Return of Rail Service to the Calgary-Edmonton Corridor and Beyond
 

Figured since the via rail thread devolved into regionalist bickering, and the east now has their own thread, there should be one for the Prairies (centred on by far the most densely populated region of the Prairies of course).

The most positive step thus far is the new Canada Infrastructure Bank study for the return of rail service between Calgary and Banff, but obviously a train between Calgary and Edmonton in also needed. For Alberta, I could see an eventual extension of the Corridor Line (Via Rail "Chinook Line" has a nice ring to it) to Lethbrige. In the long term I could possibly see that extended from Lethbridge to Medicine Hat and Regina as population growth allows. It won't be too long before Med Hat is 100 000 and Regina is over 300 000, so it's not totally farfetched.

Feel free to share your ideas on the future of rail service in the west.

To replace, enhance or shift?

We have a million flights, ease with the autonomous mobility device and good bus service. Why would traditional rail make any sense?

HSR is a non-starter due to population and lack of LRT at the key destinations.

Well...when the airlines come back, they are not going to be in great financial shape and I bet you they start by cutting the smaller routes that don't have the numbers. If they ever let outside of the country competition in, it would be even worse.

To shift service. Our bus service may be relatively frequent, but its comically expensive and takes way too long (4 ish hours), and going airport to airport is a 4 to 5-hour ordeal; half an hour from airport to downtown (1 hour total), security/waiting/boaring/deboarding/baggage (2 hours total minimum), plus flight time of an hour.

Rail goes downtown to downtown in 3 hours max including the stops at Red Deer and both airports. No security, no baggage claim, very little waiting time. It's a farrrr superior option to the two shitty options we currently have.


Immediate

Chinook Line:

Edmonton - YEG - (Wetaskiwin) - Red Deer - (Olds) - (Airdrie) - YYC - Calgary - Okotoks - (High River) - Lethbridge


Mountain Line:

Calgary - Cochrane - Canmore - Banff - (Lake Louise)

Stations in parentheses are future stations...





Possible Future (feasibility uncertain past Lethbridge)

Prairie Line:

Calgary - Okotoks or High River (or eventually both?) - Lethbridge - Medicine Hat - Swift Current - Moose Jaw - Regina - Brandon - Portage La Prairie - Winnipeg

Shouldn't this be in the Alberta forum? It's literally service in a single province.

Indeed, either this topic should be reduced to Edmonton-Calgary(-Banff/Lethbridge) and moved to the “Alberta & British Columbia” Subforum or it should be merged into the “Could daily intercity passenger rail service be revived across Western Canada?” thread I created for exactly the kind of proposals which seem to have also motivated the creation of this thread...

There's already 15 other threads discussing this in the main forum, plus a high speed rail thread in the Alberta forum and a Calgary area regional transit thread in the Calgary forum.

Of course it would be more convenient. Is it practical? Can anyone quickly tabulate the population between Toronto and Ottawa and between Calgary and Edmonton?

million or so in edmonton and calgary each, 100,000 or so in the middle?

Toronto - Ottawa 8 million?

1.5 + 1.5 + .25 is closer. Regardless we don’t need rail.

The GTHA alone is 7 million. The NCR is 1.3 million. And there's something like half a million along the Lakeshore between Durham Region and Ottawa. Simply going strictly from Toronto to Ottawa via Peterborough as VIA is proposing to do has about 4.5 million in just the cities and towns that the stations fall in, for a line that is less than 400km. So yes, Ontario has a lot more.

That said Alberta absolutely has a good case for decent intercity rail service. You have 3 million residents along a 300 km corridor (350km to the furthest points). Even with regular speed rail (160 kph), Red Deer becomes little over 1 hr to both downtown Edmonton and downtown Calgary. The two major metros would be about 2.5 hrs apart from city centre to city centre with stops.

These are distances that become commutable with high speed rail. Red Deer, Airdrie, Leduc would absolutely would boom in population. Red Deer becomes a 50 min ride (with all the stops) from the city centres of Edmonton and Calgary. The journey between the two metros would get cut down to under two hours. As fast as air. There's no way you can get downtown to downtown by air in under two hours when you include travel to the airport and pre-boarding time.

Ah fuck I forgot about the Western Canada rail thread.


Anyways, yes we definitely require rail, stat. The difference in population between Calgary - Edmonton and Toronto - Ottawa is completely inconsequential. There's between 3.5 and 4 million people in the Alberta corridor (1.6+1.5+0.35), twice the number of people than in the maritimes, which is a larger area (562 km between Campbellton and Halifax vs 300 km between Calgary and Edmonton), yet is serviced by rail. Lack of chinook corridor service makes no sense, the end.

This summer I went to Banff. Talking to the operators around there, normally about 9 million people come during the peak season. The issue becomes that many of the parking lots like Lake Louis and Moraine Lake and others fill up by 6am. Many of those are people from the Calgary area on day trips. If we had rail to Banff from Calgary and it were to meet with a shuttle to the various places it would alleviate much of that traffic. Being able to take the train from Edmonton to Calgary and then go to Banff would actually be a draw. I could even see a Jasper train as well that links Jasper and Banff.

Edmonton and Calgary have over 1 million each. There airports are one of the top busiest in the country. All of that does make for a good reason that rail between those cities and to Banff and possibly Jasper viable. Maybe it wont be 10 car trains. Maybe it is one 3-5 car trains, but that number means that much less cars driving to Banff and congesting the area up.

With over 18 million living within the Windsor - Quebec City corridor, it does make sense to have regular passenger rail. Calgary - Edmonton corridor is over 3 million. How high does it need to be to be feasible?

The triangle between Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver is similar to the area, population, and GDP of Austria. You can and should have comprehensive rail service.

Canadians need to chill out on HSR and comparisons to flying. That doesn't really get to the reasons trains are successful in places that have them, and it makes building a rail network seem prohibitively expensive and complicated, when it doesn't need to be.

If Alberta got serious about building regional rail systems for Calgary and Edmonton, lines heading out of the cities going north and south respectively could pick off towns and eventually meet in Red Deer. Then you have an Edmonton-Calgary rail line. Give it twenty years to build out. In the mean time, every town along the line will have had a chance to develop around their respective regional rail systems, a culture of train travel will emerge, and a new generation will grow up expecting to get around by train.

I wouldn't even bother with rail, we will soon be sleeping in our cars while they are driving anyways. That very thing has already happened on the QE2!