Yes, head-offices can be beneficial to a local economy, but without the small and mid-sized businesses, a city can not sustain itself. Smaller businesses are the bread and butter of an economy. It’s the same thing as a stock market, you can have tons of large companies being traded, but if you have no smaller business people investing, then your stock market crashes.

But, I believe that should such a railway be built in Alberta, the strongest area that would benefit from the railway would be Red Deer due to it’s location. With it’s location in the middle of the two cities, the city would be preferable for businesses because of the shorter distance each way. It would be wiser for a corporation to have it’s office in Red Deer and have business people from Calgary and Edmonton commute to Red Deer rather than say EDM to CGY through RD.

Another point that isn’t relevant to any of Paul’s comments, but Jordan mentioned it earlier, would be the competition between Air Canada and WestJet. If a train network was to occur, environmentalists and others would push to have CGY and EDM International airports closed and have one Alberta International Airport located in Red Deer. But likely Airlines would favor such an option because the airlines would no longer have to operate flights to/from both cities and flights to each city. Air Travel pollution in Alberta could drop by 40% because interprovincial/intercontinental/international flights would only land at the one airport. Such plan could be advantageous to citizens of Edmonton who wouldn’t have to drive/fly to Calgary to catch a flight for example to Frankfurt, Germany. For Calgarians it could definitely be helpful due to the high rate of aircraft noise due to how close the airport is to residential zones. And Central Alberta could benefit due to a busier and stronger local economy.

PCL has created more wealth for the city than a number of small and medium businesses. Head offices create more jobs, more spinoffs, and more economic benefits as they then attract more business that wants to do business with the company. Businesses go where the decision makers are. Case in point are all of the oil companies. They are headquartered in Calgary even though Edmonton is closer to all of the oil in the province. Those head offices created a need for more businesses to start up to work with them and they are all in Calgary. Check out this article as it explains why head offices are important to a local economy (http://www.bcbc.com/Documents/ppv9n5.pdf). Sorry about the pdf thing, but they didn’t put it up as a web page.

http://earth.google.com/

http://www.demosphere.net/maps/HSR.kmz

If you’re able to make some additions/options for red deer and calgary, I’d be most gracious if you could email me the file back:

jschroder at ddsi dot info

What will be interesting to see is how WestJet and AirCanada handle the incresed and more efficient competition.

With a high-speed rail service between the 2 cities, it will actually reduce the feasibility of Edmonton attracting head offices. Business likes to go where business is. Calgary would become an even bigger draw as getting to meetings in Edmonton becomes extremely easy. In fact, labour can live in one city and commute to the other for a relatively small fee – considering how quickly it can be done. Head office in Calgary, key exec living in Edmonton, worth the expense to commute each day as the commute may actually be shorter than living near Calgary and driving in with the increased traffic there.

So, even though Edmonton will benefit some, it will make things worse here in the long run by us being unable to attract the large companies we need to help the city grow. In fact, why would some companies even have a branch in Edmonton when the trip to Calgary becomes that easy.

Just my 2 cents.

The benefit is that the HSR line could be extended north east towards both Forts Saskatchewan and McMurray via existing rail corridors along the yellowhead and fort road.

Forrest – Yeah, definitely a huge range. As I mentioned above, there are more solid things they could spend this money one, for sure.