Transport Committee on May 26th, 2009

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

One thing that hasn't changed a lot is that in Canada probably 70% or 80% of our spending is still on roads, not on public transit or rail, etc. So that's the wrong direction to go, as far as I'm concerned.

That's an old study from 1998, so there really isn't any new study that would give an estimate that if we are taking 41% of the people from automobiles, and we are looking at 16.4 million, what would be the greenhouse gas reduction per tonnage, that kind of thing? We wouldn't know that until the study is finished.

[Paul Larouche]

Yes, you're doing a study right now.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

No, I realize that. I congratulate you. It's a good thing that we're doing another study, but in the meantime—

[Paul Larouche]

Updating a study.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Updating a study.

[Mario Péloquin]

That's a very important question for anyone. You have to make a lot of assumptions as to the ridership, but also as to how you're going to generate the electricity needed to move those trains. If it's all green electricity from solar or wind power, you're going to have a zero greenhouse gas net result.

The City of Calgary is running all of its trains on wind power, so they have a truly zero emission light-rail transit system. In Ontario, we still burn fossil fuels to generate some of the electricity, so if that continues there will never be a zero-emission type system.

These numbers are difficult to come by for anyone, because either we have to make a lot of assumptions, or somebody has to give the parameters as to what we need to take into consideration to make the calculation.

I'll give you a little example. We talk about greenhouse gas emissions for different modes of transport, and 8% was for rail, I believe is the number—

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Four percent.

[Mario Péloquin]

Or 4%.

One freight train, a CN freight train today that operates with two or maybe three locomotives, carries the same amount of cargo as roughly 200 tractor trailers. That's why you see a number so low as 4%, because if you took one of those trains out that travels from Halifax to Vancouver, you would have to run 200 trucks for the same distance. That's the benefit of rail: because you have steel on steel, you have almost no friction other than wind, and you increase your efficiencies dramatically.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Del Mastro.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

My thanks to our witnesses. It's wonderful to see all of you again.

Mr. Langford, you'll be happy to know that those upgrades, that facelift at Union Station was part of the public transit capital trust announced in 2008.

Mr. Haynal, you have to be very happy with the investments that have been made over the last couple of budgets—more than $1 billion into VIA Rail for VIA Fast and refurbishment of equipment, which I believe your company is carrying out for VIA Rail. Then, to encourage new purchase, there are the capital cost allowance improvements that we've made with respect to locomotives in Canada. I think we've made a lot of progress on rail in the last couple of years, and I'm proud of the government's record.

I want to go to the Lynx study, which I've read through several times. I think you're on the right path there. There are a couple of things I wanted to mention. First of all, the reason that I think this hasn't happened yet is the staggering up-front costs. I think that's the problem. Governments look at how much money is going to have to be put out initially, and it's scary. It's a lot of money. It's sad that 2009 was going to be the inaugural year of the Lynx train, based on its plan. I think we have to find a way to get the cost down.

I've heard the word “electrification” come up a couple of times. I think that electrification is a wonderful thing. They're looking at electrification on the Lakeshore West line for GO Transit. It's very expensive. What was the additional cost for electrification? If we're looking at a medium-speed train, which is geographically suited to service between Toronto and Montreal, why would we need to electrify? Isn't it about a third of the cost of building the train?

[Paul Larouche]

It's a significant part of the cost. One of the reasons you want to electrify is to get the performance that will give you the good trip times and attract the ridership. Any technology that's not electrified ends up being significantly heavier. There's more weight involved. Weight is the enemy of speed. A heavy vehicle can't go quite as fast.

It gets a little bit more complicated than that. Weight combined with speed contributes to track damage, which raises the operating costs of your system. The combination of these factors has a snowball effect on economic feasibility.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

What was the top speed of the JetTrain that Bombardier worked on?

[Paul Larouche]

It was 240 kilometres per hour.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

So it's essentially the speed of the Acela train that's operating.

[Paul Larouche]

Yes.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

A number of people have told me that based on the geography of Ontario, 260 kilometres per hour might be the top-end speed that you could manage with current technology. So it's not far off.

Mr. Péloquin, I agree that you can't mix high-speed or medium-speed with freight. The VIA Fast that we're working on for the Lakeshore line requires a lot of work to run at 160 kilometres per hour. So what we're really talking about is a dedicated line. I know that the Lynx study took into account going through Kingston. A stop at Kingston adds time, because it adds 85 kilometres. I think you need a train that operates between Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. If we look at building a dedicated line between Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal, excluding the land costs, what are we looking at for infrastructure? Has anybody quantified that?

[Mario Péloquin]

That would be a very difficult number to come up with. First, the alignment would have to be decided on. If it's all at-grade—no bridges, no tunnels, no grade crossings—you might have a fairly low number. But we all know that's not realistic in the rural areas of Ontario today.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Well, for the most part, I'd submit, your costs are for getting you in and out of the major centres. For example, if you look at Toronto, you're going to have to take a serious look at whether or not it's viable to go into Union Station. You might have to look at going somewhere closer to Summerhill.

By the way, you mentioned the words “comfortable, accessible, and convenient”. There's one more word we have to work in, which is “integrated”. Earlier, the parliamentary secretary mentioned inner city rail and inner city transit in general. This all has to work together if we're going to build the ridership numbers.

So the major costs are actually going to be in the major centres in trying to get it integrated, make it work, and frankly, get it through the built-up industry, housing, and so forth that's there. Is there any kind of per kilometre cost that we could look at? I've never seen anything like that for high-speed rail.

[Mario Péloquin]

I'll make two comments. One is the point that was made twice already about integration. It's a comment that I've heard from some of our head offices--we have several offices--and it is that they find it odd that Canada doesn't have an integrated transportation policy for the whole country. There are different groups that are responsible for different levels of transit or transportation in Canada, but there's not one policy for the whole country, and I think that's why we don't have integrated systems.

We have intercity trains coming into certain areas, but they're not connected to anything to get out of the station. Somebody asked me the other day if, when you go to Montreal by train, it is easy to get out of that station, and if there is a major bus terminal right there so that you can get on any bus to go anywhere in the city. I said no, that you get on the subway and you make your best efforts to go to where you want to go. It's similar in Toronto and so on.

About the infrastructure costs, there aren't many numbers out there for Canadian railway infrastructure construction. The rule of thumb for CN and CP, the two major railways, is that basically when you have the land and you're building the best classification of track system under the standards we have today, for single track, you'd be looking at, let's say, $1.5 million per mile.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Per mile?

[Mario Péloquin]

Per mile. They use miles still. They got the exemption when we went to kilometres.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Would that be continuous welded rail?

[Mario Péloquin]

This is continuous welded rail, but don't forget that it's under the best class system that we have today in Canada, which is not sufficient for what is virtually high-speed rail, and with no electrification and no signals. If you look at the other side of the spectrum, Holland just built a high-speed rail network to link to Belgium. They had an environmentally sensitive and beautiful field in Holland and decided they wanted to go underground. You can imagine the challenges in going underground when you're already one metre below sea level.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

You can talk to the City of Boston about projects underground.

[Mario Péloquin]

These are cost drivers that nobody can even guess at until somebody has an idea of where the line would be built.