http://www.metronews.ca/news/calgary/2015/10/28/transportation-minister-hints-at-calgary-to-edmonton-rail.html

It does get depressing hearing the same old diatribe espoused from people who suggest non-solutions to our current, abysmal, passenger rail situation in Canada. A recent poorly written article by Gary Mason in the Globe and Mail forced to me to wait, not 24 hours, not 48 hours, but 5 days after it was written to respond. Mr. Mason starts off with the usual rant that high speed rail is too expensive and the province cannot afford it. What he fails to realize is that every large infrastructure project would also include the federal government and high speed rail projects would involve a public-private partnership. Mr. Mason ignores this basic fact. Can the federal government afford it? It is all about priorities. Somehow they found $20 billion to fight a war in Afghanistan or the recent $25 billion for ship building in Nova Scotia. The federal government spent $1.6 billion to build the Confederation Bridge in PEI and will pay a shocking $44 million subsidy to the company running...

Well Calgary- Edmonton last saw regular passenger rail service in 1985 when the Rail Diesel Car were used on the route. Fast forward to now and more talk about bringing rail back to that corridor. Well the Standing Committee on Alberta's Economic Future discussed high-speed rail at their Thursday, December 12, 2013 meeting. The committee moved forward and decided to solicit written submissions from a large draft stakeholder list on high speed rail, and then the oral presentations would only come from those on the more restrictive list of panelists. Read the whole meeting minutes: http://www.assembly.ab.ca/ISYS/LADDAR_files/docs/committees/ef/legislature_28/session_1/20131212_1000_01_ef.pdf We will keep you informed on these future developments.

The Edmonton Journal ran an anti rail article recently. This rebuttal article is well written. Read it here.

Bullet train boosters are caught in a slipstream of excitement following Premier Ed Stelmach’s unexpected dual announcement Thursday of the new Royal Alberta Museum and its potential companion, a station to serve a high-speed train. READ STORY HERE

As we patiently wait for two more HSR studies to come out relating to the Ontario-Quebec corridor (the SNCF-Quebec Study and the Federal/Ontario/Quebec study) we have unwittingly fallen into the same paralysis that has prevented high speed rail from becoming reality for the last twenty years. I call the phenomenon "study paralysis". Indeed this phenomenon is not unique to the subject of high speed rail but study paralysis is epidemic in Canada relating to HSR. In Alberta, there are two new positive HSR studies already completed and nothing has happened. In fact the provincial government has gone backwards to 1960s era planning by announcing 5 billion dollars in provincial highway spending in the next few years. In Ontario , the study paralysis phenomenon is beyond belief. Twenty years of studies completed and we are anxiously awaiting two more studies to be done. We have had zero commitment from any federal government in the past. The present government has also never state...