MisterF
Senior Member
After the last HSR study I'm skeptical that it'll ever happen. McGuinty and Charest were the driving forces behind it, and after it came out they suddenly changed their tune. Not to mention the study itself came to some highly questionable conclusions. It actually predicted lower ridership than the report that came out 15 years ago.
There's more to the cost of driving than the price of gas.Paris to Bordeaux is about the same distance as Toronto to Montreal. That TGV trip costs a bit more than $100 and takes 3-3.5 hours. Driving from Toronto Montreal would be around 6 hours and about $40-$50 for gas if your car is not too big. However, I go to Montreal a few times a year with my family (4 people in a car) to visit my grandparents and other relatives, that means it would still be about $40-50 by car but $400-450 by train, and since neither my family or grandparents live right downtown, you could add 1-1.5 hours for getting to the train station, arriving a bit early to make sure we don't miss the train, and getting from Montreal's train station to our grandparents. It's easy to see that for us, taking HSR from Toronto to Montreal would make no sense whatsoever.
So basically, Toronto to Montreal HSR would be good for people travelling alone from core to core, and who are willing to pay $50 to save a couple hours of time and the hassle of driving, or people who don't have a car.
There's plenty of demand to have trains at much higher frequencies than two hours. These lines dominate market share wherever they're built and take huge numbers of riders from airlines.Unless you are offering service every 2 hours or less on various lines, going to be hard to compete with the airlines.
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