On December 8, 2021, Liricon Capital, the proponents of the Calgary Airport to Banff Rail (CABR) project announced a partnership with Plenary Americas. Plenary is a portfolio company of Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), a public-sector pension fund which through its CDPQ Infra arm is also involved in several other public transportation projects across Canada, and together they have submitted an “Enhanced Unsolicited Proposal” to the Government of Alberta’s Ministry of Transportation, Invest Alberta and the Canada Infrastructure Bank to advance the rail project from the development phase to the design phase, with a view to construction by 2025.
The press release contains additional details of the proposal, including stating that system will operate on “a new, dedicated passenger line built within the existing Canadian Pacific freight corridor.” Canadian Pacific is coo-operating closely with the proposal while insisting that the project must preserve both current freight capacity and scope for future growth. However, a fully separated passenger track is not necessarily the only way to do this because a double track main line has significantly more than twice the capacity of a single track with sidings. Some mutual interoperation to reduce disruption an optimize infrastructure utilisation might still be expected even if one track is considered primarily for passenger use.
The route would support a service at least every two hours between Calgary Downtown, Calgary Keith, Cochrane, Morley (Stoney Nakoda), Canmore and Banff, plus frequencies as high as every 15 minutes between Calgary Airport and downtown.
The project team anticipates that the line would carry at least 25% of annual visitors to Banff National Park, significantly reducing the environmental impact of personal vehicles in the park and alleviating traffic congestion. Once expected discounts for park access are taken into account, train the train trip from Calgary to Banff would have a net cost of about $20. Parks Canada adult admission is currently $10.50, and so we estimate that this means fares would be in the $25 range. For an 80 mile trip this works out to be about 50% more expensive per mile than the average VIA Rail fare for shorter trips in Ontario or Quebec, but is significantly more affordable than the current bus fare of $47.
Provincial backing sought
The project partners expect the fare revenues would cover all operating costs and more than half of the principal and interest on capital costs, so they are asking the Government of Alberta to chip in $30 million per year once the project becomes operational, as a performance payment contingent on operation of the train. Revenue risks would be borne by private capital and the Canada Infrastructure Bank.
Municipal leaders along the route have strongly endorse the proposal, but the Government of Alberta has yet to commit to any funding, with Premier Jason Kenney saying “We are not at any point ready to commit money to this. We have to give this very close rigour and that’s the stage that we’re at right now.”
While the partners seek to advance this project as a public-private partnership with a provincial contribution, Transport Action continues to believe that the route also belongs alongside inter city and regional routes elsewhere in Canada as part of a revival of Canada’s national and federally-supported passenger rail network, including the reinstatement of services northwards from Calgary Airport to Airdrie, Red Deer, and Edmonton.