ruling and the waning public support should give pause to even the strongest advocates. Can the rail authority line up a financing plan? Is the project still viable? We hope the answer is yes. But the state shouldn’t spend a dime of cap-and-trade money on it until we know for sure.”)
A Re-defined “Usable Segment”
Chairman Richard did not address the court ruling requiring the Authority to identify sources of funds and show completed environmental clearances for the entire 300-mile Initial Operating Segment extending from Merced to San Fernando Valley. Instead, Richard testified that the Authority’s revised funding plan will consider the 130-mile construction section from Merced to north of Bakersfield to be the new “usable segment.” By connecting to existing Amtrak service at Bakersfield, the Chairman said, this stretch will have operational utility, hence it will qualify as a “usable segment” within the meaning of Proposition 1A. The judicial rulings pertaining to the longer 300-mile stretch from Merced to San Fernando Valley are thus no longer relevant in his opinion.
But longtime critic, attorney Michael Brady does not see this as a meaningful solution. The re-defined Merced-to-Bakersfield usable segment will be conventional rail only, he told us, whereas Proposition 1A requires that a “usable segment” be electrified, with all the attributes of a genuine high speed rail system. Moreover, Proposition 1A says a usable segment must operate without an operating subsidy and must have adequate ridership. The Authority’s redefined usable segment will flunk both tests, Brady said. “Hooking it up to an existing Amtrak line will not get them out of these requirements.”
Long-Term Funding
As for long-term funding, a precise funding plan for the entire system is not possible, Richard testified. However, the Governor’s budget proposal “establishes an ongoing state commitment of cap-and-trade proceeds to the project.” The measure includes an initial $58 million for planning and $191 million for construction and right-of-way acquisition in the first phase of the project. Once the line to San Fernando Valley (Palmdale) has been completed and operational, the opportunity for private investment will be ” greatly increased” according to Richard.
“This is an internationally proven investment model and is common to almost all recent high speed rail projects in the world, where capital investment begins with the public sector and then becomes shared with the private sector” to pay for further expansion, Richard testified. As an example, he cited high speed rail systems in France, Spain and The Netherlands which, he said, attracted private investment once ridership was established. However, the parallel is not quite correct. True, European high speed rail systems were able to attract private sector interest after EU opened up cross-border rail passenger services to competition in 2009 . But the public-private partnerships took the form of running private high speed rail services (such as Thello, Westbahn and NTV) on publicly-owned rail infrastructure—they did not involve private capital contributions to expand the physical facilities of the high speed rail networks.
Despite Chairman Richard’s reassuring statements, the prospect for future private investment in the California HSR project still remains very much an open question.
Federal Railroad Administration Position
At the hearing, the Federal Railroad Administration and its Deputy Administrator, Karen Hedlund also came in for some sharp questioning. Why has the agency not suspended reimbursements until the High Speed Rail Authority presents a viable plan to identify a new source of the required state match, Chairman Denham wanted to know. Given so much uncertainty around the project, why wouldn’t FRA take the prudent step to hold off spending more taxpayer dollars until they are satisfied that California has remedied these legal setbacks?
Hedlund chose not to respond directly to the Chairman’s questions. Instead, she stated that “at this time,” the Authority was not in violation of the grant agreement. However, she conceded that should California fail to match the federal grants as required by the funding agreement (i.e. beginning April 1), the government could collect the owed matching funds by withholding other federal grants. Rep. Denham followed this up by introducing a bill, with the support of every member of the state’s Republican delegation, to suspend federal spending on high speed rail “until sufficient non-federal funds are available.”
The Governor’s Surprising and “Desperate” Move
On January 24, in an unusual move, Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration petitioned the California Supreme Court directly to overturn the Superior Court ruling that barred the State from selling the Proposition 1A approved bonds The state’s request to skip the appellate court review is considered as unprecedented. “In my 47 years of appellate practice, I have never seen something like this,” said Michael Brady, one of the attorneys for the Central Valley landowners who sued the Rail Authority.The Governor’s move is “an act of desperation,” observed the respected California columnist Dan Walters. The State in its brief argued that the normal appeal process could take years to resolve and the delay would cause “irreparable injury absent immediate intervention by this Court.” The brief is asking the High Court for an answer by March 1.
As reported above, the Authority is facing an April 1 deadline to begin matching the federal grant with state funds. There are speculations that, threatened with a cut-off of federal funds in the event of non-compliance with the deadline and having concluded that using cap-and-trade funds might be politically risky given the strong environmentalist opposition, the Brown administration concluded that it had no alternative but to take this drastic step in an effort to gain access to the bond funds.
The Authority’s move has caught observers by surprise. Just ten days earlier Chairman Richard gave the impression that the Authority would comply with the judge’s ruling and re-do the funding plan. “My view is that we go back and do exactly what the Judge has said,” Richard testified before the House Railroads Subcommittee. .
Back in December, we wrote that further delays in the project’s groundbreaking (already more than a year behind schedule), the prospect of multiple challenges over bond validation, a likelihood of drawn out negotiations over right-of-way acquisition and expropriation and, most importantly, the Authority’s inability to identify credible sources of non-federal money to complete the entire 300-mile line to the San Fernando Valley, “all add up to a very problematic future for this transformative project.” The events and disclosures over the past month have done nothing to lessen this impression.
Kenneth Orski
Editor/Publisher
Innovation NewsBriefs (celebrating our 25th year of publication)
Speed matters for Edmonton-Calgary train: report
On the Vancouver Sun website there is a report from the Edmonton Journal.
A 500-km/h high speed train that could travel between Calgary and Edmonton in an hour would attract nearly six million riders by 2021, says a report commissioned by the Alberta government and released Monday.
The report makes no recommendations on the feasibility of the project or whether government money should go into it, but suggests the possibility of a private-public partnership, also known as a P3.
Alberta Transportation Minister Luke Ouellette released the February 2008 report in advance of Monday’s federal-provincial Conservative caucus meeting in Calgary.
Well actually the report says a great deal more than that – and it looks at a variety of possible speeds from the UK style 125mph High Speed Train, US style Acela, French TGV and the German MAGLEV. The good thing is that the full report is available at www.transportation.alberta.ca/3940.htm – from where you can download the hefty pdf files. They make interesting reading.
A disclaimer of my own – I was recruited by Dr Alex Metcalf in 1988 from the UK to come to Canada. So we have some history – and I want to be very careful to be objective in my comments. He is one of the lead authors of the report: one his earlier projects was the demand forecast which supported the construction of the bridge to Prince Edward Island.
Secondly, I wonder why this report has taken so long to emerge: February 2008 to July 2009 is a very long time indeed to consider a consultant’s report.
The study is refers to itself as “Investment Grade” (“meets the requirement of Investment Grade Analysis as proposed by the High-Speed Rail Association”) – in other words it was intended to examine whether or not a private sector investor would put money into the project. What this means is that it is concerned with familiar issues of mode choice – and would enough people be willing to pay enough for a faster trip between the two cities. The answer is yes, and the faster the train runs the more would be willing to use it.
There is a lot in the language of the report which contrasts quite strongly with all the other things I am reading at the moment. The report is very optimistic about the economy of Alberta – after all that province has lots of oil and the rest of world is going to be increasingly short of it so there will continue to be economic growth for the foreseeable future – subject to the cyclical nature of a resource based economy. The words “peak oil” or “climate change” do not appear in it – so far as I can determine. Nor is there any sense that our perception of the world changed dramatically between then and now. So it is bit like reading BC government studies of the need for new highway and port expansion. Much of the stuff I read these days talks about the end of “business as usual” and the need for a steady state, no growth economy – or even the inevitability of dealing with the need to reduce our per capita energy consumption. Quite a lot of macro-economics seems to be turning away from GDP as a way of measuring how we are doing,and recognising that exponential growth is unsustainable.
I am not going to challenge the demand forecast – I am just going to suggest that there are other reasons why the Governments of Alberta and Canada should consider the case for building a new electric high speed rail line between Edmonton and Calgary. The idea of utilising the existing tracks or just upgrading them is not a good long term proposition. The private sector railway companies in Canada have little or no interest in running passenger trains and do not normally afford them priority. Freight railways have a rather different configuration to high speed lines – and the best separate them out. Since that means a new right of way, an electric railway is not that much more expensive, but gives a great deal of flexibility for the future as well as significant operational and environmental advantages for the present. Electricity can be made from a variety of sources: Calgary’s LRT runs on wind power. Both France and Japan determined early on that a dedicated track was a prerequisite for high speed rail and both countries now lead the world in the field.
One thing the current report seems to accept is that the line would not be integrated into the airports. This is a profound mistake. While a lot of business travel is city centre to city centre, the report recognises the need for suburban stations: that is, after all where most people live. But there is also a significant synergy to be had from integration with national and international travel which at present is by air. Of course air travel has seen significant declines – for economic reasons – and it long term future is highly uncertain, since it is currently completely dependent on oil as its energy source.
It is a bit depressing that the only way we seem to be allowed to think about these projects is if they are commercially feasible – not desirable from an environmental or quality of life perspective. One argument that Alberta should consider is the extent to which a new service would reduce the need of highway expansion in the future – and also the much better safety record per passenger kilometre of rail over road. The reduction in the demand for health services alone – even if the lower death toll is not thought good enough reason of itself – should appeal even to conservatives.
On the whole I am not persuaded that there is a good case for MAGLEV. It seems to me to be one of those “best is the enemy of the good” cases. I would be reluctant to recommend a technology that is not widely in use. French style TGV, on the other hand, has shown itself to be very successful and is being steadily expanded in the countries where it has been adopted. The British have tried Italian tilting trains on existing sinuous track (Pendolinos on the West Coast Mainline) but the success of the first French style TGV line from St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel has now got them thinking of new dedicated french style high speed lines.
I think railways should be a priority for our governments – if only because we know that relying on air and highways has brought us a whole lot of unintended consequences. Hopefully, now that this report has finally seen the light of day, the discussion can start in earnest.
Oh, as an afterthought, perhaps check out the newest Japanese shinkansen too.
Shinkansen
Tories plan £20bn 180mph rail link instead of Heathrow third runway
This is really a stunning turn of events. They are, of course, talking about the British Tories. And that party was almost completely wiped out by Tony Blair. Britain has had a Labour Government since 1997 – and now it looks increasingly likely that they will not survive the next election. Something unimaginable only a few years ago.
Mrs Thatcher never once travelled on a train while she was Prime Minister. She regarded the then nationalised British Rail as an anathema, but she could also read a balance sheet. BR was actually doing quite well, and the civil servants at the Department of Transport convinced her that there was nothing to be gained by privatisation but a lot to lose. Mainly lives. So it fell to John Major, her successor, to press ahead with what was probably one of the worst transport policy decisions in Britain in my lifetime.
I have never managed to persuade any of my conservative acquaintances that there is a direct relationship between conservatism and conservation. That protecting the environment has a very close affinity with a lot of Tory values. Sadly the influence of the right wing “neoconservatives” overwhelmed the old decent instincts of the party of Disraeli. At one time it was so hard to tell the difference between mainstream Conservatism and Labour voters – and party policies designed to take over the centre of the political spectrum that term “Butskellism” was coined – and combination of the names of two leaders of political thought on either side of the house – Hugh Gaitskell and R A Butler (always known as “Rab” from his initials). Both moderates to a fault.
It is inconceivable that Stephen Harper could propose an investment in high speed rail between Toronto Ottawa and Montreal as a way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions – even though that is what it would achieve. For one thing, Canada has been busy blocking even the most moderate international proposals to agree on new limits. We are nowhere near our, very modest and inadequate, Kyoto goals.
I cannot say I like David Cameron, but he has certainly shown himself to be a smooth operator. And Gordon Brown must have really been caught off guard. The UK government has simply waffled about important railway questions, including the need to electrify the rest of the system and to build new high speed lines. And the Heathrow fracas has been as embarrassing as the Kingsnorth coal fired power station. Labour now has a very hard time looking progressive let alone green.
It would be nice if VIA Rail was even on the radar in our federal election.
California High Speed Rail
gas 2.0 is reporting
the California High-Speed Rail Authority. After getting a green light by State environmental impact assessors, they’ve begun implementation of an 800-mile bullet-train system that will connect Sacramento, the San Francisco Bay Area, the Central Valley, Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, Orange County and San Diego. Trains traveling at 220 mph on the systems are forecast to carry up to 100 million passengers per year by 2030.
And that is where I got this image from. The site is worth visiting for the huge number of images and videos available for download alone.
Of course, California does take EAs seriously – unlike BC which has reduced the process to a sick joke. And the funding still has to get through a bond measure on the November ballot. But that is also a process I approve of. Actual democracy at work: trusting the people, and allowing them a say in how their tax dollars are spent. Again in very sharp contrast to the way we get told what we are going to be taxed for, whether we approve of it or not.
And I also like the fact that it is an electric train with a very clear association with wind power. BC of course has recently ripped up its only main line electrification and had the locomotives scrapped.
Given where we are now and where the future will be, California’s investment in this mode looks a lot more sensible than its hydrogen highway (which, I suspect, will be left to just wither on the vine) – or BC’s obsession with widening freeways.
High Speed Rail
I have just been watching “The Nature of Things” on CBC Newsworld
Rail Renaissance, our lead story, is a 20-minute segment that takes audiences to Europe where they’ll witness the exciting lead up to the launch of the new High Speed One service out of St. Pancras Station, in London. The launch signifies the end of a multi-billion dollar restoration to the rail lines between London and Paris, and to St. Pancras, the station that will be the new home of High Speed One. Along with the physical restoration, many communities along the rail line have been given a lifeline because of the new rail service. This colossal engineering project incorporates 60 kilometres of tunnel, over 150 bridges and 3 major viaducts. It has brought with it signs of newfound prosperity for east London and Southeast England, areas that have largely been neglected. This segment is hosted by the well-known urban affairs critic for The Toronto Star, Christopher Hume. The key question that this segment poses is, if high-speed rail is happening all over Europe, why isn’t it happening here, in Canada?
This was one of those serendipitous things. The furnace went out, so I had to go and find out how to get the pilot light on. But first I had to do my gig on CITR. So supper was late and I missed the news. So I turned to Newsworld to catch up and there was St Pancras in all its restored glory. Now I did mention here the record breaking run on High Speed One, and that has brought a lot of new readers to this blog. The opening of regular service on November 14 also brought me a lot of traffic.
There was discussion about London – and how it could not accommodate cars, so the motorway box was cancelled. More importantly no new car parking has been opened since the sixties. I didn’t know that. In fact when I was at the Department of Transport (as it was called then) the Thatcher government wanted to see “free market” solutions to everything – including parking. As the Economic Adviser, I was supposed to come up with ways to make the free market in parking supply come alive. What I did was point out that no-one would pay to park if they thought they could do it for free on street. So the wheels were set in motion for the toughest ever crack down on illegal parking. It included the introduction of wheel clamps. And it worked to clear out the illegal on street parkers. But, so far as I know, no-one actually wanted to build commercial car parks since there was a lot more money to made from offices and high end residential developments. And it turned out they didn’t. Since then the political wind has shifted, even though some will say that Tony Blair owed more to Thatcher than Nye Bevan. But the outcome has been startling.
Christopher Hume (the reporter on this segment) compared St Pancras to Toronto Union. He compared the Eurostar between London and Paris to VIA Rail between Toronto and Montreal. He thinks we are at least twenty years behind the times. And he blames CN. I think he should actually be looking at Ottawa. VIA Rail has been a patronage issue more than anything else. A way to reward the Liberal faithful with a sinecure. No-one takes long distance, intercity passenger rail travel seriously. It’s all cars and planes here. But it cannot go on like that for much longer.
What had to happen in Britain was that the government had to break out of the dogmatic Thatcherite straight jacket. She hated trains – and during her reign, never rode in one. She refused public funds to the Channel Tunnel and its link to London – so for the previous twenty years, the high speed trains that emerged from the tunnel were forced to slow to the pace of the London suburban services and essentially Victorian infrastructure. Well OK the Southern did bring things a bit more up to date in the thirties – but the speeds remained unremarkable. Blair, to his credit, figured out how to use upgrading the infrastructure to revitalise the run down areas through which the new line runs. Kings Cross and St Pancras will now be the centre of massive redevelopment. So will Stratford. There was much talk of “leverage” – but the reality is that London has become a major European and World centre because of its financial expertise. The real shift in my lifetime has been the change from London as major centre for manufacturing to a service economy – just as Toronto has also been transformed. The biggest change that I saw in my time was the closure of the docks and the transformation of East London that followed. Of course it was a painful process, with some notably violent clashes between the dockers and the police. Perhaps that is one reason why I find it so hard to understand why opening new port facilities here is supposed to be so terrific and forward looking.
What has been different in Britain is that the government came to realise that railways were essential. That modern trains would provide an alternative to driving and flying. That alternative would be a lot lighter on the environment – fewer emissions of both local air pollutants and greenhouse gases. One 400 meter long Eurostar is the equivalent of seven B737s in people moving capacity. Flying to Paris produces ten times the CO2 of taking the train. And those people are a lot more comfortable and happy – and get to their destinations more easily and with less hassle than flying or sitting in a jam on a “freeway”. Britain now spends three times the amount of money (in real terms) on supporting the railways than it did in the age of Thatcher. Fortunately, some of that money goes into new infrastructure, not just the pockets of private sector spivs.
Canada must start spending money – public money – on improving intercity rail travel, starting with city pairs like Edmonton-Calgary, Vancouver-Seattle, and the corridor Chicago-Detroit-Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal. It is no good expecting CN CP or Amtrak to change their ways. We need dedicated, high speed, direct rights of way with electrification from day 1. It will cost a fortune – but we are one of the richest countries in the world and we have, for now, the oil and coal revenues to make this happen. We have to invest the profits from fossil fuel into becoming independent of fossil fuels. We start with a carbon tax, and we use the revenues to build carbon free infrastructure. Paying off the national debt in an era of low interest rates must be seen as a lower priority than creating a sustainable future.
Stephen Rees's blog 
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