Premier John Horgan appears to be on board with an ultra-high speed train from Vancouver towards Seattle and Portland.

The province is reviewing a new feasibility report that was released this week which found that the train would be financially viable, but it could cost between $24 and $42 billion in up-front construction expenses.

Horgan says there is a lot of interaction between B.C. and the US states of Washington and Oregon.

“It’s reasonable that we would look at better ways to connect our communities. This feasibility study is not a commitment to spend billions of dollars. It’s a commitment to find out what the feasibility of this project would be,” he said.

Horgan thinks the private sector will be on board with the rail connection, and he’s hoping for some investment from them if the project goes further ahead.

He says if the province hadn’t looked into high speed rail, he would have been criticized for not having any vision.

“We tried to balance the needs of today, but also looking forward to what we need to do to be competitive and also to focus on greenhouse gas emission reduction for example,” added Horgan. “If we can reduce the amount of flights from Portland and Seattle to Vancouver and have more people on high speed rail, that’s a net benefit to everybody.”

The BC government has committed $300,000 to the project on two occasions, first in March of last year, and against this past February.

“I don’t want the public to think that we are all in on high speed rail and we are not going to proceed on other important projects. We are absolutely committed,” Horgan said. “Our infrastructure investment is in the billions of dollars for roads, bridges, and transit and we are going to continue to do that.”