Alto - High Speed Rail (Toronto-Quebec City)

[innsertnamehere]

1) A detour is really not the showstopper anybody here makes it to be. It adds a few minutes. But probably also suburban stops. Montreal-Quebec City will still be competitive with flying downtown to downtown. And Trois Rivieres is about to have an insane boom.

2) The Feds have never, not even once, said that they'd stop in Toronto. The whining here is because London isn't in the first phase. I think some of you haven't learned enough lessons about scope creep killing projects, so you're determined to have another go of it this time. Honesty, it's bad enough that Quebec was included this time.

I fully agree with 2) - I think the focus for now should be Toronto-Montreal (and to be fair to ALTO, I think Alto is being split into three sub-phases with Quebec being the final phase after Montreal-Ottawa and Ottawa-Toronto).

regarding 1) - it is a fairly significant detour, adding ~25km of run distance over a more direct route east which could be used with a new tunnel. The existing alignment / detour won't be high speed either (and the tunnel could be!), so even if Alto can average 90MPH on it (unlikely) we are looking at closer to 15 minutes of extra run time. It's possible to do without but that tunnel will likely go much further at cutting travel times than high speed operations would overall in the rural stretches in terms of delivering the fastest train possible for the dollar between Quebec and Montreal.

 

[micheal_can]

Trains would probably still be doing 90-100mph through there. We are talking about having to invest tens of billions to cut 5 minutes of run time. Alto is likely going to have reduced speed run zones in and out of Toronto and Montreal so they don't need to tunnel 50km of new tunnel to shave a few minutes of travel time.. it's not a huge deal.

Brampton is roughly 25 km away. It takes GO about 40minutes between Brampton and Union.It takes Via 35 minutes. That is under 30mph! So, no, not even close to 90mph.

 

[micheal_can]

You realize that this is how almost every single other HSR works around the world, right?

You think that a TGV runs every single mile of its journey on high speed lines? A couple do, but most do not.

Dan

I do understand some do travel on slower tracks. Are we doing the bare minimum, or are we going to try to do it right?

 

[Urban Sky]

regarding 1) - it is a fairly significant detour, adding ~25km of run distance over a more direct route east which could be used with a new tunnel. The existing alignment / detour won't be high speed either (and the tunnel could be!), so even if Alto can average 90MPH on it (unlikely) we are looking at closer to 15 minutes of extra run time. It's possible to do without but that tunnel will likely go much further at cutting travel times than high speed operations would overall in the rural stretches in terms of delivering the fastest train possible for the dollar between Quebec and Montreal.

I’m a bit lost here: what exactly is the tunnel and detour we are talking about here?

 

[innsertnamehere]

I’m a bit lost here: what exactly is the tunnel and detour we are talking about here?

A direct routing could be something like a ~7km tunnel east from Gare Centrale over to the rail corridor south of Avenue Souligny then using the former rail alignment from there until you are off the island. That would get you off the island in around 23km of travel distance compared to around 47km on existing corridors.

The beautiful thing about needing a new tunnel also means you don't need to use the old alignment of the Mount Royal tunnel and can do something much more direct, and therefor much faster. A routing like that is where it's worth sinking money into expensive things like tunnels as it significantly reduces run time and total track distance, which makes the cost delta between tunneling and using existing alignments smaller too. Tunnelling is a lot more expensive than using existing alignments, but when you are talking about building 23km of track with a 7km tunnel, the cost difference is suddenly a lot less than building 47km of track with no tunnel, and the time savings are even greater than when compared to tunnelling to save no or little travel distance and marginal run time.

 

[crs1026]

And? Should personal retirement growth trump functional passenger rail in this country?

I would not describe this as "personal retirement growth" ie wealth. Sure, some investors may be rich guys getting richer, but more institutional and fund based investment pays to average people who are scraping together enough to afford some form of retirement and hope to live comfortably, if modestly, into old age. That group is a big segment of the folks who have interest in CN and CPKC, through institutional investment.

Just to be clear, I do think the economy would be better served if railways earned a utility-grade ROI and conducted their business accordingly. But your assertion that we could achieve this without giving current investors legal recourse to unjustly eroding their assets is quite uninformed.

And if you are suggesting that the standard of living of seniors and pensioners ought to be eroded in order to have more passenger trains, no I don't agree with that. You may not be one of those yet, but your day will come.

- Paul

 

[kEiThZ]

regarding 1) - it is a fairly significant detour, adding ~25km of run distance over a more direct route east which could be used with a new tunnel. The existing alignment / detour won't be high speed either (and the tunnel could be!), so even if Alto can average 90MPH on it (unlikely) we are looking at closer to 15 minutes of extra run time. It's possible to do without but that tunnel will likely go much further at cutting travel times than high speed operations would overall in the rural stretches in terms of delivering the fastest train possible for the dollar between Quebec and Montreal.

Scheduled flights from Quebec City to Montreal are 35-45 mins. Add 45 mins pre board. Add 30 mins from the airport to downtown on either side. And we're talking 2.5 hrs. As long as the train gets from Gare Centrale to Gare du Palais in less than 2.5 hrs, it doesn't matter what detour is made. Even with a detour, we're talking maybe running 300 km with 3 intermediate stops (Dorval, Laval and Trois Rivieres) in 2.5 hrs? That doesn't seem hard to do. Even 2 hrs seems rather achievable.

 

[kEiThZ]

I’m a bit lost here: what exactly is the tunnel and detour we are talking about here?

I am assuming he's talking about the plan where there's a giant western C shaped routing where the train would depart downtown, stop at Dorval, then curve northeast to stop in Laval before going east out of Montreal.

 

[lenaitch]

Of course. But it still doesn't mean privatizing them in the first place wasn't one of the worst, most costly mistakes we've made as a nation. :/

You do realize that they were all originally built as private ventures (with government funding, land grants, etc.)? CP always has been private and CN was only created when all of the rest of them were going bankrupt. You seem to be a fan of State-owned everything.

 

[zang]

You do realize that they were all originally built as private ventures (with government funding, land grants, etc.)? CP always has been private and CN was only created when all of the rest of them were going bankrupt. You seem to be a fan of State-owned everything.

I'm a fan of state-owned necessities, like transport, housing, healthcare and the like.

 

[Urban Sky]

I'm a fan of state-owned necessities, like transport, housing, healthcare and the like.

Well, if I compare the privately-owned-and-run rail systems of Japan with the state-monopolies of ex-Yugoslavian States (like Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia or Albania), I start to doubt that state ownership of transportation systems is the golden bullet you believe it to be…

 

[crs1026]

We can debate ideologies all day and night, but what is most helpful to this particular forum is how one might realistically change the status quo in the context of our current legal regime and regulatory environment, without assuming a continental transformative revolution that clearly isn't foreseeable.

PS - “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.” - Margaret Thatcher

- Paul

 

[kEiThZ]

We can debate ideologies all day and night, but what is most helpful to this particular forum is how one might realistically change the status quo in the context of our current legal regime and regulatory environment, without assuming a continental transformative revolution that clearly isn't foreseeable.

Yep. Don't see what the point of all this fantasizing is. Our government isn't going to nationalize or substantially seize assets from two of the largest companies in Canada (and significant enablers of our economy).

 

[micheal_can]

We can debate ideologies all day and night, but what is most helpful to this particular forum is how one might realistically change the status quo in the context of our current legal regime and regulatory environment, without assuming a continental transformative revolution that clearly isn't foreseeable.

PS - “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.” - Margaret Thatcher

- Paul

Which is where focusing on the route between Toronto and Quebec City is key.

For talk of anything west of Toronto

SWO HSR

It is not that we should shut them down or anything like that. It is more that if we want to put in tracks beside theirs, they should allow it without any concerns.. It is also that all of our mainlines should be 2 track;4if passenger service runs on them. So if no passenger service - freight...

urbantoronto.ca

 

[zang]

PS - “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.” - Margaret Thatcher

- Paul

It's funny you bring up the tired Thatcher trope, as since her privatization of British Rail, schedule reliability declined and they received even greater subsidy, only to be renationalized just this year.