Alberta explores future of rail for 22nd Century
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Summary
Premier Rachel Notley wants to build a high-speed rail line between Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta. I don t think this is an idea Alberta should be pursuing. High-speed trains are expensive and don t work in most places.
Transcript
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almost not surprised but appalled, to see Premier Smith get up and start talking about high-speed
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rail in Alberta. This is an idea that there are train fetishists out there. That's really what
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they are. They've got a thing for trains. They love trains. They think they're great. Good for
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you. You love those things. But it doesn't mean they're economically feasible. And they certainly
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aren't economically feasible everywhere. Premier Smith's always loved trains. She even had a
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restaurant in a train car for a while. But this is reeking of a pet project. This got studied,
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I don't know, 12 years ago. We spent a bunch of money. We did a big study on it. And we found that
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high-speed rail won't work in Alberta. It doesn't work. We would need, it felt at that time, a
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population of about 10 million people. And the ticket prices, again, if you're guessing on it,
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if it got built, might be in the range of $200 to get Calgary to Edmonton. It just doesn't work.
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People keep talking about, and I've been debating them online. I don't believe in blindly following
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things. You see, that's where people got so upset with me, because I was critiquing Daniel Smith.
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Well, I love a lot of what Premier Smith is doing. I've been very supportive of it. But this one's a
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stinker, guys. This is bad news. Do not start moving towards this. We studied it. They said it was
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crap. Leave it alone. But she won't. And when they did the way they were talking so gushingly and
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everything, they said, we're just studying it. No, they're starting the groundwork to move towards this.
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I get other people saying, oh, but look at how it works in Japan. Look at how it works in
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France. Yeah, well, let's look at that. Japan has what, 120 million people in an area that's only
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a little bit bigger than half the size of Alberta. That's a rather big difference. We have four and
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some million, maybe getting more towards five. Not even close, guys. Meanwhile, France, same sort of
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thing. I think they have 60 million and far, far more dense. High-speed rail doesn't work for that.
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Think of it. What if building that between Calgary and Edmonton? Okay. And let's say it
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costs $10 billion. That means out of your pocket, right off the bat, and trust me, it'll cost more
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than that. Think of expropriating all the land required. Think of all of the battles that'll
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have to go on. The court challenges the rest. So let's say you got that right of way going. Then you
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got the stations built. You got all that done. You got that train in. And let's say it was even
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$10 billion. That means every man, woman, and child in Alberta will be shelling out about
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$2,000 each just to have it built. That's what the cost would come into. And of course,
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not everybody pays taxes. So realistically, if you're a middle-class taxpayer, it's more
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like you're going to be shouldering about $3,000 of that. And then you're going to have to pay
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a couple hundred to ride this thing. Maybe. Or it'll be subsidized down. So you'll pay all the
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time whether you ride it or not. And then get a relatively cheaper ticket. We don't need this.
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It's ridiculous. Get on and people say Highway 2 is so crowded and nasty. Yes, it is. So expand it.
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Look at the vehicles on Highway 2 in Alberta. Not all of them are going all the way from Calgary to
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Edmonton. Some of them are going Calgary to Panoka. Some of them are going Panoka to Westlock,
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you know, and past Edmonton, things like that. And they're people with vehicles. They're people
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with families. They're people with luggage. You really want to go through, OK, I'm going to go
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from Calgary to Edmonton to visit Aunt Edna there. And I'll take the two kids. So they'll say it's a
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family of four. OK, we're going to take an Uber and pay that price. Or we'll drive to this train
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station and pay for parking. You know, check in, check our luggage, spend $100 a head. So it's $400
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one way to get the family up there without including the Uber and parking costs. And you get to the
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other side in Edmonton, maybe half an hour earlier than you would have. You just bloody drove, even
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if it's a high speed train, because you had to stop Red Deer. And then you got to get an Uber,
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get in that, go all the way to Aunt Edna's. And then you're stuck without a vehicle for your visit.
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You know, you got to listen to her in terminal stories about her bad hip and things. And you
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can't even make an excuse saying, I'm going to hop in the car and go to the liquor store because
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you took the train. Look, guys, it's going to be a very limited market. And then I've had others
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talk about it. Look at Via Rail in Canada. It's a catastrophe. It's heavily, heavily subsidized.
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And it's terrible service. And then there's other people saying, well, that's because they
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have to share the tracks with CP and they don't get priority routing and things like that. Well,
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okay. But then when we want to start talking about costs, when you're talking about, say,
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some people saying, well, we would just do Banff to Calgary on a conventional rail. Okay.
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Well, then you got to share the track. So it'll have the same problem as Via.
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So you're dealing with CP because they own that track or, or you build another track. And again,
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for people not familiar with Alberta, drive between Calgary and Banff. What have you got
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going on there? For one, there's a whole bunch of mountains you're going to have to blast once you
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get into the Canmore-Ekshaw region to get that track in there. The other part is you're going
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through the Stony Reserve. Yes. A great big first nation you have to get through and it's their
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land and they have every right to negotiate the best deal they can. And again, if you're familiar
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with Calgary, we had a ring road that went through the Sutina Reserve. It took 40 years to negotiate
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that. 40 years. It cost billions. And that's just a chunk of ring road. How much do you think the
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Stony is going to want to have a railroad track doubled through their reserve? It ain't going to come
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cheap. Look, we don't want to rule out other areas of transportation. We could talk about extending
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the LRT in Calgary. It's not a real long shot anymore from the Northeast to get it to the airport
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perhaps. And people have talked about, well, what about to Cochrane? Well, again, it's already moving
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up that way up Crowchild. Keep creeping it up that way if you've got the demand and eventually you will
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have train transit going those ways. But look in Calgary as well. We've got the green line they're
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talking about. The green line. We've been talking about it for years. And they've been ripping up
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downtown Calgary doing utility working crap on it for years. And it keeps, you know, they won't make
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the budget bigger, which is five and some billion. But what they keep doing is making the green line
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smaller. So, I mean, eventually this thing's only going to be one station at the rate they're going
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and taxpayers are on the hook. We've got to remember the world's changing too. Part of the problem with
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the green line, people don't work downtown like they used to. The office buildings in Calgary are still
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nearly empty all over the place. We've got 30% vacancy going on down here. We've got another
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boondoggle going on that showed with Gondek a little while ago, where they were converting an old
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office building into residential units. And it turns out that the contractors aren't getting paid now and
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it's getting stalled. And there's a big problem. Of course, the taxpayers are pumping millions into that
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as well. Guys, people don't need to live downtown anymore. We haven't had to since the fax machine. That was
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kind of the beginning of the end. You don't see the bike couriers running around with maps and documents
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from oil company building to oil company building. In fact, a lot of people, that's one thing COVID
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changed all around, was people realizing, I don't have to be down there all the time. I can work from
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home. I can do a whole bunch of the stuff that I did at downtown on a laptop or on a computer in my
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house. And they're doing that. Maybe not full-time, but part-time. So, why are we building more
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infrastructure to suck everybody into a centralized city? The reality is we're growing out. Let's build to
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accommodate that. Let's get realistic. Let's look at, here's where, okay, to be fair, where some of
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the right can go a little wild at times. Let's look at complete communities, I think is the term
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they often use. You know, a new development that'll be on the outside of a city, but it's higher density.
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And it also has a lot of the services built in for that because that way people don't have to
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commute into the center. So, make sure there's a school there, a medical facility there, retail space
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there, all of those things so they don't have to move as far. Good stuff. It's just good planning.
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And it could sell, but we got to go out, not in, not up. Again, the people, if you care about
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affordable housing, high density stinks. Look to every high density city in North America. It's easy.
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It's great. You can study these things online. Look at the heavyweight high density cities. Look at
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Manhattan. Look at San Francisco. Look at Seattle. High density. Also expensive as all hell for renters and
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homeowners. It's not kind of contrary, but they've built up. Yes. So it doesn't matter because the
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areas where you can get affordables, where you build out, you want to be affordable, Las Vegas,
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Phoenix, Houston, even Tennessee is getting really good out there. You know, these areas where they're
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not fixated on this anti-suburban lunacy. They're just letting people build where they want to go.