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00:00:25i'm mean
00:00:25in hannamansing the
00:00:26of host of cross country checkup, we're about to start the show and we have lot
00:00:30to talk about, but first here are few stories to get you ready for that
00:00:34conversation today. what's going on with
00:00:37Alto? if you don't know, that's the proposed
00:00:39of high-speed of rail line that could take you from Toronto to Montreal in just about 3
00:00:43hours. here was the initial route proposed last year. it's approximately
00:00:471,000 km from Toronto to Quebec City, which stops in Peterborough,
00:00:51Ottawa, Montreal, Laval, and Tois Rovier. now, Ottawa
00:00:55says it's favoring a
00:00:56of more southern route that could make Kingston a stop. We'll get to that, but first... Just
00:01:00quick facts about the project. This would be Canada's first high-speed rail
00:01:03network. It's designed to have trains running at 300 km or more per
00:01:07hour. They're planning to
00:01:08of start of construction in 2029-2030 and say it's going to take
00:01:12around 12 years to build. The price tag is between 60 and
00:01:15of 90 billion dollars. So it's a major project
00:01:18of and Kingston
00:01:19of of of doesn't want to be left behind. You have Queens University, we have military members coming
00:01:23in
00:01:24in and out of CFB Kingston. We have
00:01:26a regional hospital network. After gaining feedback from the public, Canada's transport.
00:01:30of minister said he's considering it, we're going to take
00:01:32of a
00:01:33of very, very long, strong and positive look at it, but this
00:01:36makes the question, how many more stops until it's no longer a high-speed
00:01:41in of railline? we do not believe that a stop in Kingston is a
00:01:45of significant lengthening enough that would
00:01:47of dissuade people, and how much does it overlap with existing trains? here is the current
00:01:51VR rail
00:01:52of route from Toronto to Quebec City, and here are the confirmed
00:01:55of high-speed of rail stops. Keep in mind, we don't know the train's exact route. Alto
00:01:59estimate. the travel times will be cut in half and that the high-speed
00:02:03rail line
00:02:04of will be integrated with via. for example, if you're traveling from
00:02:06of Toronto of of to Ottawa, your commute could go from 4our and a half hours to
00:02:10two. but there are also many concerns about this project. the Ontario
00:02:14Federation of
00:02:15of Agriculture of says many farmers are concerned
00:02:17a about the railway cutting through their land. they're concerned about what the future looks like for
00:02:21their business, whether they'll be able to continue to operate. um, with half
00:02:25of their farm on one side
00:02:26of the tracks, half of it
00:02:27on the other. uh, certainly need critical infrastructure. as well, but we need to put
00:02:31it
00:02:31of along existing corridors that are that are already there, the CN
00:02:35tracks, the 401 corridor, ford agrees, follow the
00:02:39401 corridor, don't start taking farmers lands and everything else out, but
00:02:42transportation minister Stephen Mckinnan
00:02:44in says that could be complicated, notably because
00:02:47of the curvature
00:02:48of the highway, but we will apply the
00:02:51basic logic that we should use public right of ways whenever
00:02:55possible, those are some
00:02:56of the technical issues, then you have the politics, conservative leader.
00:03:00opposes Alto, this $90
00:03:02of billion liberal boondoggle does not make sense and
00:03:06it does not make dollars and Party Quebequa leader Paul Saintpier Plammandan
00:03:10says if elected his government would prevent Quebec from getting
00:03:13a involved. We spoke to a transport expert who sits on an independent academic
00:03:17of advisory panel for Alto. He said with Canada being the only G7
00:03:21country without
00:03:22of high-speed rail, it's easy to get excited, but there are just too many unanswered questions. We
00:03:26still haven't seen a business case on this project. We don't
00:03:28know what the ultimate cost is, we don't. have a projection of what
00:03:31the the ridership is that's very
00:03:33of detailed
00:03:33of and we don't know really what the fairs are yet. those are the things you really need to
00:03:36know to decide if this project is going to be worthwhile and the way they're promoting is that people are
00:03:40going to be able to go back
00:03:41of and forth and it's going to be pretty low cost. i would like to see how
00:03:45they're paying for that cuz that's that's going to require more subsidy. in the meantime, alto is
00:03:49touting some ambitious numbers. they're expecting 24 million
00:03:53passengers riding the rail line per year by 2055.
00:03:56they say the project could create
00:03:58of over of 50,00 jobs to... construction and estimate it will
00:04:02contribute to a 1.1 uplift in Canada's GDP,
00:04:05of that's equivalent to 24.5 billion
00:04:07of today,
00:04:08and the question on everyone's mind, fair prices. Alto says it's too early to provide
00:04:12specific details, though they say affordability is in their mandate,
00:04:15so what can you expect next? Another round of consultations will take
00:04:19place for the
00:04:20of Ottawa Montreal segment this fall. That's the first part they're planning to build, with
00:04:24construction set to begin in approximately 4 years. Trishla
00:04:28Parek, CBC News, Toronto. presidents
00:04:32of Gadno have been weighing in on the proposed
00:04:35of high-speed rail line, alto, the group behind the project is
00:04:39me holding of one of its final public consultations at Gatno City Hall,
00:04:42and it got a much warmer reception in GATNO than it has in
00:04:46rural parts of
00:04:47of eastern Ontario, where many people have expressed opposition to the rail
00:04:51line. most
00:04:52of the people CBC spoke to in Gatnow told us
00:04:55a they support the project. I'm really up
00:04:59of for of it buse I I usually take VRI to go to Toronto and
00:05:02Montreal, so I'm a big fan of
00:05:04you know taking the train like getting on the subway, getting to the train
00:05:08arriving downtown in the other city, like it's just comfortable and
00:05:12of easy. so with the high speed train, it's just going to be faster and
00:05:15higher frequency
00:05:16per day, it's going to give us more options to pick better times for a
00:05:20schedule. i'm really excited about it, i
00:05:24love public transportation, hate driving and hate getting stuck
00:05:27in traffic. i think it's a necessary step for Canada, necessary
00:05:31step for interprovintially between Quebec and
00:05:35Ontario, uh, being able to build bridges between Toronto, Quebec City,
00:05:38Montreal, Ottawa, I think that's a wonderful initiative. I'm from southern
00:05:42Ontario so to visit my family so quickly will be
00:05:46absolutely phenomenal
00:05:48um I love the high speed trains in Europe so it's
00:05:51just perfect that this is coming to North America and
00:05:55Canada and it's just uh it'll be a it'll be a game
00:05:58changer in this rapidly
00:06:01changing world Canadians are faced with new challenges both at
00:06:05home and abroad get the answers you need the national
00:06:09canada's newscast every week the issues that matter to
00:06:13Canadians, connecting politics to people. Join
00:06:16me for Rosemary Barton Live. Sundays. Send
00:06:20message to
00:06:21CBC.Ca/aircheck.
00:06:25This is a project for people to allow people to more freely
00:06:29live, work, play, across this corridor, and also attract
00:06:33visitors. Hi, I mean had a man sing in Vancouver cross country checkup is
00:06:37live. It's time for us to put an end to these costly, liberal
00:06:41schemes with cost. estimates of up to $113
00:06:44billion dollars. Are you on board for high-speed rail in
00:06:48Canada? What questions do you have? Give us call
00:06:501888-416-8333
00:06:54888-416-8333. I'm
00:06:58pretty keen about having the rail come here.
00:07:02Basically, we are a desert, we have a universe. I think this would be the
00:07:06best thing for Peter. I'm really opposed to the high-speed
00:07:09rail and there's just so many reasons why. and go ahead,
00:07:13why can't they spend some of that money on improving the veta service?
00:07:17we came from England and of course we had electrified
00:07:21trains even in the 50s - I think it's held
00:07:24back Canada tremendously. This week, Canada's parliamentary
00:07:28budget officer released report on the proposed high-speed railline
00:07:32between Toronto and Quebec City. So how much will it cost?
00:07:36Well, their estimates says up to $113 billion dollars, which
00:07:40is higher than previously thought. that same report projects the line will
00:07:44add $2 billion to the economy by 2033 and
00:07:48create up to 9,00 jobs. the conservative party says the liberal should
00:07:52scrap the project, arguing it will be too great of a burden on
00:07:56taxpayers across the country. also, the crown corporation
00:07:59overseeing construction faces resistance from some land owners
00:08:03along the route and from some politicians in Ontario and
00:08:07Quebec, and soon this debate will stretch west as well as
00:08:10Alberta prepares to launch. formal process for its own
00:08:14high-speed rail line connecting calgary, red deer and edminton. our
00:08:18question this week, are you on board for high-speed rail in canada? what questions do you
00:08:22have? you can call us now,
00:08:231888-416-8333 or go to
00:08:50we're live on CBC radio and CBC News Network. This is Cross
00:08:54Country Checkup, your voice, Canada's
00:08:56voice. And if you are watching on
00:09:00CBC News Network right now, we are live, and that means this is a program
00:09:04that you can take part in. You just call us and join the conversation right
00:09:08now. Let's begin with two experts who are here to answer questions.
00:09:12respond to calls and share their expertise. Matia
00:09:16Simiatikki is a professor of geography and planning and director
00:09:20the infrastructure Institute at the University of Toronto, and
00:09:23Michael Shabas is a Canadian railway consultant who's worked on high-speed
00:09:27rail across Europe and North America, including the Toronto Quebec City
00:09:31corridor, and they're in our Toronto
00:09:33studio. Michael the PBO
00:09:36estimates the uh cost could be up to
00:09:39$113 billion dollars with that. price tag in
00:09:43mind, why do you believe there's a strong economic case for this
00:09:46project? there's a strong economic case for this project if it's
00:09:50done right, and there's no single problem that's worth that much money
00:09:54to solve, but there are several problems in the quarter and high-speed rail have done
00:09:58correctly, can address all them. you can't get
00:10:01reliably between cities, between Toronto and Montreal, Toronto and
00:10:05Ottawa for business in less than five hours, even if you're prepared to pay to
00:10:09fly, if it's six hours, six hours of your drive, "if there's
00:10:12a sun thunderstorm or snowstorm, you might not make it at all. that's a
00:10:16serious economic problem for Canada. secondly, it's too
00:10:19expensive. students, families, uh,
00:10:22children, uh, going to see their grandmother. their tourists uh,
00:10:26they have to pay too much, you either have to drive, sit in the car for six hours,
00:10:30which is crowded and not comfortable, ride via, which has fairs that are
00:10:34much higher actually than high-speed rail will have, or you end up flying,
00:10:38which is very expensive. the uh, the third problem which high speed rail can
00:10:42solve is it can provide capacity into our cities and link
00:10:46cities like Kingston, Peter, London, Ontario, trois
00:10:50rivier, which have suffered from low growth because they are remote, they're
00:10:53increasingly remote from the... cities because they rely on road traffic, all of
00:10:57those places can be places where we develop more housing, the land is
00:11:01much cheaper, it's affordable, and and the way to solve our housing crisis
00:11:05is to build it in places like Peter, Kingston, London, not to
00:11:09keep growing the edges of Toronto, because that's not working anymore and it's too
00:11:12expensive. Matty, it all sounds so reasonable, what's your response to
00:11:16that? It sounds
00:11:17like wonderful vision, uh, for me uh, this, I would love highspeed rail,
00:11:21I love it when I travel internationally, um, I think here the big issue that...
00:11:25is nice to have, not a need to have, we have so many issues we're grappling with in
00:11:28this country, whether it's every Canadian having a family doctor, whether
00:11:32it's indigenous drinking water, whether it's uh clean drinking water, whether it's national
00:11:36defense, whether it's even our urban transit systems that are falling
00:11:40apart right before our eyes, uh, the city of Toronto, for example, the TTC has a
00:11:44$24 billion dollar uh maintenance backlog by the time we get to 2035,
00:11:48we have so many things we we could be investing in, I think it would be great if we can move
00:11:52between our cities faster uh, I think we should be in. investing
00:11:55absolutely and ensuring that it's the existing system is reliable,
00:11:59upgrade what we have, make targeted investments, but
00:12:03really we have to be focusing on our country as a network and
00:12:07we have all sorts of infrastructural needs that could really use this money more.
00:12:10we did reach out to Alto to comment on the PBO report, they
00:12:14provided the following, a quote, here's part of it, once in operation Alto is
00:12:18expected to be financially self-sustaining with revenues projected to
00:12:22cover ongoing operating and maintenance cost. the statement
00:12:25also mentions that the PBO estimate is based on comparable
00:12:29international projects. Maddy, from a political standpoint, what
00:12:33challenges do you think lie ahead for the liberals on this project?
00:12:37the sticker shock is one in that this is becoming a big number and it's only
00:12:41likely to go up from here. the projects that are being referred to in
00:12:45California high speed rail, that's become a quagmy, it's not, it's not
00:12:49even close to finish yet, and in Britain the costs are escalating and they're
00:12:52moving away from uh high-speed rail. not even completing the network they had
00:12:56proposed, so there's really uh challenges there, and then there's challenges along the
00:13:00route that people are really concerned about their their property uh, the impact on
00:13:04farming families, the impact on the environment uh, there are uh there
00:13:08are real impacts and uh and in eastern Ontario and in Quebec there are
00:13:12concerns uh locally, so the politics of this could shift very quickly
00:13:16uh as this project proceeds if if it's not done uh carefully and
00:13:19transparently. we're live on cross country checkup with Matty Semiatikki
00:13:23from the University of Toronto and consultant Michael Shabbis and
00:13:27we're asking you, with cost estimates of up to $113 billion, are
00:13:31you on board for high-speed rail in Canada? What questions do you
00:13:34have? 1888-416-8333,
00:13:38or you can go to CBC.cash Air Check. Michael The
00:13:42Conservatives want to scrap the Alto Train all together, calling it a
00:13:46massive burden for taxpayers. Realistically, how much do you think
00:13:50will be covered by private investment versus public
00:13:52dollars? The Exp? is that high speed
00:13:56rail generates fairs, revenues actually with
00:14:00average fairs that are lower than they are on via today, operating surpluses of
00:14:04about 50%, so this line will carry 30
00:14:07million people, $80 ride, that's 2.4
00:14:10billion, you will see an operating surplus pretty soon after it opens
00:14:14of billion a year or more. if that doesn't seem
00:14:18believable, you should look to Europe and see where private companies are
00:14:22investing billions of dollars in fleets of trains to compete. the incumbant
00:14:25high-speed rail operators, there it will,
00:14:28it will not pay back 100% the capital cost, but it probably will
00:14:32pay back a third to a half. Matty, what do you make of
00:14:35that? let let's say that that's possible. I mean, we know that
00:14:39from transportation research that the costs are often underestimated and the
00:14:43benefits overestimated. They're projecting that they're going to have 24 million
00:14:47rides by 2055, even that seems ambitious, like the Eurostar
00:14:51connecting London and Paris, that just got to 20 million passenger.
00:14:55trips after 20 years, so to think that we're going to get to 24 million
00:14:59or 30 million as Michael has said uh seems fanciful, but uh
00:15:03let's uh we can we can uh stick with that, but even even
00:15:06still you still have all the capital cost and all the debt that's going to be put on the country in
00:15:10order the upfront investment that as Michael mentioned is never going to be repaid other
00:15:14than uh through uh uh by taxpayers. Actually, just
00:15:18clarify, the Eurostar, London, Paris, Brussels is only 10 million
00:15:22passengers, it's 20 million because they took over. the London,
00:15:25Brussels, Frankfurt Cologne services and put them into one company, so it didn't actually grow
00:15:29at all, it's only 10 million a year, but
00:15:32you have to understand, Paris, London, Brussels, Amsterdam, all
00:15:36have high-speed.
00:15:37roots going out
00:15:38in different directions from each, what you need to do is look at the per capita
00:15:42rottership in the whole country. In France, there are 120 million trips
00:15:46a year for 60 million people, 120 million high speed rail trips, so
00:15:50that's two trips per person in the whole country. In Spain, it's
00:15:54closer to one, in Italy it's one and a half, in Germany it's about
00:15:57two, when we say 30 million for the
00:16:01quarter, there will be 30 million people in the quarter, that's ridership
00:16:05similar to what Spain has its high-speed. system and they have
00:16:09higher car ownership and better roads than we do too by the way. For those of you
00:16:12who are listening or watching, I hope you decide to pick up your phone and give us
00:16:16call at 888-416-8333 or text us
00:16:202267588924 with cost estimates of up to
00:16:24$113 billion dollars. Are you on board for high-speed rail in
00:16:28Canada? What questions do you have? And before we go to calls,
00:16:32Matty, one more question for you. Sometimes when people look at this issue,
00:16:36particularly the way it seems to... have been playing out in Quebec and Ontario, they
00:16:39see an urban rural divide in terms of of
00:16:43support, who benefits the most from high-speed rail? people in
00:16:47the cities where the stations are, that's one of my other concerns about this, that we're going to
00:16:51spend uh up to 120 billion, maybe even more when this is all said and
00:16:55done, and there will be seven or eight cities that are connected, and everyone else uh
00:16:59with stations in them, and everyone else in this giant
00:17:02pro province, not to mention this entire country, will still be faced with the exact same challenges
00:17:06about getting around, still... having a family doctor, still having
00:17:10uh all sorts of other infrastructural issues, this is huge investment
00:17:13that will be taking so much of our capital uh, it will be soaking up, and
00:17:17yet all the challenges, it'll be really um focused in just a small
00:17:21number of areas whereas all the other parts of this country uh could be left
00:17:25behind without uh without additional funding. michael: the biggest
00:17:29beneficiaries individually are actually people in smaller cities, places
00:17:33like Peter, Kingston, Bellville, Brockville, tr rivier,
00:17:37they... travel five times as much, they go into a local hospital and they say,
00:17:41you've got a special condition, you got to
00:17:42go to doctor in Toronto, that never happens
00:17:44to you in Toronto, you never go into a lawyer in Montreal and he says, oh I can't handle this,
00:17:48there's an expert you got to see, he lives in Peter, people in small cities need to
00:17:52go to big cities, and Alto was learning, initially they didn't want to include the
00:17:56stage in Kingston, they thought it would lose money, it would delay the trains, they've now come
00:18:00around, they've recognized that you can have express and stopping trains as everyone
00:18:04else in the world does, so the express trains won't stop at the... intermediate places, they'll
00:18:08actually be able to go faster, but people in these intermediate station
00:18:12cities travel five times as much today on via as
00:18:16as people from big cities, and it will be the same with high speed rail, so that's why I get to
00:18:1930 million. I've built my rodarship estimate up using techniques that I've used
00:18:23for businesses, for private investments, real, hundreds of millions
00:18:27of dollars spent on rolling stock, and and that's that's where the
00:18:31biggest ben, most people in Toronto will never use this, most people in
00:18:35Toronto don't go to Montreal, they're
00:18:36not even sure.
00:18:37it is sometimes, i think, hopefully more them will, they'll get to know other parts of
00:18:41Canada, people will go to quebec city who've never been there, but the biggest
00:18:44beneficiaries will actually be the people in the smaller cities where Alto must
00:18:48stop. okay, that's the voice of Michael Shabbis, reilway consultant, and we
00:18:52also are hearing from Matty Simitiki, director the Infrastructure Institute at the
00:18:56University of Toronto, they're with us for the remainder the
00:18:59hour, as are those who call us at
00:19:02888-416-8333, like David Kitchen who's in Winnipeg.
00:19:06Hi David, hi. and how do you feel about high-speed
00:19:09rail? well, it's interesting, like i don't live
00:19:13in the area, i live in winapeg, but do travel to
00:19:17Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal for work and for pleasure, and
00:19:21over the last couple decades I've I've seen the traffic increase, like I
00:19:24just have anxiety whenever I see Toronto
00:19:28or uh, Montreal on my air itiner, because I
00:19:32know how much pressure there is on the airlines and the
00:19:35airports there, and... "i've driven the highways between
00:19:39Ottawa and Montreal or Toronto and Ottawa and I can
00:19:42see that it's just
00:19:45unmanageable, that traffic has to move somehow,
00:19:49so when I hear about high-speed rail, I,
00:19:53I too, I'm a fan of of high-speed rail, I've traveled it in
00:19:56Europe, but for the cost, I'm
00:19:59curious which is the better option, do we expand
00:20:02airports and flights and expand highways to
00:20:06manage that?" excess travel capacity or
00:20:10is high speed rail the better option that gives us a third
00:20:14option over over flying and driving. haven't
00:20:18heard much about that and i'm curious to hear what uh what your
00:20:22experts might say about that. i am too. david, let's start with
00:20:25Michael. so air isn't going to do anything for the smaller
00:20:29cities in between the cities uh there there there used to be flights
00:20:33from kingston air Canada stop them. they still do fly from London but that...
00:20:37what's going to how long that's going to last, it's not going to carry commuters, air
00:20:41is always going to be expensive, it's always going to be disrupted in
00:20:44weather, so rail, the reason every other rich country
00:20:48in the world, except I guess... Canada in the United States has high-speed
00:20:52rail and intercity electric rail which are really a continuum that you
00:20:56know I let's let's not get focused on the speed so much is that it's actually
00:21:00far cheaper, you carry people a cost per seat that is
00:21:04half of what it is on vz diesel trains so so all these
00:21:07things can solve it uh places like London and Kitchener used to
00:21:11be an hour two hours from Toronto when I was kid I'm now pretty
00:21:15old and now it's three to four hours they've become increasingly
00:21:19isolated. "and it will only get worse without rail. rail is
00:21:23the only technology in the world that can solve that kind of short,
00:21:27medium, inter city transportation problem, and it's what everybody
00:21:31else does and there's a reason because it works.
00:21:34maddie? yeah, i'd like to see much more integrated network,
00:21:37focus on improving the via network that that we have
00:21:41now, look at intercity bus so that we can serve many of our much
00:21:45smaller communities that are as Michael mentioned, almost completely
00:21:48detached.
00:21:49I do have. ideas about uh looking at uh at Canada becoming a leader in
00:21:53electric airlines and airplanes, we are such a big country that
00:21:57we're never going to be able to blank at this entire place uh with high-speed rail, we need to think
00:22:00differently than the convention for other countries, we're a giant country that's that's
00:22:04relatively sparsely populated, we have dense pockets, we could be thinking
00:22:08differently, one the challenges obviously with air is about the environmental implications,
00:22:12if we can get if we can be leaders in electric air, it's something we could do here in the
00:22:15country and it could become an export industry, i think we need to think uh differently
00:22:19about we go about this and the final point is road tools, many the other
00:22:23countries that we compare ourselves to, they have high-speed rail networks, they also have road
00:22:27tools that generate revenue and encourage people to take the public transit. i think that's
00:22:31something we need to look at in Canada as well. lots of ways to get your point of view
00:22:35on the air, including getting in touch with us online, and our producer Meg
00:22:38Cambell is tracking some of that reaction. hi Meg,
00:22:42hello, what kind of responses are you seeing? yeah, the
00:22:46people are talking planes, trains and automobiles here, so...
00:22:50Heather Levy
00:22:50in Stone mails Ontario shared her thoughts via aircheck. She wrote, "My
00:22:54township is one the areas being considered for Alto.
00:22:58For me, this is not an abstract debate. It can mean a rail corridor through
00:23:01homes, farms, forests and communities where people have built their
00:23:05lives. Communities deserve a full conversation before Canada commits
00:23:09and corridor communities are asked to bear the impacts and then Tony
00:23:12Winson and Gwelf Ontario shared his perspective.
00:23:16He said after my recent travels in China involving. multiple train
00:23:20trips, I felt I had gone back decades in time returning to
00:23:24Canada, a train at 300 kilometers per hour through
00:23:27multiple mountain tunnels, is nothing unusual in China, with
00:23:31passenger numbers much higher than those seen during busy day at Toronto's
00:23:35Union Station, and Patrick Osborne and Vancouver BC
00:23:39shared his thoughts online. He wrote high-speed rail is laudable
00:23:42goal, but I prefer to see this funding go towards solutions that improve
00:23:46regular passenger rail service Canada wide rather. than this
00:23:50narrow corridor, maybe we need more regular track
00:23:54along existing rail corridors so passengers trains don't have to
00:23:58deal with CP and CN's right of way, we let passenger rail
00:24:02atrophy for decades, why don't we fix system-wide issues
00:24:06first before we set off on this ambitious and expensive
00:24:09project? very clever to invoke planes, trains and automobiles cuz you
00:24:13know that's a thanksgiving movie, exactly, one week
00:24:17away people, ex okay, and you are ' less than a week
00:24:20away until we hear from you again on some the online reactions, so we'll
00:24:24check in with you maybe in about 20 minutes or so. with cost estimates
00:24:28of up to $113 billion dollars. are you on board for high-speed
00:24:32rail in Canada? what questions do you have? 888
00:24:364168333 or you can speak directly to Meg
00:24:40by going to CBC.ca/aircheck. right now though, I'd like to speak
00:24:43to someone whose livelihood could be on the line. Karine
00:24:47Bercier is co-owner of Ber business that cleans
00:24:51and sells soy beans and cereal seeds. all 3,0
00:24:55acres of her family's land sit directly inside Alto's proposed
00:24:59rail corridor, and we've reached her in St.
00:25:02Isador, Ontario, about an hour east of Ottowa. Hi
00:25:06Kareen, hi, thanks for having me.
00:25:10Uh, so how do you feel, what kind of impact? Give me an example of an
00:25:13impact that uh, this proposed railline could have on your
00:25:29had in pack, I mean we've put everything on hold uh
00:25:33regarding some projects we were in the works uh
00:25:36um in our family business um
00:25:40and uh we're transferring land right now uh to the
00:25:44next generation which is us and uh we've
00:25:48considered uh stopping some transfers and everything and this has
00:25:51been in the plans for us for the last five years, we've been working on
00:25:55this with lawyers and um
00:25:58and um...
00:26:02and um accountants for a long time, so there's also planning
00:26:06and these large farms that we own
00:26:10now, there's lots of equity behind it, and
00:26:13in cas crop farming in itself, I
00:26:17mean the the margins are small, there's
00:26:21all the all around
00:26:24the um, there's so many factors we can't control
00:26:28agriculture in itself, we can't control the...
00:26:32fields in our field, we can't control mother nature, we can't
00:26:35control um uh the prices of mark market
00:26:39prices, we can't control input costs, so there's so
00:26:43many things you can't control, yeah, will you get compensation
00:26:47though if if this rear line goes ahead and cuts through your property, mean if
00:26:51they pass let's say they say the they're going to take 60
00:26:54meters, they need 60 meters wide for this
00:26:57train, um well the 60
00:27:01meter uh Yes, could pass a small
00:27:05variable of my my parts of of land, but I have
00:27:09land on the other side of that 60 meters, right, so
00:27:12I'll have to access that land, and a large portion
00:27:16of my other partials are are going to be on the other
00:27:20side, and they won't be doing overpasses on every
00:27:23small country road, so we'll have to do crazy detours, our
00:27:27windows of opportunity in the fields are very
00:27:30narrow, uh... as they
00:27:33are, and so we'll have to probably do 45
00:27:37minutes one way to get to to land, and
00:27:40we do go to that land maybe uh 15 times a year,
00:27:44so there's lots of back and forts that we do that will
00:27:48just add to our cost of operations,
00:27:52and then there's also some part the land we won't have access
00:27:56to, will we be compensated for that? and then there's
00:27:59a so it's just the viability. of our farms
00:28:03are really in question when you think of all these challenges, I
00:28:07mean they're gonna, they might cut some the land in half, they won't be
00:28:10able to avoid that, because that train needs to go
00:28:14straight, right, so if they cut some in half,
00:28:17there's we have big parcels of land now
00:28:21that have complex drainage involved,
00:28:25so cutting that and half will bring
00:28:28um a big challenge with drainage, and that...
00:28:32too, I'm assuming Alto will pay for damages there, but
00:28:36again it's a gray zone, we were not so sure,
00:28:39so and then you have parcels of land that
00:28:43won't be big rectangular land, there they're going to be may
00:28:47maybe triangular land, and with our big machinery, heavy
00:28:50machinery will compact some of that land, so then will
00:28:54affect our yields, so there's so many things
00:28:58to to think about, and and
00:29:02it just... makes us think, well, if
00:29:05food security is something we think about, and the prime
00:29:09minister did talk about that in January, um, if
00:29:13we want to be self-sufficient, if we want
00:29:16independence, especially in the air of trade
00:29:20negotiations and all that, I think, taking
00:29:23parcels of land like this, and impacting the viability of
00:29:27strong farms,
00:29:29is um, it's, it's scary.
00:29:32ultimately, we have less than a minute left, there have been
00:29:36i guess the opportunity, there has been the opportunity for public
00:29:39consultation, how was that gone? so
00:29:43public consultation, we went to a public consultation in
00:29:46January, it was more of a PR campaign for Alto, I
00:29:50mean we didn't get any answers there, and then
00:29:53we formed roundtables with our
00:29:56NP um to talk about all the challenges
00:30:00and all the mitigation possible. abilities and all
00:30:03that. um, we've received answers from Alto,
00:30:07but it's very generic answers, nothing concrete, so we're
00:30:11still to this day, nine months later, we still feel like we're
00:30:14left in the dark and we have nothing answered, and
00:30:18the the the unknown is very detrimental to the
00:30:22economics of our our um
00:30:26local economies. okay, karene, thank you very
00:30:29much, thank you. is the co-owner
00:30:33of a farm that cleans and sells seeds, specifically soy bean and
00:30:37cereal seeds, and we reached her in St. Isador,
00:30:40Ontario. Our question this hour and cross country checkup with cost estimates of up
00:30:44to $113 billion dollars: are you on board for high-speed rail
00:30:48in Canada? What questions do you have?
00:30:501888-416-8333, or you can
00:30:54text us
00:31:18Prouse now, who is in Toronto. Hi Jon,
00:31:20hello, I see you have concerns about climate change in this
00:31:24conversation, and you have a question. Yes, my question
00:31:28is, and it's the question that you raise is the cost
00:31:31113 billion dollars, but I i don't think
00:31:35I'm just wondering, has there been any um
00:31:39factoring in the cost the effects of
00:31:43um,
00:31:43you know, having more... short hall flights, which is the result
00:31:47of um traveling between Toronto and Ottawa and
00:31:50Montreal and Quebec. um, as anyone, that
00:31:54the the use of short hall fights is major contributor to
00:31:58climate change, and I don't think that people are
00:32:01factoring in the cost that it that we're seeing with all the climate
00:32:05disasters like wildfires, floods, um,
00:32:08you know, um, disasters like storms, it's it's
00:32:12actually costing money and it's actually... um impeding
00:32:15certain businesses like farming, i the last caller mentioned you know
00:32:19the forces of mother nature, well the forces are getting stronger that we're
00:32:23and i'm
00:32:23think just i don't wondering
00:32:24has anyone thought about maybe getting funding from insurance company that's paying out for all these
00:32:28um these uh disasters.
00:32:32the just thank pick question one you very much of
00:32:33jone and for
00:32:34i'll you uh mattie, do you know has there been any
00:32:38kind of uh like hard analysis in terms
00:32:42of actual
00:32:44you know numbers or? the
00:32:45of climate costs of having this train as opposed to as Joan would
00:32:49say more short hall flights? so Jone is absolutely right
00:32:53that short hall flights have an impact on the climate. um,
00:32:57the train is not a slam dunk when it comes to climate change. the reason is that the
00:33:01construction has lot of what's called embodied carbon that you have to, you use lot
00:33:05of concrete and steel and all of that has carbon
00:33:08impacts, all of that to put all the rails and everything in the
00:33:11ground. that has if we think of it a carbon cost, and it has to... be offset by the
00:33:15ridership, so the ridership has to be really high over many years in
00:33:19order to offset that initial investment so to speak, and we haven't seen a full
00:33:23assessment yet, life cycle assessment, but uh, it would be decades uh
00:33:27likely before it pays off because of how consequential the construction will be of
00:33:31a project like this. let's go to a question from social media, Dick Coott in
00:33:35Stitzville, Ontario asks, the problem with via we hear is
00:33:39that they have to share tracks with freat trains, why don't we hear anyone calling
00:33:43for the double tracking and upgrading? the existing lines a fraction the
00:33:47cost of proposed high-speed rail with
00:33:50fewer expropriations. Michael, well, the
00:33:54main line from Toronto to Montreal is actually entirely double track,
00:33:58some sections are triple track. The trouble is you've got mile long freight
00:34:01trains mixing in. It's not just that they're slow, it's they're
00:34:05fundamentally unreliable. They break down every day there's a train that
00:34:08breaks down somewhere on the line, not seriously, but it's delayed for an hour or two while they fix
00:34:12a brake hose or something like that somewhere along the. train freight
00:34:16is just not compatible with passenger rails, the way freight is operated in North
00:34:20America. In Europe, freight is run differently, the freight trains act more
00:34:24like passenger trains, they're very reliable, they're much shorter, their
00:34:28freight chargers are also twice what they are in Canada, so if
00:34:32Canada wants to have farmers and mines pay twice as much to move their
00:34:36freight to the ports, then we could make CN change its railway to
00:34:39operate so you could share the tracks, you still wouldn't have fast
00:34:42railway, you still wouldn't be able to run frequently and the costs
00:34:46of conventional rail are actually very high. it it the reason
00:34:50jet planes are used to cross the Atlantic isn't so much because they're
00:34:54faster than propeller planes, it's because it's the cheapest way to move people long
00:34:58distances over water is by jet planes.
00:35:01electric high-speed rail is actually cheaper than
00:35:04conventional diesel or even conventional electric rail
00:35:08for the distances we're looking at. if you're building new line anyway and and we have
00:35:12to build new tracks, you might as well build them in open. there aren't any mountains
00:35:16in the way so you might as well make the tracks pretty straight
00:35:19and you might as well go fast, it's what the French and the Spanish do
00:35:22and we should too. I'm ean Hannahman, sing in Vancouver, this is Cross
00:35:26Country Checkup and you've heard me talk about
00:35:28CBC.ca/aircheck, that is a way
00:35:32to give us a comment or also say you'd like to be on the show and
00:35:35Jone de Frusha uh did the latter and she is
00:35:39on the phone right now from Peter County Ontario. Hi
00:35:42Jon. Hi Ian. Uh, you have concerns I
00:35:46see about a potential stop in Peter, tell us about that?
00:35:50I do. Um, I think that most
00:35:53the um people going from Peterborough are going
00:35:57through to Toronto, and I'm wondering why they can't just
00:36:01beef up the um, the regional transportation
00:36:04system in this area, like a go-train from Peter to Toronto
00:36:08or Peter, osua even Link, um, we don't have that right
00:36:12now, and I just don't think that... the volume
00:36:16of people actually coming to Peter say from
00:36:20from Toronto or from Montreal, they're not, why are they
00:36:24going to stop in in Peter, the likelihood is? they're aiming
00:36:28for Toronto where the bus big businesses. Michael, what
00:36:31about that? why why not uh beef up uh go-train service and for
00:36:35those who aren't familiar with it? far away from Ontario, the government of
00:36:39Ontario commuter trains, which when I've taken them to visit a friend of mine in
00:36:43Burlington, they seem to be really efficient. uh, why not beef up that service
00:36:47between Peter and Toronto as opposed to this multi-billion dollar high-speed
00:36:51rail project? so my my cottage is actually near Peter so I got to declare
00:36:55in interest. um, cities at the distance of Peterborough in
00:36:58in Europe and Britain, in fact there's a city called Peter, which is about 100
00:37:02kilometers north of London, they generate thousands of commuter trips
00:37:06every day into the big city, Peter will grow, it may double in
00:37:10size over the next 30 years if this is built, you'll have 5, 10,00 people
00:37:13a day commuting in from Peterborough, not daily commuted so much
00:37:17as people who live in Peter, maybe live
00:37:19in the court, the likes go in the Toronto tour three times a week, you can't do it
00:37:23by upgrading the existing tracks, the tracks that run into Peter now,
00:37:27carry orange juice and rocks from a mine - the track speed is
00:37:3110 miles per hour, you may have noticed how slowly the trains are moving, you might
00:37:35get it up to 40 miles an hour, it would still be two-hour trip, you've got to build a high-speed
00:37:39line between Toronto Auto and Montreal, it might as well pass near Peter, might
00:37:43as well have a station, the extra cost is tiny and you can make lot of
00:37:47money, carrying commuters in, the fair might be 20 bucks each
00:37:50way uh, it'll make lot of money for Alto carrying people into
00:37:54Toronto and it'll
00:38:45essential, people have to start looking at public transit like
00:38:48it is public infrastructure. roads do not make money either, yet
00:38:52nobody really bats an eye when governments spend millions building and
00:38:56maintaining roads. so why is it that
00:39:06for high-speed rail, the prohibited cost of construction
00:39:09combined with high operational and maintenance costs will not be
00:39:13supported by low ridership and expensive user costs. The
00:39:16business case doesn't consider costs of amputated communities and
00:39:20especially family run farms already struggling with rising diesel
00:39:24fuel and other operational costs and on tiktok
00:39:27CBC News got this message from Nate. Nate wrote would love to get
00:39:31see Canada get a bullet train from coast to coast
00:39:34and another user wrote um on TikTok, this is going to be
00:39:38like California high speed rail 2.0. I am non support of
00:39:42this. We already have plenty of flights between Quebec City, Montreal,
00:39:46Ottawa and Toronto, and that doesn't require the
00:39:49expropriation of private property or construction of this mega
00:39:53infrastructure. All right, Meg, thanks for uh monitoring that.
00:39:57I think we'll... you back one more time on this topic before the end
00:40:00the hour, let's go to David Belhiv, who's in
00:40:04Ottawa, and David, we connected with you before the show, because you're
00:40:08the founder the Go Alto campaign, an independent
00:40:11initiative, building public support for this
00:40:15project, why are you so enthusiastic about Alto? for
00:40:19me, Alto is really about what it can transform, so uh,
00:40:23we talked about that earlier and other people have chimed in about this,
00:40:26but basically we're comparing a way of travel that we have not
00:40:30experienced yet in Canada, which would enable people to
00:40:34do more trips, but also the trips that matter to them, so we're
00:40:38already wasting time at airports, we're wasting time driving between our largest
00:40:41cities, while we could do it much more efficiently, for cheaper
00:40:45and actually a schedule that works for more people, so
00:40:49it's very interesting when we are from people uh reaching out to the campaign
00:40:53to share what it means to them personally, i thought people talk about being able
00:40:57to see specialists in other city, to be able to come visit their
00:41:01family or parents when the they need assistance for various
00:41:05reasons or simply being able to choose a program of study in the
00:41:08university that interests them, so my speed dull is not about
00:41:12just fast train a fast track, it's about what it enables
00:41:16around it, and frankly I'm really excited for a future where we'll have
00:41:20actual options that don't rely on people driving to get where they need
00:41:24in this country. A lot the criticism of this...
00:41:37That is lot of money, does
00:41:39that give you pause at all? "it doesn't a single bit,
00:41:42because let's look
00:41:44at what the PBO actually states, so their analysis is based on
00:41:47comparative cost from projects in other parts the world,
00:41:51and it's important to remember 113 is the top the
00:41:55range, the bottom the range is 75 billions per the pbo.
00:41:58this is a completely different forecasting model than the one used by Alto to
00:42:02come up with their own range of 60 to 90 billion, but it tells us something
00:42:06important, we are in the general ball park for..." project that
00:42:10can meaningfully transform our nation and it's also w to remembering
00:42:14that cost is only one side the equation because we can also look
00:42:18at the benefits we get on the economy, we the benefits we get as
00:42:22society, but also what we enable for decades to
00:42:25come. you're an interesting position,
00:42:28you you're from originally Quebec City, you live in Ottawa,
00:42:32maybe there's a day sometime, who knows where life takes you, you might work in Montreal,
00:42:36all of that kind of factors in your view of this as well, right?
00:42:40Yeah, absolutely, because I believe like, well, we're keep talking about
00:42:44making the Canadian economy stronger, well, half the
00:42:47population and half the economic output of this nation happens
00:42:51in this very corridor, so I believe we can, by
00:42:55integrating it further, by having more opportunities for people to travel
00:42:58efficiently between those cities, we can actually enable people to reach better
00:43:02outcomes and also have access to a larger market. I can think of
00:43:06businesses here in Otawa that could make more business with...
00:43:10people in Montreal, in Rivière, in Kingston potentially, in Toronto,
00:43:14but also for example, people that are in the academic field,
00:43:18which is where I personally work, well, we have scholars that
00:43:22have the opportunity to go to conferences in Montreal, in Toronto, that might choose not
00:43:25to do it, because it requires them to spend multiple days instead of being
00:43:29able to go in the morning and come back by lunchtime, this is the kind
00:43:33of decisions we're putting aside because we don't have actual options
00:43:37we can rely on, David B. Thank you very
00:43:41much, real pleasure. David is the founder the Go
00:43:44Alto campaign, an independent initiative building public
00:43:47support for this project, and our two guests for
00:43:51this hour are Matty Simitiki, the director the
00:43:55Infrastructure Institute at the University of Toronto, and Michael
00:43:58Shabbis, and I'm going to put this next question, Michael to you, he's a
00:44:02railway expert in our studio in Toronto, and and here's
00:44:05a question Michael, we got from social media, uh, in fact, actually,
00:44:10I'm looking at it now is from a handful of listeners have reached out online to express
00:44:13concerns about the viability of high-speed rail given our
00:44:17harsh winters and and weather conditions uh what about that
00:44:21concern? well obviously it's not easy to run anything a
00:44:24snowstorm uh but the experience is that rail is just
00:44:28about the most reliable form of intercity transport. there will be
00:44:32times when the wires come down when trees blow blow across the tracks
00:44:36there will be times when the trains have to slow down because of snowstorms and
00:44:40but the it will be the best way to travel when it's when the weather
00:44:44is bad outside. our phone number on cross country checkup is
00:45:22Okay, so it's interesting, so you made the drive from Duncan to Sydney
00:45:26Bc, where the Victoria Airport is, and then drove back home, and
00:45:30you're way out on the west of of western Canada, how do
00:45:34you feel about this big project? well, there's so many
00:45:38question marks and I think your two guests would would... confirm some of this stuff
00:45:41um a cost 113 billion then as we all
00:45:45know there could be cost overruns top of that hopefully not uh this is
00:45:49tax payer money although hopefully there'd be some corporate but
00:45:52perhaps this is something that needs a national re uh national referendum
00:45:56about this buse that's a lot of coin and you know
00:46:00there's reality versus dreams a bullet train is a dream for
00:46:04Canada uh we have mountains we have degrous geography as
00:46:08one gentleman just talked about other stuff um,
00:46:12but reality is uh, we've got repair costs the
00:46:15tracks that are rotting right now, on Vancouver island we have not
00:46:19had any rail since 2011, no freight, no
00:46:23passenger, and those tracks are rotting, we have the island corridor
00:46:27foundation, which you may know about in that uh is trying to resurrect train
00:46:30on the island with a workable commuter
00:46:33schedule so people could use it, but there'd have to be shuttles or
00:46:37something at either end
00:46:38so you get out
00:46:39the train and then then what you can walk to work
00:46:42um and
00:46:43you know it's it's a it would be a great idea to get people over the
00:46:47Malahat which is a dangerous mountain uh given
00:46:50weather uh but perhaps pilot projects to test
00:46:54this line out between in the high population areas, which were
00:46:58not uh Toronto to Montreal
00:47:01uh, but the idea is to perhaps we have
00:47:04to uh crank up the gas prices, the fuel costs
00:47:08even more to get people out their cars and think about using a train. yeah,
00:47:12could you imagine the political cost of that though? well, I can,
00:47:16but
00:47:17you know, this is huge project. um, I've been in many other
00:47:20countries that leave us behind, in rail including India uh
00:47:24where trains are no one can afford cars uh
00:47:28but the I would hope if we did something like this
00:47:31all the stuff would be made the hardware would be made in Canada
00:47:35like through bombardier or someone like that okay
00:47:39um and I'm I'm assuming high speed trade are we talking
00:47:42passenger and freight or or what do I think this is just a
00:47:46passenger but Peter let's leave it there thank you very much for the call I I really
00:47:50appreciate it um let me put a question to to Matty, um, Albert
00:47:54is moving ahead with at least discussing, kind of
00:47:58getting serious about a high-speed real project uh between Calgary, Red
00:48:02Deer and Edmonton, uh, does the investment in
00:48:06HP rail make sense in in that part the country?
00:48:09Again, we need to see the business case, and this has been one the real critiques about Alto
00:48:13as well, is that so far, what's been released publicly is essentially a marketing
00:48:17prospectus that needs much more detail, and in Alberta, uh, they're at
00:48:21an early stage. uh and I think it's okay to talk about these things and to come back
00:48:25to uh your caller David's comments earlier, I think that vision is
00:48:29really compelling. The question is for me, it's partly about cost and it's
00:48:33really about the opportunity cost, what else could that money be spent on? That's
00:48:37you know, it's hard to fathem how much $110 billion dollars is, but you have
00:48:41to think about what else could you could uh invest and get for that. You know,
00:48:45people are talking about stitching together entire regions and having people
00:48:48travel from one city to the next to go to school and what not, I have.
00:48:52students who struggle to get from a Tobaco, which is suburb of Toronto, into the University of
00:48:56Toronto downtown to their classes, because
00:48:58the the Toronto transit commission has been starved of cash for a long time and has 19
00:49:02go slow zones where the trains literally have to go slow because
00:49:05the the tracks are not in a state of good repair. This is being repeated right across our
00:49:09transportation systems across the country, where we have
00:49:121.6 billion people who are trips on our urban transit
00:49:16systems where the systems are falling apart, they're struggling, they're
00:49:18unreliable, and this is and and our regions are... struggling in
00:49:22the same way that David talked about this this national vision and this inter city
00:49:26uh vision, many more people are struggling to get to their jobs or get to their appointments within
00:49:30the cities that they live in because the systems are falling apart, so I really think whether it's in
00:49:34Alberta or in Ontario, in Quebec or elsewhere in the country, this is a
00:49:38question about both cost and what else that money could be uh better spent
00:49:42on. Back to the phones, Andrew Teedson is in Kingston, Ontario, hi
00:49:46Andrew, hi, so the uh Alto
00:49:49Route would be close to your property uh... and
00:49:53you are in favor of it? yeah, um,
00:49:57my property is long and narrow, so if lost a bit of land from it, um, it's not
00:50:01a big deal for me, more concerned with other farmers and things, but in spite of
00:50:05that, I'm still in favorite, because this is a project for the future, it's for
00:50:09my potential grandchildren, it's not for me, I'm 61, I will never ride that
00:50:13train, um, actually,
00:50:15you know what, something that I I we should make sort of clear, uh,
00:50:19Michael, if all of this went ahead, when would the train start? to
00:50:22roll, i think they could get trains running from a
00:50:26station on the edge of Montreal to a station on the edge of Ottawa in 10 or
00:50:3012 years if they started now, there are no mountains to go
00:50:34through, there's a bridge across the Ottawa river, it's mostly through open
00:50:38country, it's about the most favorable terrain in the world to build a
00:50:42high-speed railline uh, the place that's even better is Alberta
00:50:45actually, which is why Edmonton and Calgary makes so much sense uh, it's it's
00:50:49open country between the two cities, so it's it's
00:50:53simple construction. okay, Andrew, so hopefully you will get a chance to, if you
00:50:57so choose to ride at least a portion of this high speed project
00:51:01if it if it goes ahead. um, but what is it about the legacy
00:51:05of this for your grandkids that has you on board?
00:51:08well, the root represents half of Canada's population
00:51:12and about half of our our GDP, and that's only growing. the
00:51:16same time, the number of urban people that don't have cars is increasing all the
00:51:20time, and it's a way of connecting. Canada for people that aren't
00:51:24affluent enough to have a car.
00:51:27Um, if you look at even what a cheap car costs to run per year,
00:51:31and
00:51:31you take a TCC pass, there's still dozens of potential
00:51:34trips between Ottawa or Toronto and and Montreal, um,
00:51:38for less money than it cost to have a car and an urban center. Yeah, okay,
00:51:42thank you, Andrew for your call, appreciate it. And let's go back to Meg Cambell,
00:51:46who, as you know, if you've been listening all hour, all hour, has been
00:51:50watching the online conversation. Yeah, the
00:51:54conversation is yet to be derailed, so Cindy
00:51:57Bowen Ontario sent us this
00:52:00message. I don't believe is the best
00:52:04interest the... country, we've so many issues that we should
00:52:07prioritize, healthcare, homelessness and existing
00:52:10infrastructure maintenance are few, we should protect our prime
00:52:14agricultural land, this train if people actually use it, will hurt
00:52:18the small communities along the route, and John Duglin
00:52:22in Brunel Pei shared his thoughts via email. John
00:52:26wrote, "I understand
00:52:27that the construction of this project would create an enormous amount of
00:52:31economic activity in the construction phase. I question that..."
00:52:35actual long-term benefit, I would like to see development of Atlantic
00:52:38Canada's offshore wind power potential, cross
00:52:42country energy infrastructure, establishing an
00:52:46enhanced national wildfire fighting service, and yes,
00:52:50some sort of reasonable passenger service from Enlaton Canada to
00:52:53Central Canada be given greater priority and attention,
00:52:57and Mary Claire, Mosikot reached us from Port
00:53:01Alberny, BBC, she says, I grew up in Montreal and
00:53:05and I know the Toronto to Montreal drive well, the 401
00:53:08especially. I'm fully on board with the proposed high-speed
00:53:12rail. It would provide safer and more efficient
00:53:15alternative to driving a very dangerous highway. There are so
00:53:19many transport trucks on the road and bad weather in the winter.
00:53:23Meg Camble, thank you very much. Let's go to
00:53:27Lumsden Ciscatuin now. David Stillborne uh is calling. Hi
00:53:31David, hello there. So I see you would like to see better.
00:53:35real, but not for commuters, tell us about that? thank you kindly, i'll
00:53:39just a little bit, the question has already been about
00:53:43freight trains, but i'll just reference specifically how
00:53:47Canada is focused so much in the south, but so much not
00:53:51only of our current resource needs, but also our future
00:53:55resource needs are actually in the north. secondly,
00:53:59as we look at global transportation route, of course our arctic sovereignty is
00:54:03under threat with. a well-designed
00:54:06northern high-speed freight rail
00:54:10system, i would submit and expect we could actually
00:54:13undercut the costs and make global shipping across our
00:54:17portion the arctic um rather unattractive because we could do it will be
00:54:21cheaper by running it across Canada. okay, David, thank you very
00:54:24much for that call. uh, let's go to a
00:54:28question from social media, Megan Mccarrell sent is this: given
00:54:32that established trains between Ottawa and Toronto, are being cancelled by
00:54:36Via due to low ridership, how can Alto justify their predicted
00:54:40ridership numbers? By some accounts, the corporation believes that ridership
00:54:43between Montreal and Toronto will greatly exceed that of roots between much
00:54:47larger larger cities in Europe, such as Paris and London.
00:54:51We address this to an extent earlier in the hour, but but
00:54:54let's give uh Megan answer. I'll go to both of you,
00:54:58starting with you Michael, and uh, keep in mind we're just
00:55:02running a short of time here, but you go ahead, Michael, sure. i don't think v
00:55:06is cancelling those services because there are no passengers, i think they think they
00:55:10want to concentrate the services on other roots. i don't actually agree with lot of what they're
00:55:14doing, i don't think, i think there's massive pent up demand and they are
00:55:17overpricing the train services, actually they need to lengthen the trains.
00:55:21uh, comparisons with Europe are not correct either, uh, London to
00:55:25Paris is about 7 million people, i think, London to Brussels is about
00:55:295 million. typically you have five or six or 10 million
00:55:33any city pair. of those sizes, well for
00:55:36Alta, remember we're talking Toronto, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal,
00:55:40Montreal, Ottawa, Ottawa Quebec City, Montreal, Quebec City,
00:55:44eventually Toronto to London, uh, London to Ottawa, each
00:55:48of those will be generating two, three, four, five, six million passengers, that's
00:55:52how you get to the 30 million, you can't, these aren't single city pairs,
00:55:56these are multiple city pairs you're serving, so that's what you have to do to understand the
00:55:59ridership number. Matty, ridership numbers, what do you
00:56:02think, from my perspective? uh the way that I do it
00:56:06is I look at reference classes or comparators internationally uh this
00:56:10looks highly ambitious uh to me uh and and likely an
00:56:14overestimation which is what tends to happen with uh ridership
00:56:17forecasts uh and the other point about cutting service that's the other thing
00:56:21that has been observed internationally is that when high-speed rail goes in it sucks
00:56:25away some the the ridership uh from the regional trains to the
00:56:28local trains and you end up starting to see cuts in the network and you start to see atrophy
00:56:32there and that's another concern for people in... our communities who are wondering why their train
00:56:36service is disappearing, that is likely to accelerate if this high-speed rail line
00:56:40goes in as well. all right, we're running short of time on this topic, but let ask
00:56:44each of you at least one more question, michael, we were talking about
00:56:48via rail, if Alto takes over this route for
00:56:51high-speed service, what does happen to VR? well, I think on the
00:56:55roots between Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Campec City, the VR rail services
00:56:59will be discontinued, and I think that's the right answer, I have to say I didn't
00:57:03believe that three years. ago I've done a lot of analysis on it, but if we
00:57:07can have stations at Kingston, Bellville, Brockville, Peter, and actually somewhere
00:57:11near Santador, which is not too far from Cornwall, there there will be
00:57:15no passengers on the via trains between.
00:57:18in Montreal. What I don't think we should do is lose the brand. I actually think the ViA brand's a much better name
00:57:22than Alto. We should just say we're building new tracks for ViA. We're shifting
00:57:26via away from the CN tracks onto its own tracks. We're buying them a
00:57:29new fleet of fast trains so they can do that
00:57:32and we're serving pretty much all the same places with stations along the
00:57:36way plus few more. That's what we're really doing. Yeah, that that's an intriguing
00:57:40idea. Um, Matdy, beyond this high high speed rail
00:57:43project, and and again, this is something you touched on, but I want to ask you.
00:57:47directly, what other transportation projects should the government be making a
00:57:51priority of? investing in our urban uh regional transit
00:57:55networks uh, the transit networks are falling apart before our eyes,
00:57:59um, I was stuck a subway for 10 minutes yesterday and the speakers are so bad
00:58:03that you can't even hear what's going on and why the train is delayed even though they're trying to tell
00:58:07you. in Montreal they had a station taken out of service for structural reasons, in
00:58:11Ottawa they have they're having issues with reliability their service, the
00:58:14systems that people depend on every single day, are falling apart, this is
00:58:18not just about building new, it's about maintaining what we already have and
00:58:22expanding on it, so people in the day-to-day trips that they take the most regularly to
00:58:26get to all the things that are super important in their lives, that those that those trips can
00:58:30be done reliably, and in our cities where both the vast amount the trips are made
00:58:34and frankly the vast amount the pollution is is produced as well that we can
00:58:38do better and that people can uh move around our regions uh a
00:58:42smoother uh way, I think that's where really where the priority should be, we need to
00:58:45improve how we move between... cities but and
00:58:48and that can be invested into, but for some the money and let's
00:58:51put it elsewhere across our transportation networks as well. this is a live
00:58:55program cross country checkup and sometimes we make some changes on the
00:58:59fly. what i'm going to do actually is continue on this topic for few
00:59:03moments past the top the hour, so i'm going to come back to the two of you
00:59:07in just moment, and think i have time after the top the
00:59:11hour to squeeze in one more
01:00:15on CBC radio cross country checkup, Continues, I'm mean Hannah Mansing
01:00:19in Vancouver, and as we talk about high-speed rail for
01:00:22few more minutes, keep in mind our number continues to be
01:00:26888-416-8333.
01:00:30Scott Mayberry is in Northumberland,
01:00:33north uh, north, oh yeah,
01:00:36northermland, county, Ontario, hi Scott, good
01:00:40afternoon, uh, you've taken high-speed rail
01:00:44in China, and you have a question to our experts based on that.
01:00:47experience, yes, I have, I've taken in China, but also in
01:00:51France, and France are at great, and they have figured
01:00:54out, I'm a farmer as well, but...