Well, I thought I had exhausted this topic and moved on to new areas of research, but all the hoopla about Leap in the news last week made me want to re-orient attention away from pipelines (for the record, I side with Klein on that issue)... So alas, one more post on high-speed trains and more advocacy for properly funding the fledgling little Crown corporation that could:
As posted on Rabble.ca...
Leap if you must, Canada, but do it without bullet trains
The Leap Manifesto has recently found itself at the centre of controversy, with pipelines in particular acting as a wedge between various factions and regional representatives of the NDP. The Manifesto effectively calls for a moratorium on "infrastructure projects that lock us into increased extraction decades into the future." As a supporter of the social and ecological principles that undergird Leap, I can get behind this statement.
Yet my support for this notion is also the very reason why I think the Leap should reframe what it has to say about a different type of transport infrastructure: high-speed trains. I admit this may be a technical quibble arising from my having spent years critically evaluating Canadian high-speed rail initiatives for my doctoral thesis, but hey, the Leap aims to engage us in discussion and debate, so here goes.
The offending line in the document is this one: "High-speed rail powered by just renewables and affordable public transit can unite every community in this country -- in place of more cars, pipelines and exploding trains that endanger and divide us." There are quite a few sentiments in there, including the reference to the apparently controversial pipeline issue which has been discussed ad nauseam, so let's just focus on the first half of this statement.
The vision painted is of a modern society where carbon-neutral high-speed trains link all the metropolises of Canada. Clearly that can't be what is actually intended by those who crafted Leap, as building this type of infrastructure would be an environmental catastrophe in a country this vast, where the nation's biggest cities and provincial capitals are literally thousands of kilometers apart from one another. As I've noted previously for rabble.ca the ecological benefits of high-speed rail are marginal at best and many scholars are quite skeptical about the potential for bullet trains to actually reduce the volume of air traffic, even in densely populated European corridors. One problem is that the neoliberal context for high-speed rail development makes it such that this type of infrastructure only appeals to governments when the business case demonstrates an increase in overall transport demand (in other words, when it "generates traffic").
Bullet trains also contradict the social principles of Leap. High-speed rail often exacerbates unequal access to intercity transport, since the fares required to recover the costs of building newfangled infrastructure are likely to be steep. As VIA Rail's new CEO Yves Desjardins-Siciliano recently claimed, high-speed rail is "not a middle-class product" and it "wouldn't do anything in terms of improving transportation for the vast majority."
That gets me to the most important point of this post: It turns out that VIA Rail, one of the nation's few remaining transport-related Crown Corporations, has just announced a plan that should be celebrated by Leap (albeit cautiously). It is trying to convince the federal government to invest $4 billion for a dedicated electric corridor featuring frequent service of electric-hybrid trains between Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, and the towns inbetween. The project would be in operation within three years (as opposed to the much longer and much more expensive build phase of genuine high-speed rail projects).
If the Leap really is serious about building a green economy, it is this type of rail plan which should be favoured over TGV-style high-speed trains. It makes use of an existing publicly owned infrastructure, rather than requiring the construction of an entirely new -- most likely private -- infrastructure which would then compete with VIA and likely drive it into the dustbin of history.
Further, it would be cheaper and come into service much sooner, allowing for quicker reductions in greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, the Wynne government should emulate VIA's plan and scrap its current designs for a bullet train and do the same type of thing with electrified GO service through to Windsor. The Alberta NDP could explore a similar refurbishment of existing tracks between Calgary and Edmonton.
The caveats are that Leap should only support these types of projects if they are both wholly public (to ensure that the people are the true beneficiaries, and that the fare structure doesn't gouge riders’ wallets); and if they are paired with broader regulations and policies (such as carbon pricing) which aim to shift intercity traffic away from fuel-based cars and airplanes (rather than merely contribute the the overall volume of travel).
It is indeed high time for a Leap, but when it comes to transportation proposals the document needs to advocate infrastructure which better reflects its social and ecological mandate.
Ryan M. Katz-Rosene is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa.
Showing posts with label High-Speed Rail. Show all posts
Showing posts with label High-Speed Rail. Show all posts
Monday, April 18, 2016
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
The Leap Manifesto... (and a minor quibble)
Like many Canadians I agreed with the premises and objectives of the Manifesto, not to mention the urgency with which these problems need to be addressed, as implied in the name of the concept. Some 21,555 people had signed the Manifesto within a week of it's publication - I being one of them.
However, like any Manifesto, where it succeeds in conceptual ideas it falls short on detail. And one detail in particular merits a little bit further elaboration in my view. At one point the manifesto claims the following:
"High-speed rail powered by just renewables and affordable public transit can unite every community in this country – in place of more cars, pipelines and exploding trains that endanger and divide us."Really... there are just far too many sentiments crammed into this sentence and the effect is that it comes off as unrealistic and unclear. The vision painted is of some super futuristic society where carbon-neutral high-speed trains link all the metropolises and towns of Canada. But clearly that can't be what is actually intended, as that would be an environmental catastrophe in a country as vast as Canada. I've written about this elsewhere, but the energy required to build and power new high-speed train lines is vast, and even wasteful when we consider existing resources such as the publicly-owned rail services operated by VIA Rail, bus/coach transport, and yes - even congested highway infrastructure. In a neoliberal country like Canada high-speed trains are a business mechanism for creating growth - the idea is to get more people travelling, not to reduce the overall volume of travel. So we need to be careful when we paint a picture of new energy-intensive infrastructures being built all over this vast country.
What I think the Manifesto intends in that statement is the following, and it would do well to take the time to spell out the details: 1) we need to provide more environmentally-sound methods of transport between and within cities; 2) we need to promote and support public forms of transportation and make transport more accessible to all Canadians; 3) we need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, particularly in the transport sector; and 4) we need to reduce our dependence on rail freight and pipelines for shipping crude oil, because this has led to increasing frequency and lethality of accidents (with dire consequences for public safety and environmental health).
I'll readily admit this is just a quibble, and it arises specifically because I've spent half a decade studying Canada's high-speed rail prospects during my doctoral studies. Nevertheless, words matter, and if the Leap Manifesto is to be taken seriously it needs to be sure that its idealistic optimism is backed by practical concepts and facts.
Thursday, September 3, 2015
Bullet Trains Are Not the Answer to Canada's Transportation Problems
[... originally posted to Rabble.ca]
In Canada, the idea of introducing sleek bullet trains within the nation's busiest transport corridors is periodically proposed as some sort of magic wand solution to a range of transportation problems.
New futuristic trains, proponents claim, will help tackle climate change, decongest highways and act as a springboard for private investment (for instance, see this appeal by the editor of Cantech Letter from just a few weeks ago).
In reality, while high-speed rail sounds nicer than cramped over-priced airplanes, and while it would offer some improvement in travel times over automobiles, it is an unnecessary and expensive infrastructure that would fail to produce its claimed environmental benefits.
Take the Government of Ontario's current plan to introduce what the former transport minister Glen Murray called "very very very high-speed rail" linking London and Toronto with a stop at Pearson Airport. While it currently takes about 2.5 hours to make that trip by car, the proposed bullet train could feasibly cut the door-to-door travel time in half.
But such a luxury would not come cheap: The government has forecasted that it could cost up to $3 billion. Yet, many of the leading scholars of high-speed rail development, such as John Whitelegg, Daniel Albalate, Germà Bel and Ginés de Rus, note how the tendency is for such infrastructure costs to soar beyond their original cost estimates, leaving investors -- whether public, private, or both -- in the lurch.
It is a commonly asserted myth that bullet trains are an environmentally friendly alternative to cars and airplanes, yet again the academic literature suggests the ecological benefits of high-speed rail are marginal at best -- certainly not anything close to the carbon reductions that could be yielded from spending such large sums on renewable energy production, retrofitting buildings, and improving urban transit systems (John Whitelegg has argued this point very convincingly in regards to the proposed HS2 project in the U.K).
Bullet trains are often proposed as a way to confront growing populations and the higher levels of intercity travel to which they will inevitably contribute. Yet most feasibility studies of high-speed rail projects in Canada suggest that these types of investments would actually generate new additional transport demand -- and that's the crux of the problem of unsustainable transport.
In this light a much better plan would be to focus on improving existing public passenger rail services provided by VIA or other interregional transport services. VIA, for instance, already services the London to Toronto route.
A sustainable future transportation system will come from efforts to reduce overall intercity transport demand, not increase it. Regulatory efforts to divert travellers away from cars and airplanes should make use of existing alternatives. Smaller-scale improvements to rail, such as better signalling, eliminating grade crossings and building new segments of dedicated tracks have already worked to improve VIA's travel times in the busy Québec City-Windsor Corridor without requiring a multi-billion dollar investment in new super fast trains.
When it comes to Canada's intercity transportation woes, the need is to improve the infrastructure already in place and lighten the load upon it, not to reinvent the wheel!
New futuristic trains, proponents claim, will help tackle climate change, decongest highways and act as a springboard for private investment (for instance, see this appeal by the editor of Cantech Letter from just a few weeks ago).
In reality, while high-speed rail sounds nicer than cramped over-priced airplanes, and while it would offer some improvement in travel times over automobiles, it is an unnecessary and expensive infrastructure that would fail to produce its claimed environmental benefits.
Take the Government of Ontario's current plan to introduce what the former transport minister Glen Murray called "very very very high-speed rail" linking London and Toronto with a stop at Pearson Airport. While it currently takes about 2.5 hours to make that trip by car, the proposed bullet train could feasibly cut the door-to-door travel time in half.
But such a luxury would not come cheap: The government has forecasted that it could cost up to $3 billion. Yet, many of the leading scholars of high-speed rail development, such as John Whitelegg, Daniel Albalate, Germà Bel and Ginés de Rus, note how the tendency is for such infrastructure costs to soar beyond their original cost estimates, leaving investors -- whether public, private, or both -- in the lurch.
It is a commonly asserted myth that bullet trains are an environmentally friendly alternative to cars and airplanes, yet again the academic literature suggests the ecological benefits of high-speed rail are marginal at best -- certainly not anything close to the carbon reductions that could be yielded from spending such large sums on renewable energy production, retrofitting buildings, and improving urban transit systems (John Whitelegg has argued this point very convincingly in regards to the proposed HS2 project in the U.K).
Bullet trains are often proposed as a way to confront growing populations and the higher levels of intercity travel to which they will inevitably contribute. Yet most feasibility studies of high-speed rail projects in Canada suggest that these types of investments would actually generate new additional transport demand -- and that's the crux of the problem of unsustainable transport.
In this light a much better plan would be to focus on improving existing public passenger rail services provided by VIA or other interregional transport services. VIA, for instance, already services the London to Toronto route.
A sustainable future transportation system will come from efforts to reduce overall intercity transport demand, not increase it. Regulatory efforts to divert travellers away from cars and airplanes should make use of existing alternatives. Smaller-scale improvements to rail, such as better signalling, eliminating grade crossings and building new segments of dedicated tracks have already worked to improve VIA's travel times in the busy Québec City-Windsor Corridor without requiring a multi-billion dollar investment in new super fast trains.
When it comes to Canada's intercity transportation woes, the need is to improve the infrastructure already in place and lighten the load upon it, not to reinvent the wheel!
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Wynne has proposed building Canada's first high-speed train... but will it be done the right way?
However, Kathleen Wynne's Liberal government intends to change that. Earlier this year Ontario Minister of Transport Glen Murray offered clues about plans to introduce what he called “very very very high-speed rail” linking London, Kitchener, Toronto and Pearson Airport, and by all measures the system would be built very very very fast – within a decade!
The project would be the first of its kind in Canada, and no longer would train enthusiasts be able to speak of Canada's backwater passenger rail system. Recent international examples indicate that such projects can be phenomenally successful; Think China, which went from having no bullet trains to claiming the world’s largest network in a span of five years. At the same time, high-speed rail plans can be disastrous. Current proposals in California and Britain have been politically divisive and costs have run far higher than expected. What this tells us is that if we bring high-speed trains to Canada (and that is a big if), they need to be introduced the right way and for the right reasons.
We’ve heard only snippets about Ontario’s high-speed rail plan. Minister Murray suggests that the system would be organized similar to regional lines in Europe. If he has the French Réseau Express Régional in mind – a system connecting Paris’ core to suburban areas – this would be a useful structural model to emulate. The RER is jointly operated by Paris’ metro service and the national railroad (so it is subsidized by taxpayers), yet the systems are integrated for single-payment and easy rider transferability. In Ontario this would be akin to a partnership between GO and VIA. The RER doesn’t go as fast as the trains Murray seems to have in mind, but an Ontario version could easily reach high speeds since there are far less stops planned. Most importantly, the government has been buying up tracks over the last decade, so a new train wouldn’t have to compete with freight.
If done right, high-speed rail has much to offer: It could alleviate congestion and associated carbon emissions from the 401, North America’s busiest highway. But achieving that feat is not as easy as it sounds. Planners would have to be careful to ensure a new line doesn’t result in increased mobility (and therefore additional emissions); To attract would-be drivers, the system would have to enable commuters to transfer seamlessly between urban transit systems, regional lines, and intercity transport networks. With the right regulatory measures, such as the types of domestic procurement policies seen in the United States, a project of this magnitude could also create numerous domestic jobs and stimulate a number of related sectors.
Critics are correct that a high-speed rail line would only be commercially viable if it received government subsidies. And for such subsidies to be economically sustainable, Ontarians will have to keep contributing handsomely to the tax base (Murray is quite open about his government’s plan to increase taxes). While that idea might have anti-tax groups bleeding from the ears, voters ought to know that a private HSR operation would be doomed by typically low cost-recovery rates.
Proponents of high-speed rail should brace for the usual barrage of critiques: Do we really have sufficient population density for HSR in Canada? Can we really ensure that the costs don't spiral out of control? Can a Crown corporation really be as efficient as a private sector operator? My own answers to these questions, after studying HSR for years, is “it’s complicated.” Possibly, yes, if the planners really think this through. The benefit of being the last industrialized nation to join the HSR club is that we have examples from abroad to emulate, and models to avoid!
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
A Fruitful Research Trip to Alberta
The weather has been nuts and I've been hunkering down at home for days now. In part my solitude is a break from what was a busy research trip to Alberta last week, which involved traveling to various parts of the province to conduct interviews and visit archives. I was carrying out research for two main projects in Alberta: First, I interviewed four individuals who had something to say about the Calgary-Edmonton high-speed rail corridor, and second, I tracked down some archival documents relating to a paper I am writing about the origins of term 'oil sands'. Here is a little update on what I found:
Interviews on High-Speed Rail
I was lucky to interview all four of my requested subjects, who for reasons of anonymity I can only refer to here as 1) a "high-speed rail entrepreneur"; 2) a "public policy organization analyst"; 3) a "government transportation official"; and 4) a "labour organization spokesperson". All of them were asked similar questions regarding the political economic context within which an Alberta high-speed rail should (or should not) be introduced. This is part of my doctoral research, and while my analysis is still ongoing, one set of findings I can report definitively here is that is highly unlikely that the government of Alberta will introduce a high-speed rail line any time soon. Rather, the only way this type of project is apt to come about is if it is entirely financed and operated by the private sector. This is starkly different that the kinds of things you would hear in the media just a few months ago - that this could come about as a so-called "Public Private Partnership" (see, for example, the claims on the albertabullettrain.com "Quick Facts" page). In recent years political leaders in Alberta have made ovations to the idea of introducing a high-speed rail line between the province's two busiest cities (which presumably would include stops at the Edmonton airport, Red Deer, and the Calgary airport in addition to its downtown nodes). A number of studies have been carried out as well, most recently by the Van Horne Institute (2004) and by TEMS (2008). The studies point to existing demand, as well as a range of expected social, ecological and economic benefits and spinoffs. Yet after these interviews is seems the only willingness to be a part of such a project on the government's behalf is to be an external regulator.
What I am fascinated by is the different political economic contexts which serve as a foundation for what is presumed to be the 'optimal' situation for HSR, and the different realities that these foundations would produce if the project were indeed to go forward. Three of my interview subjects felt that a totally private enterprise was the best way to carry out the project. Of these three two were in favour of introducing high-speed rail, and one felt that there was simply no need for it as it would cost taxpayers too much. On the contrary, one interview subject was in favour of the project but felt that it should be entirely public. Next up is a research trip to Quebec to talk about the Quebec City-Windsor corridor line. It will be very interesting to see how the Eastern and Western situations compare.
Archival Documents about the Oil Sands
As part of another project I have been trying to track down some of the earliest official uses of the term "oil sands" for a paper about the institutionalization of this term and its broader implications. I was aware of some really neat archival documents housed at the Glenbow Archives in Calgary and the Provincial Archives of Alberta in Edmonton. The staff at both of these archives were exceptionally generous in helping me find what I was looking for. First, at the Glenbow archives I was hoping to find the proceedings of what is known as the "Athabasca Oil Sands Conference". This was a conference held in Edmonton in September, 1951. I've known about this conference since conducting my M.A. research back in 2009, but I've always been interested to know more about what was said, who participated, and how this term (oil sands) in particular was being intentionally propagated as a replacement for "tar sands" and "bituminous sands" - which were both more commonly used at that time. It was such a delight to find a folder at Glenbow with my name on it. When I opened it up, this is what I saw:
This 371 page gem was exactly what I looking for. It answered a host of outstanding questions. Of interest was the repeated use of the terms "bituminous sands" and "tar sands" - even by government officials. I also found - finally - the name of the government official who had proclaimed at this conference the following statement: "May the words 'welcome' and 'oil sands' ever be closely associated!"This quotation is mentioned by Larry Pratt in his 1976 book The Tar Sands (it's on page 31), but he doesn't attribute a name to the quotation, he just notes that a government official said this at the conference. For years I've wanted to know who actually said it, and now I know the answer. It was said by then Minister of Highways for the provincial government - the Honourable Gordon E. Taylor. It was fitting that the Minister of Highways made this ovation to big oil; As he said in the same speech, "The world's demand for more and more petroleum products increases every day. Railways, industrial consumption, household requirements, automobiles, trucks and tractors accelerate this peace-time demand" (p. 166 of the proceedings). In short, he was welcoming the world's biggest energy companies to come and do business in Alberta, and part of this welcoming involved convincing them that this peculiar substance (bitumen) could actually be converted into synthetic oil and thus used just as one would use (real) crude oil, not simply as bitumen had hitherto been used (as a raw material for paving roads and patching canoes!).
Then it was on to the Provincial Archives. There I wanted to look at the Max W. Ball fonds and the Abasand fonds. Max W. Ball seems to be the first one to have really pushed the term 'oil sands'. In the 1920s there was the "International Bitumen Company" (which later became the "Tar Sands Products Ltd.") as well as the Bituminous Sands Company (registered in Colorado by a close associate of Ball's). But then in 1930 Ball and his associated start up the Canadian Northern Oil Sands Product Ltd. (which later became Abasand Oils). I wanted to see if the archival materials had any information about how Max Ball seemed to come up with this name, what his thought process was at the time. I was astounded at what I found. Within the three boxes full of archival documents within the Abasand fonds are hundreds of correspondences between Ball and other people, most notably that associate I mentioned (whose name was B.O. Jones). These are handwritten letters, typed letters, as well as telegrams! I was amazed to find a series of correspondences between these two dating from 1930, in which they were haggling out the name of their future company. Of particular interest to Ball was including the word "sands" within the company name, since this had a certain allure. Here is an example of one telegram (two pages):
These discussions were quite interesting to read, but they did not give me a sense of what Ball was thinking in terms of the term 'oil sands'. Then I found a report Ball had written in 1930 titled "The Oil Sands of the Athabaska Region of Alberta, Canada: A Summary of Available Information". On the very first page I found exactly what I was looking for, Ball's own rationale explaining the different terms available and why he has chosen to use the term "oil sands":
This document is quite incredible, especially when considering how 80 years later the Government of Alberta and the Oil Industry are going through the same exercise (trying to convince their 'audience' that 'oil sands' is the 'correct term' and that 'tar sands' and 'bituminous sands' are thus 'inaccurate'). Here's one 2008 clip from a provincial government report noting the same rationale:
I've written elsewhere about the material implications about these changing terms and their meanings. I am happy that I now how some additional archival materials to supplement my historical knowledge of the origins of these terms.
 |
| Source: albertabullettrain.com |
I was lucky to interview all four of my requested subjects, who for reasons of anonymity I can only refer to here as 1) a "high-speed rail entrepreneur"; 2) a "public policy organization analyst"; 3) a "government transportation official"; and 4) a "labour organization spokesperson". All of them were asked similar questions regarding the political economic context within which an Alberta high-speed rail should (or should not) be introduced. This is part of my doctoral research, and while my analysis is still ongoing, one set of findings I can report definitively here is that is highly unlikely that the government of Alberta will introduce a high-speed rail line any time soon. Rather, the only way this type of project is apt to come about is if it is entirely financed and operated by the private sector. This is starkly different that the kinds of things you would hear in the media just a few months ago - that this could come about as a so-called "Public Private Partnership" (see, for example, the claims on the albertabullettrain.com "Quick Facts" page). In recent years political leaders in Alberta have made ovations to the idea of introducing a high-speed rail line between the province's two busiest cities (which presumably would include stops at the Edmonton airport, Red Deer, and the Calgary airport in addition to its downtown nodes). A number of studies have been carried out as well, most recently by the Van Horne Institute (2004) and by TEMS (2008). The studies point to existing demand, as well as a range of expected social, ecological and economic benefits and spinoffs. Yet after these interviews is seems the only willingness to be a part of such a project on the government's behalf is to be an external regulator.
What I am fascinated by is the different political economic contexts which serve as a foundation for what is presumed to be the 'optimal' situation for HSR, and the different realities that these foundations would produce if the project were indeed to go forward. Three of my interview subjects felt that a totally private enterprise was the best way to carry out the project. Of these three two were in favour of introducing high-speed rail, and one felt that there was simply no need for it as it would cost taxpayers too much. On the contrary, one interview subject was in favour of the project but felt that it should be entirely public. Next up is a research trip to Quebec to talk about the Quebec City-Windsor corridor line. It will be very interesting to see how the Eastern and Western situations compare.
Archival Documents about the Oil Sands
As part of another project I have been trying to track down some of the earliest official uses of the term "oil sands" for a paper about the institutionalization of this term and its broader implications. I was aware of some really neat archival documents housed at the Glenbow Archives in Calgary and the Provincial Archives of Alberta in Edmonton. The staff at both of these archives were exceptionally generous in helping me find what I was looking for. First, at the Glenbow archives I was hoping to find the proceedings of what is known as the "Athabasca Oil Sands Conference". This was a conference held in Edmonton in September, 1951. I've known about this conference since conducting my M.A. research back in 2009, but I've always been interested to know more about what was said, who participated, and how this term (oil sands) in particular was being intentionally propagated as a replacement for "tar sands" and "bituminous sands" - which were both more commonly used at that time. It was such a delight to find a folder at Glenbow with my name on it. When I opened it up, this is what I saw:
Then it was on to the Provincial Archives. There I wanted to look at the Max W. Ball fonds and the Abasand fonds. Max W. Ball seems to be the first one to have really pushed the term 'oil sands'. In the 1920s there was the "International Bitumen Company" (which later became the "Tar Sands Products Ltd.") as well as the Bituminous Sands Company (registered in Colorado by a close associate of Ball's). But then in 1930 Ball and his associated start up the Canadian Northern Oil Sands Product Ltd. (which later became Abasand Oils). I wanted to see if the archival materials had any information about how Max Ball seemed to come up with this name, what his thought process was at the time. I was astounded at what I found. Within the three boxes full of archival documents within the Abasand fonds are hundreds of correspondences between Ball and other people, most notably that associate I mentioned (whose name was B.O. Jones). These are handwritten letters, typed letters, as well as telegrams! I was amazed to find a series of correspondences between these two dating from 1930, in which they were haggling out the name of their future company. Of particular interest to Ball was including the word "sands" within the company name, since this had a certain allure. Here is an example of one telegram (two pages):
 |
You'll notice some similarities with the following clip from the website of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers website:
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