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There are three ways in which the Conservatives can score points with this project: By proving their fiscal conservatism by scaling down the taxpayer exposure (“liberal excesses”) or shelving the project. By proving that they are willing to invest and keep Canada “open for business”. By proving...

I’d be shocked if that were to be the most problematic expropriation related to HFR-TGF, especially in the preferred HSR variant…

There is only one place where virtually all public transport networks converge - and that’s where the HxR service should have its station… Yes, but only by necessity, not by choice!

And $500 billion to Chicago - and $5 trillion to meet CAHSR in San Francisco. Sure, if you keep adding extensions nobody was requesting, we can arrive at any fantastical cost figure! Just to be sure, I’m not saying that there won’t be any HxR service to Windsor, but it won’t be part of this...

Nobody said that VIA needs exclusive tracks, but four tracks should be sufficient to create dedicated Express tracks, assuming that there is no need to have all GO trains stop at Scarborough, Danfourth or East Harbour…

I’m not worried about the part of the Stouffville Corridor which is South of crossing underneath the Belleville Sub, where Stoufville trains currently only stop at a single station (Kennedy), which would even be a plausible HxR stop location. However, you would need to overtake at least one...

No, the upcoming announcement will mark the end of the RFP procurement and the start of the Co-development phase, which is a major milestone!

The formal decision will be made at the end of the “Co-development” phase which will only start this year and which will last multiple years. It’s explicitly acknowledged that the final investment decision will only be made then:

History and voters will surely distinguish between the Prime Minister who delivered only insignificant media “announcements” and the one who actually gave the green light and got shovels into the ground…

I was born in 1989 and didn’t touch North American soil before 2009, so I unfortunately don’t remember that press briefing… 🤣

Of course they have, but we’ll only learn who the lucky winner is at some point in November. I just hope that the reputation of SNC-Lavalin (even after obscuring its name) is still so toxic that someone else than Cadence wins the contract…

Sure, if you are fine with being stuck behind a GO train all the way from Mount Joy to Union Station, you can do just that, but you should be aware that the current travel time of a GO train between these two stations is 55 minutes. Also, you would have to create a new ROW from Gare Centrale all...

The measure should not be how well the CDPQ is doing with the REM, but how well it fits into the overall transit development strategy and that’s where the REM’s record of cripling any prospects of frequent regional rail towards Laval and of frequent intercity rail towards Quebec City… The...

The idea of building a rail corridor from Montreal and Toronto which doesn’t share any ROWs with either CN or CPKC is rather delusional. We thankfully don’t have incompatible track gauges (like in Japan or Spain) which would force building dedicated into metropolitan centers…

I don’t see why a new tunnel to Gare Centrale would be necessary: it’s unnecessary for Montreal-Toronto and no amount of travel time savings for QBEC-MTRL will be able to even remotely justify spending something crazy like $10 billion on a new tunnel…

No, the problem would be passengers travelling from Ottawa to Montreal (nobody cares about the inconveniences imposed on passengers from/to Quebec City, at this point!). The thing I can see though is that early morning trains (i.e., those too early to originate in Toronto) would operate OMQ via...

Thankfully we don’t have a new government every year and let Italy look like a beacon of stability in contrast! In all seriousness, though, only a decision about Phase 1 needs to be made before the 2029 election and I trust that PP wants to shove it in Trudeau’s face that he can actually get...

I believe the main advantage of HFR-TGF and the federal government having scope-creeped the project so aggressively towards French/Italian-style HSR is that it gives PP plenty of scope to simultaneously demonstrate his ability to “protect taxpayers”, “being open to business” and “getting things...

Cross-border services will only be convenient with the US if the border formalities can be exacuted at either the departure or arrival station and easy cases (NEXUS holders or US/Canadian citizens) can be prioritized to minimize the delays they experience. Same reason why the border facility for...

You’d be surprised, there are some really straight segments, often linked by very few curves which can easily be straightened. For instance, Komoka-Chatham-Windsor consists of four straights: However, crossing through Stratford and St. Mary’s would be quite challenging…