I think HSR is great, but I find once the numbers get so large, people sort of lose the sense of scale of how much it costs. The Alto HSR connecting the Ontario/Quebec corridor is estimated at $60-$90B, before any of the inevitable cost overruns. At the lowest estimate of $60B, that's equivalent to 71% of AB current year entire budget expense, 4.4 years of our entire spend on healthcare as a province. For that same amount, you can build 43 Calgary Cancer Centres or 120 BMO Centre Expansions, or 245 Central Libraries, and about 240 Rocky Ridge YMCA (initial cost of 191M, assuming today maybe closer to $250M). Comparing to the Green Line, the Shepard to Downtown phase 1 (including the elevated portion to 7th Ave SW) is pegged at $6.248B (with inevitable overruns not included), that's 1/10th the cost of the Alto project. The much shorter Toronto East Waterfront LRT was recently announced at $3B.
I don't think HSR in Calgary would cost anywhere close to the Alto cost, and it's a bit unclear how much is property acquisition for Alto, which the AB HSR presumably would require less of. But even compared to other transit, is there more economic and population benefit to build transit to each corners of our city instead of an HSR for inter-city travel. And I assume like VIA Rail, there will be ongoing subsidies to keep fare affordable. If we spend the same subsidy, can we run free/extremely low cost bus routes connecting Edmonton/Red Deer/Calgary?
