Bullet Train: Ottawa The Economic Backwater
Bulldog blogger Dan Stankovic says that if high-speed rail bypasses Ottawa between Montreal and Toronto, this city becomes just a secondary community with Kingston having better economic prospects.
Stankovic was replying to Bulldog Saturday columnist Ron Benn’s article Not So Fast On An Ottawa Bullet Train.
- Here are some random thoughts from a non-expert:
- politics trumps common sense and often economics when making decisions of how to spend government money (Ottawa is a great example).
- the only realistic non-political option is high-speed between Montreal and Toronto with a possible stopover in Kingston. Quebec City and Ottawa (and Peterborough if MPPs have cottages up there) extensions are not. Toronto to Windsor or at least Kitchener-Waterloo could a logical extension which would expand Toronto’s economic kingdom and maybe even capture Kingston to the east. Ontario doesn’t care what happens to Ottawa.
- should also include environmental variables into the equation (air vs high-speed rail). Air would lose.
- bypassing Ottawa on a high-speed network would effectively relegate Ottawa to a secondary, government only town ‘permanently’. Kingston would be in a better competitive position. Ottawa MPs and business execs (if there are any left) still have choice to fly to TO or Montreal or anywhere else for upper echelon civil servants (e.g. the PM and GG) .
- one can put the entire population of Canada (40 million) into metro Tokyo (37 million). Europe also has many more metro centres/connectors. Montreal-Toronto link is the only one that comes close to a viable population threshold.
- forget Ottawa to Toronto (or Kingston or Peterborough). Priority should be Ottawa to Montreal. I remember comment from Shopify founder Tobias Lutke that his company must pile people on to buses to get them to Montreal Trudeau airport so that they can fly out of country for business. Even Gatineau (downtown) to Montreal would work, maybe even better re: integrating Gatineau and Ottawa downtowns and economies. Maybe a political factor?
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I appreciate your perspective Dan, and agree with your conclusion that Ottawa will suffer if it doesn’t have a high speed connection to Montreal and Toronto. The non government employment base may stagnate as a result.
Often there is no supportable ROI based business case for an infrastructure project. It just get done because it “needs” to be done. The entity with the bank account (because cheque books are so passe) defines “needs”. In this case that entity is the federal government.
I am very disappointed in the lack of imagination shown here. Let’s call on the guiding light behind Ottawa’s LRT (and ignore the question of whether a guiding light should be behind or in front.) What is Jim Watson doing these days? I can see him, and his comrades in arms Steve Kanellakos and John Manconi getting an eastern extension from Orleans to my hometown of Lachine, terminus of one of Canada’s first railways, and south from the airport to Kingston. Let’s get it done and put Ottawa on the map.