Should critical infrastructure like high-speed rail be left to the private sector?

High-speed rail has been talked about and studied in Alberta for half a century. In more recent years, it has been put forward as a way to reduce transportation emissions, one of the largest carbon-producing sectors.

But even as climate change visits more and more extreme weather upon us, many advocates feel it remains as far away as ever in Alberta — even with a private-sector proposal to build just such a train.

"There's a good two or three generations of people who kind of grew up thinking that trains are done and personal vehicles are the solution to all of our problems now," says Justin Simaluk of the Rail for Alberta advocacy group.

"We have got to ideologically get over that hurdle of how to transport people around the province."

In 2021, two companies — Canadian construction firm EllisDon and American consulting multinational AECOM, both corporate giants in their respective countries — formed a joint partnership called Prairie Link. This new company announced that it intended to build a high-speed passenger railway between Edmonton and Calgary, and had signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the provincial government.

This came roughly a year after Toronto-based TransPod announced that it had also signed an MOU in support of its plan to build a hyperloop between the two cities.

A fast, convenient, affordable, accessible form of transportation (read: not airplanes or a highway) in the Calgary-Edmonton corridor may feel like a distant dream to many Albertans: often discussed, yet unattainable.

But in fact, such transportation existed for most of Alberta's history, albeit in varying forms of adequacy.

The building of the transcontinental railways is often viewed through a nostalgic lens by some, representing a bygone era of big national can-do projects.

But that history is complicated, and the role of trains in advancing Canadian colonization was understood at the time — one early line was called the Intercolonial Railway — and the promise of a railway to the Pacific was crucial to British Columbia joining Confederation in 1871.

Canadian Pacific (CP) Railway was founded in 1881 as a private company to build that cross-country linkage with heavy government subsidies. The railway was transformative, particularly for the West. Settlers arrived in droves in bare-bones carriages called colonist cars, and troops were able to arrive quickly to put down the Northwest Rebellion led by Louis Riel.

Canadian National (CN) Railway, meanwhile, was created by the federal government in 1919 out of a collection of smaller railways. Like CP, it transported both freight and passengers until 1977, when its passenger services were spun out into VIA Rail, also a Crown corporation. CP's passenger services were transferred to VIA the following year.

Passenger rail service was once common in Alberta, not just between Calgary and Edmonton, but along many branch lines through smaller centres.  Even once the horseless carriage became widespread, roads were often in poor condition and the Prairie provinces in particular were defined by vast distances. Taking a train was often the fastest, safest and most comfortable way to travel.

The arrival of jet airliners meant trains could no longer hold that monopoly on speed and comfort. Sprawling suburbs and paved highways ushered in the dominance of car culture, and personal automobiles became synonymous with independence and affluence.