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‘For a few elite’ - it’s the ‘elites’ that pay the majority of taxes in Canada. It’s the ‘elites’ who spend the most money on vacations. It’s the ‘elites’ who travel the most for business purposes. Sprinkle in a good dose of the middle class using HSR from time to time and some robust foreign travellers and that’s it, that’s all who will use the HSR.Can't you tell from our posts: we were on the trains.It was the lack of priority that did them in, not the speed and many of the routes were cancelled because CN and CP were closing down the lines for freight as well, cutting back on all the low profit routes and divesting property to eliminate tons of municipal taxes. Places like Orangeville thought that the railways were cash cows and charged for every foot of right of way going through the municipalities. And there is lots of room to go back if they set the priority on building a proper rail centred network for short haul. Look at the work that has been done around Kitchener with more planned. They ripped up the rails decades ago but they are going back in.
Take every city and draw a 60 mile circle. Most of those folks employment or entertainment is focused on the centre of that circle and many of them spend an hour or more travelling each way 5 days a week. Many, like me, have given up on the city entirely because it isn't worth the hassle any more. There is your market and there is where you need the 90 billion dollars spent. Look at Paris, Brussels, Rome, Frankfurt and count the number of short line runs feeding into the city centre. Definitely we need to re-build the longer routes but HSR is simply wasting money for an elite few. There are what, 10 million people in the Golden Horseshoe. Ottawa airport had 3 million domestic passengers to all destinations in 2024. Assuming that even a third of them were in or out of Toronto that is maybe 500,000 total passengers each way, assuming again that they are both coming and going. So we are going to spend all that money to accommodate 5% of the population who may or may not decide on the train whilst 95% queue up on the 401 and other roads. It isn't logical especially since the people that you are saying will flock to the HSR have to get into downtown Toronto or out to the station in Ottawa to catch the train in the first place. You need to build the slower less flashy infrastructure first.
Only 20% of the Canadian population pays 64.5% of all taxes in Canada. Another 40% pay no income tax at all. The remaining 40% pays the remaining 35.5%
The ‘slower’ infrastructure is already in place in the GTHA (Greater Toronto Hamilton Area) and beyond. Metrolinx has train/bus service daily out to Niagara Falls, Kitchener/Waterloo, Guelph, Barrie, Oshawa and all the way out to Peterbourgh. All of that will feed into the HSR.
