• aDuckk@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You mentioned further down the thread that Canada doesn’t have the population for significant passenger rail development, which gets brought up a lot in this discussion. I can’t directly dispute that point, but doesn’t around 90% of the population live within 100km of the US border? We don’t need a network across the entire land mass, just hit at least one major city in each mainland province (sorry territories & maritimes) to start. One line for 90% seems like it would be a good deal unless I am missing something.

    • BlameThePeacock
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      1 year ago

      One line from Vancouver to Halifax is 5800km

      It’s currently estimated to be between $20-40m dollars per kilometer. That puts it at at least $120 billion at the low end to build but probably closer to $200 billion in reality. Then there are costs to actually run it.

      That’s about 1/6th of the entire national debt just to build a train service that would still take 2 days to get across the country, and there are operating costs on top of that each year.

      How would it be a better value that just continuing to use airplanes?

      • aDuckk@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Thanks for your reply. That cost definitely puts it into perspective, especially if it doesn’t factor building stations and buying land in or around cities, delays & screwups, etc

    • Rob Bos
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      1 year ago

      The Toronto to Quebec City corridor certainly merits high speed rail. Maybe a line from Whistler down to Chilliwack. There’s a few places.