Transport committee  I agree with that assessment. We saw a public-private partnership for the project called Sud Europe Atlantique, which connects Paris to Bordeaux and was completed in 2017. That partnership involved a private contractor contributing to the cost of the line but as a result having very high toll fees for trains that used those tracks, which resulted in very high fares on trains that were using this system, even if they were fares charged by the existing public operator, SNCF.

Transport committee  Yes, I agree with that.

Transport committee  I can respond quickly to say that connecting with the Detroit metropolitan area is a huge opportunity for Canada and for the United States. The United States has also made major investments in intercity rail in recent years. There's an opportunity to create a binational corridor of interest that could connect people across those large metropolitan areas, as you know.

Transport committee  With regard to freight services, the potential here for freeing up the existing corridor to allow for increased movement of freight by rail could be quite important to the corridor. If the passenger trains could be moved to a dedicated line, whether they're high-speed lines or not, and the existing corridor could be dedicated for freight services, there could be a substantial increase in freight movement along the line.

Transport committee  I agree with the other panellist. The decision to privatize profit and force the cost onto the public sector will inevitably make the other elements of public sector provision more tenuous. If Via is expected to continue to provide service without making profit from the Toronto-to-Montreal corridor, for example, it's going to have more difficulties, especially if a private sector entity is taking up profit from that line.

Transport committee  I would recommend that folks check out the example of the Purple Line. That is a light rail project in suburban Maryland outside of Washington, D.C., where a public-private partnership was expected to provide construction and 30 years of operation. That partnership collapsed entirely and resulted in the project having two years of construction and then a pause.

Transport committee  The issue of cost control, as my fellow panellist noted, is an issue for countries all over the world. Bent Flyvbjerg has pointed out very clearly that megaprojects suffer from cost escalation and time escalation almost everywhere they are proposed and invested in. I agree that we need public sector transparency and constant vigilance over the scale of the project and over elements of the project that may be unnecessary or designed in a way that is inappropriate.

Transport committee  I've spent a while trying to understand the government's proposals, which, as others have said, are not super-clearly defined. Based on that, I would assume that there are going to be a number of years of additional planning, so it would be a minimum of 10 years to implementation and probably more like 15 years.

Transport committee  You know, I think I hear from your question, and from the previous question, that there's an interest in thinking about Canadian rail in general, not just the Toronto-Quebec City corridor. I can understand that. Obviously, nobody wants to feel like the national government is investing in just part of the country and not in many other populous locations.

Transport committee  Among democracies, there are a variety of approaches that have been undertaken in recent years to invest in inner-city rail projects. My view is that there are a range of approaches. There is the United Kingdom approach, which has been at an extremely high cost and is based on an almost private concession model for high-speed rail development.

Transport committee  Certainly Canada has some of the coldest weather in the world. That said, we have seen considerable investment in improved rail service in corridors like Moscow-St. Petersburg, northern sections of Japan and parts of South Korea, all of which have very cold weather. Also, the Chinese high-speed rail network extends to every part of that nation, including large portions of the country that are very far north and thus experience many of the weather concerns that Canada experiences.

Transport committee  From the perspective of responding to climate change, we absolutely must see a shift of people out of cars and out of planes. There are some clear reasons for that. One is that there is overwhelming evidence that automobiles and planes pollute at far higher levels both in terms of particulate pollution and in terms of carbon pollution than do trains, especially when those trains are electrified.

Transport committee  I can try to answer quickly. It is absolutely necessary to ensure that the rail system is connected to effective urban transit solutions. In the case of the Toronto-to-Quebec corridor, obviously Montreal and Toronto have effective subway systems and metro systems that are able to connect people to the existing railway terminus.

Transport committee  I think that's a very valid question. Certainly the speeds that are being proposed for the high-frequency rail, at least as far as I interpret the current plans, which are preliminary, would improve the average speed between Toronto and Montreal to 130 kilometres per hour. It's not slow, and it is certainly much faster than the current service.

Transport committee  My sense is that the evidence from other countries is that the high-frequency rail system could increase the overall share of the market to between 30% and 60%. There's a large amount of variability there, because we see different outcomes in different countries, but if you were to move to a high-speed rail system with average speeds similar to what we see in European countries that would allow travel times of between two and a half and three hours between Toronto and Montreal, you could see rail take an average of an 80% market share along that corridor.