Calgary Regional Rail Transit

[ByeByeBaby]

It's a great graphic. It could also do a great job of illustrating why Alberta HSR is not a particularly strong project:

 

[darwink]

It could also do a great job of illustrating why Alberta HSR is not a particularly strong project

Alberta is neat, since Alberta is a straight line, so the cities generate way more traffic between them than if they were in a grid. From 2021:

There is some in the economic reports the province did in the late 2000s.

The main thing to visualize is most of the USA is in a grid. So urban-urban trips are generated in all directions between all centres.
4 cities in a grid, 1 million each. Think of each arrow as 4,000 trips each day, each direction.
View attachment 338235

In Alberta due to our relative isolation from other centres, our relative prosperity for a long time (running what may have been close to the densest air service on the planet in the 70s between the cores of each city, building a 4 lane highway decades before it was 'needed' to speed up travel significantly), and the development of specialization over time we have much stronger links.

Even if only 70% of trips are now taken due to a variety of factors, we have this instead:
View attachment 338240

 

[badc0ffee]

It could also do a great job of illustrating why Alberta HSR is not a particularly strong project

It might still be, though - it's not that different on a passengers per km basis than the Maçon-Marseille stretch. I'm sure there's a lot less in the way, as well. (Although our material and labour costs are still huge).

Not that I think it's feasible for both geographical and political reasons, but I wonder what a route from Edmonton-Calgary-Vancouver, with stops in Kamloops and Abbotsford, would look like presented this way. Not dissimilar to the Spanish route, perhaps.

 

[Silence&Motion]

It's a great graphic. It could also do a great job of illustrating why Alberta HSR is not a particularly strong project:
View attachment 608654

On the other hand, the diagram doesn't show how challenging the terrain is along some of those other corridors. The Edmonton-Calgary corridor is practically a straight line along flat ground. No mountains in the way. No Canadian Shield. No large bodies of water to deal with.

 

[Surrealplaces]

The only issue is the numerous grade crossings. Something that needs to be addressed but is relatively easy to resolve.

 

[trtcttc]

And the province already owns most of the ROW. From what I read on why Brightline was successful vs California was mainly that Brightline ran on existing ROW and highway medians, and California had to do lots of land acquisitions. They also had issues with funding uncertainty, not unlike the Green Line. I really hope something comes of the Province's plan next year, it's one of those things where the land, engineering, labour, etc gets more expensive with each passing year.