High Speed Train Coming?-split from boosting Canada’s military spending"

[ytz]

As an aside and FYI - TGV Lyon to Paris - 400 kms, 2 hours flat. Good club car. Very comfortable. No bag screening. Multiple trains throughout the day. Vastly superior to Via.

There's been studies of the impact of HSR. And the biggest one is on mental geography. After France built the TGV, they noticed that young people stopped thinking in terms of distance and started thinking in terms of travel time. Lyon is no longer 400 kms away. It's 2 hrs away. And that changes how people think about everything from business to personal relationships.

Shouldn't be a surprise that the Bloc is no fan of this idea.....

 

[YZT580]

The Turbo is the train equivalent of the Avro Arrow. It did like one fast run a day (3:59h so they could say less than 4hrs) and that's what fans hang their hats on. The average was decent at 4:15h. But that was with few intermediate stops.

Meanwhile congestion is so bad on current tracks that VIA is suing CN because CN won't even let them run 7 car trainsets thanks to CN's own capacity needs. The 4h the Turbo Train achieved would be impossible today. And would still be impossible with all the intermediate stops that advocates are asking for. So even achieving the 4h with all the intermediate stops that Lakeshore residents want would probably still be $30-40B and have lots of expropriation anyway. And I'm guessing that is what the previous HFR studies figured out before the government chose HSR instead.

It's like saying the 401 could have been built on top of the old Hwy 2 cheaply and without much demolition, expropriation or reconstruction. Physics and economics don't work like that.

no argument with any of this. That is why a dedicated ROW was needed for the Turbo and is needed now for VIA for those 10 million potential customers that are being shut out. An HS rail system would be wonderful AFTER we solve the other.

 

[ytz]

no argument with any of this. That is why a dedicated ROW was needed for the Turbo and is needed now for VIA for those 10 million potential customers that are being shut out. An HS rail system would be wonderful AFTER we solve the other.

That's basically an argument to never build HSR. Cause we're definitely not spending $60-90B after spending $30B on a low speed train. Which means if government has to prioritize, it's obvious to prioritize the 80-90% of passengers traveling between the large metros. The Lakeshore will get VIA 2.0, something like the Kingston hub I posted earlier.

 

[ytz]

Just some context to consider. Pearson is packed and maxing out. Moving some of those domestic flights does free up some room.



And on level of effort this is how it compares historically.

 

[Altair]

Just some context to consider. Pearson is packed and maxing out. Moving some of those domestic flights does free up some room.

Pierre Elliot Trudeau is also running near capacity.

View attachment 99997

And on level of effort this is how it compares historically.

View attachment 99998

It's like I said, the economic activity between Quebec city and Windsor is something like 40-45 percent of our 3.25 trillion CAD GDP.

90b isn't cheap per say, but it's not that expensive stretched over years for the size of the economy of the region.