It’s a bit of a weird one for him to (n o pun intended) rail against. I suspect some of the narrative will be east vs west stuff, why are the laurentian elites getting a fancy train etc… And obviously it’ll get contrasted to the lack of any pipeline project so long as that remains the case.
Liberal (Minority/Majority) Government 2025 - ???
- Thread starter Altair
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Why are 15.3m people in the geographic area getting HSR is the question.
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Also a great soundbite to distract from Carney refusing to acknowledge his new strategic partner is engaging in forced labour.
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When you look at the attention anything Poilievre generates compared to unimportant stuff like foreign interference and ethics around our business practices it's easy to see what Canadians are concerned most over.
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LOL - so I just looked at the route of the HSR out of Toronto to Ottawa and then out of Ottawa to the Quebec border - not within the city of Toronto or Ottawa.
1) York Durham - riding is held by a Conservative
2) Pickering - riding is held by a Liberal
3) Haliburton-Kawartha - riding is held by a Conservative
4) Hastings-Lennox - riding is held by a Conservative
5) Lanark-Frontenanc - riding is held by a Conservative
6) Carleton - riding is held by a Conservative
7) Prescott - riding is held by a Conservatie
Kingston brought up a valid point. Why wouldn't they build down the current transportation corridor and leave the countryside alone? There is lots of room either side of the 401 to put the rail lines and it services the largest population areas. There is no reason to not move the existing system onto a dedicated line that utilizes the 401 as a base. European lines often combine the high speed and local trains on the same trackage. It simply schedules the slower stuff around the HS and does the passing whilst the locals are sitting in the station. Seems to work. Would save the costs of expropriation and open the system up to a larger audience.
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Wonderful analysis. Missing: the part that federal spending has to cover a heckuva lot more than jammy rail service for the kinds of people who need a jammy rail service.
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I'm sure that if it was simply a matter of using the same infrastructure and adjusting the scheduling to accommodate both the high-speed and regular trains then we would have had high-speed rail decades ago.
I make no claims to knowing anything about high-speed rail, but I do recall issues such as the technical specs of the tracks to handle the higher speeds, turn radius limitations, road crossings, electrification vs diesel, etc. all being issues to be resolved.
I don't know enough about the Alto plan in particular to express an opinion on it but while I'm in favour in principle of a high-speed rail link joining the major cities in the Toronto-Quebec corridor as an alternative to air travel it all comes down to the details. What will the total cost end up being? What's the share of that cost between the public and the private partners? What is the expected economic benefit of the link? What will be the cost to use it compared to regular rail or air travel? Is there a plan to allow the Government to recoup the initial investment cost over time...how long? Etc.
There has been some discussion, on and off over the years, about building a high speed line between Calgary & Edmonton (running thru Red Deer - not sure if Lethbridge gets included at first)
Is there demand? Yes, a huge demand.
The business aspect of it will be extremely successful, and it will take a ton of cars off of the QE2
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Personally I hope it doesn't get built. And as super convenient as it would be, I feel like the cons outweigh the pros (for me anyway)
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I can tell you 1 reason NOT to build there - Deseronto
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No clue what 'jammy' translates to in your world.
your points are valid where you are trying to utilize the current system. Starting from scratch means you can get a little more creative. While the idea of high speed is great for a few, providing a system for the rest of the population would be better. Having a reliable rail connection between Trenton and the markets in Oshawa and Kingston for instance: especially with gasoline approaching $2.00 and the driving time steadily getting longer.
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How in-demand would this HSR actually be for ferrying people between the Toronto Quebec city corridor? I don't imagine many people are driving between cities every day currently.
I can't see the Public Service unions championing WFH being very supportive of making travel faster and easier.
I can't see the Public Service unions championing WFH being very supportive of making travel faster and easier.
Driving, maybe not a lot, but probably more than we'd think. I've driven to and from Toronto area to Ottawa and Montreal a few times. My brother travels at least regularly between the area and Montreal, he currently flies. I think replacing flights and existing rail service is where you'll see a big uptake in passengers. A convenient and fast service can potentially attract more usage.
Some quick googling shows about 3k passengers flying between Toronto and Montreal daily. Another 3-4k passengers travel via train.
I like the idea of the HSR line, and I'd like more and better transit projects in Canada in general, I have very little faith in our ability to successfully execute such a project in a timely affordable manner. If the project ended up taking 25 years and costing $200+ billion to run only a handful of trains I wouldn't even be surprised.
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And considering support for passenger rail, including high-speed rail, is part of the CPC policy book.
The problem with on-time reliability of the current VIA lakeshore service is it subservient to CN freight. Since that is their money maker, CN is not going to agree to give passenger trains priority. We can't compare this to European mixed passenger-freight rail because the amount of tonnage we move compared to Europe is orders of magnitude higher.
They can't run high-speed rail in the current CN corridor, even if there was room - which there isn't - because the alignment of the corridor (curves grades, clearances, etc.) doesn't support high-speed trains, so even if they could expropriate the corridor wider, it still wouldn't work. Even without that, expropriation along or adjacent to the CN corridor would be horribly expensive. Towns and cities have grown up along the tracks as they have in just about every country. That's about as looney as some politicians suggesting that it should be run down the 401.
Unless it was a separate right-of-way, it is still going to be a tenant operation in a corridor owned by CN and is still going to be constrained by their operation rules. Both CN and CPKC are adamantly opposed to electrification of their corridors. Neither railway will idly sit by and accept any change or imposition that threatens their profitability.
If ALTO goes with their proposed northern alignment (very roughly following the former Ontario-Quebec Railway right-of-way), the good news is the area is much less densely populated; the bad news is the area is much less densely populated. Regardless, the point of ALTO is not to serve local needs; it is to improve travel between large population centres. 'They have promised (ya, I know) that local VIA service will continue along the CN corridor.
To hear the people howling about this, one wonders how the 401 or Seaway could ever have been built today.
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Maybe they couldn't. Decades worth of administrative and regulatory creep and Baumol's Cost Disease.
as one who has taken VIA numerous times in the past, I found that the 5 hours between Toronto and Ottawa wasn't much different from flying and the cost for a business seat with all its conveniences was the same as a last minute ticket on Air Canada. Where the train loses is in scheduling. There aren't enough of them and spending an extra 15 minutes in, for instance, Kingston because of a 100 unit freight train having priority can screw up your plans royally at the other end. Construct a passenger-dedicated track following either the current 401 corridor or the old Peterborough line that will accept 100 mph travel. That will produce a maximum 4 hour trip stopping every 40 miles on either or you could build both for half the price of the fancy hardware needed for HSR. Those trains don't come cheap and maintenance is high.And yes I read comments above re: the 401. CP owns the tracks from Toronto through to Havelock so that won't come cheap. Perhaps looking just a few miles north of the 401 on a parallel routing would serve. As I recall, housing basically ends within a mile or two no matter what side road you follow.
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No engineer but I have read that a double track rail corridor requires about 200' for tracks, separation, access, drainage, etc. There are a lot of variables, grade being one. I can think of a couple, like around Cobourg, that would be too steep for rail. I highly doubt there is 200 extra feet in the 401 corridor and it would require the rebuilding of every interchange.
The goal of high-speed passenger rail is not to compete with the car but with aircraft. City centre to city centre, travel to/from the airports, eliminate the need to show up hours before, etc. France has decreed the elimination of short haul flights between cities served by high-speed rail.
HavokFour
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More movement on that Canola/EV deal.
Someone can finally show them how to make a decent vehicle.
Someone can finally show them how to make a decent vehicle.
Stellantis in Talks to Make Chinese EVs at Idled Canadian Plant
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MilEME09
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exactly this, short haul flights dont really exist in europe because of HSR, no need to show up 2h before, its about 1/3 the cost for a ticket. For your average person its most economical. People wanting a summer vacation in Montreal can afford a round trip on HSR for the price of one way with air canada.
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