Recent content by Ward8

The time it takes to build out the Portlands will exceed the length of any boom or bust cycle. It has to accommodate the long term needs of the city. I also don't view high-rise as This is partly because theres an airstrip in The middle of one of these. The spirit of the analogy is that no sane...

It could also relate, not to the literal volume of paperwork, but the slow correspondence of Metrolinx. Which I think you allude to. Something akin to the electrification situation with DB.

There are other roads across... I've always found this a perplexing build as it provides capacity and redundancy that is only helpful a relatively small amount of the time.

To be fair to these people, they're not protesting the agreement that was in place when they moved there. This, to me, is the most disqualifying issue with the expansion plan. To kneecap housing development in an area that was painstakingly rehabilitated at enormous cost is unconscionable to...

It's also maybe 100 meters from the distillery and it's attached to Corktown. It's not like there won't be people around.

Not entirely sure who you're referring to, but if you mean the mayor and councillors, id argue that they've been completely flaccid and underwhelming on this issue. I'd personally like to see a little vision.

I'll be interesting to see the approach. HSR can take atvandage of demand elasticity when setting prices. They can undercut their competition and run more frequency. I couldn't pretend to articulate the demand elasticity formula, but there is an induced demand effect from both the price and...

I have a family of four with two young kids. Unless the trip involves a side quest to Tremblant or something, the train would be the obvious choice for us. In fact the trip is incredibly difficult in the car, and I would say we have a lot of latent demand baked into our household as we don't get...

Ill just say I disagree with this. For one, the effect of HSR mode share is consistent cross culturally, so cultural idiosyncrasies don't appear to have any impact. For two, if I accepted your generalization about Spanish punctuality, which I don't, it would only strengthen the case for rail. If...

Not sure where to start with this one. I'll ignore the generalizations and just say pick another country then. The same thing is true for London-Paris, Milan-Rome, Tokyo-Osaka, Paris-Bordeaux. Take your pick of places in Japan, Korea, China, Germany. The train dominates market share precisely...

Madrid - Barcelona went from 60 flights per day to 19. And the train went from 13% mode share to 80%. The jump was from 13% to close to 50% in the first year or two. These numbers are more or less the same with many cities. HSR city pairs under 600km in distance tend to hold an 80% train mode...

I assumed a 15 minute wait at Union. This seemed reasonable given the presumed 30 minute frequency. Many HSR systems operate more like a metro, without reserved seating and the frequencies can be at a level where you automatically show up a couple of minutes before your train. I think that...

The blight is metastasizing.

The only relevant math is door to door travel time. An hour and fifteen minute flight is a useless metric when you're supposed to show up ninety minutes early. It takes four and a half hours to fly to my brother's in Montreal. Alto can easily beat that. It's much more lopsided for business...

It depends on the details, both of Alto and where a person is starting their trip (CBD or a connecting flight for example) but for most passengers, the train will be faster door to door. That's the whole point. Most HSR lines result in a dramatic decline in air traffic for the city pair.