It’s time to slow down on high-speed rail plan

The Ontario government believes it’s a “rail transformation” of unprecedented scale. With a $21-billion price tag, the high-speed rail (HSR) will certainly be the most expensive train set any government has ever acquired in Canada.

It could also be the most expensive public transport misstep.

For most intercity commuters in the Toronto-London corridor, the HSR is unlikely to offer faster door-to-door travel times than those by car. The highest achievable speeds of 250 to 300 km/h are substantially higher than the average travel speed by rail for the entire journey.

Ontario’s low population densities and long distances between urban centres make it difficult to operate efficient and affordable intercity rail transport. The objective, therefore, should not be to choose prohibitively expensive highspeed trains that are likely to incur large operational losses but to improve rail transport incrementally to achieve faster overall travel times.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne believes that HSR is more than a game-changer. She believes, “the best time to build an HSR was 40 years ago. The second-best time is today.” Former federal transport minister, David Collenette, who advised the premier, believes HSR will yield $20 billion in overall benefits over a 60-year period.

With such a positive outlook, why would one doubt the prospects of HSR in southwestern Ontario? Well, the devil is in the details.

The Collenette report on HSR evaluated two speed alternatives: 300 km/h and 250 km/h, and reached the same conclusion that almost every other report has concluded in the past 40-plus years: that trains operating at speeds higher than 300 km/h are not financially viable.

In fact, Collenette stated unequivocally that the “(t)ravel demand, population densities and distances between cities along the Toronto-Windsor corridor do not support the additional cost associated with a dedicated 300 km/h HSR system.” Thus, the report recommends Ontario to restrict future consideration of speeds to 250 km/h.

The Toronto to London train will travel for 184.1 km. The report claims the trains will complete the journey in 73 minutes, resulting in an average speed of 150 km/hour.

But there is a caveat. Travellers are not interested just in travel times from Union Station to a station in London or Kitchener. They are interested in the door-to-door travel times, which must include the time and effort to get to hard-to-reach Union Station in Toronto.

Assuming it takes, on average, 35 minutes to get to Union Station from a traveller’s origin in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and another 10 minutes to get to the destination from the train station in London, the additional 45 minutes, when added to the 73 minutes for the haul between Toronto and London, increases the door-to-door travel time to 118 minutes, which is almost the same time it takes today to travel by car.

The proponents argue that the HSR will benefit workers who are heading to and from a destination in and near downtown Toronto because their trips may not require battling congestion in getting to and from Union station. Their argument holds merit, but it also exposes the elite downtown commuters who will disproportionately benefit from the $20-billion rail service.

For most travellers, especially in the GTA’s suburbs, HSR offers limited travel time and cost benefits or added convenience.

Ontario does not require another transit authority, as the Collenette report recommends, or to spend an additional $15 million to further investigate HSR options in the corridor. Instead, it should explore options to invest most of the estimated $20 billion for HSR in improving urban transit in Guelph, Kitchener, London, and Toronto. Why? Because for reducing auto-based emissions and improving throughput capacity, public transit investments in cities carry a much higher payoff.

For intercity travel, Ontario should incrementally build Via Rail’s capacity and performance. This is hardly a new recommendation. Back in the 1970s, the Intercity Passenger Transport Study concluded that “the most profitable strategy . . . involves maximizing the potential of existing facilities” through alignment improvements and new locomotive technology. Such improvements will require significant funds, but not nearly as excessive as $20 billion.

Forty-plus years of feasibility studies of HSR alternatives inform us that the best time to build HSR was neither 40 years ago nor now. Billions spent to achieve faster travel times for the downtown-centric populations could be better spent on urban transit where needs are most urgent, and benefits are undeniably greatest.

Murtaza Haider is an associate professor at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University. He is the author of Getting Started with Data Science: Making Sense of Data with Analytics.