Talk about train delays: It took a year to commission study
High-speed train is still on side tracks while Ottawa is looking for projects
HENRY AUBIN
The Gazette
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
On Jan, 10, 2008, the premiers of Quebec, Ontario, and the federal government announced they were jointly ordering a study updating earlier research on a proposed high-speed rail line along the Quebec City-Windsor corridor. They said they expected the study to be finished in a year.
It's now been a year. What does the study say?
The question, it turns out, is rather premature.
Work on the study has not yet even started.
Too bad. If the study were done, and if its conclusions were to support a high-speed rail project, early work on the scheme might be eligible for billions of dollars in infrastructure money that today's federal budget will make available. The Harper government's aim is to pour the infrastructure money into projects that are shovel-ready - that is, that can get under way within a year or so and thus combat the recession by creating jobs.
The delay reflects directly on the Charest government. Quebec, Ontario and Ottawa are equal partners in the study, each chipping in a third of the $3-million cost, but Quebec is in charge of the tendering process.
The province did not ask for tenders until July, a spokesperson for Quebec Transport Minister Julie Boulet told me yesterday. All three partners agreed in December that one company was best. The terms of the contract, however, will be under discussion at least until February.
A new line between Quebec City and Windsor - and particularly between Montreal and Toronto - has been studied repeatedly in recent decades. Two competing approaches have been at issue.
One concept, known in its native France as the TGV style (for train à grande vitesse), could cruise at upward of 300 kilometres per hour. It could slash the Montreal-Toronto travel time to two hours and 20 minutes from the current four hours and 20 minutes. The second concept, the rapid train, could go about 200 kilometres per hour and cover the same distance in three hours and 15 minutes.
In an interview that La Presse published this month, posthumously, Jean Pelletier revealed just how close the federal government had come to building a high-speed train.
When his stint as Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's chief of staff was coming to an end, Chrétien offered him a Senate seat or the ambassadorship to France. Pelletier rejected both, saying he wanted to become chairman of VIA Rail for one reason - to make the TGV-type train a reality. Chrétien told him to go for it.
After arriving at VIA in 2001, Pelletier found that the TGV-type model was prohibitively expensive - $12 billion. He settled for a $3-billion rapid train. Chrétien was ready to approve it but left office before he could do so. His successor, Paul Martin, was not interested. "I came within a hair of having it," said Pelletier.
Will the cost of TGV still be prohibitive a year from now, when the Quebec-Ontario-Ottawa study is supposed to be done? Will anti-recession money still be available at that time? It's too soon to say, but it's not too early to note that the case for the TGV will be stronger than ever once Canada, following the Obama administration's lead, gets serious about reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.
The rapid train would, like today's VIA trains, rely on diesel fuel, which emits greenhouse gases. The TGV-type locomotive, however, could be a hybrid, relying on both diesel and electricity (much of it from Quebec's clean hydro sources). As Transport 2000's David Jeanes points out, the train would be able to use electricity most of the time.
The faster concept's job-creation potential would also be greater. A dedicated track, required for much of the route, would require abundant manpower. Bombardier could build the rolling stock.
One of the arguments against the TGV-style concept is that fares for, say, a family of four would be much pricier than the cost of driving. But that argument ignores the likelihood that gasoline prices in the future will soar as oil supplies dwindle.
The contrast between high-speed rail and the Charest government's stock-still performance is appalling. It's time to get rolling.
Henry Aubin is The Gazette's regional-affairs columnist.
haubin@thegazette.canwest.com
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2009
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I reeeeealy want this to happen
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