Article content
Premier Danielle Smith loves trains.
I don’t know if she has one of those neat model train sets but if she does I would not be surprised.
Article content
Heck, Smith and her husband started an eatery in a restored railway dining car.
This day the Smith government is not talking health care or housing or schools or how much Albertans are getting gouged or how much the Trudeau government is throwing its weight around.
Article content
A high-speed train to Edmonton with a stop in Red Deer, a city where the premier wants to see a population of a million souls not the current 100,000-plus.
Does that mean Airdrie will house 750,000 people?
Once again, as it’s been chewed over before, the high-speed train is a thing to be studied, to be considered, to be gone over with a fine-tooth comb.
Questions.
How many people do you know will take the train to Edmonton instead of driving?
How many people do you know drive to Edmonton a lot and might possibly take the train?
How many people do you know would prefer a slow train to Edmonton?
Asking for a friend.
Then there are the imaginary-for-now trains to downtown Calgary for very real commuters in Airdrie and Okotoks and Cochrane where the shovels could be in the ground in a few years.
How many folks will ditch their wheels back home and take the train to downtown Calgary every workday?
Smith says this commuter piece of the puzzle is likely to be Job One.
Then there is the only-in-a-dream-for-now train from Calgary to Banff with the LRT connecting to the airport.
Article content
But …
“How many billions of dollars would we spend if we had to create six- and eight- and ten-lane highways?
“I look at transportation infrastructure as being core government business,” adds Smith.
“This is why people elect governments. It’s to do the things they can’t do in the private sector and that includes building massive new infrastructure.”
Smith does mention possibly working with private interests on this grand design.
Pardon the scepticism but, though it is not Smith’s fault, the latest big adventure in transportation in Calgary, the Green Line LRT, is not exactly the poster child anyone would trot out to instill confidence in the locals.
This is an old story with new legs.
Yes, it was in 2007, 17 years ago, when this column broke the news the Progressive Conservative government of the day was pumped up about commuter rail to Airdrie, Okotoks, Cochrane and High River.
They looked into their crystal ball and were excited. What they saw was great. Intriguing and incredible. It was far more than a trial balloon.
The story grabbed the headlines and their crystal ball cracked.
Is there a light at the end of this tunnel?
Devin Dreeshen, Smith’s point man on pavement who happens to drive a honking big truck and would likely have a Hot Wheels track before a model train, is 110 per cent behind the premier and her plans.
Though he likes to build roads and add lanes he is quarterbacking this XXXL file he says is “ambitious to say the least” and “historic.”
Dreeshen says the Smith government is serious.
They’re not just talking this time around, they’re walking.
“We are serious,” he says.
Good.
But just tell me when the train is leaving the station.
Share this article in your social network
