Transport committee  Your math is better than mine on that immediate point, but there has been a lot of underestimation. The UIC range was for actual projects or some that are in an advanced state of planning. The other one, which I think is actually the most relevant one to our circumstances, is the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

Transport committee  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.

Transport committee  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.

Transport committee  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?

Transport committee  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.

Transport committee  I think I was even-handed and said that it could be one or the other, but I think that's quite far in the future. I think as far as looking at the success of high-speed rail goes, it is not so much the competition with air that you have to consider but the competition with the car.

Transport committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. My name is Richard Gilbert. I'm an independent consultant. I work mostly on the intersection between transport and energy issues. I have current or recent clients in Europe, Asia, and North America. My main client over the last couple of decades has been the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the OECD, in Paris.