Hydrogen train plan off the rails
Ontario Liberals should stick to electrification
‘The Hindenburg of rolling stock,” one wag on Twitter quipped last week — the news was that Ontario’s Liberal government is looking at hydrogen- powered trains for GO Transit, as it vastly increases commuter rail service in coming years. The government will organize a “symposium” on “hydrail,” as proponents call the technology, in the fall. Risk of explosion isn’t actually a problem for today’s hydrogen fuel cells, but it nevertheless captured the mood among many observers: Hydrogen? Seriously? Why?
The plan has been to electrify the lines. Environmentalists like electrification because it cuts emissions ( and goodness knows Ontario has clean electricity to spare). Commuters like electrification because it’s faster and smoother: electric trains can accelerate much quicker, promising significantly more rapid trips across the GTA. Rail line- adjacent residents like electrification because the trains are quieter.
It is expensive, no question about that. But it is proven. It works. What the Liberals are proposing — rapid all-day rail service across this huge metropolitan area — is nothing more or less than a foreign visitor would already expect to find here. And it’s all supposed to be up and running by 2025.
Hydrogen-powered trains, by contrast, are little more than a concept — certainly as they would pertain to the GO system. The first successful test of a reasonably longdistance hydrogen- powered train, Alstom’s iLINT, happened only in March, in Germany. That’s a light- rail vehicle running on dedicated passenger tracks. It would not work for GO. There is certainly potential for hydrogen- powered heavy rail, but meanwhile, electrification proceeds apace on rail lines all over the world, in jurisdictions that — unlike Ontario — do it properly. There are many quibbles one might make with Metrolinx’s plans; the planned technology is not one of them. And unlike with the Liberals’ highly dubious high- speed rail proposal between London, Kitchener-Waterloo and Windsor, there is no reason to doubt the demand for better GO service.
As Ontario Liberal plans go, it’s a pretty good one. So why a bloody hydrogen symposium? “This is a decision that we’re making that will have to last for a generation and beyond, so we want to make sure that we’re at the leading edge of the technology,” Transport Minister Steven Del Duca told the Toronto Star.
Uh huh. I rather doubt the technology known as “electricity” is going to be considered obsolete in 30 years. And while an accurate sense of one’s own limitations is perhaps not conducive to a career in politics, Del Duca ought to realize that Ontario rarely accomplishes great things “at the leading edge of technology.” His government has struggled mightily with the Presto card, for heaven’s sake, which is technology about as sharp as a loaf of bread. Remember Dalton McGuinty’s plan to position Ontario’s economy at the cutting edge of green tech? Splat.
The Liberals very much seemed to be serious about all this. This bizarre hydrogen tangent calls that into question — and if it is just a tangent, someone’s exploded fixation, it is a particularly ill- advised one. Electrifying these rail lines will unleash a tsunami of NIMBYISM once people learn exactly where the infrastructure will have to be placed and familiarize themselves with terms like “stray current.” “Hydrail is to diesel as diesel was to steam,” the technology’s proponents like to say. For NIMBYs, hydrail will be to electrification as electrification was to diesel: a prop they can use to pretend they don’t just want the tracks torn up altogether.
If the Liberals want to do something really bold and innovative, here is what I propose: just build it, as efficiently and competently as possible. Never mind local content rules, never mind creating jobs for youth at every GO stop. When the location of a power substation becomes a key issue in a byelection campaign that objectively doesn’t matter, just stick with the plan. And if they really want to get crazy, they could make reality of the fiction that Metrolinx is running this show, and not party hacks in the Premier’s and Minister’s offices. That really would be cutting edge, and future generations really would appreciate the results.
ELECTRIC TRAIN SERVICE CONTINUES APACE ALL OVER THE WORLD.