OTTAWA — The head of Canada’s national passenger rail service says that the Crown corporation is ready to make a fast start on high speed rail service and is prepared to be a key player in any new project introduced by the federal government.

Via Rail Canada President and CEO Paul Côté said that ridership and operations have improved consistently over the past two decades, creating a base for a more advanced system. In the meantime, he said, new capital investments of almost $1 billion announced in 2007 are opening the door to faster service.

“The current investment of $900 million that the government has allowed us to do will help to continue to build that foundation, because that is the key, when the high speed systems comes into play, if the government goes ahead,” said Côté who appeared last week at parliamentary hearings about high speed rail. “The ridership of the franchise needs to be built to achieve that.”

Côté told the House of Commons Transport committee that the corporation has increased its ridership by 33 per cent and its revenues by 110 per cent since 1990 because of improvements to service and infrastructure.

“I can assure you that the people at Via Rail have the competence, the expertise and the motivation (to become a partner in a high speed rail project),” said Côté. “If we are allowed to do this and if the context permits, Via Rail will be able to show its expertise, quality and experience developed over all the years.”

Côté also said he welcomes U.S. President Barack Obama’s announcement of billions in new spending under a plan that is exploring nearly a dozen high-speed corridors in the U.S., including regions that would reach Montreal, Vancouver, Windsor and possibly Buffalo, near Toronto. He acknowledged, however, that Obama’s approach is different approach from that of federal and provincial governments in Canada.

The provincial governments in Quebec and Ontario, along with the federal government, are updating a 1995 study on high speed rail that estimated a line between Quebec City and Windsor could be built over 10 years at a cost of about $18 billion. A private consortium of firms is leading the study in consultation with representatives from the three governments and is expected to make recommendations in 2010.

“I know that there is some impatience that some people would like it to be faster,” Côté said. “But that’s the way the governments decided to go. So we will offer our assistance to make it happen and at the end we will have a very well documented storyline for high speed rail.”

Via Rail had developed a $3 to $4 billion plan several years ago to introduce an improved service with trains going at up to 200 km/h in the Quebec City-Windsor corridor. The plan could have been implemented following an announcement of new infrastructure spending in the fall of 2003 by former prime minister Jean Chretien’s Liberal government. But former prime minister Paul Martin cancelled the spending, closing the door on a project which already had support from other partners such as CN and CP Rail.

Under its current plan, Via Rail will continue to use trains that can go up to 160 km/h on the Quebec City-Windsor corridor but which often face delays since they share tracks with freight trains that have priority.

An Alberta-based research institute said that a high-speed train between Calgary and Edmonton also could have a profound impact in that region.

“I think the important thing about the high-speed rail, and the interesting thing about it, is that it would fundamentally change that corridor,” said Teresa Watts, an associate from the Van Horne Institute, at the parliamentary hearings last week. “It would change it from a corridor with two centres that at one time were competing into a complement of one million people, effectively shrinking distance because of that link, to a unit of three million people. I think that it has to be linked to a broader vision of economic development. It’s not simply a transportation solution, but it is a provincial shaper of that corridor, which has been such a juggernaut of growth over the last decade.”

The Alberta government commissioned a feasibility study on the project that was due nearly two years ago, but it has not made it public.

Source: By Mike De Souza, Canwest News Service

OTTAWA — The Harper government has touted nearly $1 billion in new infrastructure investments announced over the past two years for passenger train service as a key part of its economic action plan, but it is unable to estimate the impact of its spending on job creation.

“Canada is in a better position than many countries to face this new economic era, precisely because of the preparation that we took and the investments that our government has made,” Transport Minister John Baird said last week at the Ottawa train station as he highlighted some of the new spending for Via Rail, a crown corporation that operates at arms length from the government.

The money is being used to modernize stations across the country, as well as to increase the speed, quality and frequency of Via Rail service through improvements on locomotives, passenger cars and tracks.

For example, a third track to be built in strategic spots west of Brockville, Ont., would shorten the trip between Montreal and Toronto to three and a half hours by reducing delays and traffic that plague the route when freight and passenger trains must share the same track.

When asked to explain how the spending translated into the number of jobs created, Baird’s office referred questions to Junior Transport Minister Rob Merrifield who was unable to provide a ballpark estimate of direct and indirect jobs from all the different projects and contracts recently signed by Via Rail.

Christopher Hilton, a spokesperson for Merrifield, said the collective investments would create hundreds of jobs in several provinces.

He cited one example where a 2007 contract signed with a Montreal firm, CAD Railway Industries, to rebuild 53 locomotives created at least 130 direct jobs and possibly many more indirect jobs, on top of improving service. This five year contract, worth $100 million, was also expected to result in a 12 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Via Rail President Paul Cote said he could not provide many specific numbers on new infrastructure work resulting from $407 million in additional funding for the corporation in the 2009 federal budget since contracts are under negotiation. He added that there would be increases in the number of departures and new jobs as a result, but that he also wanted to maximize the efficiency of existing staff on the crown corporation’s payroll.

Via Rail is anticipating an increase of its ridership from 3.8 million to 4.8 million passengers in the Quebec City-Windsor corridor once the new infrastructure projects are complete.

But a railway industry consultant said the crown corporation should get more policy direction from the government to ensure that new funding is not “just a gift for whatever suppliers happen to be around.”

“If it’s $400 million or $1.5 billion (in new funding) it doesn’t matter,” said Glen Fisher, president of CPCS Technologies Corporation. “It’s just a gift to those suppliers because there’s no long range policy.”

He said the contract to rebuild aging locomotives in Montreal was working well, but that it might have been better to spend money to buy brand new locomotives that could also be manufactured in Canada to last longer and create even more jobs in the process.

Source Link: By Mike De Souza, Canwest News Service, The Vancouver Sun

mdesouza@canwest.com