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High-Speed Rail Proposals

Unimaginative: Thanks for the link. I forgot about that report. Truthfully I never bothered to pay much attention to the Alberta proposal but that could be interesting to read in an incredibly nerdy sort of way.

Sort of on topic but what is what is up with CN and derailments as of late? I just got an email about another service disruption to VIA because of a freight derailment. Although every time CN screws up (which they are doing a lot lately) it helps make it just a little easier to make a case for putting passenger rail on separate tracks and rolling back the power that freight companies have.

Ummagumma66: Alberta has money and an easy terrain to build in. It might not be as obvious as the Quebec-Windsor corridor, but it is still not that unrealistic. Even if serious plans were started now it would still be 10 years roughly before it was up and running. By then the two cities could be that much larger and benefit from growing around rail transportation instead of highways. Though I will admit the primary reason I think the proposal is a good one is because it would be good for the Quebec-Windsor corridor by making funding for HSR less susceptible to regional indifference.
 
It's definitely worth a read for high-speed rail nerds like us. While I was able to get the big Quebec-Windsor report out of the Legislative Library, I'm not sure where it can be found anywhere else. That makes this Alberta report the most detailed Canadian high-speed rail study I've found online. It's an interesting look at the different equipment options, and the alignments required.

I think that any successful high-speed rail project should come with an exemption from the North American crash protection requirements. Building the trainsets like tanks to try to meet the requirements is likely terribly costly. I think it contributed to many of the Acela Express' problems.

The California HSR reports are also very interesting, and extremely detailed.
 
The Quebec-Windsor reports are definitely high on my list to acquire. There are also a number of other think tank reports I have come across that I would like to get as well. You can order them online, but I will first see if I can find them in a library somewhere before I start spending any money.

The safety requirements are going to be a big issue that has to be resolved. This is why I tend to think that separating freight and passenger traffic on separate right of ways (with some exceptions such as night freight traffic) is the best way to approach the problem. Not only does it make it easier for High Speed train sets, but it would also make it much easier to use smaller commuter rail vehicles on those lines as well.

Just one of many issues that needs to be resolved. I also have come to think that addressing passenger rail in the large centers like Toronto and Montreal is going to have to come first. Connecting the dots between cities is not that difficult but creating high capacity corridors in urban areas will be.

Edit: One study that was sort of interesting was a cost-benefit analysis of HSR in the Quebec-Windsor corridor in a book called "Building the Future" that was published by the C.D. Howe Institute. The most interesting part was that they concluded by saying the primary problem with HSR in the corridor is that it would involve Canada wide taxation which would be troublesome given that the project was a regional one. Their analysis was much same as every other one I have seen, that the corridor would be more than suitable for HSR. I would be really interested to see some of these studies updated with new numbers and projections. I would suspect that the case is somewhat stronger now than it was 10 years ago.
 
Freight and high-speed passenger rail should absolutely be separated. You could allow a little bit of night freight traffic, but North American freight trains are far heavier than those in Europe, and they're brutal on the trackbed.
 
CN and CP also have a tendency to run excessively long train sets which doesn't help the problem. If they were to use the passenger rail tracks at night that would be one practice they would have too stop. That and they need to stop derailing their trains.
 
The derailings mostly have to do with the poor condition of track.

One of the important problems with running mainline freight on high-speed track is that freight trains cannot always handle the track superelevation that is used on high-speed lines.
 
AnarchoSocialist said:
Sort of on topic but what is what is up with CN and derailments as of late?
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You mean CN Dumb Exec Rail (CN DERail for short)? Yes, it is pretty pathetic that CN management can't seem to keep its trains on the tracks. In Japan this would have caused significant changes in management, many appologies, and public anger over the incompetence. In Canada however people just seem to accept that trains run by CN DERail will derail. Unfortunately the government fails to see this as a major issue and they are unlikely to do anything about it until there are mass casualties. I don't see this advancing the high-speed dedicated corridor at all. I only see it hurting ridership and thus lowering the business case for high-speed rail.
 
In the case of Quebec and Ontario I am sure the derailings are more likely to be because of track condition. That being said, most of the ones that have happened in BC and Alberta have been in large part due to long train sets. Either way, it is cost cutting practices by the companies that are leading to this.

The grade issue probably would not be too much of a concern though. The area where this would be the biggest concern is roughly Kingston to Toronto because of the slightly hilly landscape. But this is one area where a completely new right of way would make sense so chances are freight traffic would continue on its current tracks and have no need to use the passenger corridor. The only place where grade would really have to be taken into account might be on local spur lines but that is easy enough to deal with. Every other part of the line would run through rather flat and boring terrain.

I don't see this advancing the high-speed dedicated corridor at all.
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Not directly but when it comes time for the federal government to begin changing the operational and ownership structure of rail transport it is a lot easier to gain support for reducing freights monopoly when they have been bad corporate citizens with an accident prone track record. VIA has managed to stay alive through far more difficult challenges than this so I don't think they will be affected by it in the long run.
 
The problem is that the North American freight railway business model is to let most lines run down to the bare minimum required to operate the trains. Many rails in service today are close to a century old, on which far heavier trains operate than anyone would have imagined a century ago. Naturally this creates a significant safety problem.

It's also very detrimental to the expansion of passenger service. Pretty much every rail line that doesn't see passenger service today is in such bad shape that millions would need to be spent on track rehabilitation just to get speed limits up to a reasonable level (100 km/h).
 
It's also very detrimental to the expansion of passenger service. Pretty much every rail line that doesn't see passenger service today is in such bad shape that millions would need to be spent on track rehabilitation just to get speed limits up to a reasonable level (100 km/h).
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This is why I think a cities first policy towards passenger rail service would be effective. Take Kitchener to Port Hope via Pearson and Union as an example. If you upgrade the corridor for electrification, minimum 160 km/h standards, quad or double track (where capacity dictates), and a set of local and intercity stations that would serve VIA and GO, then you have something too easily build off. As soon as freight is off inner city corridors and passenger rail can run free, then the rest can follow.

And though it is unfortunate that some lines have deteriorated as much as they have, once you start upgrading right of ways and signaling systems, there is not going to be much difference between modernizing an abandoned corridor and one that has a 50 km/h speed limit.

To a certain degree, a proper passenger rail system is going to have to be built from scratch. This is frustrating because it means rather sweeping changes need to be made to freight transport (mainly separating them from passenger rail), safety regulations, and getting that first large scale capital investment needed to start the project. It also means that once you break that barrier then the rest can begin to fall in place piece by piece and in logical increments. It is analogous to the 400 series being built. The inner city parts where needed first and no doubt took a lot of work and foresight to make happen. Once those pieces where in place, then the rest followed. It took time, but what was created was a modern highway system. Same will be true for passenger rail.
 
I disagree with the idea of upgrading for 160 km/h speeds, since I think that it would be impossible to upgrade any of our existing lines much beyond that level. It would save a lot of money in the long run if we just built real high-speed lines right away, leaving the existing corridors for freight and some local service.

Port Hope/Cobourg is an interesting spot. The MP from that area was quite opposed to high-speed rail, since all the reports recommended ending rail service to those cities. I think that's a big mistake, since those cities have tremendous commuter potential into Toronto, since the times with a TGV service would likely be little more than half an hour. Many people already live there and commute by VIA Rail a few times a week. That market could expand exponentially with a high-speed service, even if only a few trains a day actually stop there.

People in North America don't seem to realize that the bread and butter traffic of high-speed lines in Europe is commuters, whether it's Tours to Paris, Kent to London, or Ciudad Real to Madrid. In fact, commuter traffic between the latter two cities makes up the majority of traffic on the AVE line. They even have special high-capacity, low-fare regional trainsets operating the route. Kitchener to Toronto could prove to be a much busier and more lucrative route than Toronto to Montreal.

A side urbanity benefit of high-speed rail is that it encourages development in nearby established cities instead of in sprawly suburbs. A high-speed rail stop in downtown Kitchener with a half-hour trip to downtown Toronto could be the single biggest spur to downtown revitalization in the city's history.
 
AnarchoSocialist said:
Not directly but when it comes time for the federal government to begin changing the operational and ownership structure of rail transport...
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I don't think there will be any changes along those lines. CN and CP compete against each other and as they abandoned lines other companies had an opportunity to take them over but there are only a few short line operators that took up that offer.

Rail lines in Canada today are a fraction of what they were in the 60s and that is especially unfortunate when trying to reroute freight away from passenger lines or trying to create new commuter lines.
 
I disagree with the idea of upgrading for 160 km/h speeds, since I think that it would be impossible to upgrade any of our existing lines much beyond that level. It would save a lot of money in the long run if we just built real high-speed lines right away, leaving the existing corridors for freight and some local service.
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I will expand on that thought a little more since I think you would probably more or less agree with the idea.

To start it would be a minimum of 160 km/h. Once you are outside of the heavily built up area of Toronto and the GTA then where ever possible the right of way should be built to handle the highest possible speeds. Take Port Hope to Union. The distance is 101 km. At 300 km/h (just assuming the train would run non stop at the speed the whole time) it would take 20 minutes. At 160 km/h it would take 38 minutes. The benefit of saying that 160 km/h would be acceptable is that through the more urban areas of the GTA (which there are a lot of between Kitchener and Port Hope) this could be probably be achieved within the existing right of way (or a right of way close to the existing alignment). And no doubt in many areas once you leave the GTA higher speeds would be possible.

Using the existing corridor (or very close to it) means you can serve all existing GO and VIA stations with a new high capacity line. So you take advantage of all the existing ridership nodes as well as providing infrastructure that would allow for far reaching expansion for regional rail services. That a high speed train may only be able to go 160km/h once it gets into the city is not a big deal since you are still providing excellent, and reliable service. I tend to view it as which is going to be the most effective use of money. A dedicated high speed right of way built to 300 km/h standards right to Union may be ideal, but then still means you have to do something about upgrading regional rail service. If you combine the two projects into then you still increase speed and reliability for VIA and only add a small amount of time to a long distance HSR trip, and you basically give GO the mainline it needs to be able to feed more trains into Union from all its other lines.

I see this option as being a more than reasonable balancing off regional and long distance interests.

Rail lines in Canada today are a fraction of what they were in the 60s and that is especially unfortunate when trying to reroute freight away from passenger lines or trying to create new commuter lines.
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It is unfortunate that all that happened but that was how it went. I don't see it as being a really big deal. Sure it would have been nice had the government converted some of those lines for passenger service, but two decades of privatization and neoconservative policies sent it another direction. If the goal is to start a modernization program for passenger rail then most of what existed in the past, or even now, is not all that useful. There is no way around building new tracks in new right of ways. If it means building a new right of way for passenger rail and letting freight stay where it is, or building a new right of way for freight so passenger rail can take over the right of way, or new tracks for someone in a shared right of way, then so be it.
 
You have a good idea, but I think that as we discussed earlier, it might be a good idea to think of the high-speed line as a completely new route, connecting with the existing line where desirable or necessary. 160 km/h speeds would be great within the City of Toronto and certain other urban areas, but outside the city, a new line is best. The report I have recommended a separate line west of Brampton, but I think that following the existing line would be reasonable with a Guelph bypass.
 
I should add that the line would probably include a few local spur lines and bypasses (Guelph being a good example) too add to its efficiency. But in the Kitchener - Port Hope corridor (Cobourg would be a consideration for the eastern terminus too) there would not be that many.

I agree in the long run as much of the HSR line should be its own right of way. But I think this would be a good balance for the initial line. Brampton - Oshawa is almost certainly going to be a shared corridor no matter what scenario you pick. Eventually Oshawa - Port Hope could have a dedicated HSR right of way and much of the Brampton - Kitchener line could be constructed too HS standard from the start. But by focusing on this specific corridor initially you tackle the most difficult part of the project first, and once that is complete, then you can connect the dots in between. During the time it takes to build the intercity connections, you have the inner city regional rail companies building up their service which will only strengthen the passenger network as a whole once the intercity portions are complete.

Edit: The end result (say looking 20 - 25 years down the line) that we each have in mind are probably very similar. I think the difference is that for me I see how the project is managed and phased as being a really important component. Since it is not likely to be built all at once and is going to take many, many years too do, it makes sense to build inner city (and commuter shed range cities) lines first so that they can be utilized sooner while the rest of the line is being constructed.
 
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