Rail: Ontario-Quebec High Speed Rail Study

[Tuscani01]

China has built a high-speed rail empire in the last decade that includes the world’s longest route as well as projects in other countries.

Though high speed rail in China has had issues with low ridership and ridiculously high operating costs. They have even had to reduce speeds to lower operating costs, and improve safety. (A derailment killed several people years ago)

 

[agoraflaneur]

Toronto - Ottawa - Montreal is viable today, and has been for a decade probably. Every one of the most recent studies has said it would make money. It is just when you add on Quebec City and Windsor, the economics collapse, and the political optics of giving our big cities something no one else gets doesn't fly in Canada. Higher speed to Kitchener is probably doable though I haven't read the studies. The economics work best when there is a sweet spot in which you can compete with air travel times and be faster than driving. That is achieved by long distances without stopping. Toronto to Montreal is in that sweet spot. It is around the same distance as Barcelona to Madrid and has about the same number of people, but a more important city in the middle - Ottawa - than Zaragoza, so it makes a perfect pit stop for ridership.

 

[mdrejhon]

Toronto - Ottawa - Montreal is viable today, and has been for a decade probably. Every one of the most recent studies has said it would make money. It is just when you add on Quebec City and Windsor, the economics collapse, and the political optics of giving our big cities something no one else gets doesn't fly in Canada. Higher speed to Kitchener is probably doable though I haven't read the studies. The economics work best when there is a sweet spot in which you can compete with air travel times and be faster than driving. That is achieved by long distances without stopping. Toronto to Montreal is in that sweet spot. It is around the same distance as Barcelona to Madrid and has about the same number of people, but a more important city in the middle - Ottawa - than Zaragoza, so it makes a perfect pit stop for ridership.

T-O-M = Toronto,Ottawa,Montreal
L-K-T = London,Kitchener,Toronto

Agreed, for a long time, the T-O-M trio of cities is the most obvious one in Canada, linking two megacities with the capital city.

But with Feds spending a pittance on VIA expansions and Ontario spending an order of magnitude more on GO (witness the GO expansions and upcoming GO RER) we'll see high-speed GOtrains to Kitchener well before VIA operates high-speed between Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal. Mark my words. Even France's TGV and Japan's Shinkansen have a big commuter market, and the same will be for intra-Ontario high speed trains.

With Ontario vastly outspending Federal, on rail, apparently by about an order of magnitude over the next ten years unless something changes -- and Ontario funding the current high speed rail study is specifically only for Ontario-based high speed rail. This falls to a potential Ontario operation (defacto Metrolinx).

So I think L-K-T trio will probably be the first segment of high speed rail being built. This three-city L-K-T trio is far cheaper to build than the T-O-M trio, being only 2 hours apart by car (70 minute HSR) instead of 4.5 hours apart by car (2 to 2.5 hour HSR), and will become economically profitable much more quickly than the T-O-M city trio.

Eventually, both L-K-T (Metrolinx owned) and T-O-M (Federal owned) will be interlined. Allowing VIA/Metrolinx sharing of high speed corridors, much like Eurostar/TGV in Europe. Then later this century, Windsor and Quebec City can join the fun when economically viable. Of course, all bets change if both feds/provincial are in sync with each other on HSR, and they may pool the HSR funds, but that goes full circle to the Windsor/Quebec City non-viability issue and political footballs. So it's easier to just allow Feds to let Ontario start a starter high speed bullet GOtrain, then piggyback off it for further eastward/westward extensions for federally-capitalized intercity high speed trains (politically much easier).

But....we must start somewhere. A 3-city trio to begin with, and it's now become plainly obvious that Ontario-operated London-Kitchener-Toronto is the most likely the starter HSR, given the multibillion dollar budgets that Metrolinx is now getting nowadays...

 

[mdrejhon]

Here's another confirmation of funding for the HSR study for Windosor-London-Kitchener-Toronto, embedded as part of a $1bn budget for several infrastructure items, in this new document:

May 2015
Government of Ontario
PDF: Moving Ontario Forward
-- mentions the source of funding for HSR environmental assessment on page 4, as one of the many part of a billon dollar infrastructure budget (highways, rail, etc)

(Thanks wopchop for bringing this up in the Hamilton LRT thread)

I imagine it would take a few years to come out. I would anticipate it probably recommends holding off on Windsor to a later phase, and focuses on London-Kitchener-(Pearson)-Toronto as being economically viable/profitable in realistic timelines.

 

[wopchop]

I'm still taking it with a grain of salt. So far, it is only further proof that our High Speed Rail Study industry is thriving.

 

[ksun]

Though high speed rail in China has had issues with low ridership and ridiculously high operating costs. They have even had to reduce speeds to lower operating costs, and improve safety. (A derailment killed several people years ago)

good job in finding faults in everything other countries have done well.

Low ridership? Ridiculously high operating costs? Do you care to explain and compare it with Canada's? I took the Shanghai-Suzhou train last week, 105 km in 23 minutes, faster than if I travel from Queen to Finch station, and the train was 90% full. Shanghai-Beijing takes 4.5 hours for a distance of 1300km, farther than the distance between Windsor and Quebec City, and the train is always well used. Can you imagine traveling from Windsor to Quebec city in 4 hours? We can't get from Toronto to Montreal in 4 hours! Canada is probably 30 years behind that possibility.

Derailment, great everyone always remembers that as if it were a piece of evidence of how unreliable China's high speed train is. I am sure many even find some sort of comfort or even pleasure in that accident. But only a few days ago, a derailment of AMTRAK killed 6 lives and injured 140 in the US. Accident happens and don't make Chinese accident sound more serious than elsewhere.

Speed reduction is partly done to please the airlines, who have strong lobby power.

 

[ksun]

Fixed the headline.

yeah, I am sure if it takes 3 hours to travel from San Diego to San Francisco, a lot more people will take it.

North America's train system is stuck in the 1980s technology. The Toronto - Ottawa/Montreal service is utterly pathetic, and we blame passengers for not wanting to take them?

I'm still taking it with a grain of salt. So far, it is only further proof that our High Speed Rail Study industry is thriving.

LOL. Canada is the super expert in producing useless reports, for both subway plans and high speed trains.

 

[mdrejhon]

Derailment, great everyone always remembers that as if it were a piece of evidence of how unreliable China's high speed train is. I am sure many even find some sort of comfort or even pleasure in that accident. But only a few days ago, a derailment of AMTRAK killed 6 lives and injured 140 in the US. Accident happens and don't make Chinese accident sound more serious than elsewhere.

This point of view makes a lot of sense.

Considering that China now has more high-speed train track kilometers than the rest of the world combined, one early teething derailment is actually a pretty good safety record, considering 50 years ago Chinese trains were notoriously slow and more dangerous back then. They do overspend on less economically feasible high speed routes, for prestige reasons as well as their own version of the Big Move problem -- there's just not enough space for freeways and airports to move everyone, and they are forced to go high speed to move more people using a minimum amount of space. A pair of tracks easily move more people than a clogged 8 lane freeway, and they had a 100 kilometer gridlock that lasted 9 days nonstop -- China National Highway 110 Traffic Jam.

Both the European high speed train disaster (Spain) and the Chinese high speed train disaster, each killed 40 people. Also, India's train networks kill far more people per capita than China's modern high speed train network. It may not be as safe as Japan's statistically speaking, but it is really high safety, right up there, even safer than VIA's death rate! We may not always like the Chinese taking over our jobs and such, but credit where credit is due -- it's safer to ride a Chinese high speed train than a VIA train, when you look at death rates. They run a really INCREDIBLE number of high speed train now. China high speed trains now move more people DAILY than VIA moves over SIX MONTHS... Just merely only counting the sole VIA derailment not long ago in Burlington that killed 3 onboard the VIA train, still means (despite China's one big disaster killing 40) China's high speed network kills less onboard than VIA's train network. By about an order of magnitude, when comparing the deaths per person ride statistic! The statistic gets even huger (two/three orders of magnitude) when it's deaths per kilometer! (Since the average China HSR ride is far longer distance than the average VIA ride)

The statistics amazed me. So yes, I agree -- China's high speed train network is apparently massively safer than VIA -- by orders of magnitude.

Even if not as safe as Japan's current perfect record (zero on-board Shinkansen accident deaths)

 

[Tuscani01]

good job in finding faults in everything other countries have done well.

Low ridership? Ridiculously high operating costs? Do you care to explain and compare it with Canada's? I took the Shanghai-Suzhou train last week, 105 km in 23 minutes, faster than if I travel from Queen to Finch station, and the train was 90% full. Shanghai-Beijing takes 4.5 hours for a distance of 1300km, farther than the distance between Windsor and Quebec City, and the train is always well used. Can you imagine traveling from Windsor to Quebec city in 4 hours? We can't get from Toronto to Montreal in 4 hours! Canada is probably 30 years behind that possibility.

Derailment, great everyone always remembers that as if it were a piece of evidence of how unreliable China's high speed train is. I am sure many even find some sort of comfort or even pleasure in that accident. But only a few days ago, a derailment of AMTRAK killed 6 lives and injured 140 in the US. Accident happens and don't make Chinese accident sound more serious than elsewhere.

Speed reduction is partly done to please the airlines, who have strong lobby power.

The high speed trains in China were nothing compared to the high speed trains I've used in Europe. I was never comparing it to Canada as we don't have any similar service. If you want high speed rail, China isn't the place to look up to. (Unless you want poorly built lines that were rushed and built by corrupt organizations) I also did the Shanghai to Suzhou train a few weeks ago, and it wasn't even close to 90% full (whereas every high speed train I used in Spain was nearly at 100%) Also, you would have noticed that lines for the slower trains were MUCH larger than lines for the high speed trains. I found it was mostly tourists and foreigners on the train to Suzhou. The slow train takes up to 90 minutes.

Even the Maglev in Shanghai no longer travels faster than 300km/h. Look it up. There are tonnes of stories about why they have had to limit the speeds.

Here's a pretty good roundup of all of the issues that high speed rail is facing in China.

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j...gcp-fydTDbJ94ew&bvm=bv.93990622,d.aWw&cad=rja

 

[Tuscani01]

This point of view makes a lot of sense.

Considering that China now has more high-speed train track kilometers than the rest of the world combined, one early teething derailment is actually a pretty good safety record, considering 50 years ago Chinese trains were notoriously slow and more dangerous back then. They do overspend on less economically feasible high speed routes, for prestige reasons as well as their own version of the Big Move problem -- there's just not enough space for freeways and airports to move everyone, and they are forced to go high speed to move more people using a minimum amount of space. A pair of tracks easily move more people than a clogged 8 lane freeway, and they had a 100 kilometer gridlock that lasted 9 days nonstop -- China National Highway 110 Traffic Jam.

Both the European high speed train disaster (Spain) and the Chinese high speed train disaster, each killed 40 people. Also, India's train networks kill far more people per capita than China's modern high speed train network. It may not be as safe as Japan's statistically speaking, but it is really high safety, right up there, even safer than VIA's death rate! We may not always like the Chinese taking over our jobs and such, but credit where credit is due -- it's safer to ride a Chinese high speed train than a VIA train, when you look at death rates. They run a really INCREDIBLE number of high speed train now. China high speed trains now move more people DAILY than VIA moves over SIX MONTHS... Just merely only counting the sole VIA derailment not long ago in Burlington that killed a few Canadian onboard the VIA train, still means (despite China's one big disaster killing 40) China's high speed network kills less passengers than VIA's train network. By about two orders of magnitude, when comparing the deaths per passenger ride statistic! The statistic gets even huger (three+ orders of magnitude) when it's deaths per passenger kilometer! (Since the average China HSR ride is far longer distance than the average VIA ride)

The statistics amazed me. So yes, I agree -- China's high speed train network is apparently massively safer than VIA -- by a few orders of magnitude.

Even if not as safe as Japan's current perfect record (zero on-board Shinkansen accident deaths)

Yes, China's death rate is lower (though there have been varying reports about what the actual death toll is since state media tend to report what they are told), however, China's system is also much newer. It only makes sense that more people would have died on rail elsewhere compared to in China.

Regardless, even Chinese authorities have noted that the system has used cheap materials and was rushed to be completed, and that this is jeopardizing the safety of its users. It's the reason why speed was reduced, as the lines were built to handle a higher operating speed, and were operating at this higher speed despite people criticizing the safety of the system.

All I was suggesting is that there are much better examples to follow out there. If we could take out a debt of over $200 billion, eliminate worker's rights, and lay off on safety standards, we too could have a system like China's. You can't use China as an example, as it has a way of getting things done that isn't possible anywhere else.

 

[mdrejhon]

Agreed that utilization efficiency is definitely poor in China.

But, relatively speaking, it is still a superior network to VIA, and it does move 2.5 million people high-speed a DAY, while VIA moves 3.9 million people a YEAR. That's commendable, from a people-moving perspective! Even half empty trains move more people on a 2-track corridor than a clogged 6-lane freeway. Even our freeways are often half empty midday, so a half empty high speed train (from inefficient utilization, inefficient spending, inefficient allocation) is still probably far more efficient and better than a 100-kilometer-long 9-day-long rush hour. The government in China isn't exactly a steward of consistently efficient development, considering the ghost cities and such things we constantly hear about. But you visit China, witness the smog but also appreciate the stunning quality of the high speed trains (even if not as good as Japan, but blowing past almost any country's non-highspeed network). They certainly need to work on a lot of things, but let's face it -- there was a lot of corruption and backroom deals when invited (some say "bribed") British Columbia to join Canada, in exchange for building a railroad all the way there. And while there were a lot of corruption with a lot of cpnstruction in China, there were a lot less corruption with many of the HSR routes than, say, Greece Olympics 2004 or Montreal Olympics 1976. I look more up to Japan's Shinkansen as a stellar example of efficiency. And we could talk about the streetcar-discarding corruption of the 20th century, during the freeway boom era? That is more corrupt than China's HSR network... No country in the world is innocent.

The Shanghai Maglev definitely slows down to 300kph, especially if it's not running many, offpeak. However, it's not always consistent -- there are numerous reports of it running 400+kph recently, at least during peak periods. Clearly, it seems to be a cost-cutting move, but your quote is out of context, even if some of us might not always like China in all aspects...

Consider that China has built essentially an Eisenhower Interstate System's worth of high speed train track mileage, capable of pushing more people around using narrower corridors than the USA's interstate highway system. From a transport perspective, that's apparently not too bad even if currently the high speed trains are not efficiently utilized at all hours. A lot more Chinese would have been uprooted with wider freeway corridors, had government decided to try to freeway their country the way Los Angeles did their city. So from a macro perspective, from an Alien looking from a UFO above Earth, they may see Chinese did not too bad a job at person-transported-per-mile-per-corridor-width perspective, even if they've overshot things pollution-wise elsewhere, or other inefficiencies. Half empty HSR trains nonwithstanding, that's still a hellishly lot of people moved daily -- about a billion people annually.

You are right, however, about inefficient utilization efficiency compared to other HSR networks. (I'm excluding freeways from this sentence).

 

[ksun]

Agreed that utilization efficiency is definitely poor in China.

But, relatively speaking, it is still a superior network to VIA, and it does move 2.5 million people a DAY, while VIA moves 3.9 million people a YEAR. That's commendable, from a people-moving perspective! Even half empty trains move more people on a 2-track corridor than a 6-lane freeway. Even our freeways are often half empty midday, so a half empty high speed train sometimes, is still probably better than a 100-kilometer-long 9-day-long rush hour. The government in China isn't exactly a steward of efficient development, considering the ghost cities and such. They certainly need to work on a lot of things, but let's face it -- there was a lot of corruption and backroom deals when invited (some say "bribed") British Columbia to join Canada, in exchange for building a railroad all the way there. And while there were a lot of corruption with a lot of cpnstruction in China, there were a lot less corruption with many of the HSR routes than, say, Greece Olympics 2004 or Montreal Olympics 1976. I look more up to Japan's Shinkansen as a stellar example of efficiency. And we could talk about the streetcar-discarding corruption of the 20th century, during the freeway boom era? That is more corrupt than China's HSR network... No country in the world is innocent.

The Shanghai Maglev definitely slows down to 300kph, especially if it's not running many, offpeak. However, it's not always consistent -- there are numerous reports of it running 400+kph recently, at least during peak periods. Clearly, it seems to be a cost-cutting move, but your quote is out of context, even if some of us might not always like China in all aspects...

Consider that China has built essentially an Eisenhower Interstate System's worth of high speed train track mileage, capable of pushing more people around using narrower corridors than the USA's interstate highway system. From a transport perspective, that's apparently not too bad even if currently the high speed trains are not efficiently utilized at all hours. A lot more Chinese would have been uprooted with wider freeway corridors, had government decided to try to freeway their country the way Los Angeles did their city. So from a macro perspective, from an Alien looking from a UFO above Earth, they may see Chinese did not too bad a job at person-transported-per-mile-per-corridor-width perspective.

You are right, however, about inefficient utilization efficiency compared to other HSR networks.

Nowadays, calm and fair people like you are hard to find. Usually whenever China does something right, people jump to find something wrong about it as an instinct.

China is making the wise decision to aggressively expand its HSR system - knowing a country this populous and massive can't rely on cars to move people across the country. It is particularly wise when labour cost is still low - when it becomes a rich country, workers will demand high salary and want to work 6 hours a day, things will take a lot more money and time to be done. Just consider this, Shanghai's subway line 13 which is 38 km long, cost about $4 billion to construct, compared with $8 billion for the 19km Eglinton Crosstown, which is a LRT half of which is not even underground, and $3.6 billion for a three stop Scarborough subway. Call it rushing things, but eventually it will proved to be the right thing to do.

 

[mdrejhon]

Nowadays, calm and fair people like you are hard to find. Usually whenever China does something right, people jump to find something wrong about it as an instinct.

China is making the wise decision to aggressively expand its HSR system - knowing a country this populous and massive can't rely on cars to move people across the country. It is particularly wise when labour cost is still low - when it becomes a rich country, workers will demand high salary and want to work 6 hours a day, things will take a lot more money and time to be done. Just consider this, Shanghai's subway line 13 which is 38 km long, cost about $4 billion to construct, compared with $8 billion for the 19km Eglinton Crosstown, which is a LRT half of which is not even underground, and $3.6 billion for a three stop Scarborough subway. Call it rushing things, but eventually it will proved to be the right thing to do.

This is true. China's approach is really weird to a lot of Westerners. Some of the earlier ghost cities (the ones 20 years ago) are now crowded metropolises. They seem to stupendously (sometimes stupidly) preplan out of the wazoo (making tons of mistakes along the way -- like Great Leap Forward and disastorous megaprojects) but they often hit a lot of megaproject jackpots too. Alas, this attracts corruption.

HSR is apparently one of their preplan gamble jackpots -- you can see it pushing people far more efficiently than USA's interstate highway system despite half empty trains on some routes. As their population gets richer (FoxConn employees now earn something like 5x more than they did several years ago), more afford to ride HSR, and they've built HSR before construction employees got too expensive. Apparently, the yuan is no longer undervalued, and China labour is starting to become much more expensive than it used to be ten years ago. Also, certain HSR routes that were half empty 3 years ago are now closer to 80-90% full today during weekdays -- even if this year's HSR routes are still 30-50% full. That's how much the Chinese preplan in some departments -- it's almost as if some of them dangerously gamble on long-shot megaprojects -- with big windfalls that come later (on many, even if not all, HSR routes).

China is one of those countries that won't necessarily become rich before they grow old (Japan was lucky they got rich before their population got old). It appears that the jaw-dropping preplanning-out-of-the-wazoo (ghost city mentality; populate them 20 years later) kind of compensates in a way. Get HSR built before the labour to build HSR becomes expensive. And before their population becomes older to the point where a smaller percentage can work labour (like in some greying countries).

HSR and transit projects have been rather incredible there. 10 years ago, both Beijing and Shanghai had smaller subway networks than Toronto. This year, they've became two of the world's largest (bigger than both London and New York City) and in a mere few years, the Beijing one will be two to three times the size of London UK's Underground network. Jaw dropping stuff, just like their massive HSR scale.

We do like to bash China on many departments (rightfully so -- POLLUTION!), but, I am saying, we could learn a lot of them from a transit planning department (Rob Ford, anyone?). Even their less-efficiently-utilized HSR network (but when compared to our even-worse-efficiency freeways) is far more efficient, moves more people daily in narrower corridors, less urban displacement, killed less public transit, better maintained despite some shoddiness, and historically less corrupt than North America's freeway system! From a people moving goal perspective...

Even their (shoddier than Japan/Europe) HSR viaduct is built at higher quality standards than many North American freeway viaducts (i.e. Gardiner) as one example.

(Disclaimer: I am not Chinese, but pretending to be an Alien looking down at Planet Earth, the Chinese has a rather interesting and unorthodox approach that's been tremendously successful to them for the last few decades)

 

[mdrejhon]

I was reading Thomas Mulcair's past public proclaimations of funding for high speed trains.

So we establish his love for high speed trains.
Tom, currently leading the Federal poll (by a slight hair).
Tom, a dual-citizen of France, country of TGVs, proclaiming high speed trains for Canada.

Whether one likes Tom or not -- this is political gasoline for a possible rail boom -- helped along by Ontario's current train-happy state.

Hypothetically, if fed goes orange...
...And Ontario HSR study comes out before end of his term.
Hello high speed rail tendering by 2019? Shovels in ground by 2023? Ride first segment 2030?

 

[gweed123]

I was reading Thomas Mulcair's past public proclaimations of funding for high speed trains.

So we establish his love for high speed trains.
Tom, currently leading the Federal poll (by a slight hair).
Tom, a dual-citizen of France, country of TGVs, proclaiming high speed trains for Canada.

Whether one likes Tom or not -- this is political gasoline for a possible rail boom -- helped along by Ontario's current train-happy state.

Hypothetically, if fed goes orange...
...And Ontario HSR study comes out before end of his term.
Hello high speed rail tendering by 2019? Shovels in ground by 2023? Ride first segment 2030?

Personally, I think any Federal support for HSR will need to focus on multiple corridors simultaneously. In this case, Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal, Calgary-Edmonton, and potentially Vancouver-Seattle. If Mulcair's NDP are to form government, they'll need to make in-roads in Alberta and BC. Promising HSR for Ontario and Quebec only wouldn't be well received out west.

But if a plan comes out that does showcase multiple HSR corridors, then yes, I think it stands a pretty good shot of becoming reality.