Calgary Area Regional Transit

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

Why should the government take on the risk of owning the infrastructure if a private company will do it?

Some subsidies will be required regardless, so you incorporate them in the contract. The advantage AB gets is that they can regulate what goes on the track, for the good of Alberta rather than some corporation's shareholders. While it's an alien concept in Alberta, railways normally act as a network rather than single entities - by owning the track we will be able to use the line to run trains along it and onto other lines beyond (in some far distant future).

This isn't an unusual thing. HS2 in the UK will work this way - the UK government is currently building the line and Network Rail will maintain it, but they have yet to decide who will actually run the trains on it. If they used the model you propose, where a single company operated the entire thing, they would lose a lot of benefit of the line, as trains will run from London on the new high speed track to Birmingham or Manchester then on legacy track to Scotland or Newcastle. That plan would be much more complicated if you had to use the private company's track to Birmingham, then someone else's for the rest of the route.

What if we wanted to run a train from Edmonton to Calgary on this company's line, then (for example) on a hypothetical line down to Lethbridge? How would that work, if two different companies owned each railway? It might be possible, with regulation, but it would be better if we just operated the track like Network Rail in the UK.

HS2 franchise: Bidder shortlist revealed


For the record, I can't claim to be an expert on the intricacies of how these contracts work, so if I have got some details wrong I am happy to be corrected. I'd honestly rather the government ran everything including the trains, as evidence shows it just works better. But I don't think Albertans could ever bring themselves to do that.

[milomilo]

I keep mentioning the UK's network because I am familiar with it, I believe JasperF is British too and would have similar experience. But it does offer a good case study of the pros and cons of private ownership. After decades of underfunding while the network was fully under government control, in 1994 it was fully handed to the private sector, with a for profit company, Railtrack, responsible for the maintenance of track, and private companies bidding for running the trains. While those companies running the trains did fine, Railtrack did an awful job, and safety was atrocious - a national embarrasment with many people dying in train crashes. The final straw was the Hatfield rail disasater when four people were killed as a result of a train derailing because of Railtrack's shoddy maintenance. The network was crippled afterwards while they checked all of the things Railtrack had not bothered to maintain.

As a result of the Hatfield crash and many others (the earlier Ladbroke crash killed 31), the government re-nationalised the maintenance of the track, forming Network Rail. They also started putting more money into it. Safety improved dramatically, and now the UK network is the one of the safest is Europe, and the safest in the 10 largest networks in Europe.

We have similar experience in Canada, with railway companies derailing trains, sinking bridges, blowing up cities and causing mass evacuations. Railway companies are terrible at operating railways - they are objectively incompetent at the one thing they are supposed to do well - because they are monopolies and safety doesn't matter. The evidence is clear, private companies are incapable of operating railways safely, and should not be allowed to do so.

[Jaspertf]

Yes, though I would say the golden age of railways in Britain was before nationalization, the current setup is probably the best for the modern age due to safety and infrastructure funding requirements (all roads are publically funded and maintained). Canada is the reverse, the railways are in private hands and the passenger services are public, though GO Transit is and has purchased most of the track they operate on.

The railways in the UK are going through a resurgence, road building has reached capacity, there is just no more space to build without irreversibly destroying the environment. Service in the private sector is far superior to that of British Rail, the operating companies have and are investing in modern rolling stock, and Network Rail has and is investing substantially in the infrastructure, creating a world class and superior railway. It helps that technology, materials, and techniques have advanced to make it all possible.

[DizzyEdge]

Wow. I wonder if regional government will step in. All Greyhound Canada routes cancelled in BC, AB, SK, MB

[YYCguys]

I’m not surprised. The town where my parents live is between Red Deer and Calgary. The bus stops there at an ungodly hour of the night. No wonder Greyhound has seen service decline when they have the worst schedule ever! And in Airdrie, their bus station is in middle of an industrial area so it’s not easy to get to other parts of town from there.

Perhaps the silver lining in all of this is that the bus depot property in Calgary can now be freely bought up and perhaps help spur on West Village redevelopment.

One additional thought: will anyone step in to take over, such as Red Arrow, Brewster, etc? I’m pretty sure highway bus service is needed to some extent!

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by YYCguys

Perhaps the silver lining in all of this is that the bus depot property in Calgary can now be freely bought up and perhaps help spur on West Village redevelopment.

Great point. Perhaps this could be the impetus to put in a proper regional bus hub somewhere next to a future rail station. I'm not optimistic though.

This really makes the case for a province wide regional transit system more urgent.

[YYCguys]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Great point. Perhaps this could be the impetus to put in a proper regional bus hub somewhere next to a future rail station. I'm not optimistic though.

This really makes the case for a province wide regional transit system more urgent.

Hyperloop please! Wishful thinking, I know.

[technomad]

while it's unfortunate to see greyhound shutdown, I'm not sure more government is the right answer on this..

I'm sure the free market will provide some sort of solution... a rural uber of sorts?

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by YYCguys

Hyperloop please! Wishful thinking, I know.

Hyperloop is nonsense, don't fall for the lies.

[outoftheice]

Originally Posted by YYCguys

Perhaps the silver lining in all of this is that the bus depot property in Calgary can now be freely bought up and perhaps help spur on West Village redevelopment.
!

In one of the media articles I read today on the topic (can't remember which one or I would link it) it said that the Greyhound Terminal is already owned by the City of Calgary and that Greyhound simply paid rent so this might be a closer possibility than we think!.

[CTrainDude]

Greyhound already had plans to leave the downtown depot to relocate to the SE industrial for passenger service, closer to the main routes they were using ( Deerfoot and TCH). So I suspect they were already in talks with the City to end their West Village lease.

[YYCguys]

Originally Posted by CTrainDude

Greyhound already had plans to leave the downtown depot to relocate to the SE industrial for passenger service, closer to the main routes they were using ( Deerfoot and TCH). So I suspect they were already in talks with the City to end their West Village lease.

Sure, let’s drop people off in the middle of nowhere and few ways or no way to get to where they want or need to go in the city!

[CTrainDude]

Originally Posted by YYCguys

Sure, let’s drop people off in the middle of nowhere and few ways or no way to get to where they want or need to go in the city!

Yep. But matters not now.

[tmjr]

Banff couple say they've secured half of $600M needed to build Banff passenger train (CBC)

Jan Waterous says a private investor has agreed to pony up roughly $300 million

...

When we initially took this on, people alluded to 'it'd be easier to land a man on the sun.' But it's actually doable. And I'll tell you what we've done so far. CP Rail has been very encouraging to us, enough so that we have been out there trying to raise the funds to build the rail between Calgary and Banff. The cost of that, we know from an independent study, as well as our own research, is about $600 million.

And we have thus far secured funding for about half of that from an institutional investor.… About three weeks ago, we met with the federal infrastructure bank in Toronto and they have also told us that our project checks all the right boxes and that it, too, would be something that they are interested in for matching funding to get us to the $600-million mark. Things are 'choo chooing' along here.

...

The price point that we're looking at is a price point that our research has said has to be around the neighborhood of $15 per passenger to go from Calgary to Banff. And to us, it has to be a price point like that so that people will use it to go to work, to put your kids on it so they can go skiing. It has to be a price point that is very reachable for most Canadians.

[milomilo]

I'm glad this is being promoted, but if it ever goes ahead I want it done properly. If it ends up being a single private operator owning and operating the whole thing, it will ruin any future prospects and further entrench the problems we have now.

They're right that there needs to be new track alongside, but $600M seems low. Have engineers gone along the whole route and evaluated how much it will create to dig out and support each embankment, build each bridge etc? I suspect they'll be in for a big surprise once they do.

[speedog]

At around $123,000,000 spent on the Tuscany LRT station and the bit of tracks that gets one there, I find it difficult to believe that 120 or so kilometres of new track and probably a couple of stations can be done for $600,000,000

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by speedog

At around $123,000,000 spent on the Tuscany LRT station and the bit of tracks that gets one there, I find it difficult to believe that 120 or so kilometres of new track and probably a couple of stations can be done for $600,000,000

If you're working with CP, you don't need exclusive use of tracks - you need tracks, a more complicated signal and train control system and high-speed (relatively) crossovers. You can offset a portion of the outside subsidy needed by having run freight on the incremental tracks. You don't need to triple track unless your frequency is exceedingly high (the government should help between Cochrane and the city to maybe go up to 3 tracks)

[DizzyEdge]

"people alluded to 'it'd be easier to land a man on the sun.' But it's actually doable."

This kind of made me laugh since it's already been done before, in the 1800s when there were no roads.

[milomilo]

This really needs a proper study with actual engineers looking at the CP line. Without that, it's just guess work. I would be absolutely shocked though if upgrading a railway line built in 1885 as cheaply as possible when they didn't know what they were doing was not highly expensive.

[MalcolmTucker]

For both way, all day service to Cochrane, which necessitated 3 full tracks, I recall a quote of around $550 million a decade back from CP. That was in the context of getting the city/regional partnership to stop thinking regional rail would be cheap as free however.