Wanderings – Stalled progress and stilted plans

Many years ago, when I was in my final year of high school, a plan was released to upgrade passenger rail services between Windsor and Quebec City. I remember this plan clearly as the cover had a photo of a French TGV train in VIA Rail colours.

This plan had everything. A double-track main line with speeding electric trains travelling 300 kilometres per hour. A trip from Toronto to Montréal was to take under two hours, rather than the three hour and 59 minute “fastest” train between the cities, as it was in 1995.

The cost of this plan was around $8.5 billion over 10 years and the plan was to break ground two years later. Over 25 years later... that plan is still waiting. In fact, there have been several more plans created, vetted, thought about a good idea, and then shelved. Driving from Toronto to Montréal can be done in five hours if you don’t hit much traffic.

The lack of decent rail service is really bothersome – not just because I like trains either. Our options for rail travel are quite limited.

If I wanted to take the train to Toronto for example, I’d have to drive 40 minutes east or west of where I live to the nearest station. The trains are faster than driving directly to Toronto, but the cost of a ticket, plus parking (or getting a ride from a friend) is equal to the gas I need to drive to Toronto. What is the incentive?

Looking at other countries with areas that have a similar population density to the Toronto-Ottawa-Montréal corridor, there are more trains, more stations, and less cost to passengers. More users equals less cost as operating costs are largely fixed to the system. Meanwhile Canada is stuck with a passenger rail service which is the fixed-rail equivalent to a Greyhound bus milk run, only with slightly better food options and wifi.

The newest “plan” for high speed rail was released in 2021, had called for a 200 kph line to start by 2030. Three “consortiums” were selected to begin the proposal stage. Some of the companies involved with this latest plan-of-a-plan-of-a-plan were involved with constructing Ottawa’s LRT project. With a track record like that, I have little faith in being able to hop on any passenger train of this new system by 2030.

The current VIA system is in the process of getting new equipment, which looks pretty cool. Made by a German company, these double-ended trains may not have the retro stylings of the LRC trains of my youth, but these new trains do have wifi, and more leg room.

What is bothersome in all this planning, and planning, more planning, and even more planning, is the inability to do something – or anything. A plan is made, it’s expensive, government-types wince at the cost, and the plan is studied ad nauseam until finally it is a dust-covered door stop in some bureaucrat’s office. Governments change, new ideas are created, promises are made on the campaign trail, and the cycle starts over. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This planning feedback loop doesn’t just plague railways in Canada. Almost anything touched by government suffers this inability to make a decision and follow it through.

In the dark days of the pandemic, I was shocked that Premier Doug Ford was signing deals to build new long-term care homes like they were going out of style. I guess COVID statistics were enough of a wake up call to avoid over-studying a problem.

Long gone are the days where governments ran roughshod over property rights, land-use rules, or environmental protections – unless it’s Toronto’s Greenbelt that is. It’s better that we don’t have multiple governments and agencies like in the 1950s that pushed people out of their homes to flood vast areas of land in super projects with little consultation or compensation to residents and businesses relocated. And when was the last time an entire community was wiped off the map? But the pendulum has swung too far to the point that indecisiveness and over-study means little progress is ever made.

There needs to be a happy medium struck where a plan – once agreed to – continues on to completion. It may not be a perfect plan – but it checks most of the boxes and people are only moderately grumbling about it.

In my view, it’s better to have a compromise plan completed; one that everyone doesn’t hate but isn’t necessarily thrilled with.

We’re living with what the alternative is already, stalled progress and stilted plans.

This column was originally published in the August 9, 2023 print edition of The Morrisburg Leader.