IanO
Superstar
^that they do and I am a massive HSR guy, but even in Europe and Japan those speeds are not as common or sustained as much as folks are led to believe given the number of cities and other restrictions; I'd bet that it is 2/3 of that.
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- Thread starter IanO
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Didama
Active Member
It is both vital and feasible. Alberta is growing up and I suspect we'll all be discussing this much more in the coming years.
kcantor
Senior Member
perhaps… hopefully not in the way we’re discussing valleyline lrt or the way california is discussing their hsr. in the meantime, assuming edmonton and calgary both grow to 2 million, is there a 300 km corridor anywhere in the world successfully linking 2 cities of 2 million (and nothing outside of those 2 cities although mid point stops are okay) with hsr?
Didama
Active Member
What makes the corridor attractive is that it is one jurisdiction, relatively easy geography and a fairly reasonable distance between two very interconnected cities. What you see as a weakness (two large cities with virtually nothing else around but each other) is actually a strength. Edmonton needs Calgary and vice versa because there are no other dance partners around. HSR will create an economic hub of 4 million people rather than two economic hubs of 2 million people. That's what makes it vital. And it is far more feasible, and closer to reality, than most Albertans realize.
buildings
Active Member
The argument that HSR offers cheap, reliable cargo transport needs to account for, say, autonomous truck convoys in their own dedicated lanes. Also, a HSR could only go to one central terminal requiring a huge warehouse and distribution systems requiring, well, trucks for the last kilometer. (just like already existing air cargo infrastructure). However, who really needs high speed land transport when cargo planes work pretty good? Pretty expensive replacement for a hotshot. Still not convinced there's a passenger need. What do you think the price point for a return ticket might be? Remeber when there was the YEG_YYC dayliner rail transport that couldn't make a go if it? Do you see mom and dad packing up the kids for a quick jaunt down to Calgary zoo and back before dinner? Do business folk (the only ones with the travel budget for it), need a physical presence when WFH has shown to be viable with video conferencing? Finally, is it REALLY vital us average joes can get somewhere superfast (but not as fast as an airplane)?
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Didama
Active Member
We're getting way off topic now, haha! All I can say is that this topic will be much discussed in the next few years. What the ultimate outcome will be, or how soon we will see something tangible built, no one can say with certainty. But I can tell you that there are smart people with deep pockets who consider this both vital and feasible. Now back to Stationlands...
David A
Senior Member
In my opinion, looking at our downtown and airport we need things like more head offices here, not just a faster way to get to another city that has long ago figured out it is better not to be a branch plant city.
Didama
Active Member
So what you are saying is, providing less public transportation/inter city connectivity and maintaining smaller economic hubs is the way to attract head offices to Edmonton. Bizarre approach.
Stevey_G
Active Member
It would be prudent to incorporate an HSR corridor on a new high level bridge. Getting it to terminate within the Financial district is logical but I’m not exactly sure how we would go about doing that.
chrisvazquez7
Active Member
The High Level Bridge could be used for regular intercity rail (which is what we should be talking about before we even dream of HSR). But if we are to contemplate a HSR alignment, it would most likely be a terminus station in Old Strathcona in the short- to medium-term, and then a series of tunnels and a new bridge to downtown in the long-term.
CplKlinger
Senior Member
It sadly can't support that anymore; the city hired a company to see if it could support LRT (before the centre line was scrapped), and they found that the beams have lost around 50% of their density on average, so it couldn't even support LRT without significant strengthening.
Didama
Active Member
The High Level Bridge is not able to support intercity rail of any kind, including HSR. The terminus has to be downtown so a new bridge would be the way forward. The timing could be good, with both the CoE and likely HSR proponents need to span the river...sounds like a great cost share opportunity to me.
CplKlinger
Senior Member
The long term plans (by 2065) are for bus rapid route B1 (castle downs - century park) to have an exclusive river crossing, and B2 (WEM/Misericordia - Bonnie Doon) to to be *considered* for a river crossing (they cite uncertainty because of financial, social, and environmental considerations which are for some reason not mentioned in B1's case). Perhaps one of these crossings could be expedited if it could also accomodate rail traffic?
Source (for some reason I haven't been able to hyperlink for a few weeks now): https://www.edmonton.ca/sites/default/files/public-files/MassTransit-1.25millionpeople-Report.pdf
Gronk!
Senior Member
A downtown/HLB route for high-speed rail is a non-starter IMO. That is, unless you want to demolish the Station Park building that is already under construction on what used to be old CP Rail land. Build the new rail terminal south of 76 Ave then you can have HSR to YEG, Red Deer, YYC and terminating near Memorial Drive.
yeggator
Active Member
I would argue there is still very much a need for high-speed rail between the two cities. Sure, many business meetings can be done on Zoom calls but many will still happen in-person for a variety of reasons. Executives might travel up to operations facilities, entrepreneurs travel down to meet with investors, professors travel back and forth for research networking events and conferences. Edmontonians might need to go down to access business services and consulate offices (ex. my friends who’ve travelled to Japan and Colombia). Many Calgarians come up to access our government services (including the MLAs who need to sit in the Legislature). All of these trips would be better facilitated by HSR that could do the journey in a2-hour round-trip, improving ease of business across both cities while making synergistic cooperation between our cities’ economies easier. We’re talking overnight stays becoming day trips and day trips becoming afternoons here.
Lots of Edmontonians have family and Calgary and vice versa. Many university students from the respective catchment areas of the two cities travel between them to attend classes and visit family in the holidays, and when I took debate in high school, I’ve had to travel to Calgary to attend competitions. Furthermore, I have had the unfortunate experiences of either cancelling those trips, postponing the return trip or running very late during the trip itself due to the inclement winter weather our province is infamous for and the accidents that compound those delays. High speed rail would be a safe and reliable mode of transportation in all of these conditions, much like the LRT is in our city during snow days.
Furthermore, lots of Edmontonians also like to travel down to take a trip to Banff (which will be further facilitated by a regional rail connection) or connect to international flights in Calgary, both of which are more difficult trips by car or plane (when you count last mile travel and wait times at airports) that disproportionally benefit Calgary. While HSR’s impact on our airport might be controversial, it would decouple the dependency of businesses on ample flight connections and make it more favourable to set up shop in Edmonton. At the same time, it would put Edmonton on the map for tourists flying in to check out Banff, by virtue of the HSR easily connecting them to us and being a tourist attraction in its own right.
It’s also important to remember the people living between the two cities that plane travel will never sufficiently connect. Doing HSR right means we would link HSR to smaller communities and provide local and express service (like CA HSR), enabling super commuters and gaining support from rural Alberta. This would also alleviate pressure on housing as more people move to Alberta in the coming decades and the cities run low on land, while simultaneously revitalizing our smaller towns.
In my opinion, a reliable train service that can travel 320 km/h is space-age tech, and Alberta is blessed with geography and mostly intact rail ROWs in the cities that make it cheaper and easier to implement. Passenger travel between the two cities isn’t going anywhere and HSR will be a competitive option. This is the future.