Adam Waterous, the Canadian entrepreneur responsible for building Strathcona Resources Ltd. into a major North American oil and gas producer, says he is making progress on a planned passenger rail line from Calgary to Banff, Alta., and hopes to have it operational by 2029.
Waterous told BNN Bloomberg in a Tuesday interview that he’s been working on the project for almost a decade, and that the huge undertaking is currently in the design stage after years of initial planning.
“There’s been a lot of progress,” he said, adding that when he purchased a long-term lease of Banff’s central train station nine years ago, he knew that his vision for a passenger rail line to one of Canada’s most-visited natural attractions would take time.
“Sometimes you take on projects not because they’re easy but because you know they’re going to be hard, and put another way; a lot of very obvious things don’t exist because you know they’re going to be very hard,” he said.
“Having a train between Banff and Calgary is a very obvious project but very difficult to undertake.”
Waterous is facilitating the project alongside his wife Jan through their family holding company Liricon Capital Ltd.
The company says it plans to use the existing CP Rail corridor between Banff and Calgary for the project, but that the passenger train will run along its own dedicated track.
The project is also slated to receive government support through the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB), according to Waterous.
“The CIB has given us an indication that they’ll provide 50 per cent of the capital costs at a very attractive rate; one per cent cost of capital,” he said, adding that Liricon has also had discussions with the province of Alberta about connecting the line to existing transit in downtown Calgary.
Waterous said that although ground has yet to be broken on the project, he’s confident that construction will begin in the coming years.
“These things take a long time… this is a five-phase project, we had to go through conceptual, feasibility, development, we’re now into design and the next stage is construction,” he said.
“So, what we’re hoping to be is in construction in 2027 and have the train operational in 2029.”