High-speed rail might be fit for new bank
TRANSPORT Proposed link ‘interesting project’
TORONTO • A high-speed rail system connecting Toronto to southern Ontario cities is “an interesting project” that the federal government will examine as a potential investment for the Canada Infrastructure Bank.
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne announced Friday morning that the province is moving ahead with preliminary design work for a high- speed rail corridor connecting Toronto and Windsor, as well as investing $ 15- million for an environmental assessment.
“The proposed high-speed rail link between Toronto and Windsor is an interesting project which we will examine alongside our municipal and provincial partners to see how it may fit with our programs and as a project for the Canadian Infrastructure Bank ( CIB), should Parliament approve the legislation to create the CIB,” said Brook Simpson, press secretary for federal Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi.
The government’s new i nfrastructure f i nancing agency, which Ottawa expects to be operational by late 2017, will invest $ 35 billion to attract private investors to infrastructure projects with revenue-generating potential.
In debate in Parliament last week, Sohi said the CIB could fund high- speed rail systems, such as the proposed link between Toronto and Windsor, and another connecting Edmonton and Calgary.
“We can undertake projects that some people think are unimaginable, like ... the high-speed link from Toronto to Windsor,” Sohi said.
“How do we fund these projects? We fund them by engaging the private sector, by mobilizing innovative thinking around that.”
The proposed Toronto-Windsor train would travel at speeds up to 250 kilometres per hour, with stops in Guelph, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Chatham and Windsor, as well as a connection to Pearson International Airport.
A report commissioned by the provincial government and written by David Collenette, the former federal Minister of Transport, pegged the cost of a highspeed rail project at around $21 billion.
Collenette suggested the province engage with key private- sector partners for the financing of the highspeed rail project but noted that capital costs “are generally not fully recoverable through f ares and other operating revenues alone.”
Mark Romoff, president and chief executive of the Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships, said the project — which he is happy to see moving forward — fits well with the CIB’s proposed mandate.
“The way the bank has been defined, it will focus on revenue- generating major and complex projects. There is nothing that fits that description better than something as significant as this high-speed rail initiative could be,” he said.
“I think there’s a good match there between the intent of the bank and the kinds of projects it will be most responsive to.”
Wynne called the plan “a game- changer” and said high- speed rail “will make a real difference in people’s lives and drive economic growth and jobs.”
But Matti Siemiatycki, an associate professor of geography and planning at the University of Toronto, believes Ontarians should be concerned about the project, which he says follows a classic formula for such megaprojects: overestimate the economic benefits, underestimate the costs to get the project going.
“The private sector will happily finance the project, but they want a revenue stream that’s going to pay them back, and in this case it’s highly unlikely any userfee generated revenue is going to be sufficient to pay back the really high project construction costs,” Siemiatycki said.
The feasibility report es- timates that by 2041, more than 10 million travellers would be using the highspeed rail l i ne annually, something Siemiatycki is skeptical of, given that Via Rail transported 920,000 passengers along the Toronto-Windsor corridor in all of 2016.
The prospect of a highspeed rail train connecting southern Ontario to as far as Quebec has been repeatedly floated by provincial and federal governments for decades. Advocates have argued that North America is an untapped market for highspeed rail.