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Will Canada Ever Have High-Speed Rail? | The Walrus
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this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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But good rail reduces the dependance on car infrastructure. Less lanes to maintain, less traffic means less wear of the road. Transit doesn't need to be profitiable itself to still be worthwhile. It can bring value in other ways like increasing land value near stations, reducing car traffic and emissions, providing social, cultural and business connections.
Most highways and roads cost more to maintain than they bring in revenue as well.
Regular, reliable rail makes sense. It's much cheaper to build, cheaper to maintain and the rolling stock is cheaper too. There's also the energy demand, it increases in proportion to the square of velocity. HSR is just too expensive for the limited benefits.
Almost all of the wear on our roads is from truck traffic, with one maxxed out tractor trailer equaling the wear caused by roughly 10,000 personal vehicles. HSR does nothing to alleviate that.
Rail has to be competitive with cars to maintain and encourage ridership. High speed rail can offer significantly faster travel times than cars.
The time to build regular reliable rail was decades ago, we should strive to build more modern technology that will serve us longer into the future and encourage people to switch from driving by being faster. HSR can still be reliable so long as maintaince is properly funded.