The world's largest manufacturer of high-speed trains, Bombardier, which has just announced a deal worth US$272 million to build 48 new Talent-2 trains for German State Railway, is, of course, a Canadian company, based in Montreal. How ironic that this Canadian rail transportation giant, the "global leader in rail technology," whose Zefiro train, according to the Bombardier website, is the very re-definition of very high speed (VHS) rail travel, has no call for its unparalleled expertise in Canada. There are no high-speed, never mind very high-speed, trains in this country. Toronto doesn't even have a rail link from the city centre to the airport. The rest of the world has left the station, and left Canada behind.

Even Morocco is building high-speed trains. They're running a line between Tangier and Casablanca, to be launched in 2015, at a cost of US$2.47 billion. Bombardier, naturally, is trying to get the business.

In China, airlines are having trouble competing with the high-speed trains. Southern China Airlines Co., the nation's largest carrier, is reported to be cutting fares to compete with trains that run at 350 kph, cutting travel time on some routes from nine hours to two and a half. Some say the airlines can't win the battle, at least on shorter routes. Trains are more comfortable, involve less hassle to get to since they run city centre to city centre, and tickets cost less. The ministry of railways in China says that all of China's cities with populations greater than 500,000 will be connected by high-speed railways by the year 2020. In terms of track laid, this amounts to 18,000 kilometers.

By 2020.

The same is happening in Europe. Some airlines have dropped popular, shorter routes like the Paris-Brussels and the Paris-Stuttgart runs since high-speed train service more or less made them redundant.

Wherever you look, the story is high-speed rail. Russia, Turkey, Japan.

Even the United States, which is far ahead of Canada in the high-speed railway game, is on the verge of a great leap forward. At present, the fastest trains in the US are capable of about 200 kph, and run from Boston to Washington. The Acela trains on this line, however, average only half this speed because of the old tracks they run on.

But this is about to change now that President Obama has announced that new rail projects can go ahead, using up to $8 billion in the stimulus money approved by Congress last year. High-speed lines from St. Louis to Chicago and from San Diego to Sacramento in California are just two of the thirteen corridors selected for high-speed development.

"There is no reason other countries can start building high-speed-rail lines and we can't," Obama said, though "start" seems an odd choice of words given that Europe "started" building them more than thirty years ago.

Of course, his language is somewhat disingenuous. It is not for lack of technological know-how that the United States lags the rest of the world in this; it is lack of political will that has kept America back, and, one might argue, a reluctance to embrace "public" transit since the explosive growth of automobile ownership since World War II. In Nebraska, where high-speed rail is being debated, the legal counsel for the Transportation and Telecommunications Committee of the state legislature stated that their focus was on "vehicular transportation, not mass public transportation." The state is currently building a six-lane highway between Lincoln and Omaha.

But if the United States is lagging the world, where is Canada? What is Canada doing to bring its railways into the twentieth century, never mind the twenty-first? A spokesman for Canada's Transport Mininster, John Baird, called the Obama announcement regarding high-speed rail "interesting in the long-term." He added that "we are focused on implementing our economic action plan." This is the same economic action plan for which parliament had to be prorogued, demonstrating that this government cannot think about more than one thing at a time. 

After getting off to a relatively progressive start in the 1960s with the launch of CN Rail's TurboTrain between Toronto and Montreal, high-speed rail has fizzled in Canada. There are no high-speed trains operating in Canada at present and no firm plans to introduce any. Feasibility studies on top of feasibility studies replace leadership and, heaven forfend, a commitment to action. According to the Railway Association of Canada (RAC), an Ottawa-based lobby group representing the railway industry in Canada, "the Harper government is still considering the options."

In January, 2008, an inter-governmental study was conducted on the feasibility of building high-speed rail along the Windsor-Quebec City corridor. Then in February, 2009, the same governments of Ontario and Quebec announced a contract to "update the feasibility studies," focusing on "route options, transportation demand forecasts, operating costs, environmental and social impacts … implementation scenarios, impacts on other transportation modes and recommendations on the future action plan." This, remember, is an update, not a start from scratch.

At the time it was announced, the study was scheduled to take a year, making it due about now.

Meanwhile, the RAC cites an EKOS Research poll showing that 86% of Canadians favour high-speed rail (70% if it means higher taxes to pay for it), largely because of its relatively benign environmental impact: electrically powered, the trains would also help take cars off the road. RAC data show that rail is the most fuel-efficient form of surface transport, able to move one tonne of freight 180 kilometres on just one litre of fuel. Economic benefits to regions served by high-speed rail are significant, according to the RAC. Job creation, increased competitiveness and improved quality of life are among the benefits.

Assuming the latest feasibility study is released in the near future, when might we see something concrete, like a plan, an announcement of funding, a date for a shovel in the ground? Look no further than the election cycle. The Harper government is certainly not going to announce something as important as a job-creating, economy-boosting (vote-catching), environment-friendly project like this until it can be directly linked to their re-election. Also assuming, of course, that the Harper government finds the prospect "interesting" enough to proceed with it. If that means we have to wait until next fall just to hear what they intend, so be it. That's just the way this government works.

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