How about $2b to start building some passenger rail track so passenger rail isn’t at the mercy of freight?
A dreamer. I like it.
Diesel locomotives are already hybrid. They are diesel-electric. These locomotives are diesel-electric-battery. Tribrid?
Am I the only one that thinks it’s a little silly to blog $2B on a hybrid when you can just run wires along the tracks and go full electric? Given that the grid clearly needs investment, you could expand its capacity and range at the same time with theoretically limited costs.
I haven’t seen any reporting on it in quite a while, but full coast-to-coast electrification is a pretty challenging issue, and doing it piecemeal would also be complicated, since you’d likely have to switch locomotives frequently (though I think hybrid diesel-overhead wire locomotives do exist).
And then there’s the question of interoperability with the US rail network, which will likely always be important.
The maintenance would be a huge commitment as well. Much of Canada’s rail is through thick forests and swamps. Many fallen trees and shrubs can be pushed out of the way by the trains easily enough, or cleared by crews if needed, but one downed wire can put a massive section of rail out of service.
Hydro Québec is investing into remote and autonomous infrastructure surveillance and repair in a big way.
Hopefully that can follow in Canada.
I disagree with the interoperability argument for passenger rail.
There is only one CANUS rail service, and it is operated by AMTRAK. None electric trains can still run on electrified track.
Separate locomotives for the corridor may be an option, but 8 inow little of rail operations.
Why not spend that money creating their own dedicated tracks? Then they don’t have to compete with the frieght trains of the greedy rail companies. I feel like that would make the biggest difference to their operations rather than adding more trains to overloaded, old rail tracks.
$2B wouldn’t build very much rail. Taking into account all of the prep, equipment, labour costs, etc. $2B won’t go very far. Building rail is not easy or cheap.
For comparison: 18km of highway expansion (adding more lanes to an existing highway) in Ontario had an estimated contract cost of $639.8 million.
https://www.infrastructureontario.ca/en/what-we-do/projectssearch/highway-401-expansion-project/
