The Financial Post reports in its Friday edition that if Canada's Toronto-Quebec City high-speed rail (HSR) project actually gets built, it will be the only such railway in North America. The Post's Jack Mintz writes that you should not hold your breath. Canada's publicly owned railway company, Alto, is looking to build a bullet-train service that is already projected to cost $60-billion to $90-billion for 1,000 kilometres of track. At $90-billion, Alto's HSR would cost twice per kilometre what Europe's do. International experience shows that rail projects overshoot their projected costs by 45 per cent on average, as a result of engineering complexity, negotiated settlements and delays. The value of Canada's bullet train will depend on how many passengers it has. The official forecast is 24 million a year by 2055. But that will depend on ticket prices, subsidies and the train's reliability. As Florida's Brightline East has shown, passenger forecasts can be badly wrong. Nor should reliability be taken for granted. German bullet trains break down often and only 60 per cent arrive on time. Mr. Mints says he saw this himself last April when guest speakers attending a gambling conference were held up hours in stalled HSR trains.