Evidence of meeting #18 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was study.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
What are you anticipating the speed improvement to be? Will it be 10%, 15%, 20%?
4:05 p.m.
Director General, Surface Transportation Policy, Department of Transport
It's going to depend on the segment. In terms of outcome or the trip-time benefit, VIA is planning to introduce a couple of express trains that would have fewer stops. They would reduce the total trip time between Montreal and Toronto by half an hour.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
It would be half an hour, okay. It's not really a tremendous amount.
4:05 p.m.
Director General, Surface Transportation Policy, Department of Transport
No, it's quite difficult when you're sharing the same infrastructure and you don't have a grade-separated right-of-way. It limits what you can travel at.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
One thing I didn't see in the 1995 study was how building a new set of tracks, a new transportation system, affected the capital cost of every other transportation system we have. If we're going to add a new system, what does that do to airport expansions? What does that do to highway expansions? What does that do to the freight rail system, which now has a track dedicated to freight rail? Are those things that you're now putting in the new study, to give us an idea of how this relationship between the infrastructure investments works?
4:05 p.m.
Director General, Surface Transportation Policy, Department of Transport
Yes. In fact, the 1992-1995 looked at the impact of the traffic on the other passenger modes, right? Are you referring to the infrastructure costs of the other modes, or is it funding levels?
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
Well, it is expanding infrastructure, expanding airports, and expanding highway systems.
4:05 p.m.
Director General, Surface Transportation Policy, Department of Transport
Right. It will look at that. I'll say that it'll look at the impact. Task 12 of the study will look at the impact of reducing road congestion by reducing automobile trips. So that deals with the highway mode. How many cars...?
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
Will you actually put a dollar figure on the reduction of capital costs for other transportation systems?
4:05 p.m.
Director General, Surface Transportation Policy, Department of Transport
It would be difficult to do that until we know.... For example, take the highway system. On the highway system, people aren't paying for its use; it's paid for through general revenues. The highway will still have to be there. It's shared by cars and trucks. It isn't necessarily a high-speed rail system that would take a lot of the traffic off.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
But it may mean that you'll need less development of approachways. You'll look at less maintenance over the years and longer replacement time for highway components.
You talk about regional airport expansions that might be avoided. I remember seeing a very good program on television about eight months ago about the airport congestion that everybody's anticipating in this corridor, which is going to require massive capital investment to accomplish.
So if you have a new transportation system, how is it going to affect the other capital investments that are going to be made in the region? You can't take this in isolation, in other words.
4:05 p.m.
Director General, Surface Transportation Policy, Department of Transport
No. And we are looking at the impact on the passengers who would no longer be using those modes. But as I say, that does not necessarily translate into direct capital cost avoidance, because a system of this nature is serving very targeted markets.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
You're serving a regional market. You're moving people from Toronto to Montreal, just as the airports are.
4:05 p.m.
Director General, Surface Transportation Policy, Department of Transport
Right, except that the airport will still be serving other regional flights--it's a hub-and-spoke type of system--plus international flights. Right?
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
I use the airport. I know that a great number of the flights are on particular routes. And the anticipated growth, according to the program I was watching.... It was a very in-depth program. I'd recommend it to you, if you haven't seen it already. The sense of the requirement of expansion of airports for regional carriers, will that be reduced by putting in a completely new rail transportation system?
4:05 p.m.
Director General, Surface Transportation Policy, Department of Transport
As I say, part of the study is looking at the potential for diversion of traffic. Once you have that, then, yes, we could look at those impacts. Some of them are probably going to be really difficult to calculate, extremely difficult to calculate, in particular road.
On the freight side, the railways will still need the track for their freight service. Today they're shared. VIA contributes to some of that whenever VIA wants to improve its service, but the railways maintain them. Governments don't pay for them.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
There's no expansion anticipated with freight rail traffic in this region?
4:10 p.m.
Director General, Surface Transportation Policy, Department of Transport
Yes, so they would have to continue investing in that. This high-speed rail system would get the passengers off those tracks, in fact.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
4:10 p.m.
Director General, Surface Transportation Policy, Department of Transport
For freight.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
--freight. Therefore, you would slow down a requirement for expansion of that system.
4:10 p.m.
Director General, Surface Transportation Policy, Department of Transport
It may or may not. Railways haven't done expansions in a long time.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
When you're trying to set an economic course for a country, you have to look at all the aspects of it; otherwise, you don't get a clear picture.
4:10 p.m.
Director General, Surface Transportation Policy, Department of Transport
I take note of your comment.
We are trying to understand what the impact is on the traffic, on congestion, as I mentioned, the impact on VIA Rail, because we do have a current passenger rail operator. What's the impact on VIA? What's the impact on the bus carriers? What's the impact on the airlines, the airports? We are trying to do that assessment.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
I guess the other thing you'll look at is the added value the transportation system brings to the passengers, to the movement of passengers.