Quote:
Originally Posted by milomilo
At this point, I think the government of Alberta should set up a proper regional transit agency and lay out a system of minimal service levels, to provide the function previously filled by Greyhound, and contract out the routes and provide integrated ticketing. There should be no need to step on the toes of current bus operators, as they would be the natural choice for certain routes.
Having that in place would give the bare bones and information for potential heavy rail routes. And if there isn't demand for rail on a route, good that we don't waste money on it.
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Honestly, that's probably best. Intercity passenger rail is really cost prohibitive to set up from scratch. It looks like the CP line between Edmonton and Calgary is hardly ideal as it is, with very poor track, no direct connection to downtown Edmonton or Red Deer, and probably hundreds of unguarded level crossings.
If you ran a frequent bus, you could tie in so many other trip generators that are not on the line: U of A, downtown Red Deer, YYC, YEG.
I'm reminded of GO's Hamilton-Toronto bus service. It runs every 20 minutes, takes an hour, and runs express from Union station to downtown Hamilton with a convenient stop near McMaster university. If the QEW's jammed, it takes the 407. Even with a high-capacity rail corridor, GO would still have to make substantial upgrades to run a dedicated express train to Hamilton that would be time competitive with the bus - especially since the bus is a direct downtown-to-downtown service with the added bonus of servicing the McMaster area. Hamilton-Toronto will always have a lot more trips between them than Calgary-Edmonton.