High Speed Rail - Putting the cart squarely in front of the horse

The recent High Speed Rail announcement by the Ontario government shows promise in recognizing the benefits of utilizing rail passenger service with their new rail based approach to transportation.  It is important to keep long range planning active with rail service, but other regions of the province are dealing with service reductions or cancellations  The residents in those areas worry their concerns will be overshadowed by a focus on a new service that will require huge amounts of available resources.

  The idea of high speed rail between different points on the Quebec City-Windsor corridor has been studied for decades.  In spite of that, there are no firm estimates on the cost of such a service, nor the time that might be required for such a monumental change.

The fact is, rail passenger service in Canada over the past two decades has moved backwards rather than just a lack of improvement.  As a result, the service value has virtually disintegrated along with the network and any mechanism for oversight.  High speed rail is not just an incremental improvement, it is a quantum leap in service delivery, so diverting resources to this process at this point in time makes little sense when there is so much other work that needs to be done.

There are signs however, that the provincial government is starting to think overall about the role railways can play in the transportation system.  The mandate letter to Min Del Duca indicates MTO may have been focused too much on highways and a true multi-modal transportation policy framework needs to be developed.

There were two multimodal strategies undertaken by MTO in the province.  One, Building Competitiveness: A Proposed Multimodal Goods Movement Strategy for Ontario dealt only with movement of goods in Southern Ontario, but appears to have never been released.  The other, the Northern Ontario Multimodal Transportation Strategy also includes the movement of people and although the progress has been glacially slow, the tender for a consultant has gone out.  The tender calls for a 30 month time line, (with a 12 month extension, if necessary) so there is an end in sight as this is the final stage of the process.

One of the main problems with transportation in Ontario (and hopefully the consultant identifies it, and includes the solution in the strategy) is the lack of coordination in the system.  Rail service providers like VIA, GO transit CN, (on the ACR, currently on life support) and Ontario Northland (prior to the Northlander cancellation) do not co-ordinate their services.   But none of the operators co-ordinate their services, in fact, at Union Station, VIA is being squeezed out by a growing GO service.  (See the Op-Ed on Page 7 by Greg Gormick) While the GTA needs their commuter service, a properly balanced system would not put regional intercity service at a disadvantage to provide it.

If we are ever going to get people out of their cars, we have to provide an alternative that can easily offer door to door service, and is price and time competitive.  That means all levels of government have to co-operate and co-ordinate their transportation systems.  Transit systems should also feed intercity systems, which can connect back to transit at the destination, with easy intermodal transfers. where necessary.  

We cant even get different levels of rail passenger service providers to talk to each other, let alone co-ordinate their governance and service.  So we end up with terminals of different services in different areas of the city and no one seems to care if customers can get from one to another easily.

Motor coach service is provided mainly by the private sector and regulated by route but on sections that overlap there is duplication of service as each service provider tries to scoop the others.  In the case of publicly funded rail passenger service, motor coach runs competing schedules instead of feeding trains and operating additional runs when there is no train available.

Tracks should be maintained to permit smooth rail travel at 120 km per hour and fares should be set to be less expensive than the cost of gas used by the average car.  The network has to be established to provide as much coverage in the province as possible with minimal investment in new rail tracks.  

In most areas of the province, rail passenger service has to be integrated with freight service in order to share the huge capital expense of a railroad.  Passenger service still has to be prioritized by contract, including monetary time penalties, for the freight operator to ensure on-time performance does not suffer. 

There needs to be a lot of discussion and clarification about the dual mandate of rail passenger service and which level of government is responsible for what part.  The operation must balance the intercity connection role with that of economic development.  Both roles are vital to the economy, but they often compete with each other.  The Northlander used to provide a connection to Toronto and the national rail network for residents of Northeastern Ontario, but also served to bring tourists north.  That purpose suffered under continual cost cutting, and that failure contributed to the political will that cancelled the train.

So with all that, I support the idea of high speed rail service, but there is a ton of work to do in developing the system before such a monumental shift in service design goes ahead.  I would not want to see high speed rail divert resources away from the more important fundamental work that needs to be done.  Let's position the cart correctly and improve the roadbed first.