Alberta’s two main population centres may be linked like never before in the future.
The Alberta government recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with TransPod, a Toronto-based company that aims to build a high-speed tube system between Edmonton and Calgary.
TransPod co-founder and chief technology officer Sebastien Gendron said there are a number of reasons the Edmonton-Calgary corridor made sense as the first location for the project.
“When you look at Canada, there are two main corridors, economically speaking, Toronto-Montreal and Calgary-Edmonton. The Calgary-Edmonton route is good because you’re dealing with only one province, it’s fairly flat, and there’s low density between the two cities. It’s also a shorter distance than Montreal-Toronto which reduces the overall cost of infrastructure,” Gendron said.
“Really it’s an ideal candidate and one of the best in the world to be honest.”
The system does not use the hyperloop design of a pneumatic tube but instead is driven by electrically powered magnetic propulsion pushing a tube transport resembling an airplane fuselage.
“The system we’re developing is three times faster than a conventional high-speed train and would take 30 minutes from Calgary to Edmonton with acceleration and deceleration. It’s similar to a subway, but it goes (at a speed of) 400 to 600 kilometres an hour between the two cities,” Gendron said.
While the Alberta government expressed its support for the project, it did not offer financial assistance for what Gendron estimates will be a “low-end $6 billion, high end $10 billion” endeavour.
Since founding the company in 2015 TransPod has secured initial investment from Italy in 2016 and from there conducted research and development in both Canada and Europe, eventually securing further European funding for development work on the continent.
“As we’ve been improving and progressing with the research and development aspect of our technology, we’ve been working parallel with several governments to secure an initial market. We’ve been in talks with the Ontario and Alberta governments, the federal government and the City of Calgary since 2017,” Gendron said. “This announcement is the first milestone of all those years talking to Alberta.”
The timeline for the project is a 10-year construction plan, with the first step being execution of a full feasibility study to determine infrastructure costs and economic viability, he said.
“Once that’s done, we have a year to get a construction permit for the first track of 20 to 30 kilometres to determine all safety standards,” Gendron said.
“If we’re certified around 2025 or 2026 those documents will allow us to build the full line, which would take five years for the entire construction.”
Alberta’s drastic temperature swings throughout the year shouldn’t affect the project, Gendron said.
“Cold will affect our infrastructure the same way it affects a highway or a bridge. We’re not using pneumatic technology but the infrastructure itself is connected to vacuum pumps to pump down the amount of air from the atmospheric pressure to a lower value. To manage the temperature difference from winter to summer, we’ll equip the infrastructure with expansion joints,” he said.
The advent of COVID-19 may have accelerated work on the project, he said.
“Hospitality, the automotive industry and airports aren’t as profitable as they were before. The financial sector is starting to realize that investing in companies building for the future might be an as good, if not better, investment than conventional players,” Gendron said.
“Oil prices are also fairly low, which is forcing governments who have been looking at oil and gas as a way to secure their budget to diversify.”
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