I usually start any criticism of new railway line proposals with a disclaimer that I’m actually very pro-railways. I do so because it’s absolutely true and it kind of hurts me to shoot down these wonderful-sounding schemes just because they make no economic sense whatsoever. Last week, Jen Gerson found herself doing exactly the same thing while discussing the Ontario Liberal proposal for a new high speed passenger line:
It would be good to preface this column with a confession. I love trains. I loved taking trains while tooling about in Europe in my ‘20s. I would happily trade additional travel time to enjoy the comforts of a train in favour of airport security and an airline seat.
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Train lovers like myself often like to lament the fact that Canada is the only G7 nation without a high-speed rail line, as if that fact makes us technologically backward — as opposed to merely sparsely populated.
But as Feigenbaum points out, there are only two high-speed rail lines anywhere in the world that make any money after factoring in build and operating costs: Tokyo to Kyoto, and Paris to Lyon. “There is another line in Japan that breaks even. All of the rest of the High Speed Rail projects in the world lose money and some lose a lot of money,” Feigenbaum says.
“In the North American context, you need at least 3 million people in each of the metropolitan areas [you’re serving]. You need incredibly high population density in both of these cities. You need very good inner-city transit systems and you need generally low rates of car ownership.”
Toronto qualifies as a reasonable high speed rail hub by this definition. Windsor does not.
And she doesn’t even mention the almost-universal cost overruns on major infrastructure projects like this, nor delays in obtaining equipment (especially if the winning bidder is Bombardier).
I swear I have squandered days of my life thinking about this train to Windsor and I’ve come to the conclusion that it is an onion of stupid. Every layer you peel away reveals some new and terrible aspect that doesn’t make any sense.
Fortunately, this is almost certainly just an election promise that will never actually go further than some lovely animations and perhaps a few physical scale models for politicians’ photo ops leading up to the vote. It will then probably disappear from the picture even if the Liberals get back into office.
