The Hon. David Dreeshen, recently appointed as Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors for Alberta, has received his mandate letter from Premier Danielle Smith. This letter includes a directive to explore opportunities for commuter rail between Okotoks, Calgary, and Airdrie, and between Edmonton’s airport at Leduc and city centre. This ambition, to build passenger rail infrastructure to supporting a thriving economy for generations to come, is exciting.
The return of passenger rail to Calgary, eliminated by the federal government in 1990, is long overdue and something Transport Action has long campaigned for. These services would use existing CPKC routes, so they could be launched with modest levels of investment, using modern regional trains like Stadler’s FLIRT, already used in Texas, or a North American variant of Alstom’s Coradia iLint. They should also connect with the proposed Calgary-Banff passenger service at a re-opened Calgary Tower station.
Transport Action Canada has written to Minister David Dreeshen to encourage Alberta to avoid the pitfall of deferring action in favour of costly and time-consuming studies, which has all too often ensnared other provinces and the federal government, leaving them with nothing to show for bold promises, and instead to move forward with a pilot project that could deliver tangible benefits within the current electoral cycle while gathering empirical data to guide future development. The original O-Train project in Ottawa, which is now being expanded as the Trillium Line, is a good example of this approach. With the involvement of Transport Action members, it was first launched for just $21M in 2001.
The creation of an Alberta passenger rail agency should be a first step. This agency would have standing to open negotiations for track access in accordance with the Canada Transportation Act provisions for commuter agencies. CPKC will require any project to preserve its freight capacity and fluidity, so the exploration of investments to support commuter rail should seek opportunities to simultaneously improve rail safety and strengthen supply chain resilience.
The mandate letter also mentions the use of hydrogen trains. This desire to showcase Canadian leadership in hydrogen technologies is welcome progress. Even though the hydrogen fuel cycle is less efficient than direct use of electricity through overhead catenary, passenger trains offer a good use case for hydrogen fuel cells, delivering all-weather range that exceeds the capabilities of batteries alone when installing and maintaining catenary is not technically or economically feasible. Alberta is rapidly developing a hydrogen supply chain, with Edmonton’s airport also recently entering into a partnership with Toyota and Air Products to deploy up to 100 fuel cell vehicles.
Of course, we also believe that the federal government should fulfil its obligations to Albertans, beyond the current less-than-daily Canadian, and collaborate with Alberta to contribute to the success of these projects. If commuter rail service is implemented as far as Airdrie and Leduc, the hardest parts of restoring an express passenger service between Calgary and Edmonton, as envisioned by Alberta Regional Rail, will also have been completed. It might even be cheaper to do it, thus needing only one maintenance base and spare pool for all the services, than to continue ignoring the opportunity to reconnect this corridor.