Comparing Turkeys to Watermelons

Paul Wells advocates for increased high speed rail in Canada. In principle, I totally agree with him (provided it's primarily privately-funded), and think rail might need to be extremely important in the medium- to long-term transportation mix for North America. However, Wells has a map of Europe's expected high-speed rail lines for 2020 and compares it to Canada's likely forays by that year, which is absurd when you consider it has a population about 20 times that of Canada and a population density of over 70 people per square km, vs. Canada's...3. It's unrealistic to think that the same type of mass transit would be used in both situations. Rail might well be a good option, but just because Europe's got a good system doesn't in and of itself mean Canada needs to follow suit, anymore than the Kootenays needs a subway system on par with London's. The Windsor-Toronto-Montreal corridor might have the population density to support such a system, but it just doesn't make sense for the rest of the country. Maybe Calgary-Edmonton at some point in the future. What is kinda disturbing (without being at all surprising) reading the comments on the article are the number of people who think it's totally fine to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on something just because it's cool, and then we can say we've got high-speed rail. I'm not saying it CAN'T be a smart investment, but I think we need to set a higher bar for determining the appropriate use of public funds. (Not a very Canadian idea, I know). Have people not heard of a cost-benefit analysis?