Alto - High Speed Rail (Toronto-Quebec City)

[zang]

I love how rural residents are so concerned about how a new rail line will impact wildlife and nature but aren't bothered in the slightest about the network of roads and highways they use every day that does so much more damage than a railway ever could.

Or likewise about monoculture and pesticide usage on farms.

 

[crs1026]

I am confident that 90% of the vocal opposition will dissipate once individuals learn the land Alto actually wants is across their neighbour's property and not their own.

Politicians will insist that there has to be a stop in their little town, and there's nothing wrong with that advocacy. It's their job to advocate for their constituents. Eventually the business case will confirm that those local stops are not affordable to build and would simply get in the way. The pols will grumble, but the issue is a no-brainer....no local stops.

I do hope that the controversy will lead to questions about what the right transportation strategy should be for those local communities. That question has nothing to do with Alto, because Alto can do nothing to advance it. But residents ought to quite properly ask, what about their needs and interests? Hint: Legacy VIA is part of that solution.

- Paul

 

[lenaitch]

Wondering how many of these trade "deals" will materialize to economic growth, and if any, how long will it take...

I am confident that 90% of the vocal opposition will dissipate once individuals learn the land Alto actually wants is across their neighbour's property and not their own.

Politicians will insist that there has to be a stop in their little town, and there's nothing wrong with that advocacy. It's their job to advocate for their constituents. Eventually the business case will confirm that those local stops are not affordable to build and would simply get in the way. The pols will grumble, but the issue is a no-brainer....no local stops.

I do hope that the controversy will lead to questions about what the right transportation strategy should be for those local communities. That question has nothing to do with Alto, because Alto can do nothing to advance it. But residents ought to quite properly ask, what about their needs and interests? Hint: Legacy VIA is part of that solution.

- Paul

I suspect many in the 'northern study area corridor' wouldn't be swayed by improvements to legacy VIA. Many urban people over estimate the number of rural people who actually travel to a large urban area beyond their local 'service centre' community.

Or likewise about monoculture and pesticide usage on farms.

Hope you didn't pull anything making that leap of logic.

i mean thats 2 different things. local public transport inside the city is way differnt than hsr that skips full cities
How do you "make the project useful" on cities it skips entirely and has no stops. best case scenario is telling them to kick rocks when they ask for a station

The public domain Alto debate highlights the urban-rural divide, and Alto can't hope to solve that.

The discussion is made more difficult when part of it pits the 'northern corridor' against the 'southern corridor' people, and raises ridiculous alternatives that people glom onto, like kicking CN of their corridor, build dedicated HSR tracks within the CN corridor or running it along the 401. A lot of the public domain discussion involves much more emotion than critical thought.

 

[crs1026]

I suspect many in the 'northern study area corridor' wouldn't be swayed by improvements to legacy VIA. Many urban people over estimate the number of rural people who actually travel to a large urban area beyond their local 'service centre' community.

True, but the number of people along the northern alignment is that much smaller. Even if they continue to oppose, their leverage is that much smaller.

The votes are mostly along the lakeshore.

- Paul

 

[zang]

Hope you didn't pull anything making that leap of logic.

Not at all. I grew up on a farm. Still had friends in and regular visits to the Melancthon/Amaranth area when the wind farm was put in. I got to hear the “environmental concerns”; the same people complaining about the environment in order to try and stop the turbines, were the same people regularly destroying it by spraying tonnes of glyphosates on the land. The same people complaining about the death of birds, bats and other fauna were the same people keeping barn cats to kill those same animals.

After they were put in, it was the “vibration” and “hum” and “EM radiation” to stop expansion.

The rural equivalent of the urban NIMBY “character of the neighbourhood” and “increased traffic” argument.

They don’t want things to change, and they don’t want their property values affected. $5 says just about every public consultation devolves to that by meeting’s end.

 

[lenaitch]

$5 says just about every public consultation devolves to that by meeting’s end.

On that we agree, and I suspect those against urban projects have the similar motivation.

 

[Ward8]

I’d rather argue that ALTO/Cadence is a perfect example for that you can’t build support amongst the affected communities without treating them as partners and making meaningful concessions.

I have a hard time imagining what a meaningful concession would be in this context. The Star had a piece on some angry bee farmers near Vankleek hill. When I looked at their property it is already bisected by a set of train tracks. A lot of the complaints are completely unreasonable and untethered from the national interest of the project. Much of the route and engineering is going to be dictated by geometry and geology, and a couple of rural stations are not going to satisfy the anger of the rural population. I honestly can't think of anything that would be acceptable short of cancelling the project.

 

[crs1026]

I have a hard time imagining what a meaningful concession would be in this context.

There are concessions, and then there's what it takes to mute opposition.

The nice thing about the EA process is it meticulously collects all of these complaints and then offers a mitigation or response.

The solution offered doesn't have to satisfy the originator, but if it would look reasonable to a third party, then the project has met the legal criteria of the EA - ie mitigation, not removal, of the concern. That usually defeats a legal challenge.

Sometimes the "problem" may not seem like the end of the world but demands an expensive solution - eg the nest of endangered birds or turtles that forces a complete detour - but that's usually just a matter of money. The project makes a decision on whether to argue a challenge, or just do something that deprives the complainer of a recourse to the courts at low expense.

I do think that if the northern route prevails, any political opposition will largely be reduced to a level that a governing party can tolerate, even in a minority government situation.

I wonder how many of those communities need a new hockey rink or community center or fire hall. These things do solve a lot of opposition sometimes.

- Paul

 

[lenaitch]

I wonder how many of those communities need a new hockey rink or community center or fire hall. These things do solve a lot of opposition sometimes.

- Paul

You'd be surprised how many are 'centennial' arenas, and past their best before date.

 

[MisterF]

That sounds like the kind of scope creep that would wildly inflate costs and get the whole project cancelled.

 

[micheal_can]

I am confident that 90% of the vocal opposition will dissipate once individuals learn the land Alto actually wants is across their neighbour's property and not their own.

Politicians will insist that there has to be a stop in their little town, and there's nothing wrong with that advocacy. It's their job to advocate for their constituents. Eventually the business case will confirm that those local stops are not affordable to build and would simply get in the way. The pols will grumble, but the issue is a no-brainer....no local stops.

I do hope that the controversy will lead to questions about what the right transportation strategy should be for those local communities. That question has nothing to do with Alto, because Alto can do nothing to advance it. But residents ought to quite properly ask, what about their needs and interests? Hint: Legacy VIA is part of that solution.

- Paul

I do wonder how feasible a slow speed daily train with multiple stops serving these communities would do to placate some of the residents that live along the route. Move that100% to 75%, to even lower.The question that is being asked, and is not being answered is "How do we benefit from this?" Answer that and maybe there would not be such opposition.

I have a hard time imagining what a meaningful concession would be in this context. The Star had a piece on some angry bee farmers near Vankleek hill. When I looked at their property it is already bisected by a set of train tracks. A lot of the complaints are completely unreasonable and untethered from the national interest of the project. Much of the route and engineering is going to be dictated by geometry and geology, and a couple of rural stations are not going to satisfy the anger of the rural population. I honestly can't think of anything that would be acceptable short of cancelling the project.

Sometimes the concession is simply acknowledging it and then ...moving on....

That sounds like the kind of scope creep that would wildly inflate costs and get the whole project cancelled.

The issue with scope creep is that much that should be in the scope of the project, but are ignored because "they sit in their ivory towers making all the decisions". What would have happened if part of the discussions included what the consortium will do to ensure the local community can benefit from this investment? The issue isn't scope creep. It is ignoring what should be in the scope of projects.

 

[Bordercollie]

I love how rural residents are so concerned about how a new rail line will impact wildlife and nature but aren't bothered in the slightest about the network of roads and highways they use every day that does so much more damage than a railway ever could. Or that by reducing reliance on driving, Alto might actually reduce those impacts.

In any case, some HSR stops in small towns or even rural areas do exist in other HSR systems where, of course, only some trains stop while others go through at full speed. Opportunities for these kinds of stops may exist on the Alto route but that will never satisfy the rural opposition. Opposition will always exist and the media will play it up no matter how carefully you design the line to minimize impact. At the end of the day you have to recognize that you'll never make everyone happy and not let the project get bogged down.

In Japan they build high speed train networks within the same network even where they use the same tracks.

They could build smaller stations and build passing sidings so that express trains could pass slower trains.

Ideally the Lakeshore line would be perfect for this but CN owns the corridor and that's the problem.

 

[Urban Sky]

I have a hard time imagining what a meaningful concession would be in this context. The Star had a piece on some angry bee farmers near Vankleek hill. When I looked at their property it is already bisected by a set of train tracks. A lot of the complaints are completely unreasonable and untethered from the national interest of the project. Much of the route and engineering is going to be dictated by geometry and geology, and a couple of rural stations are not going to satisfy the anger of the rural population. I honestly can't think of anything that would be acceptable short of cancelling the project.

“We are still keeping you in the dark about whether your house is among the properties we will expropriate with virtually no legal recourse or accountability for keeping local impacts low, but we will finalize our route before the end of this year and we will under no circumstances consider any additional stops!” seems almost designed to signal to local folks that there is absolutely no upside to having this thing built anywhere near their community.

Have a look at the spreadsheet I linked in this post a year ago and skim through the presentations of any “citizen participation forum” to get an idea of the (for the project) relatively small and inconsequential concessions which are made to local residents to ensure that the Frankfurt-Mannheim HSR project interferes with local communities as little as possible:

Since the wish for „yearly updates“ has been expressed, I‘d like to share the slides of (so far) 19 different „citizen participation forums“, where the potential routings of the Frankfurt-Mannheim High Speed Rail Line have been presented, discussed and adjusted in the light of suggestions received from NGOs or individual citizens. The presentations are in German of course, but I‘ve summarized them (in English) in a spreadsheet, so that you have an idea of what is going on and can quickly find the often very detailed visuals, like this one:
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Microsoft OneDrive

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