Perhaps you haven’t heard, but the future is now.
This week, Canadian Affairs reported that 15 U.S. states now have driverless vehicles operating in some of their major cities. People can hail rides without a human driver to shuttle them around.
Canada is not quite so far along. Fully autonomous vehicles are not approved for commercial sale, and our regulatory framework has not been updated to account for driverless rides. But Ontario is currently running an autonomous-vehicle pilot project with 15 approved participants.
What this means is it is simply a matter of when, not whether, autonomous vehicles will be commonplace on our streets.
And we would bet that day will arrive much, much sooner than Canada’s mega high-speed rail project known as Alto. This technological trend should be yet another nail in the coffin for Alto going ahead.
The word “mega” understates Alto’s scale.
This month, the Parliamentary Budget Office released its analysis of the cost to build the high-speed rail corridor from Quebec City to Toronto. The PBO says the government’s $60- to $90-billion estimate is too modest. The true figure is likely to be closer to $75 to $113 billion.
And even these figures may be optimistic.
“The PBO analysis assumes that planning and construction for the Alto route proceed in a manner consistent with past European high-speed rail projects, rather than the UK or US experience,” it says.
The subtle point here is the PBO is assuming a somewhat rosy construction scenario. The U.K.’s own high-speed rail project, HS2, has been a fiasco. It is now expected to cost up to £102.7 billion — more than double its 2020 estimate — and may not open until 2039, 13 years behind its original target.
These sums are not ones human minds can easily digest. But it is possible to contextualize them by noting what other, much-desired projects could be undertaken instead (assuming fiscal constraints exist, which they do).
A big one is urban transit.
In February, Matti Siemiatycki, director of the Infrastructure Institute at the University of Toronto, told Canadian Affairs that governments could complete rapid transit systems in most of Canada’s major cities for what Alto is expected to cost.
That includes Toronto’s Eglinton crosstown extension, Vancouver’s SkyTrain extension, Montreal and Quebec City’s LRT projects, and Calgary’s Green Line — plus money left over to repair Via Rail (which, by the way, Ottawa is still planning to run after Alto is operational).
Think of how many millions of riders would benefit on a near-daily basis from such transit projects, versus the relatively small number who would occasionally benefit from faster rail between, say, Peterborough and Quebec City.
These opportunity costs alone should make it clear why Alto is a bad idea.
But what makes it a terrible idea is the technology trajectory we’re on.
If driverless rides are already available in parts of the United States, they will likely be available in Canada within a few short years. By contrast, Alto’s soft target completion date is 2044, nearly two decades from now.
After driverless taxi services hit the market, the consumer market for driverless cars will be close behind.
These vehicles are almost certain to make a serious dent in demand for inter-city trains.
Just ask yourself: would you pay to take the train, factoring in the cost and inconvenience of getting to and from a train station, when your driverless car could take you directly door-to-door?
For what it’s worth, the PBO’s analysis only looked at Alto’s construction costs; it will be releasing a second report that examines projected ridership and associated revenue. We would urge the PBO to include modelling around driverless cars in this analysis.
In sum, the Alto project should be setting off alarm bells.
The fact that it’s not suggests politicians and the public may be prepared to uncritically accept major projects in service of the prime minister’s ambitious Build Canada agenda, with too little attention to their direct costs and opportunity costs.
Proponents of the project may note that Ottawa has committed to building Alto through some form of public-private partnership. This could mean private companies bear some portion of the risk of failure or cost overruns.
However, the government’s messaging has suggested Alto is going to go ahead, regardless of the market case for it. In late 2025, Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon said construction would begin in 2029, while Alto’s business case for the project is not even expected until next year.
We have seen another example of such decision-making recently. Last week, the government announced a 2027 target for approving the new Pacific Link pipeline.
Ottawa and Alberta had initially said private sector companies would need to build this major pipeline. But when little interest materialized, they pivoted to saying they would build and majority-own the pipeline themselves.
The market case — or lack thereof — seems not to matter.
The future is here, then — except for the ways of government, which look to be the same as they ever were.
