True Patriot Love - February 21, 2026


The State Of Public Transit

Topics
high-speed rail costs high-speed rail vs. air travel
Hosted by
Shara Micucci Mike Wixson
Mentioned
Brady Wedham Hamilton Mike Understaffed Lakeshore GoTrain Porter Paul
Canada's Condo Crash May Be Around The Corner Canada's Problem With Gang Crime

Episode Stats


Length

17 minutes

Words per minute

191.76

Word count

3,378

Sentence count

359

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Brady Wedham joins us to talk about his experience riding the GO train in the winter, and why he thinks public transit in general is in need of a major update. TPL Media is a podcast that focuses on the intersection of technology and culture in the digital age. Hosted by Alex Blumberg and Matt Knutson, TPL is dedicated to bringing quality, locally sourced content to listeners.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Canada has invested billions in public transit. Delivery has been slow and expensive. It's been
00:00:11.120 unreliable in some of the best cases in major cities across the country. And in fact, it doesn't
00:00:17.120 necessarily match up with the way Canadians live. Talking with me about that today and more,
00:00:23.100 Brady Wedham joins us, reporter at large here at TPL. Brady, thanks. I appreciate this.
00:00:27.980 Reporter and GoTrain specialist. I think I've become a GoTrain specialist over the past
00:00:33.120 eight months or so. Yeah, it's been quite the experience. Before we get into it,
00:00:37.480 I want to remind people, subscribe, tell a friend, tplmedia.ca. And in the Play Store,
00:00:43.640 you'll find the TPL, True Patriot Love app, and the same thing for Apple. So I recommend you do it.
00:00:51.140 All of the most recent shows go up. Plus, there's some members-only content coming to YouTube. So
00:00:55.840 if you're watching this on YouTube, right, maybe start signing up or thinking about it and
00:01:00.480 allocating those funds for that. But yeah, we're going to put up a couple of features out on YouTube.
00:01:05.260 So some premium content is on its way. Two new docs are slated for members-only,
00:01:10.560 and we'll be giving you more information about that. But yeah, you are a GoTrain specialist here
00:01:15.980 in the studio. Many people that work here are transit people, but the majority of us are drivers.
00:01:22.320 Yep. Your experience over the last seven months on the Ontario Go between the Hamilton area and the
00:01:29.460 Toronto area has been nothing short of abominable. You know, I used to take pride in riding the GoTrain
00:01:35.560 back in like 2016, 2017-ish. I was on it every single day for a year going from, I lived on Lakeshore
00:01:43.980 going down into Hamilton for a business that I owned. And I used to love getting on that train.
00:01:49.440 You almost felt like it was like, my baby takes the morning. It went through your head.
00:01:54.940 I didn't see that coming. I'll be honest with you.
00:01:56.700 The sunrise.
00:01:57.080 But I get the vibe.
00:01:58.320 Yeah. No, it felt like you were on the train to go and do something successful. Now, when you get
00:02:04.020 on the train in 2026, 10 years later, you feel if the train actually shows up, because they have been
00:02:11.980 canceling a lot of trains recently, and we'll get into that in detail here through the episode. But
00:02:16.380 showing up to the train now feels like it's your one getting robbed on your ticket price.
00:02:21.160 What are you paying?
00:02:21.600 The average is about $15 to $20 per one-way.
00:02:25.460 That's an expensive ride.
00:02:26.660 It used to be $21 inclusive for the day, right?
00:02:29.020 $30 a day is a lot of money to ask people to put aside from the paycheck.
00:02:32.800 It is. And if you're most of these stations outside of the downtown Toronto GTA core, they take an Uber
00:02:40.040 to get to, right? They're not in suburbia. They're in the middle of like the big block areas.
00:02:45.820 Well, that goes to the thing that I opened with saying, you know, I don't know that transit really
00:02:50.180 matches up to the urban sprawl that we put out there. And how as Canadians we expect it to be
00:02:55.280 serviced in that way is really difficult because it does require buses to trains, trains to
00:03:01.900 inner city trains or street cars.
00:03:04.460 And then another bus or Uber once you're in the city to get to the location you're trying to get to,
00:03:08.900 right?
00:03:09.280 Since the holidays, it's been a challenge for you because there was technical issues
00:03:13.920 with a derailment, I think, near or at Union Station.
00:03:19.220 That took what felt like weeks actually to repair and get back on track.
00:03:23.340 It seems to be the big one. Frozen signals. I don't even know how we were in a zone in Canada
00:03:29.100 where they don't keep those signals either warmed. Our friend Paul, a host on this show,
00:03:34.380 was saying that too, that there should be some sort of like system in place that if the weather
00:03:38.220 even dropped to minus 50, that these signals would still work. Minus 20, they shouldn't be dying out.
00:03:43.920 Mainly winter here in Ontario. Like you think we'd build for that.
00:03:49.100 Understaffed is another big thing that I'm noticing. Staff is not the same as it used to be
00:03:54.180 even just in the summer. And it seems to be less and less every week that goes by. You see one
00:04:00.200 security instead of two, or you see nobody. Like if a train gets canceled, there's no one to talk to.
00:04:05.960 Right. You're just stuck.
00:04:07.600 And the person that's on the line.
00:04:08.920 So what happens? You're stuck at a train. You've got to get to someplace.
00:04:11.960 What do you do at the station when you realize, okay, my train has been fully canceled.
00:04:15.740 I have no way to get to where I'm going.
00:04:17.140 You hope the next one shows up. Man, if it doesn't, once you're three in, that's my motto now,
00:04:22.040 is once I've missed two or three or I see that cancellations have happened,
00:04:25.720 I just get an Uber and eat.
00:04:28.100 Two to three arrivals in a row could be.
00:04:31.520 In some cases, yeah. It seems to be more heading west than it is heading east.
00:04:36.040 I don't know why.
00:04:37.820 Well, maybe because you're going west.
00:04:39.500 The people in the east are going, no, no, it's bad for us too. 1.00
00:04:42.160 No, I know, but I see the schedules everywhere, right?
00:04:45.920 And I see the trains that are going.
00:04:47.100 It's very rare do I see them getting canceled heading into.
00:04:50.240 Or what happens is they get turned into express trains.
00:04:52.660 So they'll only stop at Union.
00:04:54.740 Now, a couple of months ago, we did an episode on transit crime.
00:04:58.500 Yeah.
00:04:58.680 And that was a disturbing bit of business because across Canada, there is less security.
00:05:04.140 People feel less secure on our public transit, buses and trains.
00:05:07.960 Add to it these scheduling problems and technical issues that are holding people up.
00:05:12.660 And now there's one more element to this.
00:05:15.460 The population is growing.
00:05:17.320 Since COVID, by the way, transit went down over, I think it went over 70% drop around COVID.
00:05:25.900 It only bounced back to about 70% of what it was pre-COVID, 70% to 75%.
00:05:31.260 Because so many people were working from home.
00:05:33.480 Now there's been a call to action to get people back to work.
00:05:36.500 Trains are rammed.
00:05:37.360 And the trains must be just over there.
00:05:39.560 So now you've got cancellations of many more people not getting to their destinations.
00:05:44.900 This can cost you a job, cost more for daycare.
00:05:47.800 Yeah.
00:05:48.240 Put you in a situation of stress that you weren't bargaining for just to get to where you need to go.
00:05:53.300 I can only imagine the amount of people that lost their job.
00:05:55.900 And the jobs that don't have any leniency on being late.
00:05:59.820 Like those jobs that you can't be late for.
00:06:01.340 You've got to be there on that.
00:06:02.800 Right.
00:06:03.060 Literally that minute, you've got to be in there timed in.
00:06:05.680 And there's no way to...
00:06:07.900 The websites don't update quick enough.
00:06:11.480 The apps don't update quick enough.
00:06:13.060 Trains just seem to come and go as they please.
00:06:15.800 This is some days.
00:06:16.840 Some other days it's nice.
00:06:17.880 And speaking about the crime or the transit, just so I don't forget about it, the crime in transit.
00:06:22.940 I've heard that's a huge thing.
00:06:24.520 I see that that's probably maybe after some of the stops that I'm taking because I haven't seen any of that.
00:06:30.060 Oh, I'm relieved to hear that.
00:06:31.460 Zero.
00:06:31.760 Okay, so now go is one issue, but then you get into the rest of Toronto.
00:06:40.280 That seems to be the problem.
00:06:41.440 This is kind of the crux of the discussion, if you don't mind, Brady.
00:06:44.260 Yeah.
00:06:44.400 Because we've just built an LRT.
00:06:46.640 What did that take us?
00:06:47.600 Eight months, Nick?
00:06:48.660 Eight to 12 months to build that?
00:06:50.360 No.
00:06:51.040 It was...
00:06:51.600 A little bit longer.
00:06:53.000 Years overdue.
00:06:54.340 A little bit longer than eight months.
00:06:55.980 Billions of dollars over budget.
00:06:58.620 A billion, yeah.
00:06:59.460 A billion over budget.
00:06:59.800 And it runs...
00:07:00.820 A billion and a half?
00:07:01.620 Something like that, yeah.
00:07:02.580 And it runs partially by the sounds of things.
00:07:06.860 That is just one case.
00:07:09.800 You know, other parts of the country, Montreal was successful with it.
00:07:14.920 The Ottawa LRT was a mess as well.
00:07:18.240 We're not necessarily great at building transit here in Canada that matches our needs for certain.
00:07:25.660 It matches our budget.
00:07:27.360 And now we're about to embark on a high-speed rail project at the federal level that will connect Toronto with Quebec City with stops along the way.
00:07:35.760 So we look stuff up a lot of the time before we do these shows.
00:07:38.460 We don't just talk.
00:07:39.300 Although, like you say, the comment section may not agree with us.
00:07:42.180 Yeah, we do tend to do a little bit of research.
00:07:44.940 And one of the most outrageous numbers is per kilometer, what it costs us to do transit.
00:07:50.460 And I think that the reason those numbers are so high and why transit may get a kind of secondary seat is because Canada's not really laid out for transit outside of major cities.
00:08:00.700 So what's the price per kilometer to lay transit down?
00:08:04.960 Well, the average cost, it's some of the highest, by the way, in the world.
00:08:09.760 It's about $396 million per kilometer.
00:08:12.160 That's outrageous.
00:08:15.500 We didn't build the infrastructure to handle it, and we built the sprawl already.
00:08:20.720 We built a lot of it.
00:08:22.260 It's really interesting to me that we're so streetcar adept and so light rail adept when we're in the winter.
00:08:32.100 Yeah.
00:08:32.340 I mean, there's nothing better than the subway in winter if it's run right and, you know.
00:08:38.340 Who wants to wait outside in the snow to catch a train to be across town in 10 seconds and apparently get in a fight while you're on it?
00:08:46.140 Well, don't worry, Brady, because it's only $396 million per kilometer.
00:08:50.820 Okay, that's good.
00:08:51.640 Unless you're building high speed.
00:08:53.380 Wait, what's the high speed cost, Mike?
00:08:55.060 It can be north of almost $500 million per kilometer, everything in.
00:09:00.260 $500 million per kilometer.
00:09:04.540 Yeah.
00:09:05.100 Having said that, they have an amortization program that essentially should bring the cost down to a mere $30 million per kilometer by the time all is said and done.
00:09:17.620 Because they're building so much of it, this is 1,000 kilometers of high speed rail that we're talking about going 300 kilometers an hour,
00:09:25.740 reducing a trip between Toronto and Quebec City to, you know, roughly half the time.
00:09:32.100 Three hours, you're there end to end.
00:09:36.020 And they're already beginning the process.
00:09:38.480 They had a meeting in the city of Toronto down at the St. Lawrence Market where all of the experts and all the pundits got together and had a chat about it
00:09:48.260 and explained from an engineering standpoint how they would do it from a political standpoint.
00:09:51.720 We had one of our researchers down there.
00:09:54.360 And so this is well underway.
00:09:56.940 This is something that is being pushed along.
00:09:59.120 It's a lot of money.
00:09:59.660 And it makes me wonder, okay, so we're not really great at doing this.
00:10:03.820 We've created this sprawl issue.
00:10:06.160 And yet we're going to undertake this massive project that will take longer than the average political stay in parliament.
00:10:16.200 So will it get part way and get dropped?
00:10:18.940 Will it get neglected after this?
00:10:21.560 Will it just become a boondoggle?
00:10:23.600 Well, how much?
00:10:24.920 Okay, so the cost of that, I'm just trying to think of where we get to that number.
00:10:28.560 Let's just say it's 30 and it's not 500 because 500 is just mind-boggling.
00:10:32.860 In the city, you can see it.
00:10:34.260 There's a lot of infrastructure to move.
00:10:35.940 Maybe in the city, yeah.
00:10:36.560 You know, if you're digging tunnels, it can be outrageous.
00:10:38.760 But the farmland that they bought, why would the cost be so high to just lay down track?
00:10:44.040 I think a lot of it has to do with where they're going to lay the track and what's required there.
00:10:49.180 There's a lot of, you know, Brady, I made this all up.
00:10:52.500 I have no idea how you can get to that number.
00:10:56.140 No, I understand how you get to that number because there's a lot of, just to lay down a kilometer of track is a lot, it would be a lot harder than laying down a kilometer of asphalt, right?
00:11:06.020 There is so much that goes into it.
00:11:07.320 Oh, yeah.
00:11:07.560 The amount of team, the team that would be hired would be a good portion of that alone.
00:11:11.340 It would cost millions just in labor.
00:11:13.660 I don't think you could have a lot of moving around engineering-wise on a high-speed train.
00:11:18.240 I think it has to be pretty smoothly engineered.
00:11:21.840 So you would assume that it's...
00:11:23.520 Have you seen the turns that some of them do in Japan?
00:11:25.880 Yeah.
00:11:26.300 Oh, my goodness.
00:11:27.880 Yeah.
00:11:28.000 Like 300 clicks, right?
00:11:30.000 They're just...
00:11:30.540 Oh, by the way.
00:11:31.160 I want this.
00:11:32.680 Of everybody you know, I want this the most.
00:11:35.680 Yeah.
00:11:35.820 Because I think it'd be cool to get on one of these things.
00:11:37.980 I've always been dying to get...
00:11:38.940 I love the ones in Europe.
00:11:40.040 They've made them work.
00:11:41.280 It's made a big difference to how people can do business and live life in a widespread area, you know, live in one area, work in another.
00:11:50.040 It's highly effective.
00:11:53.200 Now, will it be priced accordingly?
00:11:55.820 You know, to use via rail is not necessarily inexpensive.
00:11:58.960 I wonder if this is one of the reasons why they kiboshed the idea of doing the light rail across Canada.
00:12:05.220 Not only because we...
00:12:06.460 There's been a couple of reasons as to why.
00:12:07.980 One of them going into the States, there could be some issues and things like that.
00:12:10.380 We've talked about that previously ourselves.
00:12:12.980 But the cost.
00:12:14.880 Yeah.
00:12:15.180 What would that cost to go across Canada?
00:12:16.960 This would be...
00:12:17.440 I don't know.
00:12:17.860 We'd break ourselves, right?
00:12:19.100 It's interesting because let's talk about other transit getting us across the country.
00:12:24.680 I mean, a flight, you know, on one of the airlines, one of the discount airlines for sure, you could get there for $169, $200.
00:12:34.000 If you don't take a bag, you can get there for...
00:12:37.060 If you don't take a bag and you don't have a coat, they charge you for every single thing.
00:12:43.100 You got a bag, you got to pay for carry-on.
00:12:45.100 You have two shoes on?
00:12:46.220 That's $20 each?
00:12:47.480 Yeah.
00:12:47.920 You know what it costs for a bag to get on a plane with you now?
00:12:52.800 Just your...
00:12:53.660 An extra carry-on.
00:12:54.560 It's $100, man.
00:12:55.720 Yeah.
00:12:56.200 So, okay, by the time you get to Montreal, if you have bags from Toronto, you're looking at probably $400 taxes in.
00:13:03.860 Okay.
00:13:04.940 Would that train, would a high-speed rail train be any less expensive?
00:13:09.920 I don't think so.
00:13:11.600 Because if you take a look at a Via Rail ticket, and it must be at least double that.
00:13:17.200 If you're getting there in half the time, I'm just going to guess the ticket will be twice the price.
00:13:20.900 Yeah.
00:13:21.060 So, I think we'll have a lot to pay off on this, and so they won't be discounting tickets all that often, I'm assuming.
00:13:27.520 So, let's say that it costs $250.
00:13:29.380 You're already more than taking a flight, and a flight gets you there an hour earlier.
00:13:34.560 I don't know that there's consumer appeal for this at a price point that would be comparable to air travel.
00:13:40.460 Well, it would be quicker, even though that the travel with the flight is quicker.
00:13:44.180 It still technically would be quicker with the process of getting on a train and getting off of a train,
00:13:47.840 going to a parking lot, not waiting for your luggage.
00:13:50.400 Brady, you go to Porter, let's say, for example, on Toronto Island Airport, and you're getting in a cab in Montreal an hour and a half later, at the very longest.
00:14:05.560 So, I don't know.
00:14:07.300 I wonder if there is a market for this.
00:14:09.120 And it also depends on the stations that you're arriving to, too, right?
00:14:12.220 Like, how are they headed?
00:14:13.180 Hold on.
00:14:13.540 I took a note of that.
00:14:14.540 Let's go about it.
00:14:15.580 I can't memorize this stuff, you know?
00:14:17.280 Well, it starts in Toronto.
00:14:18.620 I know that.
00:14:19.200 It ends up in Peterborough, I think, as its first stop.
00:14:22.020 And then from there on out.
00:14:23.080 The main terminal cities are Toronto and Quebec City.
00:14:25.420 Yep.
00:14:26.300 The intermediate cities would be Peterborough, Ottawa, Montreal, Laval, and Trois-Rivières, Quebec.
00:14:32.540 So.
00:14:33.500 This just sounds like a luxury line for the people in Parliament.
00:14:38.240 Well, you'll love this then.
00:14:40.780 Guess where they're going to start?
00:14:42.560 No.
00:14:43.360 Ottawa to Montreal.
00:14:44.100 So, that would be the first tie connecting two provinces, which is interesting.
00:14:53.860 You're trying to make me mad.
00:14:54.820 I'm trying to behave.
00:14:55.820 No, listen.
00:14:56.480 You can have your opinion.
00:14:58.700 I think that is.
00:15:01.820 If this transit is created for civilians to get to places easier and make life easier,
00:15:06.440 and the very first thing we're going to do is slap it in the middle of Parliament and get that figured out first.
00:15:10.100 You know what's interesting is they actually base this, it's only 200 kilometers.
00:15:14.760 Yeah.
00:15:14.840 So, you're looking at a couple of hours driving, okay.
00:15:17.000 Is this the test, like the tester?
00:15:18.920 Kind of, in the sense that it connects our capital with another major city in another province.
00:15:26.000 That's pretty major.
00:15:26.820 But the other thing is, it is one of the busiest train-use corridors in Canada.
00:15:31.660 Yeah.
00:15:31.860 Certainly in that area.
00:15:33.960 So, it's already used.
00:15:34.980 I think there's already a market for it with the federal offices and the government offices.
00:15:41.680 That would make the average Canadian happy to hear that, though.
00:15:44.240 That we're not using civilians as detesters.
00:15:46.280 We're using the politicians.
00:15:47.780 Ah, that's pretty good.
00:15:49.240 I don't know.
00:15:50.500 They will be the first to get on.
00:15:52.100 Trust me.
00:15:52.820 If it's snakes on a plane, we'll find out from our politicians first.
00:15:56.840 But it's interesting because that first corridor is an interesting test.
00:16:01.980 If all they did was build that, I bet they could get away with just doing that.
00:16:05.540 I think this...
00:16:07.040 That might be the ultimate plan.
00:16:08.560 I hate to say it, but...
00:16:10.060 I don't want to be that guy.
00:16:11.180 Like, I feel like my tinfoil hat is always on.
00:16:13.340 I don't know if that's a tinfoil hat moment because if they build this and it seems like
00:16:18.040 it was a difficult build, they'll have to rethink the extensions on either side.
00:16:22.700 But they'll keep that running.
00:16:24.560 Most likely.
00:16:26.220 It's interesting.
00:16:27.300 It is.
00:16:27.620 Well, look, if it's operated like the Go, we're in trouble.
00:16:30.840 Certainly, I do love a Via Rail trip.
00:16:33.420 Via is awesome.
00:16:34.620 You know, so I would love to do the high-speed train.
00:16:37.980 A high-speed train from here to Quebec would be an interesting trip.
00:16:43.420 And I say that the second that, you know, that they do this, we're one of the first groups
00:16:47.720 on there just to see what it's like.
00:16:49.620 I also hate air travel now.
00:16:51.480 It's absolutely...
00:16:52.000 It's no fun.
00:16:52.740 It is horrible.
00:16:54.080 It's not comfortable.
00:16:55.180 No.
00:16:55.520 You get on a Via Rail and you're like nicely sad.
00:16:58.260 But even if you pay for business class.
00:16:59.240 You want something nice to eat.
00:17:00.780 Oh, business class?
00:17:01.940 No, it's still...
00:17:02.820 That's like the way economy used to be.
00:17:05.060 And business class on a train is classy.
00:17:08.200 Oh, yeah.
00:17:08.220 Business class on a train is awesome.
00:17:09.520 Rent your own cart.
00:17:10.700 Ooh.
00:17:11.420 Throw a little party in there.
00:17:12.260 You can do that even?
00:17:13.240 We're lucky we're not turning the party lights on right now.
00:17:15.460 It's to show what we like.
00:17:16.500 I want my birthday party on a train next year.
00:17:18.740 Toronto to Ottawa.
00:17:19.720 We'll go meet up with the Prime Minister and go for drinks.
00:17:22.460 The GoFundMe has been started.
00:17:24.140 Oh, there we go.
00:17:25.400 There it is.
00:17:26.040 All right.
00:17:26.400 There's Mike's party on the train.
00:17:28.300 V-Rail.
00:17:28.580 Thanks for joining us, Brady.
00:17:29.540 Thanks for the chat.
00:17:30.260 I appreciate it.
00:17:31.220 Put your comments in.
00:17:32.320 Don't forget to follow and share it with a friend.
00:17:35.780 We appreciate you being there.
00:17:36.760 Thanks.