Recent content by CapitalSeven

I do sort of wonder what will happen to that VIA track post-HSR. By 2040 some sort of regional line between Alexandria and Ottawa with more stops could be viable. I'm not saying the 🫎 word.

I remain skeptical about the southerly route. From Smith's Falls down there is an abandoned line, now a trail, which wasn't too bad and parts of which might serve with straightening. Running east from Peterborough, the previous railway looked like this: If you want to lay out a HSR route in...

This map, happily included above by Northern Light, shows the tempting possibilities of the hydro corridors for high speeds. The branch through Almonte and Merivale passes through mid-Ottawa in an almost straight line. Despite the almost carte-blanche swath indicated in the maps, the corridor...

The Schabas document is interesting. I don't think his "optimized" spine and branches plan has that much to recommend it, but it does resemble what some of the European lines do. It's nearly all greenfield and new corridors between Toronto and the Quebec border, and I just don't think the feds...

As noted, the Winchester Subdivision came into play in the late-HFR era when it became apparent running through Ottawa would make Toronto-Montreal times very long, but that was when conventional track and speeds were involved, and using most of the VIA ROW was assumed. It’s a complete different...

There's a bypass route through Ottawa that would save 5 km but it would cost hundreds of millions to upgrade it. I suspect it means coast thru Ottawa Union at 80 kph and save the 10 minutes or so a stop involves. As for Peterborough, I think they are going to have to listen carefully to the...

The problem isn't streetcLRarTs, the problem is Toronto. This is this city that declared "Transit First" on Queen's Quay 21 years ago, took 100 years to start the "relief line," made a train wreck of transit in Scarborough, and spent huge sums on new streetcars then undermined their use in...

He was such a non-entity, even those of us who were of voting age when he floated through have mostly forgotten him.

Another, cheaper, scheme is to hive off some services from the west, say UP and Barrie, into a tunnel under Front, from Bathurst to York. This would free up capacity upstairs.

Part of the problem here is not the technology, but rather the culture. Transit managers simply don't care how long it takes riders to get where they are going, and politicians will not direct them to do so. In Ottawa this manifests itself in trains crawling around not very sharp curves for...

There aren't any published maps that cohere with what ALTO is saying in words, and I suspect we won't see anything till the consultations start, unless there is a leak. But it seems like as straight a line as possible between Ottawa and Trois Rivieres with a right angle to downtown Montreal...

The Laval stop isn't for getting from Laval to Montreal. It's for getting from the NW sector of the Montreal area to Quebec City or Ottawa or Toronto, and vice versa. ALTO likely won't offer tickets for the short hop, the way you can't travel downtown from Fallowfield today. And not every...

It's absurd. It follows an extremely abandoned line that was replaced with a country road decades ago, wandering through villages. It's AI slop or a map drawn by an idiot, full of lines and dashes, signifying nothing. (ed. Or a good joke)

Given the ridership, and the numbers traveling between Ontario and Quebec City, I wouldn't think it would be worthwhile. More likely I think would be a transfer in Laval. The consultations include Vankleek Hill and Saint-Eustache, which are roughly along the route I sketched out, but not...

The OC site indicates that the overnight version of bus 105 serves the stop on Tremblay road, by means of a U turn. So you can get to Rideau or the SE transitway every half hour. Granted, not great at all, and maybe they'll improve it some day.