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Rail: Ontario-Quebec High Speed Rail Study

This Ontario-Quebec high speed line should have been build 20 years ago when the rest of the modern world were building sophisticated lines.Im worried that it may take another generation or two before anything gets done here due to us being 20-30 years behind everyone else in this sector and slowly fading into a 3rd world rail mentality with lots of politics from the 3 levels of government with little to no money.
 
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^^^^ I agree to all the above, it's such a pain for, for example, VIA or GO to run their services adequately since CN or CP owns everything. Hopefully they'll buy some back, there was an article about that earlier.

On the topic of CN, is it really doing that well as a private venture??? I mean safety-wise, they had dozens of derailments, some of them fatal, and most of them spilling hazardous waste. Then later when it bought BC Rail, it used cars designed for the Prairies on the high mountain passes, resulting in even more derailments. There has been an inquiry by the government for months now, but nothing is being done.

Now that I think about it, privatization of gov't owned companies has gone horribly wrong in Canada. After all, Air Canada went bankrupt right after privatization. Potash Corp. was privatized and then it struggled, and then it held back supply of potash to keep prices high, and is now valued at almost $63 billion.

It's funny how Saskatchewan actually created so many crown corporation, its surreal. I really do applaud them, because water and power are essential to survival, and should never be in the hands of private corporations.

One question though, while reading all this, it said Hydro One was a private company, but wholly owned by the Ontario Government. Isn't that a crown corporation, what is the difference??

CN is the most successful railway in North America, for what it's worth. They are also pretty profitable. That said, any company makes mistakes--usually the public never has to hear about them.
 
...After all, Air Canada went bankrupt right after privatization...

Not the best example. Air Canada was doing great. Government forced them to merge with Canadian which was bankrupt under huge debt load -- government wanted creditors paid, etc.

Huge debt load from Canadian was big enough to take out Air Canada too, as predicted by just about everybody.

It wasn't really the privatization of Air Canada that caused issues so much as the botched attempt to save Canadian jobs and creditors.
 
High Speed Rail - Cooperation with the US

Living in London and travelling the Eurostar every chance I get, I am a huge proponent of HSR in Canada. Downtown-to-downtown service, and environmentally friendly!

Reading through these pages (which get me a bit excited) leaves me wondering - why the heck doesn't McGuinty and Charest start talking to the Northeastern Governors?

"What's that, Gov Paterson, the New York economy is taking a battering with the financial sector in the dumps? Why not lobby President Obama for some cash to start a big make-work project, like high-speed rail that travels from New York City to Buffalo in an hour, and on to Toronto in just over two hours?

And, guess, what, we're going to put the shovel in the ground as soon as possible to get lines up and running to Ottawa and Montreal, too. Imagine that - door to door international service that's environmentally friendly and that creates jobs. Hasn't President Obama been going on about those things a lot lately?

Sure, the EAs will take forever, but only for the city centres, or 'centers', as you would call them. We know where the lines will run outside the cities. Let's start building those within two years, tops. Lots of talented people have, well, shall we say, 'free time' right now. Let's put them to good use in planning, funding, and building a HSR system that will finally bring us out of the 1960s in transit-mentality...

Oh, and while we're at it, let's go talk to Governor Patrick about linking up Boston, Governor Rendell about Pittsburgh and Philly, and Mayor Fenty... Let's wait and see what happens to that Elvis hair guy in Illinois before thinking about Chicago, though..."​
 
"What's that, Gov Paterson, the New York economy is taking a battering with the financial sector in the dumps? Why not lobby President Obama for some cash to start a big make-work project, like high-speed rail that travels from New York City to Buffalo in an hour, and on to Toronto in just over two hours?

Nice stuff. You're just missing that cute-faced guy who's governor of Maryland, Martin O'Something, who's a progressive and the former mayor of Baltimore. He's also a rocker. What about those New Yorkers with a sudden craving for crab cakes?
 
NY to Buffalo in one hour? All we have to do is blast 40 or so tunnels through Appalachia, erect Millau-sized viaducts and develop a trainset that travels commercially at 600 km/h. When do we start?
 
NY to Buffalo in one hour? All we have to do is blast 40 or so tunnels through Appalachia, erect Millau-sized viaducts and develop a trainset that travels commercially at 600 km/h. When do we start?

I think it'd be easier to engineer a fold in the space-time continuum, or have trains go back in time a few hours as they travel (though those 1.21 gigawatts could be tricky to supply reliably).
 
I think it'd be easier to engineer a fold in the space-time continuum, or have trains go back in time a few hours as they travel (though those 1.21 gigawatts could be tricky to supply reliably).

Or we could just reengineer the time zones making it possible for one to travel from New York to buffalo and still only lose an hour.

BTW KPD, I actually did like your post, it was just to irresistible :p
 
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I don't oppose the idea of the freight railways owning their tracks outside major urban areas. They probably do a much better job of optimizing long lines out west than a government agency would. If a new high-speed line were to be built, it would require new tracks anyway. The cost saving of using the existing corridor outside of urban areas is surprisingly small: a rail corridor isn't that wide and farmland isn't that expensive. In fact, allowing for grade separation on all the freight sidings, building right next to the existing rail corridor might actually be more expensive than a greenfield route in rural eastern Ontario. That being said, the segment from London to Windsor, for example, could be built on the CN route and CN's minimal traffic could be shifted entirely to the CP corridor (most CN traffic goes through Sarnia).

It's interesting to note that CP proposed back in the 90s to merge its lines east of Winnipeg with CN, which would have allowed for a lot of the rationalizations that you suggest. Fortunately the government turned them down and privatized CN instead, an unexpected success, which has led to two very successful national private freight railways in Canada.
 
NY to Buffalo in one hour? All we have to do is blast 40 or so tunnels through Appalachia, erect Millau-sized viaducts and develop a trainset that travels commercially at 600 km/h. When do we start?

The mighty Appalachians might pose a challenge, but I would imagine that it's eminently doable. Seriously, if they can build HSR through the Pyrenees, under the Channel, and throughout mountainous Japan, I think we can find a route form New York to Buffalo.

Oh, and ShonTron, I thought about Maryland, but who wants to go to Baltimore. I mean, seriously - http://www.cityrating.com/citycrime.asp?city=Baltimore&state=MD - even if they have gotten better in recent years.
 
Nice stuff. You're just missing that cute-faced guy who's governor of Maryland, Martin O'Something, who's a progressive and the former mayor of Baltimore. He's also a rocker. What about those New Yorkers with a sudden craving for crab cakes?

They already can take "high speed" rail. In quotes because Acela doesn't cut much travel time over traditional rail because of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acela_Express#Operating_speeds_and_limitations

@kpd: Haven't you seen The Wire? Baltimore is awesome!
 
Governors...

Shon: Maryland's Governor is Martin O'Malley-I am glad to know that he is pro-HSR because of the Amtrak NEC going right across Northeast Maryland.

Illinois' Governor Rod Blagojevich is perhaps just days from being ousted from office on the impeachment by the Illinois Legislature because of the US Senate Seat Scandal. Yes-there is a resemblance somewhat to Elvis Presley but...

The sad thing is that a qualified candidate-Roland Burris-will have a stigma thru his US Senate term because Blagojevich appointed him.

Illinois has been a pro-Amtrak and passenger rail state and is OK when it comes to transit funding-because of having a dominant city like Chicago there.
LI MIKE
 

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