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

crs1026 said:
Plenty - U of Windsor; Red Wings, Tigers draw lots for games; lots of people with family down that way..... ?

- Paul
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This is the sort of clinical research that lead to the former Minister of Transportation drawing this line on the back of an envelope in 2014 ;)
 
Hey, it's a totally empirical observation of journeys actually made by myself, my family, friends, and other people who I encountered in past travels between Toronto and Windsor.

If I were less scientific, I might have simply googled for a minute and engaged in uninformed speculation about whether any of the 4,296,250 residents of the Metro Detroit area and the 344,747 residents of the Greater Windsor area might occasionally travel to interact with any of the 6,417,526 residents of the Greater Toronto area and its attractions.... or vice versa.

But I'm not going to speculate ;-)

- Paul
 
crs1026 said:
Hey, it's a totally empirical observation of journeys actually made by myself, my family, friends, and other people who I encountered in past travels between Toronto and Windsor.

If I were less scientific, I might have simply googled for a minute and engaged in uninformed speculation about whether any of the 4,296,250 residents of the Metro Detroit area and the 344,747 residents of the Greater Windsor area might occasionally travel to interact with any of the 6,417,526 residents of the Greater Toronto area and its attractions.... or vice versa.

But I'm not going to speculate ;-)

- Paul
Click to expand...
:)
 
crs1026 said:
Hey, it's a totally empirical observation of journeys actually made by myself, my family, friends, and other people who I encountered in past travels between Toronto and Windsor.

If I were less scientific, I might have simply googled for a minute and engaged in uninformed speculation about whether any of the 4,296,250 residents of the Metro Detroit area and the 344,747 residents of the Greater Windsor area might occasionally travel to interact with any of the 6,417,526 residents of the Greater Toronto area and its attractions.... or vice versa.

But I'm not going to speculate ;-)

- Paul
Click to expand...

If this is to ever really happen, and eventually have HSR go all the way to Chicago (the corridor is already rated at 110 mph, and soon to be 125 mph), a new tunnel needs to be built in Windsor, CP needs to remodel the second freight tunnel to accommodate the dimensions of HSR trains and electric lines, or they need to consider purchasing rolling stock that can fit through the existing tunnel.
 
There have long been discussions of enlarging the tunnel to permit double stacked freight - a new tunnel with an extra track for HSR would probably be possible as well.

Perhaps a reintroduction of Toronto-Chicago train service is due soon?
 
It was cancelled in the mid 2000's IIRC, but prior to Amtrak's upgrades on their side. It used to run Chicago to Sarnia then up through Kitchener.. If you ran it through Brantford / London and combine with the Amtrak improvements you could shave probably shave 1.5 hours off of the 2004 schedule (around 11 hours).

To take the train to Chicago today you take VIA to Windsor, get on a downtown bound bus / taxi, transfer to the tunnel bus, take the Q-line streetcar up to the Detroit Amtrak Station, and take an Amtrak train to Chicago. Very long transfer time with an unknown amount of layover time.

Edit: looked at it. There is essentially only one window you could do it on:

12:15 departure from Union, arrive at Windsor at 4:30. Taxi to downtown, take the 5:00 tunnel bus. Taxi in Detroit / Q line up to the Amtrak station. Take the 6:18 amtrak to Chicago, arriving at 10:40 pm.

All in all, about 10.5 hours of travel time. Though there is some pretty significant risk of missing your connection in Detroit.
 
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There are some places/routes that, from a time perspective, train (nor car) will never be competitive with flying. Geography just won't let it.

The two sort of obvious one's from Toronto are Thunder Bay and Chicago.

Chicago is under 2 hours by plane from Toronto.....even with all the "get to the airport, clear security, wait around" stuff total travel time is, what, 4 hours? We are talking about ways to shave an hour off of an 11 hour train ride? According to distancecalculator.net......

"The calculated flying distance from Chicago to Toronto is equal to 436 miles which is equal to 702 km. If you want to go by car, the driving distance between Chicago and Toronto is 833.08 km. If you ride your car with an average speed of 112 kilometers/hour (70 miles/h), travel time will be 07 hours 26 minutes."

It is not clear where all the train riders are going to come from in a reborn Toronto - Chicago rail service.
 
TOareaFan said:
It is not clear where all the train riders are going to come from in a reborn Toronto - Chicago rail service.
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Through passengers? They won't be the primary market. Similar to Toronto-New York, there are a certain number of people who will accept an 11-hour train ride - because their comparison is against driving or an 11-hour bus ride. The train wins because at least they can stand up and pace and go to the snack counter to buy a drink.

Those people clearly have rejected air travel for one reason or another. But there are only so many people in that mindset.

The bigger market for cross-border service would actually be from intermediate stations east of Chicago eg Durand where people leave their car at the depot for a few days. Michigan is pretty heavily populated, that is a pretty good sized market. All that's needed is to improve the timing and the border crossing itself and you would have something that sells itself.

I continually meet American tourists who drive to Windsor, park, and take the train to Toronto. My impression is they intend to stay downtown and don't want the hassle of bringing their car all the way into the downtown (or making the long drive). Arguably those same people have the option of parking at the Detroit airport and flying in, but the train is less hassle, even with the current border crossing thrown in.

Once you decide flying is an acceptable starting point, then yes you are likely to stick with it. But not everyone likes that experience. In my own case, I never fly to Montreal, but I have never taken the train all the way to Quebec City. Somewhere there is a threshold where the train is too slow. But 250-300 miles by train is sellable.

- Paul
 
I have been preferring to ride the train if price and speed competitive to car.

But it depends on the comfort and time.

As a reference point, I tried the train from Montreal to New York City, a slightly shorter distance (600km vs 800km) - cost me only $69 one way but was very slow.

If price to Chicago is under $100 and manages the newly upgraded US rail speed of 125kph then that is still cheaper than gas for solo car travel while still marginally beating a drive.

Price for two will be slightly more expensive than car but still cheaper than flying. Just make it marginally faster than a nonstop drive (offpeak with no food stops) and the train begins to win preference consistently for a 2 person drive, given the savings over airfare.

If the time is roughly competitive to driving and I am just touristing within downtown or transit-easy areas, I'll check trains.

With a possible lightly improved 150-200kph corridor to KW and even just upgrade existing corridor to London (no bypass), the train time begin to actually slightly beat time of driving if it's a single seat ride. Given the US side is being upgraded to 125mph in sections - almost twice the freeway speed in sections.

Realistically (In the past, when I briefly lived in Riverdale area of Toronto before permanently moving to Hamilton), the drive is already almost 10 hours for me because of food stops, and one gridlock section, anyway - given my Chicago drive usually starts on a Friday early afternoon to beat Toronto rush, but I can't beat rush in all sections of the route.

The business case will be justifiable eventually (a matter of time) -- if it can be reduced to a 7 hour train ride or faster while sub-$100. That does not even require HSR or much geography changes to get that fast.
 
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crs1026 said:
Through passengers? They won't be the primary market. Similar to Toronto-New York, there are a certain number of people who will accept an 11-hour train ride - because their comparison is against driving or an 11-hour bus ride. The train wins because at least they can stand up and pace and go to the snack counter to buy a drink.

Those people clearly have rejected air travel for one reason or another. But there are only so many people in that mindset.

The bigger market for cross-border service would actually be from intermediate stations east of Chicago eg Durand where people leave their car at the depot for a few days. Michigan is pretty heavily populated, that is a pretty good sized market. All that's needed is to improve the timing and the border crossing itself and you would have something that sells itself.

I continually meet American tourists who drive to Windsor, park, and take the train to Toronto. My impression is they intend to stay downtown and don't want the hassle of bringing their car all the way into the downtown (or making the long drive). Arguably those same people have the option of parking at the Detroit airport and flying in, but the train is less hassle, even with the current border crossing thrown in.

Once you decide flying is an acceptable starting point, then yes you are likely to stick with it. But not everyone likes that experience. In my own case, I never fly to Montreal, but I have never taken the train all the way to Quebec City. Somewhere there is a threshold where the train is too slow. But 250-300 miles by train is sellable.

- Paul
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I would never doubt that there are people who fit in with the descriptions above....never have and never will - and apologize if that is the impression I gave.....I do, however, doubt there is enough of them to make a strong economic case for the capital expenditures and operating subsidies to make sense of the service.
 
TOareaFan said:
I would never doubt that there are people who fit in with the descriptions above....never have and never will - and apologize if that is the impression I gave.....I do, however, doubt there is enough of them to make a strong economic case for the capital expenditures and operating subsidies to make sense of the service.
Click to expand...

If by capital expenditures you mean a new tunnel, I agree with you. That's a huge cost, way beyond what the revenue would provide payback for. I was thinking more that the ridership potential, and hence the operating cost, is probably in the same order of magnitude as New York-Toronto, and if that holds its own, then why not Toronto-Chicago. As noted, much of the track is already as good or better than the New York route, and there are further improvements coming.

The big uncertainty is whether use of the existing Windsor-Detroit tunnel is out of the question. And can the border crossing be improved - this is what more than anything killed the former service.

- Paul
 
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