One Line, Then the Next
What Spain’s high-speed rail experience does, and does not, tell us about ALTO.
On October 18, 2026, Fareed Zakaria closed his CNN programme with a segment presenting Spain’s high-speed rail network as evidence that a democracy can still build large infrastructure. He credits Spain’s result to six conditions: building one line first, public finance, low construction cost, routing through less populated land, cross-party support and, since 2021, competition between train operators. He also notes two caveats: low use of parts of the network, and the cost of keeping it safe. CNN transcript
Spain is the example most often offered for what a Toronto–Québec City line could become. This brief sets each of those conditions beside what has been published about ALTO.
On the sources set out here, ALTO shares few of the conditions the commentary identifies. Spain opened a single 471 km line in 1992 and did not open its second until 2003. ALTO’s published plan is a 1,000 km network, with property acquisition on its first segment, Ottawa–Montréal, reported to begin in late 2026 or early 2027.
Spain’s average construction cost has been reported at €17.7 million per kilometre. ALTO’s $60–90 billion working assumption, divided by 1,000 km and converted at the October 1, 2026 rate, comes to about €38–56 million per kilometre, an Initiative calculation set out below with its limits. Spain financed its network publicly, with a substantial share from the European Union; ALTO is structured as a public-private partnership with no comparable outside funder.
The Spanish case also carries findings that bear directly on ALTO: Spain’s fiscal authority and the European Court of Auditors have both found that much of the network carries few passengers relative to its cost, and the January 2026 derailment at Adamuz, on the original 1992 line, has made track maintenance a national question. Research also finds the network’s gains concentrated in the largest cities and at stations, with none of the studies reviewed finding that it reversed rural decline between them. These are findings about a network that was built cheaply. The comparison implies that a network costing two to three times as much per kilometre would face the same questions with a narrower margin.
Three figures that frame the comparison
The commentary is a summary rather than a study, and its figures are round ones. Each is checked here against the underlying sources. Where the sources give a different number, the source figure is used: later reporting puts the Adamuz toll at 46, against the segment’s “more than 40,” and ADIF, Spain’s infrastructure manager, gives the network length as 3,973 km as of March 2026, consistent with the segment’s “nearly 2,500 miles.” ADIF Inspain
One line at a time
The Madrid–Seville line was inaugurated on April 14, 1992, timed to Seville’s Expo 92, with stops at Ciudad Real, Puertollano and Córdoba. The next new line, the first section of Madrid–Barcelona, did not open until 2003. The network then grew line by line over two decades. ADIF / Renfe via Wikipedia
Spain’s record is incremental, but it is not uniformly fast. Construction of the Basque high-speed line began in 2006 with completion forecast for 2016; completion is now forecast for 2027. Part of the network also consists of lines built or upgraded for 200–250 km/h rather than 300 km/h.
ALTO’s sequence runs the other way. The federal government chose a high-speed option and selected Cadence in February 2025, and co-development began in March 2025. The plan is for a 1,000 km network. On the first segment, Ottawa–Montréal, ALTO’s chief executive has estimated about 1,700 property acquisitions, about 500 of them farms, with construction in 2029. Ridership has been forecast to 2084. Transport Canada Five Hundred Farms
What this implies. Spain’s decision to build its second line was taken with years of operating evidence from the first. ALTO’s structure commits to a network before any segment has carried a passenger. On this sequence, the evidence the commentary credits with building support in Spain would not exist for ALTO until after the network’s scope, delivery model and land acquisition are settled.
Cost per kilometre, in the same units
Four published sources give Spanish construction costs. They use different methods and periods, but each places Spain well below other European builders: an ADIF study gives €6–19 million per km by line; Spain’s fiscal authority, AIReF, €14.7 million (€15.3 million including stations); the engineering firm Ineco €17.7 million, against €45.5 million in other high-speed countries; and the European Court of Auditors €25 million as the average of ten audited lines across six member states. ADIF via Next City AIReF Ineco ECA
ALTO’s published range is $60–90 billion in 2024 dollars, which its chief executive told a Senate committee is a class 5 internal working assumption rather than a cost estimate. Divided by 1,000 km and converted at 0.62526 euro per Canadian dollar (October 1, 2026), it compares as follows. Senate NFFN
| Initiative calculation | Low | High |
|---|---|---|
| ALTO per route-km (C$) | $60M | $90M |
| In euros at 0.62526 | €37.5M | €56.3M |
| Ratio to Spain, Ineco (€17.7M) | 2.1× | 3.2× |
| Ratio to Spain incl. stations, AIReF (€15.3M) | 2.5× | 3.7× |
| Ratio to ECA audited average (€25M) | 1.5× | 2.3× |
| Ratio to other countries, Ineco (€45.5M) | 0.8× | 1.2× |
On this arithmetic, ALTO’s range is two to three times Spain’s average and close to the average Ineco reports for other high-speed countries. Spain is the low outlier; ALTO’s range is not an outlier against the international figures. The question the Spanish example raises is whether the conditions that let Spain build at half the international average are present in ALTO’s corridor.
Limits. The Spanish figures cover construction from 1992 onward and are not stated in a single current price year; in 2024 prices they would be higher and the ratios lower. The published ALTO sources reviewed do not say what the $60–90 billion range includes, and the Spanish sources do not define their scope in the same terms. ALTO’s figure is a class 5 working assumption. The ratios indicate an order of magnitude, not a measured gap.
What made Spain work, and whether it transfers
| Spain | ALTO, as published |
|---|---|
| Who pays. AIReF reported more than €55.89 billion spent on high-speed lines over 35 years, €14.09 billion (25.2%) of it from EU funds. As reported, Spain received 47.3% of the EU’s high-speed rail co-financing between 2000 and 2017. | A public-private partnership that Transport Canada describes as among the largest the Government of Canada has sponsored. ALTO is funded by appropriations during development ($597 million in 2025–26). Canada has no outside funder in the EU’s position, and the terms of construction financing are not set out in the published sources reviewed. |
| Transfers to ALTO:No | |
| Who builds. ADIF, the state infrastructure manager, has built line after line since the early 1990s, carrying its experience from one to the next. | A first line, with no domestic high-speed construction programme behind it. The private partner develops and designs the project with ALTO during co-development. Cadence comprises CDPQ Infra, AtkinsRéalis, SYSTRA, Keolis, SNCF Voyageurs and Air Canada. |
| Transfers to ALTO:No | |
| Where the line runs. Routing through less populated land lowered cost. Spain’s first line stopped at Ciudad Real and Puertollano, and the commentary describes the network as connecting urban and rural Spain. | In Eastern Ontario, less populated land means farmland: about 500 farms on the first segment, under a statute that removes the standard attempt-to-purchase step and the public hearing on objections. Seven stations on 1,000 km, four of them in Québec; none between Peterborough and Ottawa. |
| Transfers to ALTO:No | |
| Consensus. The commentary describes high-speed rail as a rare subject of cross-party agreement. The European Court of Auditors found, however, that decisions to build were often political and that cost-benefit analysis was not generally used. | Consensus has not formed. OFA and UPA, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and Beef Farmers of Ontario have each called for the project to be halted or suspended pending assessment. In February 2026, senators asked whether a cost-benefit analysis had been done. |
| Transfers to ALTO:Not yet | |
| Fares and competition. Ouigo entered in 2021 and Iryo in 2022. Spain’s competition authority reports Madrid–Barcelona tickets about €25 cheaper after liberalisation, fares on the main routes about 40% below 2019 in real terms, and 44.5 million passengers in 2025. | One consortium develops and operates. The sources reviewed do not describe other operators competing on the new line. Air Canada, which operates air services between the corridor’s cities, is a consortium member. |
| Transfers to ALTO:Not in published structure | |
| Demand. AIReF found Spain’s network the least used of the large networks, with socio-economic returns between zero and minimal in all four corridors it evaluated. Per-kilometre use was about a quarter of France’s. | A forecast of 24 million trips a year by 2055 would exceed the Court’s nine-million benchmark for a successful line, and the corridor has about 18 million residents. Spain’s demand record is observed; ALTO’s is a forecast made before a cost estimate exists. |
| Comparison:ALTO’s strongest point, unproven | |
Adamuz and the cost of keeping a line safe
On January 18, 2026, an Iryo train derailed near Adamuz, Córdoba, on the Madrid–Seville line, and collided with an oncoming Renfe train; 46 deaths have been reported. The railway accident investigation commission, CIAF, stated in an interim note that its working hypothesis was a rail fracture at a weld that occurred before the Iryo train passed. Spain’s transport minister said the section had been renovated in May 2025. The train drivers’ union had written to ADIF in August 2025 about wear on that section, and the CIAF has reported inconsistencies in the documentation on the welds. As of the most recent reporting found, the final report has not been published. This brief makes no finding on the cause. CIAF Reuters
The line involved was Spain’s first, 34 years old at the time. Maintenance is a lifecycle cost that grows as a network ages, and it is the cost least visible when a project is announced. The Initiative’s earlier operating-cost work estimates ALTO’s recurring lifecycle cost at about $1.8 billion a year at ALTO’s 3.5% discount rate. Cost of Running the Train
Who gains, and who does not
Rural depopulation in Spain predates the high-speed network by most of a century. The share of Spaniards living in municipalities under 2,000 inhabitants fell from 27.5% in 1900 to 5.7% in 2021, though such places still make up 72.2% of all municipalities. Of 5,678 small municipalities studied, 56.9% lost population in both post-crisis periods examined, about 404,000 people combined, and the authors judge that around 3,300 face a bleak outlook. Gil-Alonso et al. 2023
On 2018 INE data, 53% of Spain’s area holds about 5% of its population at under 12.5 inhabitants per km². elDiario.es The evidence reviewed does not show that high-speed rail caused this decline. The question it can answer is narrower: whether the network changed the pattern, and for whom.
Gains concentrate at the ends
On Madrid–Seville, population growth and land development concentrated “mostly towards the two largest cities.” Ciudad Real, within commuting range of Madrid, gained; Puertollano, one stop further, seldom did. Shen et al. 2015 Shen et al. 2016
Stations matter
Provinces with stops on Madrid–Barcelona saw on average about 2.4% higher output and 3.3% more firms. Across Spain, service has been associated with population growth overall, but not in every case: a required condition for development, not a guarantee of it. Carbo et al. 2019 Miralles i Garcia 2019
The places in between
The coverage gap is greatest for smaller, peripheral municipalities and those between lines, and strengthening links among the largest places could further isolate the smallest. Activity concentrates in the most developed nodes, and areas without a station can see service degradation. None of the studies reviewed finds that high-speed rail reversed rural decline between stations. Naranjo Gómez et al. 2020 Albalate & Bel 2026
Local evidence from those places is mostly advocacy and press reporting. A users’ association reports Linares-Baeza station fell from 56 passenger trains a day before 1992 to 14. Soria, reported to be the only province the high-speed line crosses without a stop, has had no operating rail service since April 2025. In May 2025, farm unions in Sanabria, Zamora, protested a proposal to remove high-speed stops to shorten journeys to Vigo, citing depopulation and access to medical care. Each intermediate stop slows the trains for everyone travelling end to end, so the stops that provide access are the first to come under pressure. Moncloa El Debate Agronews
What this implies for ALTO. ALTO’s published plan has seven stations on 1,000 km, none between Peterborough and Ottawa. On the Spanish evidence, gains would concentrate in the end cities and at those stations, while the rural communities between them carry the land acquisition without a station of their own. Transport Canada’s 2025 briefing records funding for the planning and eventual transfer of VIA Rail’s Québec City–Windsor corridor services to the private partner; the published sources reviewed do not say what service would continue at VIA’s intermediate stations. On the Spanish record, that is the question that decides whether the places between the stations gain or lose. Transport Canada
What the Spanish case supports, and what it does not
What it supports
What it does not support
On the arithmetic and sources set out here, the Spanish case is better read as a description of a method than as evidence for a particular project. ALTO’s published plan differs from that method in sequence, cost, finance, routing, station spacing and market structure. The comparison implies that whether Canada can build depends less on whether high-speed rail is built than on how it is built.
Published figures on this page are quoted from the named sources and can be checked there. All other figures, including every per-kilometre figure and ratio for ALTO, are Initiative calculations from those inputs: ALTO’s published range, a 1,000 km route length and the October 1, 2026 exchange rate. Reconstructions are estimates rather than measurements. Where ALTO has not published something, such as a breakdown of its cost range or the terms of construction financing, the text says so rather than inferring it. No claim is made about why any particular figure was or was not published.