Is there opposition to high-speed rail in #Canada?
Yes. The media, loving a conflict narrative, amplifies the voices of the few property-owners who are protesting Alto.
But guess what? A new Abacus poll shows broad, cross-party support for the project.
62% for, only 18% against...
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The study was commissioned by AltNo, a protest group, who can't be happy with the results. The project is especially popular with young people, who are hungry for transport alternatives.
Here's a link to the full report:
https://www.altno.ca/_files/ugd/f1a60d_f91a3f0ada144cb981f03a0da603e347.pdf
Failing Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has urged cancellation of the projectβin spite of the fact that high-speed rail was CPC policy, and only 25% of Conservatives polled oppose it.
I dig into what's behind the attempts to make modern, sustainable transport (high-speed trains now run in 28 countries) into a Canadian culture-war issue in this High Speed dispatch:
@straphanger
Canada lacks gun-control and abortion as stand-ins for substantive debates on things like wealth inequality and land-reform
So we get bike paths
@straphanger The campaign works well, unfortunately: one of my friends has gone either reactionary or NIMBY.
She is very active on their facebook page. Facebook facepalm.
If an American company wanted to do it, he'd be all in favour and bend over backwards to change laws and expropriate the land ASAP.
I expect a lot of people outside the WindsorβQuebec corridor (yes, they exist!) to be unhappy because of persistent underinvestment in their communities, and because of a perception that funding for high-speed rail in the corridor competes with funding for housing and hospitals across the country.
Federal support for transit which would help densify and revitalize the urban cores of cities such as Winnipeg, in particular electric surface railways, might be one aspect of an overall package. Another could be electrification of the main rail lines, starting from the BC coast and moving eastward, increasing the freight-carrying capacity of the railways and getting the grain harvests moved faster, which is a serious issue for the Prairie Provinces. And at the same time, increasing conventional rail capacity makes 120 kph passenger trains between city pairs such as Regina and Saskatoon, Calgary and Edmonton, more workable, assuming there is transit at each end so you don't necessarily need a car when you get there. And those routes will also support a certain degree of demand for longer-distance services.
@straphanger Turkey, Morocco and Finland all have faster trains than Canada.
We are in the corridor proposed for the route.
I'm in favour of it but very nervous that we won't receive enough compensation to be able to move to a comparable home, especially since they've already removed one step in the compensation process.
Though doing it fast but fair would lift a load of worry and shorten this period where it's impossible to sell for people who already wanted to move for other reasons.
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