I can't imagine the passenger traffic between Edmonton & Calgary ever being high enough to justify high speed rail of any kind. They can't justify the cost of running the same between Toronto and Montreal. (3-4 times the population base of Cal-Edm). The Turbo back in the 70's was an ill fated attempt.
Much of the traffic between Calgary and Edmonton is commerce and the movement of goods. Unfortunately HSR from a fixed point A to a fixed point B, is not conducive to commerce.
Well, a quick look at Ontario 401 (600km) v. Alberta QE2 (300km city to city) traffic numbers reveals that traffic east of Cornwall - presumably mostly Montreal origin/destination traffic - is about 16,000 - 20,000 vehicles per day (2016 numbers is all I could find). It also appears to be the lowest traveled section of the whole 401 (peaking at near 400,000(!) daily trips in the GTA). In the east of Cornwall section, I would suspect a large portion is semi-trucks as the corridor is absolutely packed with them anecdotally when I drive there (sorry can't find data). Also I would assume there would be larger local traffic in all the towns/cities in the middle, as the 401's surrounding population density is higher with loads of small and mid-sized towns along almost the whole route.
Source
A similarly remote area, half-way between Red Deer and Leduc, has the lowest traffic counts on the QE2 - about 28,000 - 30,000 / day. There is no way there is a higher portion of freight or local traffic on the QE2 than the 401 - which connects the two largest manufacturing hubs in the country - but if evidence suggests otherwise I would love to see it.
Source
So from this half-effort analysis I am inclined to believe:
- Travelers make up a far higher percentage of traffic on the QE2
- The total highway travelers is likely *higher* between Cal-Edm than Tor-Mtl, in absolute terms
- Total trips Tor-Mtl might be much higher in total, with a huge number of flights (pre-covid) between the cities ( don't have the data)
- Makes sense to me that road trips are lower and flights are a higher share due to distance and travel time (600km v. 300km)
- No matter what speed the rail, both connections would benefit from improved network resiliency: frequent collisions, congestion and bad winter weather often closes down the roads and shuts all commerce and travel
- No matter what speed the rail, both connections offer big social/environment benefits over current situation: potential for new trips from non-car travellers, emission benefits
For solutions:
- For Toronto and Montreal: given the distance and high amount of air competition, any rail-based solution will need to compete on speed and city-centre to city-centre convenience as air travel is so much more competitive. This points to faster rail solutions (or relying on all the cities along the way to generate more trips such as the HFR proposal that routes through Ottawa to get between Toronto and Montreal, expanding the market)
- For Alberta: speed advantages are more limited. If high-speed rail got you Calgary to Edmonton at 300km/h in 1 hour, you save 2 hours. For Toronto to Montreal you save 4 hours at the same speed. Would be awesome either way, but saving 2 hours vs. saving half a day is a big difference when it comes to economics of travel time savings
- I don't know if this means that high-speed rail makes sense in one corridor, both or neither. Any solution will require people to care about travel time savings, network resiliency improvements and the social/environmental benefits and would require some government involvement to secure the right-of-way (at least).
My thought would be leaning towards Alberta's being cheap and fast-ish approach (straight as possible and grade separated, but don't bend over backwards to ensure the thing goes 300km/h+ the whole time). Anything less than 2.5 hour travel time core-to-core, would vastly improve the current situation for travel time, resiliency, environment and social benefits. If faster, great! Anything under 2 hours puts Calgary and Edmonton into the range of the ultra-commuters - work in one city and live in the other. That really changes the economic game in the future, as the cities become close enough together their economic identities begin to blur. Throw a suburban Red Deer station in there as well, as it's evolving into a fairly large hub.
Toronto to Montreal is trickier - needs to be go far but also fast enough to compete with air. The airport locations in both cities and their general congestion levels helps rail competitiveness, but it's a long way to go. The HFR approach is probably about right as long as the corridor is future-proofed as much as possible so you can keep increasing speeds as the travel demand grows. For an example, most French TGV lines started at lower speeds in the 1980s (200 - 250km/h) and slowly improved until today's 300km/h+ on some routes.
