ALTO's final price tag could be as high as $400 billion.
That's $40,000 per taxpaying family. Paid over the course of 40 years, it's still $1,000 extra income tax per 4-person family, every year. All for a rail project we don't even need.
How do I calculate the $400 billion?
Alto's publicity says it will cost only $80 billion.
However, at least two big public projects have cost 4 or 5 times their initial advertised cost.
1. In Canada, the Trans-Mountain Pipeline has ballooned in cost. It was originally planned, in 2017, to cost $7.4 billion. The final cost was $34.2 billion. That's 4.6 times the original estimate.
According to Google, the huge increase in costs resulted from pandemic delays, weather-related challenges, inflationary pressures, and poor project management.
"With the federal government owning the project, analysts suggest a significant portion of the cost increase (over $9 billion) may not generate revenue, leading to potential taxpayer subsidies."
2. The California High-Speed Rail project is very similar to the Alto plan. It's not completed yet, and maybe never will be. It is supposed to link Los Angeles and San Francisco – about 615 km by road.
And the California train doesn't have to worry about ice and snow!
It was presented to California voters in 2008, and was supposed to cost $33 billion.
(At least the people got to vote on it, unlike Alto. It was simply announced by Justin Trudeau in 2025, without asking the approval of Parliament or the public.)
The California rail project is still uncompleted and un-useable. There are exactly zero passengers.
The project may now cost $89 billion to $135 billion. This is 3 or 4 times the original estimate.
It may now be doomed, because the U.S. federal government (Donald Trump) has cancelled $4 billion in grants.
Google says that the reasons for the California cost balloon include premature construction; delays in purchasing the land for the route; relocating thousands of water, gas, and power lines; bad management; and high inflation.
The builders stupidly didn't really plan on all the tunnels and overpasses they would have to build.
3. The budget for a high-speed rail project in the U.K. grew from 31 billion pounds to 106 billion pounds. That's more than 3 times the original estimate.
Back to Alto. anyone can predict expensive problems with the cold weather, ice and snow, and the need to build overpasses to allow innocent people to get across the rail line route. Etcetera etcetera.
A new tunnel will have to be made through Mount Royal in the middle of Montreal island. Just for this little stretch of Alto, it would cost $1 billion to $2 billion, according to Google.
Yes, anyone can predict the ballooning costs. But the Alto people seem to be blind to them. On purpose.
The Alto project is not so different from the other disastrous train budgets I just mentioned.
So, with an initial estimate of $80 billion, the amount coud easily inflate to 5 times that. That would be $400 billion.
Let's not forget:
The ALTO president, Martin Imbleau, told a Parliamentary committee in February that, really, he had no idea how much Alto would cost in the end. See the newspaper article below.