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When your argument is whataboutism, well,.......
High Speed Train Coming?-split from boosting Canada’s military spending"
- Thread starter Czech_pivo
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Incorrect. We are a people that manages to mostly vote for parties that create and then underfund massive social programs. That means, by definition, that every new undertaking is competing for borrowed money.
The fiscal criticism is two-fold: that the governmental contributions are not the best use of borrowed money right now compared to other spending pressures; and that once the project is stuck in, governments will be expected to borrow more money to cover pretty much all of whatever the overruns turn out to be (there isn't going to be a lot of additional private capital raised).
Proponents arguing variations of "people just don't want to spend the money" or "people just don't want to invest in/build Canada" are side-stepping those two points because those two points are almost impossible to contradict. It is clear from nightly/weekly news that governments at all levels are severely stressed by social problems: health, housing, homelessness. It is clear by observing the past that governments are the deep pockets of last resort that are expected to kick in under the threat of a project being abandoned by private interests when cost overruns exceed contingency funds.
A third point proponents ignore is that the true cost of anything is the sticker price plus the cost of financing (borrowing). To the extent that any government at any level is not spending money from a position of net surplus, the cost of its share includes the cost of new debt. As I observed facetiously a while back, if a government never fully extinguishes its debt, then the cost of financing goes on forever and the theoretical cost of everything done on borrowed money is infinite.
For people excited by new levels of defence spending, a federal contribution to any project is in direct competition with that exciting new defence spending. Depend on it. When a future crunch comes, which should be abandoned? Given an understanding of Canadian politics, which is most likely to be abandoned? I surmise the best way to protect new levels of defence spending for the next decade is to not undertake any more federal spending commitments greater than approximately chicken-feed.
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You're clutching pearls over 5-6 billion a year.
There are many better arguments against HSR, talking about what amounts to a rounding error is not one of them.
so that makes it OK? It is an elite showy project which will not benefit the average Canadian. Perhaps if they were looking at Edmonton to Calgary as an initial project I could be more on side. That would be worthwhile.
Today is the last day for public comment.
I urge everybody to submit their thoughts. Even those who hate the idea.
en.consultation.altotrain.ca
I attended consultations in person. But I'm a nerd who has done that for public transport projects wherever I've lived.
I urge everybody to submit their thoughts. Even those who hate the idea.
Shaping the Canada of tomorrow with high-speed rail
The train we need Alto’s aim is to build the country’s first high-speed rail network that will run at speeds of 300 km/h or more to efficiently connect major cities in the Toronto–Québec City corridor. Fast, reliable and frequent: Alto will reinvent the way we travel
en.consultation.altotrain.ca
I attended consultations in person. But I'm a nerd who has done that for public transport projects wherever I've lived.
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Listen, if you want to argue the merits of HSR I'll entertain that.
If anyone wants to say the price tag is too high, I'm not taking that very seriously.
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Unless you're advocating a complete elimination of OAS, you're not making any useful point by repeatedly hammering on the total cost of the program.
At what income level do you propose to cut it off, and how much would that actually reduce the program cost?
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As much as I would love that, I can’t see that happening. HSR usually works in places with higher population density. I’d love to get on a bullet train on Winnipeg to go to Vancouver, but I can’t see that being viable.
And building HSR from Vancouver to Canmore would be…interesting.
Edmonton-Calgary is probably on par with Ottawa-Montreal for demand. A basic model to determine demand that planners use is the Gravity model. Multiply the catchment populations (let's say CMA here) and divide by by the square of the distance. This gives a rough figure of merit to compare. I'll let you do the math to see why Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal is the most viable route in the country.
But also Alberta is literally developing their passenger rail plan right now (with heavy nods to HSR). They'll be getting federal funding and support once that is announced. And they need Alto to succeed simply to have the talent and experience base in the country to build their plan.
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The greatest irony for those saying calgary-Edmonton >Quebec City -Toronto
We need Quebec city-Toronto to work so we can have Calgary-Edmonton
I don't think people understand just how much planning is going into this project.
I also don't think people understand just how far along alto is. Probably because we are thinking on a Canadian timescale. The Europeans have done this all before.
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Again, the bleeding edge doesn't always have to work. There just has to be a bleeding edge.
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