VIA Rail

[TerryJohnson]

I wish we had a similar advocacy group that was willing to take a staged approach like this and realize that the best way to HSR is to first build the fundamentals.

Only HSR Canada takes the all-or-nothing E300+ track. Other passenger advocacy organizations favour High Performance Rail now, to build up frequency and ridership.

There are both public and internal discussions of whether the HFR proposal represents the best version of that approach, and unfortunately we have less public data on HFR to inform those debates than our US counterparts usually receive from Amtrak and state DoTs.

 

[kEiThZ]

Only HSR Canada takes the all-or-nothing E300+ track.

Reece Martin adopted the same tone in some of his videos. A few of us called out his flawed logic and he seems to have softened his tone in recent videos.

There are still way too many purists and they do substantial damage to the cause.

 

[SFO-YYZ]

People keep comparing airtravel to rail travel and they miss the stops in-between.

Yes you can fly from Toronto to Kingston or London, but does it fly hourly?

Is it as cost effective? How do you get from Airport to your final destination? The benefit of the train is that it's from downtown to downtown (not so much with Kingston, but the airport isn't exactly downtown either).

What if you want to go from Belleville to Brockville? Are you going to drive to Kingston and the fly to Ottawa and then rent a car?

Stop thinking that all trips start and end in Toronto, Ottawa or Montreal.

Wait, I was referring to Biden's 2010/2011 HSR funding announcements for Amtrak, what does this have to do with air travel?

All I said with regards to this $2.3 trillion transportation plan - was that I wouldn't put too much stock into it until we see actual shovels in the ground. This isn't the first time Biden talked about HSR or rail expansions, and just because Joe used to take the Acela between Delaware and DC doesn't mean he will actually walk the talk, unless we see something much more concrete and substantial from this administration. For example, how much of the $2.3 trillion is specifically dedicated towards passenger rail (vs. airports, highways, and other money-sucking transportation spends), how much are one-time capital announcements vs. ongoing boost to Amtrak's operating budget. None of that is clear at the moment, and all of this still needs pass the GOP-controlled Senate which may water down a lot of things in the final version.

In his 2010 announcement, Biden as VP specifically said he wanted to invest in 13 HSR projects around the country, including the California and Florida Miami-Tampa corridor. 11 years have gone by, and none of the 13 projects sponsored back then is even close to completion (most never took off in the first place...), with the exception of Florida Brightline which had nothing to do with the Amtrak projects and only came to fruition thanks to private investment. This was the Biden/Obama funding plan back in 2010 for HSR: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.go...nnounce-8-billion-high-speed-rail-projects-ac

Later in 2011, Biden made another $55 billion HSR funding announcement. http://edition.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/02/08/biden.rail.network/index.html

Once again, like Ontario/Canada, U.S. feds have a track record of announcing ambitious HSR proposals in the past, and like Ontario/Canada, there's also a time-honored track record of things becoming "much ado about nothing".

 

[kEiThZ]

This isn't the first time Biden talked about HSR or rail expansions, and just because Joe used to take the Acela between Delaware and DC doesn't mean he will actually walk the talk,

Biden would.

But it's not his choice. Congress appropriates funding. Not the executive.

 

[EnviroTO]

Didn't some of the HSR federal funding announced during the Obama administration end up in California high speed rail budgets. I think the challenge in the US is typically the state governments, oval office, senate, and house are rarely on the same page. Even when the federal government passes something to make funds available the states will decline the free money to be argumentative.

 

[crs1026]

^Some of the projects have been around for long enough to have won federal funding in the Obama era, but were stillborn because individual states voted against authorizing their portion of the funding. I haven’t seen enough of the fine print to know if the Biden plan changes the cost sharing formula. If it doesn’t, those same recalcitrant states may still block the projects.

Still, I am optimistic that some will get funded. I can’t see Congress shooting down the whole plan, but competing modes won’t be shy about fighting for the biggest possible share of the spend.

- Paul

 

[KevinT]

^Some of the projects have been around for long enough to have won federal funding in the Obama era, but were stillborn because individual states voted against authorizing their portion of the funding. I haven’t seen enough of the fine print to know if the Biden plan changes the cost sharing formula. If it doesn’t, those same recalcitrant states may still block the projects.

It's a fun thought experiment to picture the feds using the unclaimed money to reduce the amount of state funding required on projects that went ahead. That would send a message, although I'm sure you'd hear the other states howling then.

If only Hamilton or Waterloo had gotten Brampton's light rail allocation...

 

[OntarioOnTheMove]

Amtrak ramps up pursuit of Detroit to Toronto rail passenger service

U.S. rail passenger provider Amtrak is continuing a push and feeling more hopeful of seeing a new Detroit to Toronto direct connection in the wake of President Joe Biden’s $US80-billion commitment to rail service under his $2-trillion infrastructure plan released this week.

windsorstar.com

 

[Hieberrr]

This is a good video and motivator for having a good rail network built in Canada.

(Sigh, it'll never happen...)

 

[EnviroTO]

This is a good video and motivator for having a good rail network built in Canada.

(Sigh, it'll never happen...)

The more people ride trains, the more support there will be to invest in them. With the rail investments in regional rail in Toronto and Montreal, and if there is HFR, then we are on our way to having a high speed option. That high speed option is unlikely to ever cross the whole country though... there isn't the population to support it.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

The more people ride trains, the more support there will be to invest in them. With the rail investments in regional rail in Toronto and Montreal, and if there is HFR, then we are on our way to having a high speed option. That high speed option is unlikely to ever cross the whole country though... there isn't the population to support it.

I wonder what the population tipping point is where HSR would make sense on a national scale. Canada has about 30 million people ~15 years ago, and we're going to hit 40 million before long.

I don't think we'll see a coat-to-coast HSR network within the lifetimes of any UT posters, but we could maybe see a West Coast (Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton) and East Cost network (Windsor, Toronto, Montreal)

 

[kEiThZ]

I wonder what the population tipping point is where HSR would make sense on a national scale.

Billions.

Even the US doesn't have a business case for this.

The EU is double the population of the US, on a smaller land area. They are now slowly getting around to offering some trans-European HSR. And nothing like China for a while yet.

I don't think we'll see a coat-to-coast HSR network within the lifetimes of any UT posters, but we could maybe see a West Coast (Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton) and East Cost network (Windsor, Toronto, Montreal)

That'll be enough for more than a few lifetimes.

 

[MisterF]

The Rockies are a huge barrier to any kind of HSR line from Calgary to Vancouver. Their populations would have to be an order of magnitude bigger for that to make any sense. And no matter how many people live in Canada northern Ontario will still be 1800 km of rugged wilderness.

With Mulroney's dream of 100 million Canadians, or even Laurier's dream of 60 million, a vastly expanded rail network will be needed. Including HSR in the most populated areas. But HSR across the entire country is pointless.

 

[roger1818]

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 InternationalThe Rockies are a huge barrier to any kind of HSR line from Calgary to Vancouver.

And it isn't even just the Rockies, you also have the Columbia and Coast mountain ranges. While not as high, the Columbia mountains are a more significant barrier. Admittedly most of the Coasts can be mostly avoided by dipping south through the Fraser Valley.

The current route is far too windy to be practical for HSR, so a massive amount of tunnelling would be necessary (at least 200km of new tunnels, and possibly double that). If you consider that the the world's longest railway tunnel (the Gotthard Base Tunnel at 151.840 km) cost CHF 9.560 billion (about 12.84 billion CAD) in 2015, we would be looking at over 20 billion CAD just for the tunnels (not to mention the between 650 and 1000 kilometers of high speed track, depending on the route) just to get from Vancouver to Calgary. All this to get a HSR line that will do in 3 to 4 hours (with at top speed of 300km/h) what can be done in 1 hour by airplane. I just can't see this ever happening.

The people who propose this have no concept of the distances and terrain involved.

Shandro, Bret & Haegeli, Pascal. (2018). Characterizing the nature and variability of avalanche hazard in western Canada. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences. 18. 1141-1158. 10.5194/nhess-18-1141-2018. Shared via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

 

[crs1026]

^ I don't believe for an instant that I will see HSR Vancouver-Calgary in my lifetime, or in my grandchildrens' lifetimes.... but.... I do foresee a tipping point for much more intensive HSR/HFR investment. There are parts of the country (Edmonton Calgary being the prime example) where construction of a new passenger rail line is possible, and the incremental cost of building to HSR in the first phase is likely not that great relative to a HFR like first build. That's not to say that the initial phase might be limited to HFR, as a thin edge of the wedge... but the obstacles to HSR that exist Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal are not universal. It will get easier.

As to the Rockies, I would predict we are a lot closer to some new rail tunnels than we may think. Reduction in grades, addition of track capacity, energy savings, environmental pressures, posssibly indigenous interests. That might enable a more VIA friendly posture, although it's the growth in the freight network that would justify the expense. I bet somebody at CN/CP has rough drawings in their desk drawer.

- Paul