Comments on: Canadian Conservatives Again Downplay Plan for Montréal-Toronto High-Speed Link

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:50:54 +0000

Who’s Alan?

And intercity rail doesn’t compete with intracity rail – it competes with rural highways and short-hop airlines, while intracity rail competes with buses and urban highways.

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 22:25:13 +0000

I think you are exactly right Alan, the Liberals were in no way better than the Conservatives on the issue of inter-city rail travel, and they were in power for much longer. Anon, do you base your accusation of rampant graft being why infrastructure hasn’t been better funded on anything in particular, or just a general feeling?
I think HSR is a fantastic idea, and one that could work very well in Canada. But I think there is something to the argument that existing inter and intra city rail improvements would be a much more cost effective activity. Can we do both? Sure. But the government should be careful with out money and should invest in projects that delivers services most efficiently to tax payers. Dealing with the “low hanging fruit” type problems of the existing rail lines is likely to be such an investment.

By: anon.

anon. — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:36:42 +0000

The *current* Conservative government are a pack of slimeballs who have been doing very crooked things — frankly I’m not surprised that they’re underinvesting in infrastructure, they need that money to shovel into their own pockets.

Perhaps a future Conservative, Liberal, Quebecois, or NDP government will do the right thing. The current one is a walking disaster and is only present thanks to suborning the Governor General and bribing opposition party members. Seriously, I can’t expect anything from them, at all.

By: planningpolitics

planningpolitics — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 08:42:38 +0000

No doubt that was the case. However, we must remember political parties aren’t ideologues on rail service – and those cuts were, sadly, a sign of the times. Canada is only in the excellent debt-GDP ratio you speak of because of massive sacrifices the whole country endured for 4 years in the 90s as Chretien brought the country from systemic deficit to surplus. (Canada only came back into surplus in 1998, so there were really only 10 years of surpluses, not 15).

The difference is those cuts were pragmatic and were happening in every department across the country. They were an unfortunate necessity. And let us not forget, the same thing happened in the US under Clinton, with similar success at bringing both North American countries into fiscal health and economic prosperity. As fiscal health returned, the Liberal party did, in fact, begin to invest substantially in transit before their defeat in 2006.

Now, we’re in a totally different situation, one we can all be excited about. After decades of global resistance to rail and investment in highways, there are telling signs that this can change. It’s unfortunate that while the UK, the US, and France move swiftly on investments in rail that the Conservative party is bucking the global trend and dragging their feet.

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 06:24:33 +0000

I thought the Liberals weren’t much better on these issues. Chretien paid lip service to Kyoto, but made no real effort to reduce emissions. The defunding of VIA, GO, and the TTC seems to continue regardless of which party is in charge. Wasn’t it the Liberals who starved VIA of funds so that it had to cut the Canadian to three days a week?

By: planningpolitics

planningpolitics — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:13:01 +0000

@Alon, very true. The trouble is the current Conservative government has been dragging its heels on infrastructure spending for years. While they claim to be injecting money from the stimulus now, there’s still $7bn sitting in the bank for 2007 that hasn’t been spent yet.

Nevertheless, the improvements they are seeking at VIA Rail are the type VIA’s board has been pushing for, and remain pretty good investments for now. Regardless of speed, just getting frequency up to world standards would be a great boon for us Canucks.

As for true HSR, we’ll surely have a change in government by 2011, and that will be when the real progress begins.

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:21:52 +0000

The sad thing is that Canada can afford this project more than any other country. It had a 15-year run of fiscal austerity, so that now its debt-to-GDP ratio is the lowest in the G7 and less than half the USA’s. It could easily deficit-finance such a project as part of a fiscal stimulus program. It can also propose HSR link-ups between Montreal and New York, Toronto and New York, and Toronto and Chicago. The last one especially can do a lot to help manufacturing by increasing Michigan-Ontario integration.