I still predicted that the study area scope for HFR would be expanded to include SWO, which means I'm still underwhelmed by this commitment to things which sound more like a description of what you would expect a Transport Minister to do unprompted...
Peterborough will have to get a bypass anyways once services go beyond hourly service. The question now is just whether any trains will ever stop in downtown again or if there will be just a greenfield HSR station which could just as well be called after the next farm...
If you want to build anything beyond the absolutely minimum standard, you should directly build HSR ready (i.e. design speed 150+ mph) and that would be an entirely electrified and grade-separated double-tracked corridor, which is about the last thing I would want to see build if Peterborough was my home city. Another reason to build a downtown rather than greenfield station is that it would facilitate rather than impede the creation of a Commuter Rail service in the distant future...
With the obvious caveats that I haven't looked at the details and that I defer to your greater knowledge...........
I drew a line off the existing corridor south-east of PTBO and drew a roughly straight-line to rejoin the corridor to the east of PTBO where the rail corridor closes in on highway 7 again.
I was really quite surprised to find that the distances were almost identical in the two routes.
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Obviously, the advantages to greenfield are there in terms of easier potential for grade-separations and curve elimination or mitigation, allowing for much higher line speeds.
A couple of further observations:
1) Downtown Ptbo has an inordinate amount of open land, which in theory would provide some 'options' for rail upgrades, albeit not to HSR standards.
2) However, Downtown Ptbo is also a giant floodplain, which makes grade-separations where either road or rail go below grade a near impossibility.
There's also a creek piped under much of the area as well.
3) The above, almost (not really) makes me want to muse about going elevated through the downtown.
4) Peterborough has a remarkable amount of dis-used railway ROW, some of it currently purposed as trail.
I make note of this, because one of those routes runs almost perfectly parallel to the existing live track into downtown, it would, in theory, have potential to function as a passing track, give or take any blowback from taking away the trail.
The red line punctuated by pins shows the alternate ROW, which I have then connected to the existing at Brown Line.
I selected that for a potential connection to avoid complex crossings of wetlands, or conflicts w/roads that have supplanted the ROW beyond that point.
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