JARVIS: Kingston high-speed rail stop will cost taxpayers dearly

Governments have a bad habit of going over budget on similar rail projects.

Article content Prime Minister Mark Carney’s unaffordable high-speed rail plan is veering off the rails. Adding a stop to the high-speed rail line in Kingston will cost billions more for a project taxpayers already can’t afford. Recommended Videos

The government’s original proposal was a 1,000-kilometre high-speed rail line from Toronto to Quebec City with stops in Peterborough, Ottawa, Montreal, Trois-Rivières and Laval. The government says it would cost $60 to $90 billion to build the line. But Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon told Canadians last month he is directing the Alto team to start making plans for a potential extra Alto stop in Kingston.

MacKinnon gave Canadians no estimate for how much an additional stop in Kingston would cost taxpayers. But adding an extra stop on the Alto high-speed rail line is certainly going to cost taxpayers big time. Sandwiching a Kingston stop between Peterborough and Ottawa would add at least 52 extra kilometres to the high-speed rail route, presuming the line runs in a straight line from city to city (which it won’t).

Adding 52 kilometres of line to the Alto route would cost taxpayers an additional $3.9 billion, based on the per-kilometre cost at the midpoint of the government’s original estimate. Not to mention the ongoing subsidies required to keep the line running. The Alto line would require $53.2 billion of subsidies over 43 years to keep the line afloat, according to research from McGill University.

That’s about $53.2 million per kilometre to cover the losses. At that rate, adding another 52 km will increase that subsidy by about $2.8 billion. And that’s assuming the government doesn’t blow past its own cost estimates.

Governments have a bad habit of going over budget on similar rail projects. California taxpayers in 2008 were promised a high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, scheduled to open in 2020, at a cost of $46.8 billion CAD. Now, the California high-speed rail line is estimated to open in 2033 and cost taxpayers $181.7 billion.

That’s a nearly 300 per cent cost overrun for a train that’s 13 years late. Taxpayers in the United Kingdom are dealing with a similar problem. The U.K.’s HS2 high-speed rail line was supposed to cost $38.4 billion.

Seven years later, the project is now projected to cost up to $192.4 billion. That’s a fivefold cost increase. And don’t think that Canada is immune from big boondoggles.

Toronto’s Eglinton Crosstown LRT was originally billed to taxpayers with a $2.2 billion price tag. The final price tag ended up at $13 billion, a nearly 500% cost increase. The Finch West LRT was supposed to cost Toronto taxpayers $835 million and ended up costing $3.7 billion.

If the Alto project sees cost overruns comparable to other high-speed rail projects or other Canadian transit projects, Alto’s cost per kilometre could surpass $300 million. That would make the detour to Kingston cost $15.6 billion and bring the project’s total cost to around $300 billion. Taxpayers can’t afford boondoggles when the government is drowning in debt.

The Carney government is projected to add $65 billion to the debt this year, driving it to $1.4 trillion. Interest on all that debt will cost taxpayers $58.7 billion. The Carney government can’t afford to pile billions more onto the taxpayer credit card to pay for a pet project.

But Alto is already burning through tons of taxpayer cash. The federal government is giving Alto $4.2 billion just to plan this project. Adding new stops to Alto line in the middle of the planning phase certainly won’t make this process cheaper.

And before a real plan had even been drafted, Alto doled out $2.8 million worth of bonuses to its executives and staffers. When Alto’s staff are popping champagne and stuffing their pockets full of taxpayer-funded bonuses before a plan has been made, Canadians should be worried about their tax dollars. You can’t transform a bad idea into a good idea by tinkering around with the details.

Instead of burning through countless billions in taxpayer cash, the Carney government should send the Alto project to the scrapyard. Noah Jarvis is the Ontario director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation