:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, members of the committee, for giving us the opportunity to share in your reflections on high-speed rail.
I'll make a few introductory comments and then look forward to the discussion that no doubt you will wish to have with all of us.
I'm joined here today by two expert colleagues: Paul Larouche, who is a leading member of our strategy group and who was personally involved in the link study we participated in, in 1995, as well as Dan Braund, who is a senior member of our systems group, with his office in Kingston, which has worldwide responsibility for systems planning and execution in the rail system.
[Translation]
My introduction will deal with four main topics. First, I will provide a brief overview of Bombardier Transport. Then, I will discuss exactly what a high speed train is. There are different definitions, depending on the situation. Third, I would like to talk about Bombardier's experience with high speed trains around the world. To conclude, I will say a few words about the potential for high speed rail in Canada.
[English]
I hope that doesn't take up too much time. I'll try to make it as quick and as pointed as I can.
I'm sure you're all familiar with Bombardier. Most Canadians know us because we are the world's third manufacturer of civil aircraft. What is less known is that Bombardier Transportation is in fact the leading producer of passenger rail solutions in the world, with something approaching 23% of global markets in this field. We have 100,000 vehicles in service today around the world. So we've been in this business for some time and have had considerable success in a very competitive environment, which I'm sure you will hear later on.
We have 50 production and engineering sites around the world, and 21 service centres in 24 countries. As I said, we are present around the world.
In Canada, we have two world-leading centres of excellence—one in La Pocatière, Quebec, and one in Thunder Bay, Ontario—as well as our systems group engineering centre in Kingston, Ontario. The head office of Bombardier Transportation North America, which runs our operations in Canada, the United States, and Mexico—we are present as producers in all three countries—is in Saint-Bruno, Quebec. We have vehicles, on which I don't doubt all of you will have travelled at one time or another, in operation in Vancouver, in the greater Toronto area, in Toronto itself, in Ottawa, and in Montreal. Many of the vehicles that VIA Rail operates were made by Bombardier in Canada.
So that's us, generically.
On the issue of what high-speed rail is, I'm sure that you have done extensive thinking about this. This is a subject that admits to a broad range of definitions. It covers a multitude of options in inter-city rail, ranging from systems that operate at about 150 miles per hour, such as the Acela system now connecting Washington, New York, and Boston, all the way through to the experimental Maglev technology that moves--I'll switch to kilometres, because the numbers are more impressive--at 400 kilometres per hour. This is an experimental technology, and it now presents the extreme range. But then there are ranges of everything in between.
The issue for policy-makers, if I may suggest, is not so much whether you have high-speed rail. It is the much more complicated and complex issue of what kind of high-speed is appropriate in a particular setting, and indeed whether high-speed is appropriate in particular settings. The choices are relative and political, and they boil down to whether a particular corridor's needs justify a certain level of investment in a certain type of rail service.
The technology exists today to meet virtually any high-speed requirement. Indeed, any one of the three companies represented at this table today could supply them all. The decisions about the choice are economic, social, environmental, and political, and the calculations are often relative, not absolute. For instance, rather than comparing the absolute maximum speeds of these modes, compare the time it takes to go from one city centre to another by different modes of transport and how a reduction of those times would attract ridership. Airplanes, after all, fly at about 600 kilometres per hour and upwards. So the comparison is a very difficult one to make when it just comes down to looking at maximum speeds of any form of transport.
I have one last generic word on the choice of transport. Obviously, the choices are relative and the costs can be daunting, but the fact is that not all systems cost the same. Different options have different prices. Much of the time the difference has very little to do with the vehicle being selected. The major costs involved in the various choices have to do with infrastructure, the choice of right of way, the need, or not, for new railbeds, and the cost of electrification, if required. I think that's an important consideration in everybody's decision on these issues. That decision is dictated, in turn, by an assessment of the proper balance between cost, speed, utility, and public benefit.
What is exciting, and certainly what we have all found, I'm sure, is the change that high-speed rail brings to communities and individuals. A good example is the intense integration of the countries and cities of the European Union high-speed rail has brought. For instance, it is common for Londoners to work in Paris, for Parisians to work in Brussels, and for people to commute to each other's cities, not just for daily work but for recreation. This is a notion that would have been unthinkable before the advent of high-speed rail.
The notion that people in Kingston or Ottawa could work in Toronto and Montreal and vice versa, that Red Deer residents could commute to Calgary or Edmonton, and that it would be commonplace for people to travel routinely across the Quebec City--Windsor and Edmonton--Calgary corridors for work, recreation, or social contact has extremely important social benefits that cannot easily be quantified.
One other issue that I think is important in considering high-speed rail, and undoubtedly it's one you have grappled with, is that this is a costly system, whatever one does. The investment can be less or more intense. There's no absolute cost calculation involved. What is not in doubt is that the investment has to be made by the public sector, just as it has to be with any other major infrastructure investment whose returns are not necessarily commercial but are spread across society and the economy.
The private sector brings much to the success of such an investment. Indeed, it is an indispensable partner. But ultimately, just as with roads, bridges, airports, and air corridors, the vital sinews of the modern economy are a public charge. That being the case, decision-makers will have to make careful calculations on the benefits of such an investment, because the issues involved address a vision of the country that goes beyond the immediate.
So the investments have to be put in the broader long-term context. They also involve issues of equity, and in particular, the calculation of whether public funds put toward this mode of transport or that prejudice another, and if so, whether that prejudice is justified by a considered policy preference--i.e., whether one mode of transport brings superior benefits over the short and long term over another in a particular setting.
This is truly a decision for those entrusted with political responsibility, not for industry or for advocates for any particular point of view. I know that in my own case I have some difficulty commenting on this, given that we make both trains and planes; in fact, we make the world's best regional aircraft. So it's a toughie when you ask one of us about the choices, but it's nice to be able to offer all the alternatives.
As I mentioned, all three companies represented here are leaders in this field, but perhaps I can offer a few words on what Bombardier itself has done. We have participated in virtually all high-speed rail projects in the last 20 years, often working in collaboration with other manufacturers, including those my colleagues here represent.
But we have our own highly successful range of installed technologies that range in speed from 200 kilometres to 300 kilometres an hour. We also have our next generation of Zefiro, a family of trains that represent the latest technological innovations. That is a system that offers speeds up to 360 kilometres an hour. We have trains in operation, including in China, where a 250-kilometre-an-hour system is now in place with the world's fastest sleeping trains involved.
There are two things peculiar about us and our approach to high-speed rail, which are worth noting for future reference. One is that we value the flexibility of application to different needs of customers above all; for instance, being able to provide different forms of propulsion that are interoperable, depending on the demand--diesel, electric--as the case may be.
But something that is even more important to us, and which we stress and in the Canadian context is particularly important, is the synergy between our aerospace and rail technologies. Bombardier aerospace technology has helped us to develop lighter materials, better welding techniques, more stable aerodynamics, more ergonomic designs and interiors, and more sophisticated controls for our high-speed systems. This is a uniquely important asset on which we will focus intensively. And as I said, in the Canadian setting--given that Bombardier Aerospace is so much a part of the Canadian technology scene--this will be an important asset.
Let me conclude with a brief observation, from our perspective, on the potential of high-speed rail in Canada. It's not an exaggeration to say that this country was forged by rail. And even if we have gone much beyond that in what now unites us, it still continues to play an important role in our national life, though a declining one. And perhaps this is the moment when that balance should change.
Passenger rail does provide a critical option for travel between our communities, and those include our great cities, particularly those that control major economic corridors. It's immune to the vagaries of our difficult climate, is secure in the face of threats, and is able to accommodate special needs. And it also connects the hearts of cities.
Not because this is not obvious, but public policy, frankly, has not privileged passenger rail to the measure it might have in the last decades. Investments in public infrastructure have been heavy in other areas compared to the investment in rail. This is not unique to our country. The United States, which is now entering a new phase of policy consideration in this area, has concluded the same thing. This is not a criticism. There are many difficult decisions involved.
But it is worth noting that we are in danger of falling behind. It's not just the countries of Europe that are investing in high-speed rail. I've mentioned China in this context. A number I still find difficult to believe is that by our calculations, China is spending $80 billion this year in high-speed rail. You didn't hear me wrong. That is the calculation of what they're spending.
But closer to home, of course, the United States is also taking a new look at high-speed rail, and the Obama administration is investing in the very first stages--$8 billion--in considering high-speed rail transport corridors, ten of them. That $8 billion will probably do the feasibility studies for those ten corridors, but it indicates the seriousness with which they regard this challenge.
I should note that among those corridors are three that connect Canadian cities to the United States. There's the corridor in the east, which is conceptualized as linking Montreal south; the corridor in the west that would link Vancouver to Seattle; and the corridor from Chicago to Detroit-Windsor that would link central Ontario to the north and south. So if for no other reason, it will be important for our country to consider whether to link our great cities in a similar fashion on a different axis.
Thank you. I very much appreciate your indulgence.
:
Good afternoon, members of the committee, ladies and gentlemen.
[Translation]
I am pleased to appear before the committee today to discuss high speed rail in Canada.
I have been in the railway business since the 1980s. I worked at Canadian National, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, and, finally, at Siemens. I have been interested in rail transportation for a long time, most specifically, in high speed rail.
[English]
I have had the opportunity to provide input to various studies, participate in high-speed-rail symposiums, and offer advice on technology, ways of operating, and so on, to large groups of interested parties over several years. All of this has allowed me the privilege of keeping abreast of developments in the fascinating field of developing a high-speed network.
Several companies can speak about high-speed vehicles and the technology that each can develop. My general comment is that several companies can build high-speed trains of excellent quality, boasting a variety of esthetics and particular features, but I don't believe that is what this committee wants to hear about today. I won't try to compare our vehicles to those of other companies. They're all very good and run at very high speeds.
What I would like to state is that from experience, far too many people concentrate on the vehicle technology at the beginning of a high-speed discussion when evaluating the feasibility of such a system, instead of evaluating the basics first.
[Translation]
What is needed first, in fact, is a vision or strategy before determining which technologies are appropriate for the project. A technology that is too sophisticated, or not sophisticated enough, can adversely affect the achievement of results and the level of service. If the technology is too sophisticated for the system you want, you are going to spend much too much. If you choose the wrong technology and you want a system with better performance, you are going to have a lot of problems for the life of the project.
The vision must determine whether the goal is to serve the greatest number of urban centres or to carry the greatest number of people possible at a very high speed. Those two goals are not necessarily compatible.
[English]
Once the vision is firmed up, the evaluation of various aspects of the project can take place. For example, a decision on medium-speed travel may consider utilizing existing rights-of-way or corridors, as opposed to a truly high-speed system, which would most likely require dedicated rights-of-way with no road-crossing upgrades, for example.
Like the United States, there are some pretty stringent rules that all operating railways have to comply with in Canada under the regulatory regime of Transport Canada, which ensures rail safety for the people of Canada. So far, the maximum operating speed for railway grade crossings is 100 miles per hour. VIA Rail operates at that speed right now. There has been much discussion over several years, but no solution to this issue has been found over the last 20 years or so.
Mixing high-speed train travel at 250 kilometres an hour, let's say, with relatively slow freight trains--in Canada right now their speed is about 100 kilometres an hour--is very complicated. It gets worse as the speed goes up towards 300 to 350 kilometres an hour. The difference in speed, as you can imagine, is very simple. The difference in speed is so great that you need a lot of capacity on your rail network in order to have a high-speed train approaching a slow freight train and allow them to keep operating without delays.
Right now, the fastest subdivision in Canada is the so-called Kingston subdivision between Toronto and Montreal. There are small portions of that track that allow train travel at 100 miles or 160 kilometres an hour. That's the fastest in the country and the best track in the country. It simply would not be sufficient to operate a true high-speed system with the mix of freight trains, which is about 70 freight trains per day right now. There's just not enough capacity to operate one high-speed train on that network.
There are also several considerations to investigate whether we're looking at high-speed or medium-speed rail. For example, most high-speed trains cannot necessarily operate at full speed on the tracks built according to the standards that we have in Canada today. The best track classification in Canada, which includes the method of construction of the track as well as the maintenance frequencies and so on, and the leeway in what you can allow the tracks to do, would not be strict enough to allow a high-speed train to operate at full speed. We would have to define new standards for track construction and maintenance.
Similarly, the system of train control for the train movements would need to be adapted for faster train travel. We should also underline that a true high-speed train system would have to be an electric system, and the electrification of any network is fairly significant. We need to consider that.
The method of construction and maintenance of the track network, the signal system, and the train technology will be greatly affected by the climate in Canada. Be it the Calgary-Edmonton corridor or the Quebec City-Montreal-Toronto-Windsor corridor, we have the privilege or the benefit of experiencing some of the coldest climates in the world for railway operations. In fact, in Canada, we operate the coldest light-rail systems in the world. We are the cold reference for the world.
The roadbeds on which the tracks rest, as well as the steel of the tracks themselves, are greatly affected by the 70-degree Celsius difference between summer weather and winter weather in Canada. Very few high-speed trains have been designed for a cold climate operation. The adaptation of these trains should not be underestimated. No one wants to be stuck on a disabled train in the middle of nowhere on a cold winter night. It's happened to me, as I come from the north, and it's not pleasant.
So there are several hard decisions to be made in order to execute a vision that would be as great a leap forward as the original construction of the first transcontinental railway in Canada, which effectively allowed our great nation to be formed. These decisions, similar to those made to build the Canadian Pacific in the late 1800s, would likely span more than one term in office for any politician. There is an absolute need to be bold and forward-looking in regard to the long-term objectives.
The economic impacts of designing, building, operating, and maintaining a high-speed rail network in Canada will be extraordinary for this country. There are very significant secondary benefits from shifting the paradigm of where people can live and commute from, including attracting and facilitating tourist travel, developing important new technological know-how, and improving the environmental benefits of travel over long distances. We've heard about our neighbours to the south, led by President Obama, announcing such visions and committing large amounts of money for the high-speed project in California.
I believe that Canada, as a pioneer in all matters of railroading ingenuity, can and should move forward with its high-speed rail program, and move from the study phase into the decision-making phase.
[Translation]
Thank you for your attention.
[English]
I'll take questions later on.
:
Yes, I'm all set to go.
Does everybody have their handout, with the little pictures? I'm more of a visual person. Sorry, I don't have a big paper to hand to you, but I figure you'll remember most of the details in-between, if you have some visual cues.
First of all, Alstom, as some of you know and some of you don't, has the largest fleet of high-speed trains in the world. We have the land speed record of steel-wheel rail vehicles, at close to 575 kilometres an hour, or almost 360 miles an hour.
Some of the other companies you know better. Bombardier, which people generally think of as primarily a Canadian company, has a rail transportation division that is German; they're based in Berlin. Siemens is also based out of Germany, in Nuremberg. And we're based out of Paris.
The transportation industry is focused out of Europe because somewhere close to 70% of the world market is in Europe. So the technology is driven from a European perspective and the way Europe functions.
In terms of us in Canada, most of our employees are in the Montreal area, somewhere around 1,000 people, I believe. We have two groups: power and transportation. By “transportation”, we mean rail transportation. And within rail transportation, we also have an information systems group, which essentially supports the rail industry. That's a global export business for us. Montreal is the global headquarters for that business, and we do passenger information and security systems globally out of there. We have about 2,500 employees in upstate New York, with the primary focus on the New York City market, because they buy a lot of subway cars and we supply a lot.
So I think that gives you a rough idea of who we are in Canada and North America.
If you turn to the slide that says “Why High Speed Rail?”, I think this really shows the driving force behind why people have chosen high-speed rail. If you look at the two maps I have there, you have a green map, which is just a plain geographic representation of France, and then a red map, which is how the geography has been transformed because of high-speed trains. You could say, “Oh, well, we can do this on airplanes”, but airplanes, really, are too expensive, and frankly they can't provide the medium-distance connections provided by rail. If you want to go within a 400- to 500-kilometre range, you're far better off moving people by train. The speeds from the starting to the end point, door to door, are faster.
Then, if you look at the other advantages, which are on the next slide, it's a question of safety. If you're moving people in the wintertime, do you want to have people moving essentially on dangerous roads, on which there are huge numbers of deaths per year? I don't know the statistics in Canada; perhaps you are more acquainted with them than I am. But when you consider the TGVs in France, no one has ever died on one of these trains. So from a pure safety perspective, this is the safest way to move people.
In terms of the envelope, or how much land you absorb, such as whether you need another Highway 401 to meet the future needs of demand in the Montreal to Toronto corridor, if you put in a rail system, you're going to use half of that footprint; and the greenhouse gas emissions and the carbon usage of high-speed rail are only going to be a fraction.
As Mario pointed out, the only really logical way to go forward with this is to go electric. The reason is that the operating costs of even a diesel-fuelled train relative to an electric train are about four to five times as much. Right now that doesn't seem to be such a big deal, but if Jeff Rubin is right and we see oil prices go back to $120 to $140 a barrel, and then move up from there.... It's not going to happen overnight, as we're in a recession, which has given us a bit of a breathing space, but I think within a decade we could be, in real terms, in that range again. If we are, then the demand for transportation will be suppressed because of the fact that it will be costing so much to move people.
I think those are some of the main reasons why the Europeans.... If you look at the next page, you can see the evolution in Europe to 2010. Their whole network has changed and developed from 2001. Essentially, they started off with a few small links between major cities. Then they kept on expanding them. By 2010, which is just around the corner, they'll have major linkages between almost all European countries.
Even Russia has linkages from Moscow to Helsinki through St. Petersburg. Siemens has one leg of that, from Moscow to St. Petersburg, and we have from St. Petersburg to Helsinki. It just depended on the orders that the government placed.
If you look into the future, that network is being expanded, and expanded again. You have to ask, why is it so attractive over there, even in Russia, and we haven't moved here? I think there are some historical reasons for that.
When we essentially privatized CN, instead of doing what Europeans do--namely, they keep all of the rail infrastructure as part of government property and then give operating licences--we did the opposite. We gave away all the property. Then we gave an operating licence to the passenger service, which means passenger service is dependent completely on CN and CP for access and therefore gets second priority.
In Europe, the first priority is passengers. The second priority is freight. As a result, you see quite a different operational scenario. You see much better technology for signalling and train control throughout the entire system. You also see track that is of much better quality, because it's government property. It's just like the highway system. They don't differentiate between the two.
Those are some of the fundamental reasons why they have a different set-up than we do. I'm not judging the way we do it here versus there, but those are what drove different sets of decisions.
If we want to have high-speed lines, we can operate in mixed traffic with freight, but that will mean either having lower speeds or controlling the quality of the train tracks. You will also have to do more grade separation, and grade separation really becomes the big driving cost.
Some people ask how much it would cost to electrify the whole line. Well, that's really nothing. For vehicles, electrification is small potatoes. The big cost is the land and then the grade separation. It's really a question of constructing bridges so that roads can go over the tracks and people won't be wandering into the right-of-way. These trains move so fast, you don't see them coming. You don't hear them coming. They're just on you. If you're going 300 kilometres an hour, you have no time to stop.
So if you're going to operate on the same corridors as CN between Montreal and Ottawa, you're going to have to dedicate part of that right-of-way just for high-speed trains. Otherwise, you're going to keep bumping into the freight trains or slowing down.
How long does it take to build the system? Well, from the time you make a decision to actually anything happening, it's usually about a year to a year and a half of design activity. After that, construction would take in the range of five to six years at a reasonable time speed. Before that, you actually have to figure out how you're going to tender the contract. You have to acquire the right-of-way. So you're really more or less in a ten-year program to do this.
If you're looking forward and saying we should have a contingency plan in place just in case oil prices double, or in case they triple, then you need to have a lot of these fundamental things done in the meantime. Even if you want to build a highway, you need to make sure that you have that space. It's kind of good to get the corridor defined, acquired, locked down, and then have all the designs in place. It costs very little to do that.
If oil prices never go up and people stop driving cars, then you're okay. If people keep driving cars and our population keeps growing, well, the highways will get jammed up and the death rate will go up. Oil prices look like they will go up as well.
So it makes sense to have some vision and think ahead a little bit. I summed this up with a little bit of Alstom experience. We actually did the Acela program with Bombardier. It was a joint project and it's been very successful; in the northeast corridor, the numbers keep going up. Each year they keep investing more, and I think that's a precursor to the whole transportation strategy of President Obama, where he's defined different quarters in the U.S. George mentioned it briefly. I think the Americans are seeing this as a future vision. And I think it's a vision we should be sharing, not everywhere in Canada but in certain defined corridors where it appears that there is the passenger volume to support it. I think this would be a good thing to do.
I've just added onto the back a little bit of information about the Helsinki to St. Petersburg corridor so you could get a sense of what would be involved if we did have high-speed trains. This kind of reflects a similar kind of situation. I think St. Petersburg and Helsinki are actually smaller cities than Toronto and Montreal, so if they can justify doing it there, then I think there's justification for Canada as well.
That's it.
:
Maybe I'll add some more thoughts on that.
So you've come up with the long-term vision. You say the long-term vision is to create an integrated rail transportation network, high-speed, that will run in major corridors and then will be extended as demand can be justified. That also means you have to look at it in terms of a strategic transportation infrastructure perspective, the same as you do with marine, highways, and airports. So it has to be put on the same footing as those major building blocks at the federal level.
You can't be thinking it's just trains, so we won't worry about that; it's like a little operating company, VIA. You really have to say no, this is on the same basis as our national highway program, so it should have the same level of intensity, same level of funding on an annual basis. If you look at what you're spending on highways and compare that to what you're spending on rail, there's absolutely no comparison.
The other thing is that you have a P3 approach on capital programs right now, on major infrastructure. There's no reason why you can't do that in this area as well. It fits very well. The risks to you as the project owner are very large if you try to micro-manage all the little pieces, while if you can capture that risk in a large contract and you pass that off to somebody else.... Look at OPG and how much they're spending on this bloody tunnel. They have a construction program, but they didn't transfer that geo-technical risk to the private sector. I'm not saying we all want that geo-technical risk. That's not actually our field. That's for the contractors, the civil guys.
I think you have to think in those terms—how it fits into the broader federal transportation structure—and then build from there. This also fits into what the other overlapping elements are in this. There is environmental and safety, and really those are big things. There are greenhouse gas emissions. I don't see any money for greenhouse gas emissions from the Ministry of the Environment focused on trains. There's nothing.
Is there an incentive even for CN and VIA Rail to move away from diesel to electric? I don't see anything in that area, even for them to study this in a serious way. Yet they're still going to have the same issues.
Regarding the standards we use here, we look at the Americans and say this FRA is everything. In fact, FRA is very interesting and it meets the needs of the Americans, but the rest of the world follows the European standards. European standards, if anything, have higher levels of safety because they take a different approach. Instead of saying everything is based on the physical limitations of vehicles when they have collisions, they say it's about how we can reduce risks, how we structure it so there aren't collisions. They take a more risk-management approach. You have to look at risk management from a rail safety perspective.