VIA Rail network developments

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by DTcrawler

6-7 years just for the development/design phase. Holy hell. Looks like these smart bureaucrats know how to ensure themselves job security for the foreseeable future.

Originally Posted by stolenottawa

14 years!?

This is about normal for what will be one of the largest projects attempted in Canada's history and delivered by a public-private partnership (which means more stakeholders and process).

Not explicit here is that one of the ways to make the business case work for this is for the consortium to be able to do major development near stations. That might not happen in major cities. But it may happen in places like Peterborough and Trois Rivières. So this is definitely about planning more than just the rail line.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by roger1818

I'm not convinced he will. The CPC platform talks about improving passenger rail, and the way the HxR project has been formulated, it ticks all of the boxes that Skippy would like, especially now that Air Canada has joined one of the consortiums.

I want to be optimistic. But the way these parties are influenced by American grievance politics, particularly that zero sum thinking, doesn't have me very optimistic.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by roger1818

I'm not convinced he will. The CPC platform talks about improving passenger rail, and the way the HxR project has been formulated, it ticks all of the boxes that Skippy would like, especially now that Air Canada has joined one of the consortiums.

I suspect that is aimed at rural train service. So we might see an improvement in service there which in the scheme of things is very cheap.

We are going to see large scale governent spending cuts so it's hard to see a project that the even Liberals were hesitant about who never saw project not worth "investing in.

The math is pretty dubious on any projections of ridership given how suburban and car oriented most trips are and the costs involved. If we are going to throw money at the sacred cow of Climate Change this at least gives us some benefits other than employment but it's very expensive per ton of carbon removed for sure.

[Truenorth00]

The primary goal of any intercity rail service is not to cut emissions. That's a nice second order benefit. It's to improve connectivity, which in turn should improve economic productivity and quality of life. Unfortunately, the average Canuck and especially the average politician is a one-dimensional moron who thinks choo choos are only about environmentalism.

The Chinese, Germans, French, Italians, Spaniards, Japanese, and even the Moroccans didn't build HSR because they care about cutting emissions.