All aboard? Alberta's premier could boost his drab image with a sexy new Edmonton-Calgary high-speed train.

  The conquest of space must and will go ahead. That much we know. That
  much we can say with confidence and conviction.
  --PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, SPEAKING IN SAN ANTONIO, TEX., NOV. 21,
  1963

IT's been half a year since the decidedly un-Kennedyesque Ed Stelmach stumbled into the premiership of Alberta on the second ballot and he's not done a lot to galvanize our rich young province. His haltingly delivered speeches, his banalities about "transparency" in government, and a recent budget that increased spending by 11 per cent to $33.1 billion, much of it on "infrastructure," are a disappointment both to the fiscal hawks who'd prefer no government and the reds who like two chickens to a pot.

The Stelmach government has so far performed like the general contractor of a construction project that wants the job done right and will spend whatever it takes. With surpluses of $7 billion, this is not an outlandish strategy, and the role seems to suit the unexciting Mr. Ed, but it doesn't exactly move Alberta to the next level. Hey, people, we won the lottery; let's get the driveway paved!

But, of course, the pre-preem Stelmach's apotheosis in cabinet came when he was infrastructure and transport minister under Ralph Klein. It's in this area he still seems most comfortable. In Stelmach's world--the farming and heavy oil extraction lands east of Edmonton--the former pig farmer and reeve of Lamont County knows only too well that successful politics and good roads are same-sex partners.

But Stelmach's general policy of maintenance and improvements will likely not maintain and improve the Stelmach government through next spring's probable election in what is largely an urban province. Next to Ralph Klein, Liberal Leader Kevin Taft looked like an anima-tronic scarecrow; next to Ed Stelmach he looks like Abe Lincoln. What Ed is going to need is something to galvanize the population: some sort of space race. Since roads appear to be Stelmach's metier, perhaps it is in this general area that he might find his moon shot.

Alberta's biggest and busiest road is Highway 2. It runs from the Montana border south of Fort McLeod, and north to somewhere west of Lesser Slave Lake. It was built in the 1950s and 1960s under Socred highways minister Gordon Taylor--the "Roads Scholar"--and cost as much as $200,000 per mile, an astronomical sum for the time. Its busiest portion was and still is the 300-kilometre stretch between Edmonton and Calgary. More than two-thirds of the province's population live along this bland stretch of four-lane.

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Today most of the highway remains a four-lane and is increasingly congested and slow, no longer the smooth "highway of happiness" that Taylor dubbed it. With the pace of the economy and a population growth of more than 50,000 per year, other stretches of Alberta road are becoming similarly taxed--in particular the latest Death Highway, the two-lane No. 63 that serves Fort McMurray and results in the deaths of more Canadians than the Afghanistan mission.

In fairness, the province's ample infrastructure budget is improving these roads, but as is often the case in boomtime Alberta, we're playing catch-up. Even with Highway 63 twinned or Highway 2 trebled, how long would it be before those upgrades are overtaken by volume? There are economists who tell us to hold off on capital expenditures until the boom has cooled. But who knows when that will be? If OPEC floods the market, if we don't find enough new natural gas, if someone suddenly perfects hydrogen fuel cells, if the U.S. economy tanks and takes the Chinese manufacturing sector with it ... Any of these ifs is possible, but we've been hearing them for a decade. Maybe it's better to plan for the most probable "if"--if the price of oil continues to rise and the tens of billions of tarsands plants and upgraders on the books are built. And while we're at it, why not build something that might be a bit more fun than new blacktops.

Let us, in fact, get a jump on the future, relieve congestion on the roads, mollify the greenies, kick-start the tourist industry, transform Stelmach from glorified maintenance man to Kennedyesque visionary, and actually have some fun. How do we do this? Easy: we build the fastest train in the world.

The idea of a bullet train between Edmonton and Calgary has been kicked around since the Japanese and the French built super-duper choo-choos in the late 1970s. With the populations of Calgary and Edmonton each over a million, with jet travel between the two cities taking two hours including security and travel in and out of the downtowns, and with Highway 2 turning into a parking lot, the idea of a train that would get one from Jasper and 109th Street, Edmonton, to 7th Avenue and Centre Street, Calgary, in 45 minutes--including stops at the two airports and in Red Deer--has become realistic.

Perhaps Alberta Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Luke Ouellete, 53, the affable farm boy and campground owner from near Innisfail, feels the same way. A few weeks ago his department admitted it had purchased land in Edmonton and Calgary for the stations that might someday be required for high-speed train terminals. Rumour has it that when an executive from the giant German electrical engineering company Siemens AG met with Ouellette earlier this year to pitch the company's 600-kilometre magnetic levitation (maglev) train, Luke was pumped. His department is currently studying traffic levels between the two cities by road and air to determine a fast train's feasibility.

In 2004, Calgary's Van Horne Institute, a train-promoting organization named for the CPR's venerable 19th-century president Cornelius Van Home, conducted a similar feasibility study. Although favouring the slower (200-300 km/hour) trains and tracks produced by study participants Bombardier and CN Rail, the Van Home report said a profitable line costing up to $3.4 billion could be run on the sale of $50 one-way tickets. Siemens, a company that employs 7,000 Canadians and builds everything from LRTs to power stations, did not participate in the Van Home study.

At the time, Siemens' Canadian president Albert Maringer told me that his company's maglev system--which so far only exists on the 31-kilometre run between Shanghai and its airport--would cost $6.5 billion between downtown Edmonton and Calgary. The maglev is a kind of light monorail straddling a raised and electrified concrete track that both suspends the train and propels it on a cushion of electromagnetic repellence. The concrete track would run along the median of Highway 2, meaning no costly or time-consuming purchases of right-of-way, and the whole thing could be up and running in two years. Unlike Bombardier's diesel-powered "Jet Train," the maglev would produce no emissions and, as mentioned, could attain a smooth 600 kilometres per hour on the flat, straight route. (France's TGV recently hit a record 585 km/hour for a shuddering minute or two.)

Such characteristics make the maglev the equivalent of a land-based jet aircraft. An airline such as WestJet could operate the train in lieu of the planes it now flies on the short and avionically punishing route between the two cities. The train's speed would, as mentioned, make the train the fastest in the world, melding Calgary and Edmonton into a commuter bloc, and becoming a tourist draw.

Assume the price tag has risen to $10 billion. So what? The provincial and federal governments can help out with money saved from not trebling Highway 2 or upgrading airports. The operator of the system would contribute a billion or so for the exclusive contract. A system of tolls might be introduced for vehicular traffic on Highway 2, with the proceeds both subsidizing the rail link and encouraging its use.

Any initial shortfall could be backstopped with monies from Alberta's $16-billion Heritage Savings Trust Fund, to be paid back as the line brings in revenue. This troublesome lump of money has always been there to invest and what better investment than a local one that cleans the air, reduces traffic deaths, brings in tourists, puts Alberta on the map and gives us all something of which to be very proud? And if the Alberta Clipper works between Calgary and Edmonton, it could be extended the extra hour to Fort McMurray. Word reaches me that Ontario is considering such a train for the Toronto-Detroit route. But Alberta is the province of the future. We shouldn't let them beat us in this race.