I don’t know about the whole country, because there’s a lot of low-density space where it’s hard to justify this level of infrastructure cost.
But the Quebec City-Windsor corridorabsolutely needs high-speed rail because it includes roughly half of Canada’s population. It’s even conveniently arranged in a straight line! Driving in this region is hindered by tons of traffic, and flying has huge carbon costs. Rail should be the default way to get around in this region.
When rail was first built across Canada it was done when Canada had a population of ~4 million and preceded most of our development. That’s what “nation building” infrastructure is about. Transportation infrastructure in particular has a huge role to play in developing that low density space.
People are fine running a road somewhere to spur growth but a rail line is a “waste of money”. Cities used to build their subways out to undeveloped land because its way easier to do that before the land is developed and the subway line would give a reason to develop it.
Fuck this stupid fuck. We need high-speed rail across the entire country. It needs to start somewhere, and become the new normal.
I don’t know about the whole country, because there’s a lot of low-density space where it’s hard to justify this level of infrastructure cost.
But the Quebec City-Windsor corridor absolutely needs high-speed rail because it includes roughly half of Canada’s population. It’s even conveniently arranged in a straight line! Driving in this region is hindered by tons of traffic, and flying has huge carbon costs. Rail should be the default way to get around in this region.
When rail was first built across Canada it was done when Canada had a population of ~4 million and preceded most of our development. That’s what “nation building” infrastructure is about. Transportation infrastructure in particular has a huge role to play in developing that low density space.
People are fine running a road somewhere to spur growth but a rail line is a “waste of money”. Cities used to build their subways out to undeveloped land because its way easier to do that before the land is developed and the subway line would give a reason to develop it.