Rural Commuter Rail

[mousquet]

I think we should face a couple of actual facts if we want to win one more battle on the ground.

First, high-speed transit was meant to be real fast, so it simply can't have too many stops along a given route. It is only supposed to be easily accessible and fast links between metro areas that are large enough. So, going from Winnipeg to Calgary or from Montreal to Detroit for example makes sense, if you don't have to serve every single small community that would claim they deserve their own stop in between. We've had that problem here in France. Of course, everyone wants to be served regardless population figures, which causes harm to the efficiency of the overall system. Sometimes, people need to watch figures and be reasonable.

Second, our traditional HSR technology is growing old and almost outdated. We need massive funding to take it to the next level (why not maglev eventually, after all?), that would take Alstom, Bombardier and Siemens merged altogether, once and for all, so they can stand as a powerful lobby to put the Canadian, French and German authorities under pressure to fund innovative infrastructures. Development of the TGV goes back to the 1970s/80s here. It's just growing too old.

The Chinese are being faster than we are right now, that's bad. I mean, good for them, but we need to survive their thing, cause we still have a couple of essential things to teach them about.