Take The 'A' Train

Jesse:
In what may be my first (non-legal) dive into primary research for this blog, let's talk trains.

Since the Iggernaut has been talking lots about high speed rail (I decided to scribble out this post since the "build a train" thing has gotten to the point where he's being mildly mocked for it), I thought I'd just poke at the distances.

Wikipedia tells me that high speed rail in Europe makes the most sense for journeys of 150-650 km (compared to air). It also suggests they can be competitive at 2-3 hours (the article isn't super well written).

So, what does that mean for where high speed rail should, in my hilariously unqualified estimation, run? I'm glad you asked. Here's what I'd do:

From Windsor Toronto Ottawa Montreal Quebec City Fredericton

To Toronto Ottawa Montreal Quebec City Fredericton Halifax

Distance 371 km 450 km 194 km 253 km 740 km 260 km

Now, most of these numbers are right in the sweet spot for high speed rail, and they connect a stupid number of people:

City Windsor Toronto Ottawa Montreal Quebec City Fredericton Nova Scotia

Population 323,342 5,113,149 1,130,761 3,635,571 715,515 85,688 372,858

Pop. Rank 16 1 4 2 7 42 13

Note: I used the metropolitan area populations from 2006.

But, of course, more perceptive of our readers will have noticed some anomalies. Let us examine them.

1) Windsor's not very big. Yes, but it's also a huge border crossing to the United States. And Detroit, Michigan, has a metropolitan area of 4,425,110 (less than Toronto, more than everybody else on our list). Might it make more sense to connect directly to Detroit, and let people get to Windsor a little more slowly (Google Maps says it's a 7 minute drive, for those of you keep score at home)? Yes.

2) Fredericton is too small. Yes. But, it has a couple things going for it. It's the capital. It's not very far from St. John. And, it's got some "beeline possibilities" going for it. (See point 3). And, I'm not married to it. Really, Moncton or St. John may make more sense, having, as they do, more serious airports.

3) It's too far from Quebec City to Fredericton. Yes, but... let's look at the (Google) map.


View Larger Map

(Have I been sitting on this map the whole time, instead of showing it to you much earlier in this piece? Yes. It's called "the reveal". Deal with it.)

Now. What do you notice about the line between Quebec City and Fredericton? It's windy. What happens if we cut through Maine? Well I'll tell you; it's only 362 km as the crow flies. I think this might be doable. Make trains that we can lock up, if the States has a huge problem with this. By the way, using the same nifty online program I found that gave me the direct line, you can shave 100 km off the Toronto-Ottawa run by building new, beeline tracks.

I think this type of scheme has some actual, serious advantages over the proposed "Windsor-TO-Ottawa-Montreal" scheme. First, it'll un-piss-off Quebec politicians who insist it go to Quebec. Second, it'll be more of a "nation building" scheme, since it includes 4 provinces (helpful when it comes to federal dollars, since I hear parts of Canada outside of Ontario and Quebec get cranky when money gets spent just here. Third, I know some people from Nova Scotia whose whining I'd LOVE to stop by giving them a little leg up in building an economy. Something about Joe Howe, who may or may not have been some sort of professional wrestler, in the 1700s...

The smaller cities may not be ideal... but I think part of building this kind of public infrastructure has to be forward looking. Sure New Brunswick stops are kind of limiting now... but should we be aiming for a future where they won't be?

So, overall, I think it's worth looking into. Oh, and PS; I've never used tables before, so it'd be nice if you could let me know if they look OK on your computer, especially if you're (inexplicably) using something other than Firefox.