The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - High-Speed Grail

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

The first study into a high-speed rail corridor between Toronto and Montreal was released in 1970. Now, 54 years later, the federal government says that a high-speed option is being "seriously considered". In the years in between, dozens of studies, reports and surveys have evaluated different costs and business cases based on varying routes, speeds and stops. But after all this time, is there not enough information to decide whether to move ahead, or not, with such a massive project. And if there is a case, what are the challenges and obstacles preventing its approval by government and use by the public?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The first study into a high-speed rail corridor between Toronto and Montreal was released in 1970. Now, according to a report by Radio-Canada, the federal government is moving forward with a high-speed train connecting Quebec City and Toronto. What are the challenges in planning and building such a transformative project? Let's find out from, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Anthony Pearl. He's a professor in the Department of Political Science at Simon Fraser University. He's also a former board member of Via Rail. In Smiths Falls, Ontario, Mayor Sean Panko.

And with us here in studio, Leslie Wu, CEO of Civic Action and a former chief planning and development officer at Metrolinx. And Murtaza Haider, Professor of Data Science and Real Estate Management at Toronto Metropolitan University. He also serves as the Research Director of the Urban Analytics Institute and it's great to have you two here in our studio and to our friends in Points Beyond. Thanks for joining us on TVO tonight. Murtaza, I want to get you up here first because we got to get some

definitions out of the way. We hear about high-speed rail. We hear about high-frequency rail. Are they different? Yes, they are. High-speed rail means more speed. So anything over 200 kilometres, 300 kilometres or 400 kilometres is high-speed rail. High-frequency means that you run more trains in a given time period. So you're running it frequently rather than just one or two trains in a given day. And it's not as fast? There can be high frequency and could be high speed rail. They're not mutually exclusive.

Gotcha. All right. I would like to ask our director Sheldon Osmond to bring this picture up because as we alluded to in the introduction here, there's nothing new under the sun. This is a picture of the cover of the Intercity Passenger Transport Study completed for the Canadian Transport Commission in 1970. It is one of the first to evaluate the possibility of higher speed trains between Toronto and Montreal, in this case almost 220 kilometres an hour.

Wow. So we've been thinking about this. Anthony, I'll bring you in at this point. We've been thinking about this for a very, very long time, and yet it's never happened. How come? That's a great question. I guess we've always been waiting for the right time to do this, and it's always required an alignment between the federal government and other partners,

usually the governments of Ontario and the government of Quebec, and they've never been on the same page so far. We've sometimes gotten two out of three, but that still wasn't enough to move forward. We'll check back in with you later to see whether we are all on the same page now. But Mayor Pankow, I want to ask you, I presume since you've been the Mayor of Smiths Falls over the last decade, you've had the odd discussion or two about the possibility of this happening since it would go right near your community. How many chats do you think you've had about this?

Oh, probably at least two or three a year since 2016. It was August 2nd, 2016 is when I first heard from the HFR people saying there was a planned route which would potentially include our community. And so we've had numerous meetings over time. Each time it was really based on the priority of trying to ensure that Smith Falls would be part of this project and from HFR standpoint

it really started out as HFR. Really frequency was going to be the key focus and of course we've heard now speed being maybe a bigger priority that does cause some maybe some pause or some concern that they may not have as many stops as we'd like to see but it's been a lot of dialogue over the last eight years Okay, Leslie, let me ask you when you were at Metrolinx. How many conversations did you have about the possibility of this happening? Probably in the dozens I Stopped counting after a while So many and and in the context of how an infrastructure like that could fit within a broader network,

not just on, you know, not the conversations were about the intersection a lot. And does this feel more real today than any of those conversations you had back then? It's closer. It does feel more real. And because I think a lot more work and analysis has gone on, a lot more engagement.

But, you know, as they say, the distance between the cup and the lip is still very far. There we go. There we go. Anthony Pearl, how about you? When you were on the board of Via Rail, lots of conversations about this? At that point, it was trying to regroup and find something more affordable. At the time, it was thought that high frequency rail, or what became this high frequency rail proposal, would be a stepping stone on the way that governments might be able to accept fiscally more easily

than a bigger ticket. But it sounds like that has changed. I have trouble imagining that it's going to cost less to build high speed rail than high frequency rail but it sounds like people are presenting it as an affordable option which would be great if that's true. Do you want to give us a ballpark figure of what you imagine the difference between the two would be? I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a good number. I

think that the order of magnitude would probably be two to three times the the cost for the full high-speed rail because the infrastructure would be much more expensive because it would have to be entirely separated from all other modes of rail and road transportation and that's costly. Okay, Ritazi, you want to put some numbers on this for us? It will be prohibitively expensive. It will be a sticker shock that Canadians have not seen before. These are very expensive projects and the at-grade intersections, the railway crossings, just to turn them into bridges, that there are hundreds of those between Montreal and Toronto,

that of course alone would surprise people once the real number comes out. Well, we've seen some pretty big numbers lately. We had the Premier of Ontario a couple of weeks ago saying he wanted to put a tunnel under the 401, and people mentioned $100 billion, and he didn't blanch at that. Are we talking that kind of number? It will be more than that. The tunnel could be around, if it's a 60 kilometer tunnel could be around 30-40 billion dollars. This project could easily be

over 60 to 100 billion dollars. Do you, I mean we've had you here in the past many times and you've told us what your preferences are on the different kinds of options for transit. High frequency rail, high speed rail. Which do you think we should be doing? We should be doing high frequency rail, high speed rail? Which do you think we should be doing? We should be doing high frequency. High speed solves no unmet need right now. The transportation infrastructure has to serve an unmet need if you're spending $100 billion. High frequency to smaller distances, not just Toronto and Montreal, could solve many problems.

Congestion in big cities and housing problems in big cities. If you have high frequency rails from bigger centers to smaller centers so you can disperse the population a little better. Regional rail is a key to improving mobility and affordability in big cities. The intra-city travel between 600 kilometer distances that requires very high-speed rail and there's not necessarily an unmet need because airlines are still running and if you really want to get somewhere in one hour you can take a plane. Mayor Panko do you have a view on which should

be built here? High frequency certainly I mean I think having to make a few five-minute stops on a long route between Montreal and Ottawa and Toronto absolutely makes sense to enable one, growth in the rural areas. But two, to realize the alternative would be anyone in Eastern Ontario would have to go to Peterborough or Ottawa or potentially Montreal to catch a high speed train. And the rail lines are, the VN line already goes through Smith Falls. We have a history of a Canadian Pacific line, a Canadian Northern line, both coming through town. So we've got a long history of a rail service through our community and a dedicated line right now going from Smiths Falls to Ottawa.

So the frequency is important. It would enable people to catch a train here instead of having to go directly into primarily Ottawa to catch a train. Leslie, I should get your vote on this. High speed versus high frequency. So can I ask, say it depends? Sure. Because I think what's

important to understand is what the benefits not just the economic benefits of any investment whether it's 20 billion or a hundred billion and and and and I understand that there is a business case for this. My hope is that the considerations and thinking in the business case take into account broad community benefits that are national, provincial and local. So that requires us to think about this not just as the project as the end in itself, the speed not the end in itself but what it does for nation building, city building and that balance sheet is

actually where the start point starting point should be because then you can compare what the benefits are from this investment against other things and whether or not that whatever billion of dollars can indirectly support other parts of livability, such as affordability, public health and so forth. Anthony, is there a case to be made that in terms of community benefits, maybe high speed is the better way to go instead of high frequency? I think there is over the long term. I think if we would have moved forward in 1970 after that

report that you showed the example of, that would have been the time to start with the high frequency. But we're so far behind. We're behind places like Uzbekistan and Morocco. There's now countries that are much less affluent than Canada that have made this work. I think it's time to jump ahead. But I would also add that it's not impossible to have both high frequency and high speed. It is impossible to have both high frequency and high speed. It is impossible to make high frequency rail as quick as high speed. But the Japanese who invented the Shinkansen, the bullet train, they have operating on the line between Tokyo and Osaka, nonstop trains that are high speed and stopping trains that cover communities of the size of Smith's Falls.

So if this is done right, it's not a trade-off of either or. We can have the bullet trains between the major endpoints, which better include the airports as well for intermodal integration, and trains that serve the smaller communities along the way. If it's designed right, it's not an either or option. Martaza, can we have our cake and eat it too? I don't think so.

I think the business case for high-speed rail does not exist. I've been studying it for 28 years, and I've been frustrated by every government and every layer of government. You never see any of these reports in public. I had to go to Access to Information Act to get hundreds of pages of government reports fully redacted, not even telling you how many passengers actually travel. Why do they do that? Because they think it's

prior. They think it's usually... Well, wait a second. Let me answer this way. When I made that request, I was a professor of transport engineering at McGill University. I thought I'm at the big school and they would respond, but they said, no, you're not worthy of knowing the very fundamentals of it and the things are so bad that the the survey work that was done that data was withheld from me but made available to professors in America who actually taught travel demand forecasting using Canadian data in their workshops and through their Frank Kopelman luckily gave me that data that Transport Canada never gave me. So this is what I

say that when you hear someone asking for 60 billion dollars ask for transparency saying where's the business case, where's the data, where's the you know the only two million people that travel between Montreal and Toronto. This is what I was going to ask when you say make the business case is your point we don't have the population to support this? Absolutely. We don't have the population that is interested in traveling by train.

If you have 2 million people, that's what we have right now. Each trip, even now with the regular fare, is subsidized by $60 from Montreal to Toronto. You run high-speed rail that is much more expensive to build and operate. The subsidy per passenger between Montreal and Toronto would go even higher and what if you double, triple or quadruple your mode split from 2 million trips to 4 million to 6 million. It makes not an iota of difference in greenhouse

gas emissions in the place because it still would represent less than 1% of the travel between Montreal and Toronto. Leslie, but Matt doesn't sound like it works there. Well today I think we have to think about these investments as legacy represent less than 1% of the travel between Montreal and Toronto. Leslie, but Matt doesn't sound like it works there. Well, today I think we have to think about these investments as legacy investments and where is the growth happening and can we actually accurately predict it? Because yes, if it's 2 million today, it's not going to be 2 million in 20 years from now.

And that's the part of the fact base the scenario planning look at the Greater Toronto Hamilton area the growth that we are seeing even with the up you know the recent moves on immigration continues to exceed all expectations and so I think and for all different reasons including the fact that we didn't think about or plan for this kind of legacy investments and we took what I call short-term measures for something that really is going to have to be with us for maybe a hundred years. Mayor Pankow, I know it sounds more real today than it has at any time over the last 50 years, but do you think, I mean, you see these trains

going by all the time. Do we have the population that wants to travel by train in big enough numbers to support this kind of activity? Well, the frequency and speed are gonna be big factors. And I mean, in the rural areas, we're traveling any distance now. We're traveling to Ottawa to fly out, to go somewhere. Many times Toronto and Montreal lack to do limited flights in Ottawa.

So I think the ability for people in small rural areas, or smaller urban areas in eastern Ontario and beyond, the populations are growing. We've seen great growth in recent years. We expect more growth in the future. More people are working remotely. The federal government loosens up and enables more people to continue to work from home. It's going to help our population grow as well. The quality of life people experience in smaller communities, all these factors lead to growth in

rural areas at much greater rates than what we experienced before. And having the ability to hop on a train and be in Montreal in an hour and a half or Toronto in two hours. I mean, for people who are even working in those areas, a hybrid work model would function. Living in a smaller area and two days a week into a bigger center would be really functional. Mertesla, you want to come back on that? Yeah, I think two elements. The effluence that we have allows us to have a very high automobile ownership rate.

That is the reason why people travel because we have an effluent. People that places that are less affluent or places where automobile ownership by policy is made difficult like Japan and elsewhere. That's where you will see that rail is a dominant mode. But we are here and the level automobile ownership in smaller towns and other places is very high two cars three cars per household. The other thing is I have read that 1970 proposal in fact it talked about downtown to downtown commute the downtown Toronto to downtown Montreal. In the past 50 years there's

been far more growth in the outer suburbs in in both Toronto and Montreal. In fact these places the core of Montreal and the core of Toronto and Montreal. In fact, these places, the court of Montreal and the court of Toronto, the court of Toronto is different because of the condominiums, have not grown much. And if you take out condominiums, you won't see them. So what does it mean? It means that it would take you much longer

to get from a suburb to downtown Toronto to board that fast train. So who cares if the train gets you to Montreal in two hours when it takes you four hours to get to Toronto and get out of Montreal? Okay, let me come back on this. Have you been on the Teja V in France or have you been on the bullet trains in Japan? I have been on Teja V multiple times. I've traveled across China in high-speed rails. You've got to admit they're fabulous, aren't they? They are fabulous,

absolutely. So you don't want that here? If we can afford it. I like eating at Michelin star restaurants, but I can't afford it. Okay, let me... That was good. Anthony, let me get you on this. Air Canada is part of the consortium that's looking into this right now. And that kind of got my eyebrows raised because, you know, one of the reasons... We've always taken it as a given that the airlines would never support this because, of course, this could potentially take away from their business. So what's Air Canada doing as part of this as part of the coalition here? Well I think they want to be a part of an intermodal offer that allows people to take short trips to and from their long distance flights

and and that's where they're going to make their profit hopefully in the future. Short flights are not as money making for the airlines and they're not as resilient. We've had you know meltdowns in winter extreme weather and summer extreme weather and with climate change I think there's going to be even more of that. Now, of course, the high-speed rail has to be made resilient also, but I think it's a proven technology that will allow for future proofing

our intercity transportation system in ways that, in Air Canada two years ago, they'd invested in some Swedish electric battery electric plane company. You don't hear them talking about that anymore. We're not going to be having battery electric planes flying between Toronto and Montreal and Ottawa. But we will have electric trains if this proposal comes through.

And I think Canada wants to be in on that action so that they can connect some of those travelers to flights to Europe, the US, and longer distances. Leslie, how do you even begin to consider a project this massive? The price tag, the number of stops along the way, the kind of infrastructure you'd have to build, the number of different communities that presumably you'd have to get onside,

not to mention indigenous First Nations reserves as well. This sounds massive. Well, it is massive, it's complex. And where do you start? I'm less of the technician in the sense that where I start from always in any planning exercise is who is this for, what is the problem we're solving and What do who are all the stakeholders that are vested in this and is there a concurrence and agreement and alignment on?

What it is you're trying to accomplish the the project in and of itself is not the end and so and it is going to take A long time. It's going to be there for a long time. So you need a constituency of community that is bigger than the project, that is able to take it through. So you start there and then you identify the vision for what this project brings is X. And then you move towards that and you measure how you evaluate the investment relative to that, relative to the policy, not just how fast is it or how long is it or is it this technology or that technology. Is it really benefiting a wide range of folks who agree at all different scales? So the brokering of the community and the civic engagement required to make sure that this survives political cycles.

Let me pick up on that. Anthony, that was the next thing I was going to put to you, which is you not only need community engagement every step of the way along the route, but potentially, given how long this will take to build, you're looking at the possibility of getting three, four, five, maybe six different governments to flow funds on this kind of thing,

maybe from different parties along the way, probably from different parties along the way? Is that doable? Well, we've done it with a bridge to Prince Edward Island and other big ticket infrastructure projects. But yes, this has to stand the democratic test of changes in government. And there's a real risk that it could be cancelled and then we'd be even worse off. But it's a risk, I think, that has to be taken.

Well, let me ask, worship the mayor of that question, because we've seen here in the capital city of Ontario, there was a time when one city council decided to opt for LRTs, then they went for subways, then they went back to LRTs, now they're back onto subways, SmartTrack was in there at one point. Every council changed what the previous council did. How much do you worry about that,

pulling the legs out from under this project? I don't think not no concern municipal level or I had provincially federally probably biggest federal if there that investment is going to be probably the biggest transportation investment made in the country and the history of a country and so it's really more a matter of ensuring that politically it's acceptable to all parties who are going to be involved at the federal level. And as we've had four transport ministers leading this so far, who knows, number five will be along down the road possibly. So far the commitment has been there. So I would be pretty confident this project is growing legs. As I said, in 2016 there was some,

thought we might have trains on the road or on the rails by mid-2020s. Here we are now mid-2020s. Another talk and maybe 10 years down the road we'll have this in place. But I think we've come so far there's no turning back now. Well let's see, I'm going to ask our director Sheldon Osmond. Sheldon, if you would, let's bring up the map just after question 12. And okay, for those listening on podcast I'm going to describe what we see, which is a map of the southern part of the province of Ontario and then part of Quebec as well. This is the possible Eastern Corridor Rail scenario. And it's from Alstom. Alstom, that's the French company that makes all the, you know, the Go train cars up in

Thunder Bay and so on. 2022 Alstom proposal included high frequency and high speed links. And we've got some lines at differing speeds. Some of the colors of these lines are a train imagining at 144 km an hour. There's another line imagining 200 km an hour. There's another line imagining between 200 and 300 km an hour. Starting in Toronto, up to Ottawa, across to Montreal, northeast to Quebec City. Murtaza, I just want to ask you, as you look at that map and the feasibility of that, what jumps

out at you? Well, the first thing is why am I being taken to Ottawa if I want to go to Montreal, right? Like it violates the fundamental principle of take the shortest possible route. The other thing that you'd notice is that the speed would differ along the entire corridor. So you won't get a 300 km an hour average speed, even if someone tries to build it. The average speed would probably go down to 200 km an hour because you have to stop, you have dwell times, you have acceleration deceleration time. If a train is moving at 360 kilometers an hour it takes about 10 kilometers for it to stop. It takes about three minutes for

it. You apply the brake now and the physics of it is about you know 0.5 meters per second square. You'll stop in 10 kilometers. So you add all of those dwell times and unexpected stops the average speed would be 200 kilometers an hour. But it's still taking you to destinations you didn't want to go. I want to go to Montreal. I would rather go to Montreal rather than Ottawa. But you would try to do it trying to pick up the passengers. But those passenger numbers are even smaller if you look at the numbers. Only Toronto-Montreal corridor has two million trips a year.

Toronto-Ottawa is probably less than half a million. So just to capitalize on it or just to bring political support for it, you're going to carve out a route. It would not be as efficient if it were to be direct Toronto-Ottawa line and Toronto-Montreal line. But again, the point is at what cost. The cost is key. When you ask taxpayers money, it's a zero-sum game. The government recently announced an autism strategy and put

just 10 million dollars. That 10 million dollars could be 10 billion dollars if we were not to push it to other projects like high-speed rail and say yeah 100 billion here or a 50 billion there. Leslie do those logistics doom this project in your view? No so I have a slightly different view because I think the numbers, we didn't talk, we haven't talked about what is latent demand or induced demand when you, you know, you can forecast from the trends you've had in the past and just move forward and the numbers will reflect the current situation, you know, in this region 75% are single occupancy cars but if we're trying to make a change you have to kind of define the vision of where does you want to get to how it is you want to

move and then backward back cast in order to design so yes right now the numbers are as said but if we want to change that then we have to design the choices for people to make it an option and right now The best choice to get to Ottawa may be a plane not a train And so if you create the opportunity you can induce demand and shift Where the modes that individuals decide to choose, but it's not just the technology right? It's the fare It's the frequency. It's the reliability, all those things. Your Worship, I want to take you 10 years down the road,

maybe 20 years down the road. You'll probably still be the mayor at that time. Tell me what, if this happens, you think it could do for Smith Falls. Incredible growth, and I would say not, like our community would probably double in population or more. But again, Carleton Place is 15 minutes down the road with Perth close by, Brockville close by.

All of Easton, Ontario would benefit from having this rural areas. And we have that north-south line now going Brockville, Smiths Falls, Ottawa. I mean, if you're high speed, going back to comments earlier, high speed going through, stopping in Smiths Falls, a spur line running from here to Ottawa, people coming down from Ottawa to catch that line, rather than the train going into Ottawa, it's gonna help. But overall, we would see immense growth within Eastern Ontario in and around Smiths Falls. Do you think your present-day constituents would be prepared to put up with the massive disruption that would undoubtedly happen

in the 10 or 20 years it would take to do this? I would say for the most part, yes, but I mean, we see it now where we've had great growth in recent years as have a lot of the communities around us. And there's always those people who don't want to see any erosion of the small town life they've enjoyed. And I certainly don't want to become a city. I want to make sure that they can continue to enjoy

the quality of life you have in a smaller community. But no, I think there would be some concern, but the overall benefit of having high frequency, high speed train in our community, connecting us to all the neighboring communities and cities of Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto, far outweigh any other concerns. I think municipally we've had conversations with our neighbors in the area and everybody's very supportive. We have just a few minutes left here and I guess we should get on the record here. And Anthony Pearl, I'll ask you to come in first on this. You know, some people are promoting this as an antidote to climate change,

saying that if we could get, you know, stinky trains off the rails or more cars off the highways and put in nice battery-oper operated trains that don't add to climate change that would be worth doing. How persuasive is that argument to you? Well if you want to post carbon mature technology that's already proven it is electric rail they're not battery they're connected directly to the grid through wires so we don't need to mine any lithium to run these things. It's been done for 100 years and improved efficiency. So climate options, high-speed rail, and energy security

also is a proven technology that I think has to be added into the calculations for some value for that option in the future. Mertesu, you agree? No, absolutely not. I've been looking at the data for 28 years. It won't make an iota of difference because again, at very best it would have what, 1 to 2 percent of the commuter volume in the corridor. If you really want to make a difference, you have to invest in regional rail. The Metrolinx Go train and Ajans Matrapalitham, the Trasma, AMT or whatever is the current one in Quebec,

invest in those, build stronger linkages for bigger cities with smaller towns including Smith Falls so people can live in Smith Falls and work in Toronto or other way around. That would have a far bigger impact on greenhouse gas emissions. But the intercity travel between Toronto and Montreal will continue to be auto dominated. You may move a little bit of people from here to there, but that would not make a humongous difference. For dollar value, if you invest the same dollar in regional train and improve that service, you will have far more volume people shifting to the regional trains getting to Stratford in an hour getting from Toronto to to

London Ontario in an hour or an hour and a half or Kingston or Guelph these have far more benefits because people will move to the train rather than driving but Toronto Montreal will continue to be auto-dominated. Leslie last 30 seconds to you do you think this is ever really gonna happen? So yes, it will. I do. I mean look how long we waited for the link to the airport. We are patient society, clearly. I think it will and for a couple reasons. One is the benefits that we haven't even really, they haven't really articulated the true benefits which are much longer term. And so I feel that eventually when we start to grow

and we think about this whole part of the country as urbanized centers, 70% of the world is gonna be in cities. And what we see now is not what we're gonna see in many years. And so the need for it will happen. Whether we wanna be ahead of that curve or behind that curve is what we're sitting here asking ourselves.

Let me ask our director to give us a lovely four shot of our guest. Thank you so much, Sheldon, so that we can thank everybody for coming and having this debate on TVO tonight. You four have given our viewers and listeners a heck of a lot to think about. So thank you for doing that. Much appreciated. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.