[URBAN NOTE] "U.S. Congresswoman calls for high-speed rail linking Manhattan to Canadian cities"

[rfmcdonald]

I like the idea of high-speed rail. I'd love a high-speed rail route in Canada, connecting Toronto to Montréal, with a side-spur to Ottawa, preferably one linking the entire central Canadian urban corridor from Windsor to Québec City. I love the idea of cross-border rail links, too, the idea of a high-speed link between Canada and New York City that New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney talked about with the Globe and Mail's Konrad Yakabuski particularly appealing to me. There's just the non-trivial question of whether or not any of these high-speed rail links would be financially viable. I suspect not, at least judging by the projections for a similar mooted high-speed rail link between Toronto and Buffalo.

Is my gut feeling wrong?

[New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney] wants governments in her country and Canada to get moving on building a high-speed rail line that would link Manhattan, where her district lies, to cities north of the border.

“It would really help the economies of our countries dramatically,” Ms. Maloney insisted in an interview with The Globe and Mail, as she prepared to take the stage on Tuesday night at the Democratic National Convention here. “Both of our countries should get behind it, push it and make it happen.”

The dream of bringing European fast trains to North America has been around for decades without making much headway. But it got a powerful boost from President Barack Obama, whose stimulus bill allocated $8-billion for the development of high-speed rail projects. Most of that money is still waiting to be spent.

Only one cross-border link – between New York and Montreal – is mentioned in the U.S. Transportation Department’s 2010 list of “priority corridors.” But little progress has been made on advancing the project advocated by the Quebec government. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has expressed no enthusiasm for the idea.

California is currently the site of the biggest and most controversial high-speed rail project in North America, a $68-billion plan to link San Francisco and Los Angeles in less than three hours. Construction on the first leg of the project, through California’s Central Valley, is slated to begin next year.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is also championing fast trains in his state. He is plowing state and federal funding into speeding up train service to upstate cities including Albany, Syracuse and Buffalo. He snagged an extra $500-million in federal high-speed rail money that was refused by Republican governors in Wisconsin and Ohio, who feared the faster train projects would end up as financial sink holes.

Ms. Maloney, whose district covers most of Manhattan’s east side and parts of Queens, thinks expanding the scope of New York’s projects to include more populated Canadian cities makes economic sense and could be the key to their viability.