Oh, I’m so surprised that any type of rail project in Canada doesn’t go according to the political announcement of the project. /s
I would love not to be cynical about this but whatever they announce is probably going to be delayed, new study needed, delayed, new study, cancelled, announced again… Then a new government and everything stalls, then another government that waits till before an election to announce a new project… rince, repeat.
I just read about the other rail project, the supposedly high speed train between Toronto and Quebec City. Well, obviously this will also be delayed if not cancelled.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh69IfHPrnU
I don’t know how people get to believe any of this will happen one day.
EDIT: I pasted a link that was also about the high frequency project instead of the high speed one. Or is the news confused about the projects? One or another, it’s unfortunately never going to be realized.
Preventing this oscillation between governments in power is a strong argument in favour of proportional representation. I would far rather have slow shifts in minority governments where we can actually plan and accomplish infrastructure projects instead of this wild “we abandon what the last government didn’t have time to complete” seesaw.
Am I too cynical to think they don’t really want to build transit infra and just make empty promises.
If any party would really want any rail project to be realized, they would announce it right after the election, not a few months before the next one.
So whatever the system we have, I am under the impression that they will find a way to just promise and never do anything about it.
Even if a transit infrastructure project is announced and then funded right after an election, it would take up most of a term for the pre-project work to be completed before shovels even hit the ground. There’s utilities that would need to be mapped and relocated, land to expropriate to start, which I believe has to happen before contracts are signed.
Then there’s always going to be a vocal opposition group throwing obstacles in a major project, whether it’s because there’s no train station serving villages and hamlets, or the sight of a train will ruin people’s views of sprawling parking lots, or groups of people whose land is being expropriated at fair market value not wanting to give up property and going through legal challenges which take time to sort.
Even writing this out, it seems like a transit project does take a great deal of political will to push through, especially before shovels hit the ground.
With our current political representation setup, a big swing in majority governments means that an opposing party in power can just rip up contracts and pay out the penalty fees (or legislate away recourse for a project cancellation) which takes much less effort and provides an immediate win for their side.
