Evidence of meeting #24 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 high-speed.
A recording is available from Parliament.
City Councillor, City of Vancouver
No. Today, as I indicated to your colleague, our request is that they revisit the business opportunity for a second train set from Seattle to Vancouver each day, because by doing that we would show our commitment to the development of this corridor down the road.
Our request is for about half a million dollars.
Bloc
Bloc
Mario Laframboise Bloc Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC
I see.
You said that if the high-speed train used the same corridor as the freight train, the maximum speed at which a passenger train could travel would be 90 kilometres, or 90 miles per hour. Is that correct?
City Councillor, City of Vancouver
No, I'm referring to testimony that I think you received earlier from Burlington Northern Santa Fe. At least, that's what was in a paper that, I believe, I received from your committee. It indicates that, over those speeds, it's impossible to mingle freight and passenger traffic safely and efficiently. So you can use conventional rail to get to the higher speeds soon, but it's very difficult at the higher end to mingle freight and passenger traffic on the same corridor. You need to start separating it.
Bloc
Mario Laframboise Bloc Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC
There is no question that a high-speed train needs to have a dedicated track. Has the City of Vancouver already looked into this? Have certain corridors been considered, or must you handle all of the analysis and development for this project?
City Councillor, City of Vancouver
No, we are focusing mostly on our urban requirements, because we're part of a regional transportation body that is doing some of the analysis you would like to see.
Our assumption has been that the trains will continue to come right downtown to False Creek and Science World, but as I said, the Washington State officials say a quicker and cheaper solution may be to bring them to the end of the current rapid transit service which is out in Surrey, pretty close to Mr. Dhaliwal's home ground. So some of that analysis needs to happen. We're at such an early stage here that simply adding a second regular passenger train a day would be a good step forward.
Bloc
Mario Laframboise Bloc Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC
The governments of Ontario, Quebec and Canada are doing an analysis and have ordered a study to update the 1995 studies on high-speed rail. Do you plan to ask the governments of British Columbia and Canada to do a study? Have you already done so? Is it something you are considering?
City Councillor, City of Vancouver
We do want to pull together a group of stakeholders here to seek that work and make sure it's done. We just came through a provincial election, and we don't really know right now who our transportation minister is in B.C. The Province of B.C. did make some investments along this line to assist the movement of goods in cooperation with Washington. I think they're open and receptive to it, but most of the work is going to be done on the U.S. side of the border, and we believe we would be disproportionately benefited by that work. So we'd like to keep up the good faith relationship, and at the moment it's a bit tough.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to our witnesses for appearing as we undertake the study of high-speed rail and intercity urban rail as well.
In 1995 a feasibility study demonstrated very clearly that very slight changes in variables literally made or broke viability in terms of a business case for high-speed rail. The longer I'm into this current study, the more I'm getting a sense that the Canadian business case is still quite fragile. In terms of what our presumptions will be going forward in constructing, the business case would have to be extremely solid, or any slight changes could really make the difference in whether this would be viable or not. Is that because we don't have some of the important elements that are present in the business case in Europe or Asia?
Maybe I should start by asking whether anyone has any understanding or opinion of whether high-speed rail in Europe is profitable in terms of cost recovery, both for capital and operating costs. If so, where would that be and for which lines? Does anybody know that particular detail? Maybe that's where I should start.
Consultant, As an Individual
Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to that, because governments have a sometimes terrifying way of obscuring costs, especially for capital investments. If you were looking for an example, I think the Paris-Lyons line, if you could get the numbers, is the one you would go to. I think you would look at a couple of routes in Sweden where I think there are some decent numbers.
The general answer is that you're going to be disappointed. The other general answer is that you're going to find that usually they have been subsidized, and sometimes quite heavily.
If I could comment on the fragility, I absolutely agree with you. However, there is one 800-pound elephant in the corner, and it's oil prices.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
I'll get to that in just a moment, Mr. Gilbert, since you raised that, but I'm going to presume that because of things like density and ridership numbers, for example, which would be greater in Europe, their case would be a little less fragile than ours would be here in Canada.
Since you want to move on to the price of oil, one of the fragile elements you raised was the case for switching from automobiles. I'm not sure the price of oil has shown that this is the cause for lower vehicle consumption currently in the marketplace. In other words, I think what we saw with high gas prices in the United States was that there was a switch in the types of vehicles that were being driven--away from SUVs, for example, and into more fuel-efficient vehicles. The collapse in current demand has a lot more to do with the availability of credit, because nine out of 10 buyers have to be able to finance a vehicle. So I'm not sure I accept the direct correlation that people will switch from automobiles over to high-speed rail because of the price of oil.
You've raised an interesting point, because if we don't get enough people to switch over, that affects the business case and the viability going forward.
Maybe all panellists might want to weigh in on this. If we embark on this venture, are we really looking at permanently subsidizing the high-speed rail either in terms of operating costs or...? Are we going to be able to recover costs?
Go ahead, Mr. Meggs.
City Councillor, City of Vancouver
I'll be very brief.
It was very striking in Washington State to see that both in the United States and in Canada we really have had a 40-year gap in commitment to passenger rail, so the idea that we would now leap over all those stages and go straight to high-speed rail has struck some people here as a bit utopian. I think high-speed rail should be the goal, but we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater and lose the opportunity to recommit at much lower levels of cost, as Mr. Gilbert has said, and with the tremendous benefits of higher-speed rail or better rail. There's a whole host of policy issues that the Americans are going to have to wrestle with--and we will too, because we're so interlocked--concerning computerizing the train management system so we can move more freight and people on the same track, and so forth. I think these are going to be things we have to do, just the way we invest in lots of other economic infrastructure. Subsidies may be necessary, but the benefits will outweigh them.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
Does higher-speed rail involve a separate corridor as well, or will it be on the same line as freight?
City Councillor, City of Vancouver
Maybe Mr. Gilbert knows better, but I was told the answer was yes.
Consultant, As an Individual
Yes, I'm inclined to agree. The Deutsche Bahn German railways have tried very hard to run both freight and passenger at relatively high speeds on the same track, and where they have finished up is that basically the passenger runs during the day, and the freight runs at night. It's a short night and a long day. I don't think the results are very good. I'm not too familiar with this, and I think the conclusion is that it would have been better to separate it even there.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
In either fashion, we're looking at the cost of constructing some sort of separate corridor where it can be viable. Presuming that we move ahead, what are some of the impacts with respect to shipping--freight costs, freight volumes and things like that--and moving passengers at higher speeds to a different corridor? Can you provide any detail on what that will likely mean for, say, shipping costs?
Consultant, As an Individual
I would say that at the moment in Canada the impact of passenger trains on freight movement is negligible. If you were to move it to another line, it would hardly be noticed. That's not entirely true and it's not true for every single kilometre, but over the whole system it's negligible. The answer is that it wouldn't reduce freight costs.
Liberal
Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to split my time with Mr. Dhaliwal.
My main question is for Mr. Gilbert. As you know, governments build highways but they don't build train tracks. When you looked at the distances and the indirect costs for the different rails, did you take into account a scenario where you would take the cost of the government's building the tracks out of the cost to the train companies, or the cost of lost revenue from gas taxes on the highways?
Consultant, As an Individual
We certainly didn't look at the last one. That's going to be a factor that governments will have to work out.
For the first one, almost all of the cost of this, certainly more than three-quarters of it, in my view, is capital cost when you amortize over a reasonable period—30 or 35 years. If you're having to pick up only, say, 20% of the total cost, the number of passengers that you need, the number of fares you need to do that is very substantially reduced—it's reduced by 80%—so it becomes much easier. There are many models that look to covering the operating costs. The California one talks to making “a profit”, with government picking up all the capital costs and the operating authority running at a profit. I think they say $1 billion per year, but I can't remember the precise number. But it's not really a profit. The people of California and probably the U.S. as a whole will have made that huge investment.
I have separated out the capital and operating, and you can see how the operating can work pretty easily.
But your other question about the gas tax is something that needs to be fed in through all the thinking about this.
