Alberta to seek private bids for high-speed rail its plan put at C$38bn

Alberta will seek private proposals this fall for Calgary-Edmonton high-speed rail, asking for minimal provincial funding on a corridor its own master plan costed at C$38 billion.

The tender was announced in Calgary on 28 September together with a federal commitment. Ottawa and Alberta will study high-speed service on the Calgary-Red Deer-Edmonton corridor, create a joint governance structure and refer the initiative to the federal Major Projects Office as a “transformative strategy”, the same treatment given to the Toronto-Quebec City high-speed project.

The line in the competition would run from downtown Calgary through Red Deer to downtown Edmonton and serve both international airports and the City of Airdrie. The province intends to choose a proponent by April 2027. The Alberta government says the winning bid will be expected to need only minimal investment from the province and to connect with the existing passenger rail systems in both cities. About 80 per cent of Albertans live in the corridor, according to the province.

What Alberta’s master plan says the line would cost

The province’s Passenger Rail Master Plan, whose executive summary the federal announcement links to, compared two ways of building the corridor between St. Albert and downtown Calgary via Red Deer. Both options also included commuter services to the two international airports and Airdrie. High-speed trains on two new dedicated tracks in a greenfield corridor were estimated at C$38 billion for construction and vehicles. Conventional diesel trains on two new passenger tracks within or beside the existing freight corridor came to C$25 billion. Both figures are in 2025 dollars, exclude inflation, include land and carry an accuracy range of +100% to -50%.

Only the high-speed option cleared the plan’s cost-benefit test. It was forecast to cut the downtown Edmonton to downtown Calgary trip to 1 hour 45 minutes, against 3 hours 35 minutes for the conventional option, and to draw 56,000 daily riders in 2055 instead of 29,000. Its benefit-cost ratio was put at 1.1, compared with 0.4 for conventional rail. Driving between the two downtowns takes about three hours, the same document says.

Answer: only the high-speed option was forecast to deliver benefits above its costs, at about C$13 billion more in capital spending. Both options run from St. Albert to downtown Calgary via Red Deer and include commuter services to both international airports and Airdrie. Capital costs include land, exclude inflation and carry a +100%/-50% accuracy range. Travel times exclude getting to the station. The plan splits the high-speed ridership into 32,000 regional and 31,000 commuter trips, which add up to more than the published total of 56,000; the table uses the published total. Source: Government of Alberta, Passenger Rail Master Plan executive summary, pages 27-28. The C$13 billion difference is an editorial calculation (C$38 billion minus C$25 billion).

Neither government has attached a price or a public funding figure to the project now heading to tender. For the full 30-year network, the master plan expects fares to cover operating and maintenance costs but not to repay the initial capital.

A delivery model the plan treated with caution

The master plan also set out how the network should be built. It warned that handing integrated delivery and long-term operation to one or more private parties, for example through unsolicited proposals or public-private partnerships with long operating terms, might reduce efficiency and flexibility in operations and weaken competition. Its preferred approach was an arm’s-length provincial agency that controls the order of works and splits construction into contracts sized to what the private sector can deliver. The terms of the new tender have not been published, so it is not yet clear how closely they follow that advice.

Private interest in the corridor predates the tender. The plan notes that the province has received four unsolicited proposals for passenger rail or high-speed ground transport corridors. One of them, from Prairie Link Rail Partnership (EllisDon and AECOM), is listed in Alberta’s major projects database as an Edmonton-Calgary line for passengers and freight at up to 400 km/h, with an estimated cost of C$10.9 billion. The partnership announced a memorandum of understanding with Alberta Transportation on 8 June 2021. Its scope differs from the master plan options, so the two estimates are not directly comparable.

How the Alberta model differs from Alto

The federal release links the Alberta initiative to the Toronto-Quebec City project, saying that work will inform future high-speed lines such as this one. Alto is planned as about 1,000 km of dedicated electrified track for trains of up to 300 km/h, was referred to the Major Projects Office in September 2025, and is due to start construction on its first Ottawa-Montreal segment in 2029.

Ownership is where the two projects part ways. The federal government, through the Minister of Transport, owns Alto and is its main investor and shareholder, while the Cadence consortium works on it as private developer partner under a federal Crown corporation. In Alberta, the province is asking private bidders to carry the project with minimal provincial money. According to the Alberta government, Ottawa will work with the province to advance the line once a proponent has been chosen, and the two governments will look at financing options together.

Answer: the two lines share the federal Major Projects Office route, but Alto is owned and mainly funded by the federal government, while Alberta expects a private proponent to need only minimal provincial investment. Sources: Major Projects Office, Alto High-Speed Rail; Transport Canada, High-Speed Rail Initiative from Toronto to Québec City; Transport Canada, Canada and Alberta to collaborate on High-Speed Rail; Government of Alberta, Passenger Rail Master Plan executive summary.

What happens before construction

The tender is due to open this fall, with selection by April 2027. Transport Canada says the governments will engage Indigenous communities, municipalities, industry, investors and the public as the work moves forward. If the province proceeds, the master plan lists further steps that come before any construction: corridor planning to fix routes and station sites and protect rights-of-way, environmental reviews, Indigenous consultation and legislation to create a passenger rail agency.