Transport Committee on June 9th, 2009

[Richard Gilbert]

No, I said one particular cost had been underestimated, and that was according to the Van Horne study of the line between Calgary and Edmonton with one stop at Red Deer. I haven't examined that study carefully enough to know which parts of it they've underestimated. I've just compared the total costs with the total costs of equivalent studies, and it's an outlier. The lowest cost elsewhere in the world I found was $17 million. Their cost was $11.5 million, or maybe about $13.5 million today, and the cost goes as high as $53 million per kilometre. I think that something in order of $40 million a kilometre is a good number to look at, and that's the one we use in our book, although we use U.S. dollars in the book.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

You mentioned Calgary and Edmonton, Mr. Rowden. You don't feel that high-speed rail service between these two cities is feasible. Is that correct? You believe that a separate track would be needed and that the terrain is not conducive to providing this type of service.

Are you saying quite simply that the idea of high-speed rail service between Calgary and Edmonton should be scrapped?

[Allan Rowden]

I might not have been heard correctly. What I was referencing was that based on earlier comments that there would have been a third corridor in the densely populated southern Ontario, it's conceivable there would need to be a third corridor for a higher-speed rail system. In between Calgary and Edmonton, the land space wouldn't turn around and you would definitely have to have another corridor outside of the existing railway corridor. And that's entirely feasible.

Where the controversy and conversation would come from would be simply on the fact of having a high-speed rail system that's going to be connecting at the ground, basically because of the infrastructure that is already in place, not only on primary roads but on secondary roads and third-level roads. A tremendous amount of interface would have to be recognized and properly be identified just from a simple safety point of view, and the local population would be very concerned about that particular system being put in place.

There is no shortage of people who would use a system, but whether or not it is a conventional grounded system is what the conversation would be about. There are other systems that can move people that would make more efficient use of a corridor than a higher-speed railway that would minimize to the maximum any interfacing with the existing infrastructure.

Mr. Gilbert was mentioning the cost side of developing that corridor being on the low side. Traditionally in Alberta, the cost of road development and any rail development is a lot cheaper than it is in other parts of the country. Even though I understand his need for having a benchmark on the cost point of view, I would probably want to defend the cost per kilometre on what they used for Calgary to Edmonton. This is because, even though I'm not in favour of a grounded system, our general construction costs per kilometre are less than what they are in other areas of the country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Mr. Bevington.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Gilbert, what you suggested is that there are so many linkages between what's going to happen in the transportation system that it makes the choice very difficult without a visionary approach to this transportation system. You have to understand some of the details.

I'm interested in the work you've done on alternate vehicles. How would a properly functioning electric car with a range of 400 or 500 kilometres change your equation?

[Richard Gilbert]

A properly functioning electric car with a range of 400 or 500 kilometres, with respect, is a dream. It's not going to happen in the timeframes that we're talking about. We'll be lucky to have an affordable, properly functioning electric car in the next couple of decades that could do 200 or 250 kilometres, in my view. Electric cars are going to serve very useful purposes for shorter distances. But for what we're talking about, unless a way is devised of having small personal vehicles charged while they're in motion, such as how a streetcar gets its power from the cable, or the high-speed rail gets its power from the cable or the rail, so that you can drive on the 401, for example, and put an antenna out and grab some power as you're going, a kind of Jetsons scene, we're not going to see personal vehicles doing that. We're going to need something like high-speed rail or higher-speed rail.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Rather than, let's say, an electric vehicle with a backup generator? That's more than likely the model that would follow for long-distance electric vehicles.

[Richard Gilbert]

Yes. This is your General Motors Volt concept, a concept that, in my view, is becoming increasingly criticized for being neither one thing nor the other. Either it's a battery vehicle in which you have the inconvenience of lugging around a great internal combustion engine, or it's an internal combustion engine vehicle although you have the inconvenience of lugging around a great battery. It would be better to devise two kinds of vehicle, one for shorter distances that is electric, and one for longer distances that is an internal combustion engine, if that's the way you want to go--to stick with personal vehicles.

But what we've seen elsewhere is that high-speed or higher-speed rail can work, can make huge dents into other modes of travel, and can bring places together. It's not a futuristic thing. It's not something you have to dream about, such as an electric vehicle that will go 500 kilometres. It's available now.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

I don't think we have to dream about high-speed rail. I've travelled on many of them around the world.

But when you transform society, which is what we're talking about doing, by getting 80% of the people travelling between Edmonton and Calgary onto a train rather than a personal conveyance device that they can drive from their driveway to someone else's driveway, it's an enormous convenience. How do we accomplish that societal change with this investment of billions and billions of dollars? Are we going to accomplish it or are we going to find that we won't be...?

That's where the visionary stuff really has to be. Can we modify society enough to make high-speed rail successful in any case?

[Richard Gilbert]

If gas prices don't go up, then high-speed rail, the way it's presently conceived, is not going to break even. It's going to need a subsidy. What I was talking about was trying to explore--and I think this should be done much more rigorously than I've had the opportunity to do--what would be the break-even price, and is that a relevant price? If you were to do your sums and find that it was $20 per litre for gasoline that was the break-even price, then you wouldn't worry about that argument. But you can do the sums and find out that it's actually not $20 per litre; it's something actually quite close to where we are now, or not so much where we are now, but where we were last year. That makes it very interesting.

So you're not doing any societal engineering. What you're doing is saying, look, we have a reasonable chance that the oil price is going to go up that high, and thus the gas price will go up that high, and therefore a goodly number of people, if the rail is there, will use the rail.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Meggs, do you have any sense of the volume of traffic in that Vancouver-Seattle-Portland run and what volume would be available for a higher-speed train?

[Geoff Meggs]

Well, they believe that the doubling of the daily service from one per day to two per day would add about 35,000 visitors per year to Vancouver, which is not a large number, but that the ultimate volumes are much, much higher. And not too many recent studies have been done.

The challenge we're going to face, which I think has been touched on in the other presentations, is that if we get up to the speeds that are possible with conventional rail, we have to work out our relationships with the freight carriers because of the enormous amount of freight that goes back and forth on those tracks. I think you've had testimony earlier that you can't share freight and passenger rail much above 90 miles an hour or something in that range.

We need to make these incremental steps and start long-term planning, because the real gains would come with higher speeds--not even the highest speeds--but those will require quite a few investments to make sure we don't harm goods traffic. I don't have a specific number, but certainly for a long time they've believed that we're the logical end of this route, not Bellingham or just north of Seattle.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Mr. Mayes.

[Allan Rowden]

Mr. Tweed, could I ask a question? I'm sorry for interrupting right now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Go ahead.

[Allan Rowden]

There was a point raised about whether or not there was an electric car, and Mr. Gilbert had mentioned that it was his opinion that it would conceivably be 10 to 20 years before we would have a car that would regenerate itself as it was travelling.

One of my points of concern is that when we're in the decision-making process, we always have to reach a point where we've made a decision and fixed a design, and there is always that point. Many of us have been involved in projects for which there has always been the question of how you maintain the schedule when you've already agreed to a fixed design. Design has a certain amount of bias, and in order to proceed to a decision, you have to benchmark some of your design.

As recently as last week--and I would suggest to Mr. Gilbert that he could touch base with the Calgary Herald--there was a new mode of regeneration for batteries--not for large batteries but for smaller batteries--being patented by a local designer. It brings the existing cars that are on the market today from electric propulsion and gives them an opportunity of going 300 or 400 or 500 kilometres simply because they're recharging. His new alternator-generator system allows for that opportunity, as far as that goes.

I have a question for Mr. Meggs in Vancouver. I was looking at the numbers, and if I understood them correctly, we were suggesting that for a cost of $1,500 a day--roughly $450,000 to $500,000 a year--we would be able to capture something in the neighbourhood of $17 million. Am I correct? Are those the numbers we're using?

[Geoff Meggs]

The Washington State--

[Allan Rowden]

Is there not a local incentive? When I'm looking at numbers like that--

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

I have to interrupt there. Actually, while it's a good question, I think the committee members are anxious to ask their questions, and perhaps you can have that conversation afterwards, if that's fair. I'm sorry to interrupt.

[Allan Rowden]

All right.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Mayes.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to direct my question to Councillor Meggs, please.

One of the things the committee has looked at is not only high-speed rail but also the light rail links to that high-speed rail. Our government has made some significant commitments to Vancouver to aid the light rail links. Do you have any idea how much the Government of Canada has contributed to the Canada Line from the Vancouver airport to downtown Vancouver?

[Geoff Meggs]

It's been a while since I looked at the numbers, but it's hundreds of millions of dollars, in the order of $300 million, I think.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Also, the Evergreen line that's coming in from the Mission area to downtown Vancouver, which was announced, is about $300 million. So we have made some significant investments in your city to assist Vancouver in making sure those light rail links are there to deal with the environmental issues and grid congestion.

When we look at the issues you brought up about the high-speed rail from Seattle to Vancouver, and talking about the Canada Border Services Agency charging the $1,500, I need to let you know that there is a public policy, and regardless of whether it's in Vancouver or any other place at a border crossing in Canada with a rail, those charges would have to be charged as a cost recovery. Of course any government across Canada, if it changed policy, would have to do that. We serve all Canadians.

As Mr. Rowden mentioned, it's about $500,000 a year. I know it looks as though the Government of Canada is not willing to invest that $500,000 so that Vancouver can benefit, but you have to look at the big picture, and that's our job here, in representing all Canadians across the country.

I'm a British Columbian, and I was brought up in Vancouver, so I do appreciate what you are saying about where the market is for Vancouver. It's not necessarily from east to west; it's north and south, and that's very important. But I kind of question the criticism of our minister, who is working on this file and is trying to help out in this situation to encourage high-speed rail from Seattle to Vancouver.

The question I have for you is what the City of Vancouver has done with regard to long-term planning for high-speed rail to Vancouver. Have they put together a corridor that you have planned and made sure that the land is available to bring high-speed rail into Vancouver from Seattle?

[Geoff Meggs]

Well, as a city, we've certainly had titanic struggles with CPR to retain the right to keep former interurban tracks available for transportation corridors. That battle was very expensive and, I believe, was fought all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Under provincial law, we're subject to the decisions of TransLink, which is the regional transportation authority, and it is working in its planning to facilitate the development of high-speed rail. I don't know if Mr. Dhaliwal is still there, but certainly the Washington State authorities, and I think TransLink too, are alive to the reality that it may be necessary to link higher- and high-speed rail to connections in Surrey, for example, where it would tie into the SkyTrain line and that kind of thing.

With regard to the business case for the extra investment, I think that's a discussion in which the minister needs to engage in a more straight-up way. I don't mean to say “straight-up” in the sense that he hasn't been direct and candid; I just think that we really do need to sit down, study the policy, and see if there are steps that can be taken to encourage this step. There's a huge investment available that would benefit B.C., for a relatively modest investment on our side, and the American side certainly is puzzled and unable to communicate. I didn't have the material necessary to communicate what the basis of the rejection was. They certainly didn't feel that they were already paying and would have to simply include that in their business plan.