07-08-2021, 09:11 PM
Well I’ll believe it when I see it, but there actually is a lot to say for it.
If you look at where everything is in Alberta, it quickly becomes pretty obvious there should be stops at Edmonton downtown, YEG, Red Deer, YYC, and Calgary downtown, in that order.
The downtown terminii should give high-quality transfers to the LRT systems in the two largest cities in Alberta. The Red Deer station gives the third-largest city in Alberta excellent rail service. You get high-quality airport-downtown rail links for both cities, and also eliminate the need for Calgary-Edmonton airplane flights.
The total distance is almost exactly 300km, so the number of trainsets/vehicles required to provide service is not too great and the amount of track to build is relatively manageable. I’m pretty sure there is even an existing reasonably straight rail corridor which could be widened and improved to provide most of the right-of-way.
In short, outside of your favourite subset of the Windsor-Québec corridor, this is probably the best choice in Canada for a high-speed rail project.
If you look at where everything is in Alberta, it quickly becomes pretty obvious there should be stops at Edmonton downtown, YEG, Red Deer, YYC, and Calgary downtown, in that order.
The downtown terminii should give high-quality transfers to the LRT systems in the two largest cities in Alberta. The Red Deer station gives the third-largest city in Alberta excellent rail service. You get high-quality airport-downtown rail links for both cities, and also eliminate the need for Calgary-Edmonton airplane flights.
The total distance is almost exactly 300km, so the number of trainsets/vehicles required to provide service is not too great and the amount of track to build is relatively manageable. I’m pretty sure there is even an existing reasonably straight rail corridor which could be widened and improved to provide most of the right-of-way.
In short, outside of your favourite subset of the Windsor-Québec corridor, this is probably the best choice in Canada for a high-speed rail project.