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

[Northern Light]

This goes nowhere fast in the near term.

Ford's promises are such that they can't all be met, the deficit will likely grow, and taxes too.

This was the case before Ford (we needed a higher tax of some description to get back to balance) .

His wish list merely adds to the problem.

The political value in this project vs the 11B cost on the books just to get to London means it will be formally shelved or slow-walked.

Regardless, there are a whole series of improvements needed on the Toronto-KW portion for RER service, hell even for conventional all-day GO.

Those will be pushed ahead, and done properly some of the 11B in costs will be spent as part of that project, reducing the relative cost of HSR at a later date.

The By-Pass, in some form is a pre-requisite to everything. That's the big money.

Additional trackage all the way from Toronto to beyond Georgetown needs delivery as does a by-pass of Rockwood/Acton; and a fair few improvements in Guelph.

We won't see all of those over 4 years, but we should see progress on all of those and a few of the smaller items delivered.

Or at least one can hope.

 

[kEiThZ]

The interesting thing with HSR is the tech sector. Waterloo needs this. London less so. Even if they don't do full blown HSR, they'll need to something to speed up service here. 2 hrs from Kitchener to Union is ridiculous.

 

[Allandale25]

Reviewing the information @ONtransport sent us from our RFI we sent in. The only information they sent was how they calculated the 73 min from #ldnont to Toronto. Apparently, #whyhsr can go 0-190km/hr in less than one minute based on their graphs. More info coming soon!

Source:

https://twitter.com/kellyelliottmcm/status/1007059333295886336?s=19

 

[kEiThZ]

Source:

https://twitter.com/kellyelliottmcm/status/1007059333295886336?s=19

190 km/h ~ 53 m/s. Accelerating to that speed in a minute would require less than 1 m/s^2. About 0.1G. I don't get her complaint. That doesn't seem excessive to me.

 

[jordanmkasla2009]

190 km/h ~ 53 m/s. Accelerating to that speed in a minute would require less than 1 m/s^2. About 0.1G. I don't get her complaint. That doesn't seem excessive to me.

Her complaint seems based on her thinking in terms of traditional Diesel-Electric trains. Full electric trains will always accelerate and decelerate faster than Diesel-Electric trains.

 

[Urban Sky]

190 km/h ~ 53 m/s. Accelerating to that speed in a minute would require less than 1 m/s^2. About 0.1G. I don't get her complaint. That doesn't seem excessive to me.

Her complaint seems based on her thinking in terms of traditional Diesel-Electric trains. Full electric trains will always accelerate and decelerate faster than Diesel-Electric trains.

Some data to verify your assumptions, which I posted here a few years ago:

https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threa...son-airport-toronto.20558/page-50#post-949226

 

[steveintoronto]

I wouldn't have considered this sensible or doable, but if some are touting double stacking the highway...screw that. Put rail on the upper deck, or on the lower and road vehicles on the upper. Gradient far too extreme for regular rail? Absolutely, but not for HSR. Take a look at the grades TGV pulls. They don't go around hills, they go over them.


Add lanes above or below Highway 401 to ease gridlock, board of trade urges
Vertically expanding the highway would add capacity and free up movement on route through the Toronto-Waterloo corridor.

The By-Pass, in some form is a pre-requisite to everything. That's the big money.

Absolutely agreed. And it would save massive amounts over the longer term as well as making freight service much more efficient too.

 

[Allandale25]

The new Minister of Infrastructure's comments on HSR in this London Free Press article.

A local Councillor questions the need for HSR/wants the EA expanded tweeted it out and asked to meet with him (series of tweets): https://twitter.com/kellyelliottmcm/status/1014349644242063360?s=19

 

[BurlOak]

The new Minister of Infrastructure's comments on HSR in this London Free Press article.

A local Councillor questions the need for HSR/wants the EA expanded tweeted it out and asked to meet with him (series of tweets): https://twitter.com/kellyelliottmcm/status/1014349644242063360?s=19

This HSR really is a terrible idea. I have spoken with several people from London and none support it. It is obvious that the PC's agree that this is a bad idea, but want to appease the supporters to some degree.
Hopefully they heed the advice of this Councilor and expand the scope - because there may be merit in GO type service to London - or it can be shown to the feds that VIA needs to be improved.

 

[ssiguy2]

Calling Monte McNaughton a London area MPP is like calling someone from Lindsay a Toronto area one. He represents Lambton/Middlesex/Chatham-Kent, a very rural riding. It does not touch any of the city of London or Sarnia or Chatham for that matter. The largest town in the riding is Strathroy with 14,000. It is a conservative area and he is a VERY conservative person. He is the anti-thesis of a urban Londoner who`s all 3 urban seats went NDP.

He is the type who would view HSR as socialism. I would be VERY surprised to find out that the man has ever taken the train little alone embarrass himself by boarding a city bus. He has absolutely no urban sensibilities. Unfortunately London and Windsor who would benefit the most from HSR have no MPPs in Ford`s government so their concerns will be duly noted and just as quickly duly forgotten with no political repercussions.

 

[muller877]

Calling Monte McNaughton a London area MPP is like calling someone from Lindsay a Toronto area one. He represents Lambton/Middlesex/Chatham-Kent, a very rural riding. It does not touch any of the city of London or Sarnia or Chatham for that matter. The largest town in the riding is Strathroy with 14,000. It is a conservative area and he is a VERY conservative person. He is the anti-thesis of a urban Londoner who`s all 3 urban seats went NDP.

He is the type who would view HSR as socialism. I would be VERY surprised to find out that the man has ever taken the train little alone embarrass himself by boarding a city bus. He has absolutely no urban sensibilities. Unfortunately London and Windsor who would benefit the most from HSR have no MPPs in Ford`s government so their concerns will be duly noted and just as quickly duly forgotten with no political repercussions.

His riding is huge. Represents everything from towns which act as suburbs of London (both North and East of London), the rust belt near Chatham, cottagers near Grand Bend and several First Nations Reservations. Pretty much a wide spectrum of Ontario outside of metro cities. Areas that have seen extreme economic hardship over the past 15 years, windmills forced upon rural communities by Queens Park and towns/suburbs near London that are growing quite rapidly. By just dismissing him without understanding the economic realities of this region you dismiss a large percentage of the population of Ontario. Which is why the Liberals failed a large percentage of Ontario and will never rise again if they continue to do so.

His job will be to question if there is enough benefit for any infrastructure project. Whether it is Waterfront Toronto, HSR, any other other transit/road/bridge/dam project that is on the books. So....most likely the ROI will not meet the hurdle rate and the project will fail like it has done several time prior.

 

[TOareaFan]

 

[jje1000]

So I guess this project is dead for the foreseeable future?

The Conservatives did mention that they would fund the completion of the environmental assessment, but I presume that the project will stop there. Without Collenette or any other boosters within the Conservative government, it's hard to push forward an expensive project like this when the message of the day is tax cuts and austerity. The only way I would see a project like this continuing is in some form of slightly faster GO Transit, and even that's happening under a blue moon.

From a month ago:

In an interview with CBC's London Morning program Wednesday, McNaughton said the Ford government will continue the work begun by the previous Liberal government on high speed rail from Toronto to Windsor.

However, McNaughton did not commit to the completion of the project.

He said the new government will continue to fund the environment assessment, but he quickly added: "We'll see what the final reports say."

The minister said there are obvious regional economic and social benefits to high speed rail, which would come with a "substantial price tag."

"I have also said there needs to be some more consultation, whether it's with more local municipal partners in the cities and the small towns, as well as the agriculture community … so we'll be working through these."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/monte-mcnaughton-new-infrastructure-minister-ontario-1.4733394

 

[Allandale25]

^ Nothing new that I've seen but the rural anti-HSR who has started the #whyHSR hashtag did comment on a recent article about the Mayor of Guelph's support: https://twitter.com/kellyelliottmcm/status/1024669459892584448

Article itself here.

Guelph Council passed a pro-HSR resolution:

 

[jje1000]

Interesting- I wonder if there might be some more confirmation of what exactly the Conservatives have in mind for infrastructure planning following the AMO conference on the 19th-22nd.

At the moment, everything's still kind of floating in the air (i.e. Go Electrification), and of course, there's Ford's 'audit' of provincial finances. Things might firm up come September, maybe?