Good afternoon, members of the committee, ladies and gentlemen.
I am pleased to appear before the committee today to discuss high speed rail in Canada.
I have been in the railway business since the 1980s. I worked at Canadian National, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, and, finally, at Siemens. I have been interested in rail transportation for a long time, most specifically, in high speed rail.
I have had the opportunity to provide input to various studies, participate in high-speed-rail symposiums, and offer advice on technology, ways of operating, and so on, to large groups of interested parties over several years. All of this has allowed me the privilege of keeping abreast of developments in the fascinating field of developing a high-speed network.
Several companies can speak about high-speed vehicles and the technology that each can develop. My general comment is that several companies can build high-speed trains of excellent quality, boasting a variety of esthetics and particular features, but I don't believe that is what this committee wants to hear about today. I won't try to compare our vehicles to those of other companies. They're all very good and run at very high speeds.
What I would like to state is that from experience, far too many people concentrate on the vehicle technology at the beginning of a high-speed discussion when evaluating the feasibility of such a system, instead of evaluating the basics first.
What is needed first, in fact, is a vision or strategy before determining which technologies are appropriate for the project. A technology that is too sophisticated, or not sophisticated enough, can adversely affect the achievement of results and the level of service. If the technology is too sophisticated for the system you want, you are going to spend much too much. If you choose the wrong technology and you want a system with better performance, you are going to have a lot of problems for the life of the project.
The vision must determine whether the goal is to serve the greatest number of urban centres or to carry the greatest number of people possible at a very high speed. Those two goals are not necessarily compatible.
Once the vision is firmed up, the evaluation of various aspects of the project can take place. For example, a decision on medium-speed travel may consider utilizing existing rights-of-way or corridors, as opposed to a truly high-speed system, which would most likely require dedicated rights-of-way with no road-crossing upgrades, for example.
Like the United States, there are some pretty stringent rules that all operating railways have to comply with in Canada under the regulatory regime of Transport Canada, which ensures rail safety for the people of Canada. So far, the maximum operating speed for railway grade crossings is 100 miles per hour. VIA Rail operates at that speed right now. There has been much discussion over several years, but no solution to this issue has been found over the last 20 years or so.
Mixing high-speed train travel at 250 kilometres an hour, let's say, with relatively slow freight trains--in Canada right now their speed is about 100 kilometres an hour--is very complicated. It gets worse as the speed goes up towards 300 to 350 kilometres an hour. The difference in speed, as you can imagine, is very simple. The difference in speed is so great that you need a lot of capacity on your rail network in order to have a high-speed train approaching a slow freight train and allow them to keep operating without delays.
Right now, the fastest subdivision in Canada is the so-called Kingston subdivision between Toronto and Montreal. There are small portions of that track that allow train travel at 100 miles or 160 kilometres an hour. That's the fastest in the country and the best track in the country. It simply would not be sufficient to operate a true high-speed system with the mix of freight trains, which is about 70 freight trains per day right now. There's just not enough capacity to operate one high-speed train on that network.
There are also several considerations to investigate whether we're looking at high-speed or medium-speed rail. For example, most high-speed trains cannot necessarily operate at full speed on the tracks built according to the standards that we have in Canada today. The best track classification in Canada, which includes the method of construction of the track as well as the maintenance frequencies and so on, and the leeway in what you can allow the tracks to do, would not be strict enough to allow a high-speed train to operate at full speed. We would have to define new standards for track construction and maintenance.
Similarly, the system of train control for the train movements would need to be adapted for faster train travel. We should also underline that a true high-speed train system would have to be an electric system, and the electrification of any network is fairly significant. We need to consider that.
The method of construction and maintenance of the track network, the signal system, and the train technology will be greatly affected by the climate in Canada. Be it the Calgary-Edmonton corridor or the Quebec City-Montreal-Toronto-Windsor corridor, we have the privilege or the benefit of experiencing some of the coldest climates in the world for railway operations. In fact, in Canada, we operate the coldest light-rail systems in the world. We are the cold reference for the world.
The roadbeds on which the tracks rest, as well as the steel of the tracks themselves, are greatly affected by the 70-degree Celsius difference between summer weather and winter weather in Canada. Very few high-speed trains have been designed for a cold climate operation. The adaptation of these trains should not be underestimated. No one wants to be stuck on a disabled train in the middle of nowhere on a cold winter night. It's happened to me, as I come from the north, and it's not pleasant.
So there are several hard decisions to be made in order to execute a vision that would be as great a leap forward as the original construction of the first transcontinental railway in Canada, which effectively allowed our great nation to be formed. These decisions, similar to those made to build the Canadian Pacific in the late 1800s, would likely span more than one term in office for any politician. There is an absolute need to be bold and forward-looking in regard to the long-term objectives.
The economic impacts of designing, building, operating, and maintaining a high-speed rail network in Canada will be extraordinary for this country. There are very significant secondary benefits from shifting the paradigm of where people can live and commute from, including attracting and facilitating tourist travel, developing important new technological know-how, and improving the environmental benefits of travel over long distances. We've heard about our neighbours to the south, led by President Obama, announcing such visions and committing large amounts of money for the high-speed project in California.
I believe that Canada, as a pioneer in all matters of railroading ingenuity, can and should move forward with its high-speed rail program, and move from the study phase into the decision-making phase.
Thank you for your attention.
I'll take questions later on.