Transport Committee on June 18th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, meeting number 27.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), our orders of the day are the study of high-speed rail in Canada.

Joining us by video conference from Vancouver, on behalf of the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority, TransLink, is Mr. Robert Paddon, vice-president of corporate and public affairs.

I hope you can hear me.

[Robert Paddon, Vice-President, Corporate and Public Affairs, Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority (TransLink)]

I can hear you fine, thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

We have another guest, who is running a few minutes late, but I would like to ask you to start and make your presentation. Hopefully our other guest will be here. If not, we'll go to questions, and then refer back to our other guest when he gets here.

Please begin.

[Robert Paddon]

It would be my pleasure.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's my pleasure to be here. I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to speak to you today.

As noted, I represent TransLink. We are the public transportation authority for metro Vancouver, which represents approximately 2.3 million people in British Columbia.

We're pleased to have an opportunity to comment today on the matter before you, high-speed rail. First I'll give you some context.

While our mandate is specific to public transportation in our region--including public transit, cycling, walking, and also our major roads--we have an interest, and a strong interest, in seeing the development of rail connections in the area that we refer to out here as Cascadia.

Cascadia is known as sort of the growing super-region that connects Portland, Oregon, through Seattle, to Vancouver, British Columbia. As of 2000, the population of Cascadia was almost eight million people. It's estimated that it will be over 10 million people by 2025. In addition to that, we're anticipating the growth of Vancouver over the next 20 to 30 years to add an additional million people.

One of the challenges that we face in our region--and certainly what British Columbia is trying to tackle--is reducing our carbon footprint, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We see rail connectivity through Cascadia as an important contribution to that. We have, over the years, worked to try to develop increased rail service. We worked a number of years ago to have the second train come into Vancouver, and we're very supportive of that. In addition, we support the efforts of the City of Vancouver, which has undertaken a memorandum with Portland and is working with other municipalities in Cascadia to connect.

Now, that's a bit of the background and a bit about our interest in high-speed rail. In terms of looking at greater Vancouver, we have looked at some models of how to develop. First, we have been very fortunate, with the support of the Government of Canada, to have significant investments into our region. We'll be opening the Canada rapid transit line later this summer, which will be in addition to our SkyTrain system, and we are very pleased with the commitments the Government of Canada has made for another rapid transit project, Evergreen Line. In addition to that, through the gas tax transfer program we've been able to expand our bus fleet by about 48% over the past five to six years. Our ridership is up by 38%.

We've set goals for ourselves into the future, where, by 2040, more than half the population, more than half of the trips taken by people of this region, will be by transport, public transportation, walking, or cycling. Today, that's about 25%.

So we're looking to models in North America. Probably the closest would be the metropolitan New York area. We're also looking at European cities and asking ourselves what some of the requirements are for us to change the way we move about.

In order for us to be a significant economic power in western Canada, our connections to the U.S. are important. High-tech industries are important to Vancouver. Connections to Seattle, with Microsoft, and to Portland, with some of the other high-tech industries and companies there, are vital parts of our economy.

We see that in the distant future dependence on carbon-based air travel will start to become a problem, as the cost of fuel will probably increase significantly and the availability and the way to connect through air travel will likely be diminished. When that happens, we will need alternatives.

We see a future in which a business person in Vancouver can hop on a high-speed rail system, go to Seattle or Portland, do their business, and when they get off there can use their smart card transit pass from Vancouver in a cooperative agreement with that city to use their public transportation system. So we see the relationship as being important.

We do not look at it as an either/or situation. We think it's important to continue to develop the public transportation systems of our urban regions in Canada. We appreciate the support of the Government of Canada there.

We also think it's important to begin to look into the long term to see what we can do to build on high-speed rail. We're pleased to see the United States moving in that direction. There are some opportunities, I believe, for Canada to take advantage of the infrastructure money that the United States will spend on the Cascadia corridor. We hope there will be an opportunity to see some support here in Canada to make those connections.

Mr. Chair, I'll conclude my remarks there. I'd be pleased at any opportunity to respond to questions that you or the committee members may have.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Volpe.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Thank you very much.

Welcome, even though you're far away.

I'm going to ask my colleague from British Columbia to take this section of the questions, if you don't mind.

Mr. Dhaliwal.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Volpe.

Welcome, Mr. Robert Paddon, all the way from British Columbia.

You mentioned the Cascadia region. Should the rail service between Vancouver and Seattle go directly to downtown Vancouver, or should it connect to SkyTrain in Surrey?

[Robert Paddon]

In terms of the specific details of what the appropriate alignment would be coming into the metro Vancouver area, I think we need to study that very carefully. We're not, at this position, recommending a specific alignment.

Looking into the future, we know that the city of Surrey will be growing significantly. It's anticipated that by 2040 the population of the city of Surrey will be larger than that of the city of Vancouver.

So if we decide to move forward with this initiative in Canada, I think we'll need to work with the municipalities of metro Vancouver to try to see if we can develop an alignment for high-speed rail that would create the best economic benefits for our region as a whole.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

There are issues with the New Westminster swing bridge. Could upgrading this bridge help improve the transit system in metro Vancouver?

[Robert Paddon]

With regard to intercity connectivity, certainly the rail crossing of the Fraser River is well over a hundred years old now. I know in the discussions we've had over the years with the rail providers, just working on trying to bring the second Amtrak train into Vancouver, that has been identified as a long-term infrastructure challenge that we'll have to address.

I can't speak directly to it in terms of how best to approach that, but one of the things that we're going to be looking at is replacing in Vancouver an aging bridge, which we own through TransLink, called the Patello bridge. I know you know it well. It is over 70 years old. We have to replace that bridge.

One of the things we will undertake in the study of the replacement of that bridge is whether or not there are some benefits to considering a combined railroad bridge for our region. I can't say that this may be an outcome, but we're certainly going to look at it.

In any event, in terms of well into the future for any rail connectivity to the south, be it high-speed or regular train, I believe we'll need to address that rail bridge.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

On another issue, you say that Surrey is going to be one of the largest municipalities soon. The portion of that old interurban rail line that runs through my riding of Newton--North Delta and beyond, to Cloverdale and Langley, now connects some of the densest communities south of the Fraser. TransLink has said that it seeks to preserve this route for the future.

I'm wondering, given the current bus ridership and the continued growth of those communities, if it would make more sense to investigate the viability of the return of passenger rail to this route now as well.

[Robert Paddon]

As TransLink, we believe it's important, wherever there are rail corridors in place, to maintain those and keep those for the potential for moving people and having more commuter rail options in our region. One of the challenges is that once a rail corridor is gone, it's very hard to create a new one or to bring one back. So we're certainly supporters of that.

With regard to how best to service the growing city of Surrey, and also Langley farther east, we are undertaking studies at this time. We will be looking specifically at rapid transit in Surrey and potential extensions.

One of the studies we're also undertaking, in cooperation with the Government of British Columbia, is to look at the interurban and the viability of parts that corridor, if not all of it, for potential for public transport into the future.

We haven't completed that work yet, but there certainly is potential there, and we want to be investigating it.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

On another issue, when the federal government contributes to these projects in transportation, do you see that this funding should be application-based, just as we're doing it now, or would the increased resources of the gas tax improve the long-term local planning? Which would you prefer?

[Robert Paddon]

There are merits to having both procedures in place. For example, when we look at high-cost major infrastructure projects, we believe it is important to have a rigorous technical review so that all of the options are considered, that we have detailed analysis to determine ultimately what the best route would be--or the alignment, as we call it in the industry--as well as the technologies that should be employed, and that this large project can stand on its own.

With regard to the gas tax transfer program, we have really benefited from that in the region. We have been able to use the gas tax transfer program to acquire well over 250 new buses in our region. Many of these are electric-diesel hybrids, so we're reducing our GHG emissions as well as other pollutants. We're also utilizing some of the money in building the infrastructure to support the bus system, for bus depots and this sort of thing, and we are acquiring new SkyTrain cars through the program.

The gas tax program has significant requirements as well, but we see it as being an excellent tool to work with when you need the flexibility to make bus orders that come up from time to time and to do less expensive infrastructure.

Both programs, we believe, are needed, but I would say that when you move to a very large infrastructure project, and when we're talking about rapid transit, you're moving into the billion-dollar range or close to it.... Even for rapid bus, you're getting into hundreds of millions of dollars. We think it's important to have a program that would look at the specifics of the project at that level.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

I would now like to introduce Mario Iacobacci. He's the director of transportation and infrastructure policy for the Conference Board of Canada.

We appreciate you making time to be here. We're going to give you your opportunity and then we'll proceed with more questions.

[Mario Iacobacci, Director, Transportation and Infrastructure Policy, Conference Board of Canada]

Thank you very much, Mr. Tweed.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to address you today.

We at the Conference Board believe the time is right to move forward on the development of high-speed rail in Canada on the different corridors that we've been talking about: Calgary-Edmonton, as well as Quebec City-Windsor. If we look at the European and the Japanese experience, it indicates that it's possible to design a service that is both attractive and competitive relative to the other modes.

What I want to focus on today is really the aspect of how we evaluate the high-speed rail options that are before us, because it's important to realize that these options cannot be evaluated in terms of commercial or financial benefits alone. There is, in fact, no high-speed rail service in the world--that I'm aware of--that covers its costs through the fare box. Maybe the Japanese one does, given that the infrastructure is already all depreciated, but that's about as close as you'd come.

The reason we can't use those evaluation measures alone is that there are important public benefits at stake: environmental benefits, social benefits in terms of accident savings, and economic development benefits as well. What drives these public benefits? We like to think of it in two ways.

There are two things that happen when you introduce a major improvement in a rail service. You have a potential switch from other modes, and this mode-shift effect drives a lot of the savings, both in terms of reduced accidents for those shifting from road and in terms of reduced GHG emissions for shifts from road and from air as well. So on the one hand, you have the mode-shift benefits that are very important and speak to a lot of the overall environmental and social cost savings.

The second set of benefits is made up of those that are driven by the additional passengers. The fact that we're actually introducing a service that improves mobility between two or more points means that you're likely to see a very substantial increase in overall traffic.

By way of comparison, if you look at the introduction of low-cost airlines on a number of routes, whether it's here or in Europe, those routes often saw a doubling of traffic because the service was both improved and much more cost-competitive. If we are able to introduce a much more competitive service, I wouldn't be surprised to see that order of magnitude of improvement in rail traffic between Montreal and Toronto, for example.

It is these latter benefits, the new trips, that drive the economic development impacts of this kind of infrastructure. Here we're talking about impacts that are driven by the fact that we can do these trips and reduce journey time, but these are impacts that drive how labour markets work, because they are able to make labour markets work much more effectively by ensuring, essentially, that people can get to and from their places of work more easily and so on.

They also drive trade and investment opportunities, which rely on people being mobile. This is not something we talk about very often, but it is a very real effect of improving connectivity.

To summarize, we believe that when you look at the public benefits of some of these projects, it is these that actually justify the public investment--that is, the government spending that will be required in any of the options that are evaluated going forward.

I would just end by saying that we are looking forward to the current study that's reviewing or updating the Quebec City-Windsor studies of 1994-95. We're looking forward to those results, but we'd like to say that continued delays in improving this infrastructure are unlikely to improve our capability to deliver on this vision. In fact, it's actually quite the opposite. Over the last 20 years or 10 years, what we've seen is a cost escalation--a construction costs escalation. There's a dip now possibly due to the recession, but this is a long-term effect that you're likely to see continue to evolve, and that works against these kinds of infrastructure projects.

Second, as we see communities continue to develop within the rights of way we're talking about, it makes the environmental assessment processes for these options also a lot more difficult to get through over time. This is particularly relevant, for example, for the Calgary-Edmonton corridor. These are all factors that potentially work against us if we delay further.

I'd like to leave any other questions for you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you very much.

Monsieur Laframboise.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Paddon, my first question goes to you. It is my understanding that, as a representative of TransLink, you do much the same as the Agence métropolitaine de transport does in Montreal. Am I correct to say that you are a counterpart of the AMT?

[Robert Paddon]

Yes, sir. It's very similar.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

If we go with the concept of high speed rail linked with public transit...Airport representatives and officials from Toronto Airport have come to the committee to say, among other things, that we now have to see the airports as destinations for high speed trains.

I have had the opportunity to go to Vancouver. Would the idea of bringing high speed trains to the airport allow integration with the public transit systems and lead to the development of the transportation network as a whole?

[Robert Paddon]

That's a very good question. One of the things we are looking at is that many people in the industry no longer see that there's competition between the modes--air versus rail versus rapid transit. We will be opening Canada Line, which will give us rapid transit connection to the Vancouver airport. There certainly is potential as we move forward on this initiative to look at the study to see what the benefits would be. As I mentioned earlier in response to a question on high-speed rail, one of the challenges of it is that you would not have a lot of different stops, and you'd have to determine where best to terminate that rail service. There could be the potential to examine the airport, or to look at moving into the downtown core. It might also be a matter for many business travellers of ultimately trying to get into, for the most part, the downtown business district. We would have to determine how best to do that with the technology coming forward, but there would be merit in exploring that concept.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Iacobacci, let me continue along the same lines. In your presentation, you told us that this will mean that airports do not need to be expanded. Great. What we also want is for the airports to survive.

From your analysis, if we were to develop the concept of bringing high speed rail to airports, would the airline industry be able to survive and would we save money on highways and on airports too? Have you looked at that question?

[Mario Iacobacci]

I can't say that we've studied the impact of any particular option on the airports or airlines. We haven't. But what I can say is that it is extremely important to ensure very good connectivity with the key hubs and the key modes. In fact, I think that probably the viability of a lot of the options that you may be considering eventually will depend on where we're able to get traffic. If we're able to have good connections with particularly the inter-city services within the greater metropolitan regions, such as the services of the AMT in Montreal, or the equivalent services in the Vancouver area, or GO Transit, and potentially we can even provide services for some of that market, say Oshawa to Toronto, as an inter-city service, we could potentially service that by high-speed rail. If we were able to pick up some of that traffic, it would actually make the overall high-speed service much more viable. So that's why it's important to ensure very good connectivity.

The way we measure connectivity is to look at the ease--and not just the speed--of transferring from one to the other. People travel with bags and everything else, so the more the hub is designed to facilitate that transfer, the more attractive it is from a passenger perspective. I think it's actually one of the essential ingredients of a good option.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

My next question goes to Mr. Paddon. It is about the Cascadia Corridor. Are you interested in it at the moment? Who is working on it? Have you analyzed the possibilities for high speed rail? Have the Americans been asking for it? Could you give us a little summary, please?

[Robert Paddon]

We have worked closely with a number of stakeholders in the corridor. I've been involved with this now for probably seven or eight years in terms of looking at rail connectivity. There's a stakeholder group out of Seattle, the Discovery Institute, that has put a lot of time into it. As well, there are some non-profit organizations here in Vancouver that have looked at Cascadia.

Of interest to stakeholders is that we see potential in what is emerging as one of the major industries, in what we call in the States the Pacific Northwest, or which we're now referring to as Cascadia. We have today some challenges, and certainly will over the balance of this decade, with the border thickening, as we say. It has become harder to make physical contact, to be able to travel as business people to and from the cities, although that still continues. As we look into the future, we would like to see a situation in which we would be able to perhaps address that issue, and we believe high-speed rail has an important potential to do it.

In addition to that, the environmental matters that we face in the Pacific Northwest are important to many of the stakeholders here. While we all know that we will depend on air travel well into the future, we're increasingly starting to see that there would be some options, ideally for a high-speed rail system that would be electrified. One of the benefits here and in the Pacific Northwest is being able to rely primarily on hydroelectric energy, which is very low in terms of emissions.

We can see the potential of improving our business connectivity, and of doing so in a way that is very environmentally beneficial. We think this is something that has been worth pursuing.

It is my own personal observation that there is much interest, both within municipalities and at the state level and within the non-governmental organizations, in really seeing some movement in this direction. I would not anticipate significant resistance to this going forward into the future.