Alberta Moving Quickly to Advance Regional Rail

The province of Alberta hosted a passenger rail forum on November 22, 2024 to engage stakeholders and present their plan for passenger rail in the province. Transport Action was represented at the forum by member and volunteer Ken Westcar who brought back some positive news from the event.

The very welcome core message of the conference was that the Province of Alberta is looking primarily to rail rather than highways to accommodate burgeoning population, industrial and tourism growth. New and improved roads and highways will continue serve some aspects of the Calgary/Edmonton economic region, but public transportation will have a strong commitment to expanded rail services.

Alberta Passenger Rail Master Plan

The plan as described is specifically for regional, light rail and intercity rail, unlike many other provincial plans that usually consider rail as a largely localized commuter issue with the GTHA being a prime example. The Alberta plan will result in a long term, high-level policy designed to extend passenger rail to target markets rather than an ad-hoc approach based on short-term political expediency and the availability of existing rail infrastructure.

This is a strictly provincial plan that does not consider VIA Rail operations nor Transport Canada as significant contributors other than being accommodative and compliant with national regulatory issues. It does, however, commit to holding CN, CPKC and Rocky Mountaineer operations safe and considers them as counsel on infrastructure planning matters, typically the Calgary/Edmonton and Calgary/Banff passenger rail initiatives.

Ministerial Commitment

Provincial Premier, Danielle Smith, Minister of Transport Devin Dreeshen and Bryce Stewart, Deputy Minister of Transportation provided unequivocable support for the master plan, reiterated that it was “when” not “if”. Funding would be available based, not only on the more immediate business case, but on longer term considerations including future predictions of regional economic activity, population growth, smart land-use planning and proven economic multipliers from rail–based transportation.

The provincial government openly recognises the true cost of highways including land-use, environmental harms, and climate resilience. Induced traffic demand is at odds with evolving economic, environmental and social policy goals. They noted the availability of needed human resources (engineering, construction and operations) are more certain with a both a parallel and sequential project development approach and offers more scope for capital cost containment and timely project delivery. Transport Action unequivocally supports these conclusions.

Plan Timeline

This forum was the official launch of the Plan but a group of planners, known as Alberta Connexion Partners has already received its provincial work scope briefing (July 2024) and are fully engaged. It is anticipated the Plan will be complete by the end of the first half of 2025 to enable ministerial decisions in the fall of 2025. Compared to similar exercises in Ontario this timeline is extremely aggressive and suggests a sense of urgency.

The Plan is an integral part of the 2026 Community Infrastructure Plan that has a $30bn budget. A brief, one-on-one discussion with Adrian Lightstone of CPCS confirmed the ministerial statements and that the province is drawing heavily on national and international infrastructure planning resources.

In-Scope Projects

Calgary Green Line LRT – Route selection and funding. A resolution is expected within the next 3 months, possibly sooner. The original plan will be modified but there is no provincial resistance to fulfilling the project, per se.

Calgary Blue Line LRT – Airport Extension – Seen as the major initiative to make Calgary more internationally competitive and reducing highway congestion. By making it attractive to air passengers with tight scheduling and short journey times it is expected to be the preferred route to downtown and beyond and would integrate with the planned Calgary/Edmonton and Calgary/Banff heavy rail services.

Calgary/Edmonton Heavy Rail – Alberta Connexion Partners will be researching and reporting on the various technological options based on relations with CPKC, municipal land use preferences and business case scenarios. There are no plans to develop existing Highway 2 for additional vehicular capacity despite growing congestion. Currently 300kph HSR appears to be favoured with a consortium of AECOM and Ellis-Don having made, what appears to be, an unsolicited proposal.

Calgary/Banff Heavy Rail – Seen as a key component of lifting annual provincial tourism revenues from the current $10bn to eventually $25bn. Alberta hosted 28million tourists in 2023. Private developers of this project, Liricon Capital, have been working on this for almost a decade using CPKC infrastructure and require provincial support to move forward. The business case is positive and stresses the “passenger experience” and reduction in provincial highway expenditures and land-use.

Airdrie/Okotoks Rail Connection – Although embryonic it is seen as a critical project offering improved, car-free mobility in the north/south Calgary axis in anticipation of major population growth. Alberta Connexion Partners will include a preferred solution in their summer 2025 report to the province.

Other Notes

Some other notes from the conference include:

• Indigenous partnerships are critical, and attitude is showing that indigenous leaders are largely supportive of the plan.
• The provincial rail strategy will be managed by a provincial crown corporation to reduce the impacts of major changes in political ideology resulting from a 4-year election cycle (like Metrolinx).
• Broad public consultation is critical, and the plan includes a robust outreach to all interested parties, including regional open houses to ensure smooth transition to shovels in the ground. (Initial sensitivity work indicates broad public support for rail expansion).
• The province will work to avoid perceived federal government “inconsistencies” in funding and regulatory matters. They feel that Ottawa is “putting the cart before the horse.”
• Input from existing passenger rail operators (national and global) is that focus on the passenger experience is fundamental and rapid system recovery after an unplanned incident is critical. They will dictate the success of investments in terms of ridership and farebox recovery.
• Risk sharing between public and private partners must be equitable and Metrolinx’ Phil Verster described the evolution of Infrastructure Ontario contracting policies as a means of avoiding conflict, cost overruns and project delays. Deutsche Bahn now breaks up its larger projects into smaller parcels and applies close management scrutiny to contractors. This new approach is proving successful in Germany.
• Modal integration with local transit and airports will be pivotal in network investments to encourage modal shift and reduce per capita average kilometers driven in the province.
• Privatisation is not generally seen as solution to provincial passenger rail operations due to the conflict between customer service and shareholder demands.

Transport Action’s Comments

It is refreshing to see a very pragmatic approach to provincial public transportation. We are very supportive of the Government of Alberta’s plans and actions to date and will continue to support this promising plan as it develops. The emphasis on long-term institutional thought as well as cost comparisons to highways are novel developments in modern Canadian transportation planning, and we hope that Alberta will be able to combine these stances with the knowledge and experience that Ontario has accumulated in creating a model for other provinces looking to unlock their economic potential through public transportation.

We encourage the province to maintain a positive and active relationship with VIA Rail and Transport Canada so that Canada can begin to walk the path of building a sustainable national public transportation network.

Transport Action was also happy to present copies of our recent Beyond HFR report, which includes sections on both Calgary and Edmonton commuter rail and intercity rail between them, to the planning team and the Deputy Minister to assist in the plan.

Photo credit: Devin Dreeshen via Twitter