Rail: Ontario-Quebec High Speed Rail Study

[RC8]

Southern Ontario and Southern Quebec put together look a lot more like Europe than California.

Why should we use scarce resources to subsidise highways (more expensive and inefficient) instead?

 

[innsertnamehere]

There are 4 situations that make sense in Canada for HSR if you ask me.

1. Detroit-Windsor-Toronto-Kingston-Ottawa-Montreal-Trois Riveires-Quebec City
2. Calgary-Red Deer-Edmonton
3. Vancouver-Seattle
4. Toronto-Hamilton-Buffalo-Rochester-Syracuse-Albany-New York

 

[diminutive]

I don't understand why this conversation keeps coming up. Canada doesn't have HSR because it's almost never viewed favorable in environmental assessments, would cost a fortune, be hugely prone to cost and schedule overruns and relieve no seriously congested routes.

Talking points like 'only G8 country without..' are meaningless. The Finch buses probably carry more people per day than any HSR would. Why focus on intercity travelers who have tons of options already?

I'd even rather see a kind of 'regional HSR' network centered on Union to increase the commuter belt. Super-GO, if you would. Though, I have doubts that it could be done cost effectively.

 

[innsertnamehere]

What I find interesting is that the poll that goes with the article shows 85% support. Interesting considering the fact that the Sun is likely the paper with the most dissenters in the reading base.

 

[drum118]

For someone who rode 12,000+ miles in Europe last year, I found a lot of those call HSR were slower than using GO. Even VIA would be faster than some of these lines.

Many lines only got up to 140km at best of time while other times you hit 310km from time to time in short sections. Many of trains I was on show the speed of the train and very disappoint for most of those HSR line rides.

Even in Europe, most places are only looking at 200km due to cost to do it, let along trying to get to 300+.

Give a lot of those countries have mountains to deal with while we have flat lines, you are better off beefing the existing lines up to max speed and live with it than try to built something that will miss the higher ridership generator stops.

You put it to a vote with the current cost to build it, the timeline to do so, the route and the cost of a seat, it will get voted down as we are not real rail users like Europe.

The cost of a trip first class ticket between Toronto and Montreal will get you a further distance ride in Europe for the same cost.

 

[gweed123]

There are 4 situations that make sense in Canada for HSR if you ask me.

1. Detroit-Windsor-Toronto-Kingston-Ottawa-Montreal-Trois Riveires-Quebec City
2. Calgary-Red Deer-Edmonton
3. Vancouver-Seattle
4. Toronto-Hamilton-Buffalo-Rochester-Syracuse-Albany-New York

I would add Montreal-Boston to that list, although admittedly only a small portion of that line would actually be in Canada.

 

[mpd618]

I don't understand why this conversation keeps coming up. Canada doesn't have HSR because it's almost never viewed favorable in environmental assessments, would cost a fortune, be hugely prone to cost and schedule overruns and relieve no seriously congested routes.

Really? The last government study I saw, which was hidden away pretty well, showed that the Toronto-Montreal section would turn a huge operating profit.

 

[diminutive]

Really? The last government study I saw, which was hidden away pretty well, showed that the Toronto-Montreal section would turn a huge operating profit.

It was hidden away because after McGuinty and Charest made all these bold statements on how HSR would be the future for Ontario & Quebec the results were hardly favorable.

Of all scenarios examined, scenarios with functional segment between Montréal and Toronto are projected to produce the best financial results. For the MT-200 scenario, NPV is projected at negative $1,215 million and IRR is estimated at 3.32% while
for the MT-300, the NPV is projected to be negative $2,032 million and IRR is estimated at 2.92%.

 

[nfitz]

I would add Montreal-Boston to that list, although admittedly only a small portion of that line would actually be in Canada.

Surely Montreal to New York would have much higher demand ... and presumably you'd only need to build it to Albany.

 

[DavidJamesTO]

I would add Montreal-Boston to that list, although admittedly only a small portion of that line would actually be in Canada.

I seem to recall Quebec and New York state discussing a Montreal-Boston-New York City line a while back. Did that die on the vine too?

 

[gweed123]

Surely Montreal to New York would have much higher demand ... and presumably you'd only need to build it to Albany.

Looks like Quebec studied both Montreal-Boston and Montreal-NYC, as well as the usual Quebec City-Windsor.

http://www.mtq.gouv.qc.ca/portal/page/portal/entreprises_en/transport_ferroviaire

 

[Hipster Duck]

Southern Ontario and Southern Quebec put together look a lot more like Europe than California.

Presumably you mean the auto-dependence and design of built-up communities and not the natural landscape and climate (although there are parts of Europe that have the same climate and geography as California).

In either case, you would be wrong. The built form of Southern Ontario and Quebec primarily consists of automobile-oriented suburban sprawl and segregated commercial-residential uses, with the vast majority of buildings built since the second world war. This sounds more like California than Catalonia. Laval and Pickering have more in common with Livermore and Pomona than Libson and Prague.

Sure, about 1 million people in Greater Toronto and Greater Montreal each, and maybe 150,000 people in Ottawa and Quebec City live in some neighbourhood where you can plausibly walk to most services and have reliable public transit options to get you to the main railway station, but that's no different in California. I fail to see how the residents of Parkdale or the Plateau lead a more European lifestyle than the residents of the Mission District, San Francisco. In both cases they certainly lead a lifestyle that only a minority lead in their respective city regions.

Actually, I would argue that, in many places, California is more like Europe (rail-wise) than Ontario is. When it comes to connecting mid-size cities of relatively close proximity, you can't take the train from Kitchener to Hamilton or Guelph to Cambridge or Brantford to Camrbidge, but you can take the train from Escondido to Oceanside and from Stockton to San Jose. California also has more frequent intercity rail service than anything in Ontario and Quebec. There isn't service anywhere in the Quebec-Windsor corridor with the frequency of the Capital Corridor (15 trains/day from Sacramento to Oakland including service every 40 minutes at rush hour) or the Surfliner (11 trains/day from LA to SD paralleled by local commuter rail services along its entire length), unless you count the stretch from Toronto to Kingston where trains don't run at regular intervals and don't stop at the same stations.

For someone who rode 12,000+ miles in Europe last year, I found a lot of those call HSR were slower than using GO.

I find that very hard to believe. The fastest scheduled GO trains - like the Express runs to Oshawa - still only average 80 km/h.

 

[rbt]

3. Vancouver-Seattle

Why this route?

By the time you take out customs and the time at the half-dozen stops, there only about an hour of actual train movement. Electrification might make sense but it doesn't need a particularlay high peak-speed.

Some form of customs pre-clearance would cut out half the scheduled time.

 

[RC8]

Presumably you mean the auto-dependence and design of built-up communities and not the natural landscape and climate (although there are parts of Europe that have the same climate and geography as California).

In either case, you would be wrong. The built form of Southern Ontario and Quebec primarily consists of automobile-oriented suburban sprawl and segregated commercial-residential uses, with the vast majority of buildings built since the second world war. This sounds more like California than Catalonia. Laval and Pickering have more in common with Livermore and Pomona than Libson and Prague...
...

I meant to say that we look more like Europe than California does. I was replying to this:

Given Canada's low population density, it's not surprising we don't have a high-speed passenger rail network to match Japan or France. We look a lot more like Australia than Europe or California, and last time I checked, there's no bullet train between Melbourne or Sydney. The negative externalities associated with congestion make subsidizing public transit in urban areas a good idea. But why should we use scarce resources to subsidize inter-city passenger rail travel?

If according to diminutive California can sustain high-speed rail, then so can we.

 

[andrewpmk]

I meant to say that we look more like Europe than California does. I was replying to this:

If according to diminutive California can sustain high-speed rail, then so can we.

Europe has an enormous number of short haul flights though, and high speed rail has trouble competing on anything above 2-3 hours. Thanks to low cost airlines like Ryanair and Easyjet short haul European flights are very cheap (even "full price" airlines like Air France are not that expensive for flights within Europe).

Similarly in Japan and China airlines retain significant market share against high speed rail. The air route between Fukuoka and Tokyo is one of the busiest air routes in the world, with several flights an hour operated by large aircraft such as Boeing 777, even though it competes with Shinkansen (it is about a 5 hour train ride).

In Canada the Toronto island airport makes it very difficult for high speed rail to compete against air. Very few cities have an airport that close to downtown.