Quebec-Windsor Corridor

[roger1818]

My apologies, it’s not you it’s me: I got mixed up with east and west…!

Okay, I see you have swapped east and west in your original post. Do you think there is room for a third track on CPKC's Vaudreuil Sub? It looks pretty tight to me. Maybe VIA could jog over to CN's Kingston Sub in Dorion, but I suspect that would just move the bottleneck down the track from Coteau to Dorion.

 

[micheal_can]

Okay, I see you have swapped east and west in your original post. Do you think there is room for a third track on CPKC's Vaudreuil Sub? It looks pretty tight to me. Maybe VIA could jog over to CN's Kingston Sub in Dorion, but I suspect that would just move the bottleneck down the track from Coteau to Dorion.

The better question then would be from where Via's ownership ends, is there space for 4 tracks all the way to Central Station.

 

[Urban Sky]

Okay, I see you have swapped east and west in your original post. Do you think there is room for a third track on CPKC's Vaudreuil Sub? It looks pretty tight to me. Maybe VIA could jog over to CN's Kingston Sub in Dorion, but I suspect that would just move the bottleneck down the track from Coteau to Dorion.

Given that CPKC seems content with having a single track west of De Beaujeu for exclusive use, I’m inclined to assume that the same is true east of De Beaujeu (including the Vaudreuil Sub). Having HxR and exo share a single track over the two bridges leading to the Isle-Perrôt would be far from ideal, but still manageable. And even if you’d need to build new bridges, you’d still require substantially less capital funding than building an entire new freight bypass with a new crossing of the Saint-Lawrence Seaway…

 

[dowlingm]

Here is a rough sketch of what I am talking about. The black line represents my proposed new CPCK main line. I drew it as a very rough approximation of existing and former corridors, and there are other options. CPKC would still have access to Cote St. Luke yard (if they kept it), the Parc Sub and the Outremont Spur. The spurs off of the Vaudreuil could be accessed after hours.

There are many obstacles to this actually happening, but I did say it is a fantasy.

View attachment 564425

Not so easy to get from the former CN Massema Subdivision to the current CN Massema Spur - diamond is no longer extant. I suspect any such project would need to be going under or over CPKC here.

 

[roger1818]

Not so easy to get from the former CN Massema Subdivision to the current CN Massema Spur - diamond is no longer extant. I suspect any such project would need to be going under or over CPKC here.

View attachment 564773

Why would CPKC need to connect to the current CN Massema Spur? Admittedly it might be a challenge to connect to the northern branch of Adirondack Sub, as that would be a tight turn, but I did say it is a fantasy.

 

[Urban Sky]

Why would CPKC need to connect to the current CN Massema Spur? Admittedly it might be a challenge to connect to the northern branch of Adirondack Sub, as that would be a tight turn, but I did say it is a fantasy.

You are right, you wouldn’t need a grade separation here (if the assumption is that only CPKC would use the bypass), but you’d absolutely need to grade-separate Coteau Junction, which is going to be very expensive and of zero utility for passenger operations…

 

[chrisw]

The Cadence team is proud to announce the submission of its proposal in response to the Government of Canada's Request for Proposals for the High Frequency Rail (HFR) project.

During the development of its proposal, the Cadence team welcomed new partners. Air Canada and SNCF Voyageurs have joined the Cadence team, which already includes CDPQ Infra, SYSTRA Canada, AtkinsRéalis Canada and Keolis Canada.

Cadence, a world-class consortium, qualifies for the High Frequency Rail (HFR) call for proposals

/CNW/ - Cadence is delighted by the announcement from the Government of Canada that it has qualified for the procurement process of the High Frequency Rail...

www.newswire.ca

 

[micheal_can]

Cadence, a world-class consortium, qualifies for the High Frequency Rail (HFR) call for proposals

/CNW/ - Cadence is delighted by the announcement from the Government of Canada that it has qualified for the procurement process of the High Frequency Rail...

www.newswire.ca

If this bid is selected,it can do one of 2 ways.

The first would be akin to the mess of the streetcar bustitution scandal AKA General Motors Streetcar Conspiracy.

General Motors streetcar conspiracy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The second would be the seamless connections between flying and rail travel in Canada.

A Third option of something messy is of course possible too.


This all assumes that they are selected. If they are not, it is nothing.

 

[guavadelic]

VIA HFR CEO Imbleau with another interview, this time with the Ottawa Business Journal. https://obj.ca/via-hfr-what-is-it-and-what-does-it-mean-for-you/

Not much in the way of new details, but he's continuing to indicate this project as having HSR speeds with certain comments:

"It will probably cut the travel time in half. So you can imagine that the ridership would increase significantly for workers, for business people, for students, for people travelling, for health-care needs, for tourists, for everyone."

He's also presenting this new service as a viable commuting option for workers. He used the example of someone commuting from Peterborough to Ottawa. Even if the train is fast enough to accomplish that, I think the cost would be prohibitive for most as a daily 'commuting' option. Especially if it will be privately-operated, as the plan seems to be.

The completion timeline also seems to get longer with each interview. He states here of the development phase taking 6-7 years, with the construction phase then taking 6-7 years. An optimistic expectation is service beginning in the late 2030s, with a start in the 2040s being more likely. Could be sooner if they open partial segments initially.

 

[Sunnyside]

VIA HFR CEO Imbleau with another interview, this time with the Ottawa Business Journal. https://obj.ca/via-hfr-what-is-it-and-what-does-it-mean-for-you/

Not much in the way of new details, but he's continuing to indicate this project as having HSR speeds with certain comments:


He's also presenting this new service as a viable commuting option for workers. He used the example of someone commuting from Peterborough to Ottawa. Even if the train is fast enough to accomplish that, I think the cost would be prohibitive for most as a daily 'commuting' option. Especially if it will be privately-operated, as the plan seems to be.

The completion timeline also seems to get longer with each interview. He states here of the development phase taking 6-7 years, with the construction phase then taking 6-7 years. An optimistic expectation is service beginning in the late 2030s, with a start in the 2040s being more likely. Could be sooner if they open partial segments initially.

The time savings here are insane and honestly might be overkill, but I’m not complaining. Id love to see the speed/usage relationship.

Now, if you could get travel times down to say, 1-1.5 hours from Peterborough to Ottawa, then Peterborough to Toronto is also in play. And, if people can do it, people will do it. Housing+ transportation matrix and so on. This all matches up with a 50% reduction in travel time from say, 5 hours to 3 (with some time to spare!). That’s well within the upper tier of accepted commute times, and on a train to boot. Peterborough has some serious growth prospects on its hands…

 

[crs1026]

My fear over a high end HSR system is the pricing, which would likely be forced to an air competitive level.. A system which is slower but cheaper might benefit more people. One can always price advance purchases lower etc however fundamentally we may get more value from lower fares than an ultimate airport-killer.

- Paul

 

[Urban Sky]

Now, if you could get travel times down to say, 1-1.5 hours from Peterborough to Ottawa, then Peterborough to Toronto is also in play.

Quick reminder that Peterborough-Ottawa is 276 km using the (previously) existing alignment, which implies an average speed of 184-276 km/h when assuming travel times of 60-90 minutes…

 

[dowlingm]

The one thing I always wonder about when you see the clamour around reinstating the morning Kingston service, and Brantford/St Mary’s/London commuting, is what public policy goal is being served by pushing the commuting boundary further and further. To some extent it can be pointed to the number of vehicles heading into and out of Toronto from those locales anyway, the number of two income families where one job is local and the other is in the city but it is hard to see an outcome other than limited capture of the vehicle traffic and instead additional sprawl pressure in the rural districts near stops.

In this case, HSR as a commuting option from Peterborough should not have intermediate stops except to service localities with sufficient development capacity to absorb it without eroding farmland/greenbelt

 

[Urban Sky]

In this case, HSR as a commuting option from Peterborough should not have intermediate stops except to service localities with sufficient development capacity to absorb it without eroding farmland/greenbelt

Independently from whether we are talking about intercity (HxR) or commuter (GO) rail, I fail to identify a single location between Greenbelt and Peterborough which could possibly justify a stop.

 

[Sunnyside]

Quick reminder that Peterborough-Ottawa is 276 km using the (previously) existing alignment, which implies an average speed of 184-276 km/h when assuming travel times of 60-90 minutes…

I would wager it’d be closer to your lower end if HSR is the goal, maybe a 200km/h average? But I’m not trying to get caught up in that. I also checked the distance to Toronto, and it’s about 112km as the crow flies, less than half the distance to Ottawa at 240km to Parliament.

So, unless this framing is simply to avoid mentioning Toronto, I must wonder… is a political angle being played? Who might this convince in Ottawa? Could it be more palatable to a conservative government, or it’s base? I don’t really know if VIA has the flexibility to move like that on their own terms, so I might be totally off base. It’s just curious.

The one thing I always wonder about when you see the clamour around reinstating the morning Kingston service, and Brantford/St Mary’s/London commuting, is what public policy goal is being served by pushing the commuting boundary further and further. To some extent it can be pointed to the number of vehicles heading into and out of Toronto from those locales anyway, the number of two income families where one job is local and the other is in the city but it is hard to see an outcome other than limited capture of the vehicle traffic and instead additional sprawl pressure in the rural districts near stops.

In this case, HSR as a commuting option from Peterborough should not have intermediate stops except to service localities with sufficient development capacity to absorb it without eroding farmland/greenbelt

I’ll try to keep this brief. The problem is not higher-speed services, as they just compress distances at expected travel times into a given city. That’s good and natural, so long as say, PTBO-TO (HSR) takes the same time as say, Burlington-TO (GO). As long as it’s under the conventional max commute tolerance of 1-1.5h.

The problem you speak of is commute times are being pushed beyond such reasonable bounds. Both travel time and distance increasing, because we can’t control/fix either. VIA’s commuting services can treat the symptoms, but we should never have allowed it to get to this point. These are not first-world commute trends.

Still… It might not be best for those communities to ‘remove’ the smidge of Toronto-oriented economic growth. Places like Brantford likely need it.