Alto - High Speed Rail (Toronto-Quebec City)

[lenaitch]

otherwise it will grow from a $100B project to a $200B project

And then be cited as a reason to kill it.

 

[Sauga89]

I'm more interested in how Ottawa's Roads Department feels about the rerouting necessary to squeeze tracks where Colonel By runs today. And all the new over/underpasses to connect the station to the Tremblay area, it's already a spaghetti zone for roadways and pathways. And raising the Mackenzie King bridge, which is not sized for catenary.

While the head building of the old station remains, the trackage space needed to support a depot with multiple platforms has all been repurposed.

And is this premised on Montreal-Toronto trains not running into the depot at all? Or will they reverse direction? How long does that add to the trip time?

All this to save four or five stops' travel on the LRT?

- Paul

Also, if you did make the expensive decision to move the Ottawa station, Bayview would be a more logical place by far.

 

[McGillicuddy]

I cannot imagine anyone in municipal government in Ottawa would have a shred of enthusiasm for ending up with two white-elephant heritage-designated historical railway stations.

 

[Bordercollie]

In China they went with concrete sleepers bolted into the base. They found that when there is any miss alignment, they cannot adjust it causing vibrations. Which are difficult to repair.

 

[urbanclient]

In China they went with concrete sleepers bolted into the base. They found that when there is any miss alignment, they cannot adjust it causing vibrations. Which are difficult to repair.

This is true. Slab track is far from perfect and eventually requires full slab replacement. Maintenance costs aren't cheap. I've seen outlier cases in papers where track slabs are replaced after less than 10 years, when the typical lifespan should be 60.

 

[legoswmonkey]

if people really are headed for the immediate downtown. A great many won't be.

Sure, but for the majority of the city which lives on the west end, getting on at Rideau instead of Tremblay saves a decent chunk of time and the excruciating turns at Hurdman. If the city ever gets a form of commuter rail (stares at the Beachburg sub), Union makes for a far, far better terminus than Tremblay. This will likely be the only chance for Ottawa to get a downtown station back, so I think it makes sense to invest in it as part of this 'nation-building' project. If they're tunneling 5+km through Mont Royal they can spend a bit on a trench (or cut-and-cover!) where Colonel By used to be.

 

[micheal_can]

Senators, not MPs.

Sorry, my mistake.

And the route into the station at grade is currently occupied by Colonel By Drive, Ottawa's convention centre, and the Pearkes building, which remains National Defence Headquarters despite the move to Carling. You would either need to remove all of that infrastructure, or you would have to tunnel into the station and have the trainshed below grade.

Colonel By is easy enough: the National Capital Commission owns it, so the federal government can get rid of it tomorrow if they like. There would be loud local objections, and not just from grouchy motorists (replacing a roadway with high-speed rail tracks would impede pedestrian and vehicular access to the eastern bank of the Rideau Canal), but you can solve that by spending enough money on tourist-friendly pedestrian overpasses and a couple of vehicular access points.

Pearkes is more of an issue. National Defence expects to vacate the building by 2035 at the earliest, and as the main barrier is the sheer amount of specialized and sensitive material and equipment to be relocated, that timeline will tend to resist compression. But if you can wait until the late 2030s to begin construction, sure, fine, whatever.

The convention centre, oh boy. The land belongs to the province, but there must be some sort of lease arrangement to operate the thing, and you better believe the Board of Trade and the Ottawa Tourism and Convention Authority would throw seven fits if they tried to relocate it to a greenfield site in the suburbs or whatever.

More broadly than all of this, you'd also be dealing with serious objections from the City of Ottawa and its well-connected residents about the environmental impact on the Rideau Canal and its various designations and listings, to say nothing of how local residents would feel about having trains "spoiling" their views of the canal or "cutting them off" from it. (In ways that the current roadway absolutely already does, but that's still the argument they'll make.)

It's not as simple as rolling up the road and laying down some track. The tunnel will be an attractive option, despite the fact that it makes for an extremely silly solution if you aren't actually using the building as anything other than a head house.

I was not assuming any above ground infrastructure other than the building.Decades from now, outside of the obvious signs directing you to ALTO, I would not expect to see anything train related on the surface.

Using that building as the station for Ottawa would make an easy connection to Rideau station for the LRT. If you are looking for a better Downtown station, I am at a loss of an idea. Having all major ALTO Stations in their respective downtowns make sense. This building could be Ottawa's

 

[ShonTron]

Yeah, I don't see any viable case for the reuse of the old Ottawa Union Station for high speed rail, especially as it won't be a terminal station. Trains would have to reverse direction back out of the station (itself not a huge deal; high speed trains in Italy continuing through Roma Termini and Napoli Centrale have to reverse directions at those dead-end stations), but it would certainly increase running times for that crucial Toronto-Montreal passenger market. A through station will be necessary, and though there were once two through tracks at Ottawa Union (the CP line that once crossed the Interprovincial Bridge), the cost and disruption to all the parklands would be politically prohibitive.

 

[urbanclient]

The Spanish and Italian cases of abandoning higher speeds had to do with the economics of maintaining safety.

@320 km/h or bust crowd: Maintaining HSR is very costly, and cutting corners to save money can lead to deadly consequences. As seen in yesterday's double derailment in Spain.

"A Spanish train driver's union warned railway operator Adif in August of heavy wear and tear on tracks, including where the derailments happened. This included potholes, bumps, and imbalances in overhead power lines that were causing frequent breakdowns and damaging ‍the trains. Allegedly, no action had been taken despite several flags. High-speed trains between Madrid and Andalusia have experienced frequent delays since 2022. Sky News found at least 18 incidents on the tracks over the past three years, from signalling failures to issues with overhead power lines. Spain's high-speed network is particularly vulnerable to cable thefts, as it crosses large swathes of empty countryside." —Wikipedia citing Sky News linked below

"A faulty joint has been identified as key to the train crash, Reuters reports, citing a source briefed on initial investigations.

The news agency said the broken joint was found by experts investigating the reason behind last night's derailment.

The technicians identified some wear on the joint between sections of the rail, known as a ‍fishplate, which they said showed the fault had been there for a while."

Spain train crash latest: Investigators 'find fault' at site of deadly collision

At least 39 people have been killed and dozens taken to hospital after two high-speed trains crashed in southern Spain. Follow the latest.

news.sky.com

 

[Milaisacat]

There are photos circulating of a segment of rail that appears to have failed entirely (Reddit post).

 

[Mihairokov]

Yeah, I don't see any viable case for the reuse of the old Ottawa Union Station for high speed rail, especially as it won't be a terminal station. Trains would have to reverse direction back out of the station (itself not a huge deal; high speed trains in Italy continuing through Roma Termini and Napoli Centrale have to reverse directions at those dead-end stations), but it would certainly increase running times for that crucial Toronto-Montreal passenger market. A through station will be necessary, and though there were once two through tracks at Ottawa Union (the CP line that once crossed the Interprovincial Bridge), the cost and disruption to all the parklands would be politically prohibitive.

Seems like zero possibility the old Ottawa Union Station is used for HSR for the reasons you highlight. It would slow down trips substantially and would remind me of the VIA trains in Quebec City that enter and then reverse out. Lengthy and needless delay.

IMO, Tremblay would be the ideal, but if not Tremblay it feels like it'll be out near the airport around Greenboro or Hunt Club. Definitely not my preference but would offer transfers to/from YOW and be the quickest route through the city.

 

[McGillicuddy]

Given that Montreal is only 30 minutes away (on ALTO), I can't imagine a ton of people are going to be connecting to flights out of Ottawa?

 

[Mihairokov]

Given that Montreal is only 30 minutes away (on ALTO), I can't imagine a ton of people are going to be connecting to flights out of Ottawa?

I'm not suggesting it would be a substantial number of passengers but there are flights in/out of YOW and YUL that the other doesn't entirely service and ALTO would replace any of those connecting YOW<->YUL flights otherwise.

There have been times i've tried going to Ottawa from wherever and the only option was via YUL where I then took VIA rest of the way, or vice versa. ALTO would make that easier regardless of where the station is.

 

[StreetcarRider]

Just a lowly Torontonian here but I adore the current Ottawa train station. I like it better than Montreal's Gare Centrale or Lucien L'Allier. I like it better than Union Station in Toronto. Every time I visit, I worry that somebody will have ruined it since my last visit by some ill-considered renovation. And I think the world would be a better place with more big swirly ramps in places where people are likely to have something on wheels and a need to transfer levels. Putting the Alto here would be so great. Unlike all the other station options, you could actually look out a huge window and see these trains while you're waiting.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Ottawa VIA station is a great station building. It's just in a terrible location.

I'd actually be OK with keeping it though with a few upgrades - an enclosed connection to the LRT, expanded parking, and enhanced pedestrian connections (including a new south pedestrian entrance).