If this isn’t piggybacking off a good idea, then we don’t know what is. Today, a new (yes, new) construction company announced they’ve received the go-ahead from the Alberta Provincial Government to work on their own high-speed train between Calgary and Edmonton.
That company is called Prairie Link, and it’s a subsidiary of the Edmonton-born construction giant EllisDon. Basically, they’ve gone the whole ‘it’s not copying if you change it a little’ route. Like TransPod (the original company to get what’s known as a Memorandum of Understanding), Prairie Link’s vision is a high-speed rail connecting Calgary, Edmonton, and Red Deer.
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Alberta has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to support a feasibility study of a @TransPod_Inc hyperloop between #Calgary and #Edmonton.
If developed, this could mean a fully electrified high-speed corridor between our two cities within a decade.https://t.co/evXAjKUiFI pic.twitter.com/rDfskpTou4
— Jason Kenney (@jkenney) August 25, 2020
Unlike TransPod, this proposal is both cheaper and will have slower speeds. While TransPod needs around $29B to complete the project, Prairie Link is after only $9B. One tradeoff there? A slower train, by like a lot. TransPod hopes to see speeds up to and exceeding around 600km/h. Meanwhile, Prairie Link is going to top out around 300-400km/h.
So, we’ve had high-speed trains all around the world for decades, and now, two have been proposed in Alberta in under a year? Since they’re private initiatives, it’s just about who gets the investors and funding first.
You can learn more about Prairie Link here, and TransPod right here. It’s the battle of the hyper-trains! We just hope one of them actually wins.
