In this episode, I chat with Alberta s premier, Doug Ford, about his thoughts on high-speed rail and the potential benefits it could bring to the province. We discuss the benefits to the economy, the potential for growth, and the challenges.
00:00:19.000So I saw your tweet about taking the train in Japan.
00:00:23.000What are some of your thoughts on high-speed rail now?
00:00:27.000It's obviously something that's also near and dear to you as well.
00:00:33.000Well, I love having that old rail line map up on that wall because in some ways it's such a missed opportunity.
00:00:43.000Most of that line has been pulled out when you get to, I think it only goes down to about Alderside right now.
00:00:50.000It's been pulled out of High River and then further on south to form a cloud.
00:00:53.000But I think rail is making a resurgence now and we're finally getting into the population size where it makes sense.
00:01:01.000So I had a chance to, on another trade mission, go to Montreal and Ottawa and met with Alstom and I think Alto was the other one.
00:01:09.000And they said that once you get into the kind of population size that we have where you're taking 1.5 million metro market and connecting it to another 1.5 million person metro market.
00:01:23.000Now that is, those are the size of economies of scale that actually makes sense.
00:01:28.000So there is a similar high-speed rail that connects two Spanish cities.
00:01:32.000There's a similar one that I guess connects Lyon and Marseille and France.
00:01:36.000And so I would say that I thought maybe the high-speed rail was far into the future, but maybe it's also far into the future.
00:01:44.000I got a chance to take the high-speed rail in Japan from Tokyo to Sapporo.
00:01:50.000And the first leg of it was four hours.
00:01:54.000And we were able to travel 900 kilometers in four hours.
00:01:57.000So we took with some delight having been, I don't know, 57 minutes into the trip saying, you know what, we'd be in Edmonton by now.
00:02:04.000And when you can have that kind of speed between your two major economic centers, it really can be transformational in your economy.
00:02:15.000So we've got a passenger rail feasibility plan coming out in the coming weeks and months, and I hope to be able to ignite that conversation.
00:02:23.000But I'm feeling pretty optimistic that for a lot of years we've been talking about it.
00:02:52.000It doesn't surprise me because you can get right on easily.
00:02:54.000You can do your work while you're on the train, and then you can arrive in your destination and do your business and then get back home the same evening.
00:03:02.000So I would say that we should keep an open mind about it because I think that when you look at what's happening in eastern Canada, I think one of the last announcements that Trudeau made was support for a high-speed train network that would go.
00:03:17.000I think the first lake is Montreal to Quebec City, which is a very similar market size that would be connected, and then they would go on to Ottawa and then of course on to Toronto.
00:03:26.000So if it makes sense in the Montreal Quebec zone, I think it may make sense as well in our zone.
00:03:33.000Because when you think about what we would need to do if you don't have that kind of transportation option, do you then build out the QE2 to be six lanes on either side?
00:03:57.000So we're getting to that point where it is so busy.
00:03:59.000And then of course, because we have inclement weather a lot of times during the year, if you'd actually have a safety argument that you could make as well by being able to transport an alternative way or safely.
00:04:13.000I think that there's a lot of things to recommend it, but everyone should take advantage of an opportunity to do some travel if they can to a place that has a high speed train.
00:04:23.000To experience it and think about what it could mean for Alberta, I think it's pretty eye-opening.