Fighting for transportation investment | Sarnia Observer

Perhaps the most often asked questions to me is, "Does High Speed Rail make money?". Unfortunately the anti passenger rail folks who love asking this question, do not ask the same question of other infrastructure projects. Do roads make money? Car ownership and the building, maintaining and use of the roads is one of the largest financial and environmental costs to Canadians. One example to illustrate the cost of roads is the PEI Confederation Billion dollar bridge. We as taxpayers are paying a staggering $44 million a year for the next 33 years to in effect pay the mortgage on it. Does providing policing, sewage treatment and health care make money? Of course not, these are things that are done for the public good. We also seem to ignore the cost overruns associated with the building and maintaining nuclear power plants. An example: Just one plant, the Darlington Nuclear Plant original cost in 1993 was estimated to be $3.95 billion. The final cost was a staggering $14.4

The State of High Speed Rail in Canada | media! It’s not hard to describe the current state of high speed rail in Canada. It’s pretty much non-existent. That is apart from Bombardier who is busy building high speed trains for countries around the world. The ZEFIRO by Bombardier is capable of speeds up to 380 kilometres per hour. Yet you won’t find any of them in Canada. Around the world many countries are expanding existing high speed rail infrastructure; yet Canada it seems is intent to sit on the sidelines. media! News Magazine asked the founder of High Speed Rail Canada, Paul Langan, about the state of high speed rail in Canada. Here is what he had to say. How did you get involved with High Speed Rail Canada? I had been doing passenger rail advocacy for about 25 years in Canada. Grassroot groups that were mostly about fighting to keep VIA Rail service going in a community. I found myself often in conflict with VIA RAIL management on how the organization was run. I decided to do