High speed rail has taken a U-turn in Ontario.

For decades, all roads — or at least routes — led to Montreal. Driven by the perennial national unity debate, premiers preened for annual photo-ops while promising to bind Ontario and Quebec not just economically but politically.

Yet high speed rail remained stuck on a slow train that never left the station.

Now, the destination is in another direction — with westward stops in Guelph, Kitchener-Waterloo and London.

Why the turnaround? And why did the Quebec quest reach a dead end?

Today the politics are more provincial than national, and the economics are more practical than aspirational.

Premier Kathleen Wynne dreams, no doubt, of harvesting more votes by proclaiming Ontario’s biggest-ever infrastructure project — a sleek high-speed train with all the bells and whistles — as her $20-billion legacy. But southwestern Ontario is hardly fertile territory for her governing Liberals, and she’s unlikely to be in office to drive the last spike eight to 14 years from now.

A better explanation for the new direction is the belated recognition that a fast train to Montreal isn’t as smooth as it sounds. At least not at that price.

If you build it, they may not come. Or pay.

The trip between Canada’s two biggest cities has always been driven by the promise of business travellers and tourists paying top dollar for a short trip. But the problem with occasional travellers is that they come and go — without coming back often enough to build a business around it.

Consider the painful fiasco of the Union Pearson Express to Toronto’s airport.

A train that targeted an exclusive business market didn’t generate much high-end traffic in the end, or the high revenues to pay for it. Only when UP opened up to everyone along the route — transforming it from a business and ruling class train to a people’s class commute — did the seats finally get filled and the cash begin to flow (though still too slowly).

This is not a columnist’s customary second-guessing, merely second thoughts. I’d long supported an airport rail link here, having regularly ridden the Hong Kong Airport Express when I lived there (also a 22-minute ride downtown). Just as I’d always supported the idea of a high-speed link to Montreal — or anywhere.

One trip on the Maglev train from Shanghai’s airport at the warp speed of 432 km/h takes the breath away, even if the terminus in suburban Pudong is in the middle of nowhere. But no amount of love and affection for train technology (vintage or vector) will keep a dreamy journey from crashing down to earth on faulty economics.

Without the ridership and revenue bases, any train is baseless. It’s not clear that North American distances, densities or propensities among riders would have sustained customer demand here until recently. The appeal of this proposed route — if the economics can be made to work — is that it connects 7 million people along a population corridor that accounts for 60 per cent of Ontario’s economy.

Phase One would link downtown Toronto to Pearson Airport and the high-tech hub of Kitchener-Waterloo at speeds of up to 250 km/h, ending in London. The latter destination seems more of a stretch (and happens to be the home of deputy premier Deb Matthews, whose riding is increasingly encircled by New Democrat MPPs), but there may be an argument for a southwestern Ontario nexus that draws in that economically depressed population centre.

Phase Two leads from London to Windsor but may never get off the ground. A report to Wynne by former federal transport minister David Collenette concedes that ridership and revenue remain unproven on that stretch, relying instead on “socio-economic and regional development grounds” for a future extension.

A Windsor terminus sounds more political than economical, destined to be deferred from one election campaign to the next. Just as the perennial route to Quebec kept going in circles.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

High-speed rail has been a long journey, more prosaic than romantic. Instead of passengers gliding to Montreal for a getaway, think of commuters hitching a 48-minute from Kitchener-Waterloo to the GTA as part of their daily grind.

Customers in a hurry, heading from home to work and back again. Who keep coming back.

Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca , Twitter: @reggcohn

Read more about: