The Financial Post reports in its Thursday, Nov. 5, edition that Ottawa's proposed Alto high-speed rail line connecting Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City is still in early planning stages. The Post's guest columnist Wendell Cox writes that preliminary estimates suggest costs could range from $60-billion to $90 billion, while the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates construction costs at $75-billion to $113-billion. Evidence from high-speed rail projects around the world suggests the ultimate cost could be considerably higher. California's proposed high-speed rail line connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles was originally expected to cost $33-billion (U.S.), but now the price is pegged at $126.1-billion (U.S.). As for ridership, rail projects miss their ridership projections by more than 50 per cent. This can result in much lower fare revenues, leaving deficits that taxpayers have to cover. Optimism bias of this sort may already be emerging in Canada. Alto projects approximately 24 million annual riders by 2055. The high-speed service between Washington and Boston carries fewer than four million riders yearly in a corridor with a much larger population, which makes the Alto plan seem ambitious.