A Train to Nowhere?

If you read this weekend’s Winnipeg Free Press, you likely came across an article titled Manitoba could join Minnesota in 175-km/h rail link or the accompanying editorial. The article takes a look at the idea of building a high-speed rail link between Minneapolis/St. Paul and Duluth, Minnesota, and suggests that thought be given to extending the link all the way to Winnipeg.

Any such rail link, if it ever becomes reality, is likely decades and billions of dollars away: though early estimates suggest that a Twin Cities-Duluth rail line, about 150 miles (240 kilometres) long would cost about $1 billion to build, rarely has any high-speed rail line been built at anything nearly as low as the proposed $7 million per mile price.

High-speed rail lines rarely cost less than $40 million per mile to build, putting the realistic cost of a Twin Cities-Duluth line at $6 billion or more, and a 380-mile Duluth-Winnipeg connection at a staggering $15 billion or more.

Before governments start being asked for funds to make such an ambitious project happen, there are some serious questions to ask:

Do we really want to go to the Twin Cities that badly? Yes, the Twin Cities are a popular long-weekend destination for Winnipeggers, being the only city within 1,000 kilometres of Winnipeg with a population greater than one million and the amenities that come with that. But a high-speed rail link can’t just exist for long weekend traffic — it would need heavy weekday use as well. There’s little reason to believe that such demand exists.

Do Minnesotans really want to come here that badly?  Much of the tourist trade from the Twin Cities and Duluth is in the form of hunters and other wildlife enthusiasts who are destined for northern Manitoba — the province’s most unique tourist offering — which would be a long, tiring journey by train.

There is unlikely to be much interest among Duluth or Twin Cities residents in visiting Winnipeg for fun, as Winnipeg pretty much follows the same template as any other medium-sized Midwestern town (Minimal nightlife? Check! Bland gastronomy and early dinnertimes? Check! Can sometimes walk an entire block in broad daylight without passing anyone? Check!), and competes with the similar offerings to be found in Kansas City, Milwaukee, Omaha and Des Moines — and Chicago’s genuine big-city experience — all of which are just as close or closer to the Twin Cities than Winnipeg is.

Will the price be right? Based on advance-purchase prices for similarly long rail journeys such as Winnipeg-Saskatoon, Vancouver-Jasper, London-Scotland and Netherlands-Switzerland, a Winnipeg-Minneapolis one-way trip would cost $100 to $200 each way per person, plus taxes and fees. For a family of four, the cost of taking the train to Minneapolis and back for the long weekend would thus cost $800 or more. Would people pay such a price for the convenience of reaching the Twin Cities in 4-6 hours, and would enough people pay such fares to make rail service viable?

What about Customs and Immigration? There are no pre-clearance facilities for passenger trains between Canada and the U.S., and it’s improbable there would be enough traffic on a Winnipeg-Twin Cities run to justify building such facilities at Winnipeg’s Union Station. Thus, on routes such as Amtrak’s Montreal-New York service, the railway cautions that departure times from the border are subject to delays if there are complications. Since a delay of an hour or two at the border would significantly erode the time-saving advantage of a high-speed rail line and lead to missed connections further down the line, this raises questions about whether or not high-speed cross-border rail is even worth spending the thousands of dollars on for a feasibility study, let alone the billions of dollars required to actually construct a line.

A related issue: cabotage. No, that’s not a mis-spelling of sabotage. Cabotage refers to the right of a foreign airline, railway or bus service to carry people between two points in the same country. For example, Amtrak’s New York-Montreal service stops at St. Lambert each way between Montreal and the U.S. border. But, as Amtrak is not a Canadian company, it is strictly prohibited from selling tickets between Montreal and St. Lambert in either direction. (And the law is enforced: in 2002, a Korean airline was fined $750,000 by American authorities for carrying passengers between Guam and Saipan, two U.S.-controlled Pacific Ocean territories). Thus, passengers would either need to change trains at the border, or the cross-border train service would have to be viable without any passengers being allowed to buy tickets between Winnipeg and Steinbach (if operated by an American company) or between International Falls and Duluth (if operated by a Canadian company).

Can it be justified as a political priority? Make no mistake: a high-speed rail line anywhere will require heavy financial assistance from government, and ongoing political commitment for at least 20 years, assuming a rosy scenario that sees early planning start in 2013, construction start in the early 2020s and service launched in the early 2030s. (If you think this is too broad a timeline, I have just three words: Winnipeg Rapid Transit).

It is difficult to argue that a high-speed rail line to the U.S., for which there is little apparent demand, should be made a political priority for a generation. It is even more difficult to argue that investing in high-speed rail would be nearly as beneficial for the economy as much smaller investments in improving Manitoba’s woeful educational attainment rates, encouraging more research and development, or appointing a provincial Transparency Commissioner to bring honesty and openness in government and Crown Corporations up to the same high standards found in Scandinavia.

Overall, the concept of a Winnipeg-Twin Cities high-speed rail link is definitely imaginative. Political and economic realities, however, suggest that it should be taken no further, as such a rail line would certainly become a “white elephant” under all but the most extreme future scenarios (e.g., a fuel price shock that would make the sharp rises, and the economic troubles they caused, in the ’70s look like a walk in the park by comparison), and is thus impossible to justify as a political priority.