High Speed Rail: London - Kitchener-Waterloo - Pearson Airport - Toronto

[MisterF]

Comparisons like this are pointless. It wouldn't cost $25 billion to build HSR between 3 major metros and their regions in Uzbekistan.

Probably not, but we also have several times more wealth than they do, so the cost isn't really the point. The point is that it can be done and would be feasible.

@Urban Sky has great analysis on how Spain and France's rail networks evolved with population over time. And where that maps out for Canada. So I do support his thesis that HSR will be a tall order for Canadians. And something aspirational for us. At this point, I am just hoping for HFR that is upgradeable. Let them pick a route that allows them to improve speed through capital investment over time. Whatever the travel times are at launch, if they can get Toronto to Montreal under 3.5 hrs eventually, that alone would shift a good bit of aviation traffic. Get it under 3 hrs and you all but save aviation for largely feeder traffic and the most time-sensitive of travellers.

I know VIA tries with that productive time comparison, to sell the virtue of train travel for business. But let's face it, VIA sucks for business travellers. The lounges are okay for business travellers. Not as great as most airline lounges, surprisingly. Onboard connectivity is very unreliable. And they don't have meeting spaces like say on the Italian HSR. Much of this will have to be addressed before they can truly sell a 3-4 hr transit time as productive.

This is one reason that I support projects like Via's HFR. That and the other rail projects that are underway (RER, REM, LRT in several cities) will help rebuild a rail culture that has all but disappeared everywhere except the central parts of Toronto and Montreal. Once that happens and ridership increases, HSR to Montreal will go from a pie in the sky idea to the next logical step to take.

What and where are these other cities in the millions of population?

Duh! Toronto and its related municipalities, of course.
He said other cities than London and Montreal, as a direct reference to the list in his previous sentence.

I was actually referring to cities that wouldn't be directly served by an HSR line that doesn't serve the entire Corridor, going only from London to Montreal. The additional millions come from cities that would be served by conventional rail lines feeding into the HSR system. Like Hamilton, Niagara Region, Quebec City, Trois-Rivieres, Brantford, Peterborough, Barrie, Windsor, Sarnia, Chatham, etc. Ultimately exactly which cities have HSR and which ones don't doesn't matter as much as the fact that cities off the system are still very relevant to ridership and demand.

 

[mdrejhon]

This is not about reducing emissions but rather giving people realistic alternatives to driving. The Corridor is growing at nearly 300,000 a year and no amount of HSR is going to result in reduction of auto use. If rail is backed up by the climate change agenda then HSR is the kind of project that should be the very LAST thing to get built. It won`t make a hoot of difference with our polluting trucks and long distance highway driving results in far fewer emissions per km drove than urban stop and start car use.

I understand induced demand but population is going to grow over the years.

So one has to ask:
Do we add freeway lanes, or do we expand by HSR instead?
I prefer HSR over extra freeway lanes.
Even if there is not fewer cars compared to today, it is still fewer cars than continued freeway expansions and widenings.

 

[crs1026]

I understand induced demand but population is going to grow over the years.

So one has to ask:
Do we add freeway lanes, or do we expand by HSR instead?
I prefer HSR over extra freeway lanes.
Even if there is not fewer cars compared to today, it is still fewer cars than continued freeway expansions and widenings.

^This.

Oxford County is arguing that we should not be allowing farmland to be eroded for HSR. I agree, farmland in Southern Ontario is precious....but....

The number of hectares which the HSR proposal would consume is trivial compared to the number of hectares lost to urban development (ie sprawl) in London alone.

London, Woodstock, heck even Tillsonburg lie outside the Places to Grow Act, and do not have any legal direction to increase density.

Any highway expansion will consume more farmland than any level of HxR will.

We need an equivalent to Places to Grow, covering all of Southern Ontario west of the GTA.

- Paul

 

[TOareaFan]

I was actually referring to cities that wouldn't be directly served by an HSR line that doesn't serve the entire Corridor, going only from London to Montreal. The additional millions come from cities that would be served by conventional rail lines feeding into the HSR system. Like Hamilton, Niagara Region, Quebec City, Trois-Rivieres, Brantford, Peterborough, Barrie, Windsor, Sarnia, Chatham, etc. Ultimately exactly which cities have HSR and which ones don't doesn't matter as much as the fact that cities off the system are still very relevant to ridership and demand.

I just think, in the context Canadian demographics, we end up a) overestimating the populations of those secondary markets that will feed into the HSR and/or 2) stretch way to far afield to get the numbers to add up to, as you described, "millions".

 

[MisterF]

I just think, in the context Canadian demographics, we end up a) overestimating the populations of those secondary markets that will feed into the HSR and/or 2) stretch way to far afield to get the numbers to add up to, as you described, "millions".

I'm not overstating anything. The combined population of the CMAs I listed is over 3 million. And that doesn't include small towns and rural areas.

For the sake of comparison, here are the 2017 Statscan population estimates of some of the key metropolitan areas in the Corridor:

Windsor: 344,747
London: 521,756
Kitchener: 527,765
Toronto: 6,346,088
Hamilton: 787,195
St. Catharines-Niagara: 416,539
Oshawa: 402,399
Ottawa: 1,377,016
Montreal: 4,138,254
Quebec City: 812,205

 

[lenaitch]

The compensation offered for the land usually sorts this kind of thing out. Certainly, some sort of standard subsidy for expenses such as legal and survey fees could be offered as part of an offer. Sometimes there are individual needs.... for example, the land being bought may have a structure on it, and the owner wants to retain the structure. so the deal may be about covering the cost of moving a garage or shed as much as the price per acre. If farmers want to swap blocks of land around, they can generally figure that out for themselves afterwards. There might need to be relief on rules for severing and merging lots, yes. That kind of sweetener is a good idea to build goodwill, although it has to be carefully managed to avoid becoming a bottomless trough.

Competent engineers do reuse templates and forms/components from job to job. So long as one doesn't let the design of each crossing to a different engineering firm, economies of scale will prevail.

The issue with farm crossings is just how big farm equipment is becoming. A small underpass may not do. A new line will likely mean farmers taking "the long way around" to reach different pieces of land, or to move equipment from one farm to another. This is an unavoidable and lasting impact of building a new line, but it's hard to say it renders farming impossible. Some other quid pro quo might have to be considered to mitigate the inconvenience and sweeten the deal .... eg maybe some sort of tax relief for farms within x meters of the line for y years, or widening/paving local roads.

- Paul

Land swaps involving farms that have been in the same family for generations may become complicated. As well, in agricultural terms, the value of a given parcel will be based on factors such as its soil classification, topography, drainage (you can get on a well-drained field earlier), etc.

The farther a farmer has to operate equipment from home to the field and field-to-field adds significantly to their input costs on top of margins that are already thin and based on unpredictable factors. Compensation in terms of credits or other relief are likely do-able but would have to account for all of the impacts.

I just think, in the context Canadian demographics, we end up a) overestimating the populations of those secondary markets that will feed into the HSR and/or 2) stretch way to far afield to get the numbers to add up to, as you described, "millions".

Agree, but beyond raw population numbers, some sort of pattern analysis needs to be done. Travel between urban centres could range from daily commuting to less frequent trips such as business or social/personal. Regular travel to and within the GTA/GTHA/GGHA is probably significant but, anecdotally, I'm near Barrie and have a need to go to Toronto about twice a year and Windsor, well, never.

 

[44 North]

So what's stopping the Prov from using older GO locos/trains as a preliminary lower-speed HSR today. In effect undercutting VIA's service by offering a lower-priced no frills choice between London and TO. Can a GO loco go as fast as what Via has, or faster? Would they be allowed to use the tracks, or is there not enough allotted space for them?

 

[crs1026]

So what's stopping the Prov from using older GO locos/trains as a preliminary lower-speed HSR today. In effect undercutting VIA's service by offering a lower-priced no frills choice between London and TO. Can a GO loco go as fast as what Via has, or faster? Would they be allowed to use the tracks, or is there not enough allotted space for them?

It’s not a bad idea, but has a few practical obstacles. The biggest one is CN’s reluctance to allow more trains on the line east of Georgetown. That issue needs a solution regardless of what the Province elects to build. That solution will be pricey in any scenario.
The second obstacle is the quality of the track west of Georgetown. It ought to be improved even in the lowest cost, most minimalist strategy. A less than HSR level improvement is certainly affordable. The issue is whether that minimal incremental improvement now and then a second round of upgrades would cost more in the long term than just doing the whole job now.
The third obstacle is that CN owns the line west of Kitchener and hasn’t said yes to handing it over. If anything, they appear less inclined to allow more passenger service there. A new line may be the only solution to that.
But yes, a low profile, minimalist service plan would be doable and the taxpayer would hardly notice the expense. But it wouldn’t be sexy or generate photo ops. No political appeal in that!
- Paul

 

[Urban Sky]

I sincerely appreciate your viewpoint Johannes. But you know the context is different here. Why compare to 37 million? HSR it not viable for most of Canada. It would be viable in the corridor we are talking about here.

Given the scale of such megaprojects, every HSR project I'm aware of has been approved (and at least partly financed) by the national government and for them, the proportion of their shareholders (i.e. the electorate they are held accountable by) which benefits from a certain measure is an important metric, especially at the scale of taxpayer money to be invested. Of course, the passenger number increases when only looking at the most populated geographic entity - from 2.4 rail trips per Canadian to 4.5 per Ontarian*, but at the same time the financial burden of building HSR ($10.9-$20.9 billion, even in the 250 km/h version) increases from 0.51-0.98% of Canada's GDP to 1.31-2.52% of Ontario's GDP.

*Unfortunately, I couldn't find any publicly available break-down of rail passenger trips for individual provinces. However, as the relative size of ridership can be expected to be strongly related to (1) the population size in the respective province and (2) the service quality offered, I will try to approximate the figures as follows:

• VIA Rail: passenger figures allocated by the average of the following two measures (for each service area separately)
  • The individual province's population share of the total population size of all provinces served by this service area
  • The individual province's share of stops offered per week in the respective service area (see my previous post #1315)
• Commuter Rail: Ridership figures can be found for Montreal and Vancouver, therefore Ontario must account for the total remainder of the total reported by the RAC

Source: Population figures from Wikipedia, VIA Rail passenger figures from VIA's Annual Report 2016 and my VIA Rail station count from Post #1315.

In Europe, rail is a way of life.

The reality is a bit less black and white, as a comparison of 32 countries across Europe with North America shows:

Source: Population figures from Eurostat, Rail ridership and rail passenger mileage from Eurostat, RAC (for Canada) and APTA (for the US) and HSR network lengths from the UIC.
Country codes: CH=Switzerland, LU=Luxembourg, DK=Denmark, DE=Germany, AT=Austria, UK=United Kingdom, NL=Netherlands, SE=Sweden, BE=Belgium, FR=France, CZ=Czechia, HU=Hungary, IT=Italy, NO=Norway, FI=Finland, PT=Portugal, ES=Spain, SK=Slovakia, LV=Latvia, IE=Ireland, PL=Poland, SI=Slovenia, HR=Croatia, EE=Estonia, RO=Romania, BG=Bulgaria, LI=Liechtenstein, ME=Montenegro, EL=Greece, LT=Lithuania, TR=Turkey, MK=(Former Yugoslavian Republic of) Macedonia.

As you can see, Canada's numbers are totally in line with certain European countries, just not exactly the ones we usually compare ourselves with - our place is of course in the bottom half of the table, but still ahead of countries like Montenegro, Greece, Lithuania, Turkey and FYROM, while Ontario even lands before Romania, Bulgaria and Liechtenstein. Without any intention of boasting, I have travelled all countries listed above by rail (except for Norway, Liechtenstein, Montenegro and FYROM) and I wouldn't be surprised if public investments into rail infrastructure and passenger service (as % of GDP) in the countries of the bottom half of the table was comparable to what our country invests...

The ridership is so low because Canada's passenger rail infrastructure is pitiful compared to those other countries, and as it stands trains aren't seen as a viable transportation option simply because of the lack of proper infrastructure and poor service. Obviously less people ride trains in Canada if the service is nowhere near t the same level as some of these European countries.

As above table demonstrates, the presence of HSR is a very poor predictor of rail ridership: The unchallenged rail champion, Switzerland, has actually only 144 km of HSR lines, while Turkey's 724 km of HSR lines (to compare: Boston-NYC-DC is 735 km) only yield the second-last spot. Even more shockingly, Spaniards use the train less often than even the Americans (!), despite having the by far densest HSR network in the world.

A good model/discussion point for Ontario is not Norway or Uzbekistan..... it's Ireland. They have a very effective, but very modest, rail network. No high end HSR, enhancements funded and implemented incrementally, with a long-term growth plan. Auto competitive. Ambitious but not grandiose. Linking dense population centers. Well used.

You are right, Ireland is a good example for a modest, but effective rail network and its comparision with countries like Spain or Turkey exemplifies the advantages of focusing limited financial resources on improving frequency rather than speed...

Even when including commuter rail, Canada's per-capita rail ridership is a small fraction of what European countries had when they started to introduce HSR (one single ride on the UP Express from Union to Pearson Airport is already enough to put you above the average mileage travelled by your fellow citizens on any passenger train):

Note: Table was first posted in Post #3064 of the VIA Rail thread and shows the population figures and rail ridership for the "base year" indicated. For sources, please visit the original post.

I've just realized that I miscalculated Canada's passenger rail mileage and that it should be 2,025 (rather than 645) million. You'd therefore have to take the GO train from Union Station to Hamilton (rather than the UP Express to Pearson Airport) to exceed the average Canadian's annual rail mileage in one single ride. I will correct the tables once I've located the corresponding spreadsheet...

 

[TOareaFan]

I'm not overstating anything. The combined population of the CMAs I listed is over 3 million. And that doesn't include small towns and rural areas.

For the sake of comparison, here are the 2017 Statscan population estimates of some of the key metropolitan areas in the Corridor:

Windsor: 344,747
London: 521,756
Kitchener: 527,765
Toronto: 6,346,088
Hamilton: 787,195
St. Catharines-Niagara: 416,539
Oshawa: 402,399
Ottawa: 1,377,016
Montreal: 4,138,254
Quebec City: 812,205

If nothing else, you appear to be counting a couple of places twice.....firstly as part of the group of key metropolitan areas and then in your list of other cmas to be linked by non-HSR (Hamilton and Quebec City and Niagara appear on both lists).

 

[MisterF]

If nothing else, you appear to be counting a couple of places twice.....firstly as part of the group of key metropolitan areas and then in your list of other cmas to be linked by non-HSR (Hamilton and Quebec City and Niagara appear on both lists).

Nope, I'm not counting anything twice. In my last post I just listed some of the key cities in the Corridor for reference. You can see the populations for yourself on the StatsCan link if you want. But I see I'm going to have to get more specific. So here you go. Let's say we build the Via HFR plan, phase 1 of the London HSR, and an HSR to Montreal following the route through Kingston (I'm being optimistic that this will ever happen in my lifetime). Here are the CMAs that would have direct HSR service:

London: 521,756
Kitchener: 527,765
Toronto: 6,346,088
Oshawa: 402,399
Ottawa: 1,377,016
Montreal: 4,138,254
Guelph: 159,988
Kingston: 173,862
Total: 13,647,128

And the ones that would have conventional service:

Quebec City: 812,205
St. Catharines-Niagara: 416,539
Windsor: 344,747
Hamilton: 787,195
Barrie: 209,081
Brantford: 147,489
Peterborough: 126,291
Trois-Rivieres: 158,942
Total: 3,002,489

The overall population of the Corridor is somewhere around 19-20 million.

 

[muller877]

^This.

Oxford County is arguing that we should not be allowing farmland to be eroded for HSR. I agree, farmland in Southern Ontario is precious....but....

The number of hectares which the HSR proposal would consume is trivial compared to the number of hectares lost to urban development (ie sprawl) in London alone.
....
We need an equivalent to Places to Grow, covering all of Southern Ontario west of the GTA.

- Paul

Actually there are pretty strict controls in Oxford county (and other parts of SWO) for growth. More restrictive than Toronto.

The province has recommended growth targets for each county. Each county had to identify which towns are growth areas and which are not. They then have developed detailed growth plans based on their targets and the places they want to grow. Its very detailed and each county has a plan on their website.

In Oxford county they have had a long history of restricting growth on prime agricultural land. They only let the farmer subdivide their land once for one residential property (even if the farm is then subsequently sold it can not be subdivided again). This forces people to live in towns and not spread along every paved road. There were sins from the past (pre-1980) but they have been very strict since then.

Other counties allowed for continuous divisions of property up until the 90's (e.g. Norfolk county) and you can see 1 acre lots lining every major road. But they also have stopped that and will only allow focused growth in specific towns.

In fact they have set their plan and have not deviated from it. This has allowed them to win at the OMB when developers wanted to ignore it (almost the opposite of Toronto).

If you look at Woodstock's growth they expanded to the other side of the Thames river not that long ago. There is on road that is the boundary (and not coincidentally also very close to where the soil changes to Guelph Loam which is very good for crops). They are allowing growth on one side of the road and none on the other. Some developer tried to subdivide a farm on the other side of the boundary and completely failed. Its now back as active farmland (and the developer is out of pocket some money).

If the HSR proposal does subdivide farms this will permit not only the land on the HSR to be stolen away from our agricultural supply of land but it will allow these new parcels of land to also be used for an additional house (in rural areas this means 1 acre of land gone). And if it is too small (i.e. 2o acres or less) it will become a hobby farm and not be very productive.

 

[kEiThZ]

The number of hectares which the HSR proposal would consume is trivial compared to the number of hectares lost to urban development (ie sprawl) in London alone.

London, Woodstock, heck even Tillsonburg lie outside the Places to Grow Act, and do not have any legal direction to increase density.

We need an equivalent to Places to Grow, covering all of Southern Ontario west of the GTA.

We should be doing this across the province. Look at what MOOSE was proposing in Ottawa. Developers take any chance they get to pave over the countryside and put up monster mcmansions.

 

[kEiThZ]

I just think, in the context Canadian demographics, we end up a) overestimating the populations of those secondary markets that will feed into the HSR and/or 2) stretch way to far afield to get the numbers to add up to, as you described, "millions".

Don't bother. I've argued we should be more practical. And for that @MisterF labelled me being opposed to rail. If you don't pass his bullshit personal purity test on high speed rail, you hate public transport apparently.

 

[innsertnamehere]

London et al still need to meet the Provincial Policy Statement - which directs growth to urban centres and encourages intensification.

Growth pressures outside of the Growth Plan area are generally much lower however, so it's not quite so important to protect farmland as strictly. The PPS prevents subdivision of farmland outside of the urban area, but municipalities are free to expand their urban areas as they see fit to accommodate subdivisions.

London in particular has a huge amount of apartment construction for a city of it's size. Probably over half of it's growth is in high density form.

Ottawa is a sprawl king for sure though, the apartment market is almost non-existent and the city sprawls at a rapid pace over it's greenbelt.

Places like Norfolk are growing at less than 2% per census period - the fact that they are directing that growth to their urban centres, even if in the form of new subdivisions, is probably acceptable. Towns like Simcoe and Port Dover are growing faster than they have in a long time, if not ever, because of it.