By Daniel Béland

June 1, 2025

Canada is the only G7 country without high-speed passenger rail service, meaning trains that can travel at 250 km per hour or faster. This has long been the case based in part on the fact that Canada, as the second-largest country in the world by area and 38th by population, ranks 230th by population density at 4.5 humans per square kilometre.

It has therefore, all other reasons aside and with the partial exception of the Toronto-Quebec corridor, been an unlikely high-speed rail prospect for lacking the economies of scale that apply in other jurisdictions.

Over the years, initiatives like the high-frequency rail project were meant to address some of the existing issues and impediments to innovation that had put Canada behind countries like China in this key development indicator. More recently, in February, the Liberal government announced the development of a high-speed rail line in the Toronto-Quebec City corridor. This type of project has been discussed for several decades now and, hopefully, it will fully materialize this time around although, if it does, it is likely to take many years.

Considering that, in Japan, the first Shinkansen high-speed trains entered service in 1964 and that, in France, the first TGV did the same thing in 1981, technologically Canada is decades behind the curve. An early experiment in high-speed rail in the Toronto-Montreal corridor during the 1960s with the UAC TurboTrain succumbed to design problems and poor track quality, and was finally mothballed in 1982. Catching up now will prove expensive.

Yet, while building new infrastructure is crucial, passenger trains and, more generally, transportation policies require that sufficient resources are available to maintain and upgrade existing equipment. Without that, we can witness what is known as policy drift, the gradual deterioration of public infrastructure and services in a changing context coupled with the absence of sufficient efforts to keep them working effectively.

While politicians might claim more credit from announcements about shiny new projects, maintaining existing facilities is a less politically appealing yet essential component of policymaking that is often neglected, to the point of weakening otherwise effective policies and structures.

A cautionary tale about this comes from Germany, a country known for its efficiency and timeliness. The Deutsche Bahn (DB) national railway company, which for a long time symbolized these virtues, has “descended into chaos”, per The Guardian in 2023. In 2024, DB paid out 197 million euro ($307 million CAD) in compensation for delays. Delayed and even cancelled trains have become an epidemic in a country were running late is seriously frowned upon.

The fact that Germans take punctuality very seriously is reflected in the cultural aphorism that “only the Swiss are more punctual“. Tellingly, earlier this spring, chronic delays at DB forced Swiss Federal Railways to further cut German rail routes into the alpine nation. This means that many German trains will stop in Basel, where passengers will need to switch to more punctual Swiss trains.

Late trains frequently mean missed connections, a situation creating domino effects, making daily life in Germany both highly resistant to planning and a major source of material for comedians.

In other words, Germany’s trains are not seen as timely enough to be relied upon as a network partner by its Swiss neighbour, and for good reason. On a continent to which so many tourists are first introduced by rail travel, where Germany recognizes that by offering unlimited rail passes for 50 euros a month, and where cross-border connections are an integral part of an EU-tourism whole, these are not positive developments.

In 2023, only “64 percent of long-distance trains arrived on time, compared to 81,8 percent in 2020, the most punctual arrival times in 15 years.” Last year, the situation deteriorated slightly, with only 62.5% of these trains arriving on time. Importantly, the DB only considers trains to be late when they are at least 6 minutes behind schedule, which means that the above statistics paint a rosy picture of the actual situation on the ground (in contrast, in Japan a train being one minute behind schedule is a big deal).

As a subversion of Germany’s national brand of efficiency, the situation is a source of national embarrassment and a cause of endless frustration for travellers. This is especially the case because late trains frequently mean missed connections, a situation creating domino effects, making daily life in Germany both highly resistant to planning and a major source of material for comedians.

Late trains have also become a key economic issue, blamed at least in part on decades of chronic underinvestment, which “have now come home to roost, with the railways becoming a symbol of Germany’s creaking infrastructure,” per The Guardian‘s Joanna Partridge, “alongside motorways and bridges – at a time of economic malaise.” Some German federal officials recognize that the country’s railway infrastructure has been “neglected for decades” and new investments were announced last year. At the same time, these investments should be coupled with the reorganization of the DB’s structure, which currently takes the form of a fuzzy public-private hybrid.

Even fiscally conservative governments, which are the norm in contemporary Germany, now must act, not so much to claim credit for new projects, but as a form of blame avoidance to address and potentially reduce public outcry targeting them, as the DB operates under federal jurisdiction.

Yet, the investments needed to repair and update Germany’s passenger rail system are enormous and certainly higher than what has been announced recently, considering how low German spending per capita on rail infrastructure is from a comparative (European) perspective.

At this time, despite some encouraging developments, it is not clear whether large new investments will be made swiftly enough to spare the current generation of passengers a new normal of German unreliability and inefficiency.

Time is money but timeliness has a cost, at least where public transportation is concerned. Considering how efficient public transportation is also crucial to addressing environmental concerns in a country where the car culture and industry remain strong, the time to act is now.

Beyond trains and railway infrastructure, the sad tale of the DB suggests that countries that fail to upgrade their infrastructure are likely to pay a high price sooner rather than later, a situation that will hurt them economically but that will also cause headaches to ordinary citizens who simply want to enjoy basic facilities and services that work properly.

To cite the title of a book by UBC political scientist Alan Jacobs, governing for the long term is a tricky task, and we have to create the institutional and political conditions under which the sustainability of our infrastructure should become a priority.

Daniel Béland is professor of political science and director (on leave) of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University. He is currently visiting Heidelberg University as the recipient of a Humboldt Research Award. He thanks Jale Tosun for her suggestions.