[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

The Quebec-Windsor corridor and its rail dreams perfectly illustrate the problems for private investors in this space. Realistically, the actual financial rate of return is quite low
May not be a loss. But would not be investment grade either. And then there's portions of the Corridor where return is much higher and others where projections show a loss. So no investor will only want the portions that provide returns. Makes it hard to sell as a cohesive proposal.

This problem is universal. Which is why elsewhere government books the infrastructure and usually only fully privatizes the actual services. Tracks are usually government owned or managed by a non-profit trust.



We've been talking about HSR on the Quebec-Windsor Corridor for half a century now. As long as we insist HSR is the minimum improvement, we'll get no improvement. I strongly suspect a big part of that is airline lobbying behind the scenes. The TOM triangle, despite the competition, is extremely profitable for the airlines. HSR would kill Porter and substantially injure Air Canada. I've previously read that the airlines raised concerns about HFR. Imagine the fight they would launch against HSR.

The value in HFR is three fold. First it will show that a business case exists and that not all intercity rail is a money pit. Next it regularizes train travel for a lot of the population. May be not for business travel. But certainly for personal and tourist travel. Third, if done properly, there should be a path to slowly upgrade towards HSR. People forget that most HSR lines in Europe aren't totally brand new. They were upgraded to allow for faster speeds, with grade separations being the biggest expense. If done right, HFR could basically be Acela a decade after service launch.



Doubtful. And I say that as someone who really does support such an investment. I can't think of any city pair in the world, where two cities of about 1.5 million each have enough traffic between them to make a multi-billion dollar rail investment profitable. The justification for building something between Calgary and Edmonton is entirely about the economic and environmental benefits. Increased productivity from more efficient travel, avoided investment in road construction and reduced GHGs from air travel. I'm fairly sure WestJet and Air Canada would fight this hard though.

We're getting a bit off topic. I responded to your post in the High Speed Rail in Canada thread.

https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...postcount=1418