Canadians have been talking about building high-speed trains at least since Pierre Trudeau was a rookie politician. This week's Canwest News Service series on the idea, reflecting a new flurry of interest across the country, is just the latest installment in a very long conversation.
By one count the last 30 years have seen at least 16 major studies of building such a line between Quebec City and Windsor. The latest, from 1995, is now being reviewed by a federal-provincial working group. Meanwhile, out west, the Alberta government is buying land for new stations for a high-speed link between Calgary and Edmonton, and has commissioned a study to find the best route. It's a dream that just won't die.
And no wonder. Canada has railroads in its DNA, and the notion of sleek modern trains linking our major cities is hard to resist. The Quebec-City-Windsor route also has symbolic value, linking as it would the national capital to Eastern Canada's two major cities and the capitals of its two major provinces. What the CPR did for national unity in 1872, the TGV-Québec-Ontario-HST might do in 2009.
Practical virtues for the traveller aren't hard to find, either. Three hours of dozing (or working) in a comfy seat beats five or six hours driving on the 401 to get to Toronto. And when you figure in the hassle of airport security checks and long taxi rides, the downtown-to-downtown speed certainly becomes competitive with flying.
And trains are the darlings of the green movement - especially trains powered by clean, hydro-generated electricity.
The bump in the tracks, of course, is the cost. It's horrendous. The latest estimates for the Edmonton-Calgary line range up to $40 billion, and that is barely a quarter the length of the Quebec-City Windsor route. The most recent estimate for that link - from 1995, remember - was $18.3 billion. Add in 15 years of inflation and the inevitable cost overruns, and you end up with a number that would make even Sir John A. Macdonald blanche.
But it works in Europe, we're told. Indeed, the French-born train à grande vitesse (TGV) is revolutionizing travel all over the continent. But Europe is more densely populated and more heavily taxed than we are, and Europeans have maintained their conventional rail network far better than we have. Europeans use trains; we're just nostalgic about them.
Even if, perhaps under cover of stimulus, governments drum up the money to start this project, there would also be the issue of operating costs.
But highways cost billions to build, too, and no one expects them to make money,. We spent tax money to build airports, too. If high-speed rail can get people out of the air and off the highways, it might well be worth the extravagant price tag. Still, we'll have to proceed with caution - take the slow road to the fast track, as it were.
Perhaps what's needed are hardheaded romantics: people who can dream and operate a pocket calculator at the same time. Canada found them once before, when it decided, against all odds, to build a railroad across several thousand miles of unsettled, unsurveyed, and virtually unknown territory to create a continent-wide nation. Why can't we do it again?