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

[steveintoronto]

I disagree about ridership, but agree with you on VIA meddling. For those who don't know, evidently VIA has been slagging the HSR proposal in favour of HFR (article here) for South Western Ontario. I like HFR, but not happy with VIA competing overtly with the HSR plan for SW Ontario.

I've got to disagree on the *reported nature* of D-S remarks on HSR. Judge him on his quotes, not the story headlines. From the article (which I termed a "fluff piece" at the time, and agreed to by a number of posters) linked:
"Deputy Premier Deb Matthews. Matthews couldn’t be reached Friday to respond to Via’s plans." Ha! Neither can Collenette eight months later! In the event, I can't find any comment by Matthews either on the matter in that eight month time frame.

And while we're at it, where is Waldo? He'll show himself long before Collenette does (and I actually like Collenette, but it's absolutely obvious he's hiding).

That article was discussed and dissed in two strings at this site at the time:
http://urbantoronto.ca/forum/thread...on-airport-toronto.20558/page-72#post-1106418
http://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/via-rail.21060/page-58#post-1106424

If D-S misspeaks, by all means, post his quotes, and he'll get thrashed. Seems to me the man is still in the game with some great cards to play. Collenette, Matthews at al aren't even in the building.

 

[TOareaFan]

I disagree about ridership, but agree with you on VIA meddling. For those who don't know, evidently VIA has been slagging the HSR proposal in favour of HFR (article here) for South Western Ontario. I like HFR, but not happy with VIA competing overtly with the HSR plan for SW Ontario.

What are the HSR "plans" though. As far as I can recall it was a hastily announced campaign platform by then Minister of Transportation Glen Murray....I happened to be at one of the first events (perhaps the first, I don't recall) he mentioned it at and it dropped out of the sky as a huge surprise ....but was just a plan to run High Speed trains from Kitchener to Pearson to Union....no mention of any details other than it would be fast and cheap and was an idea he got when he rode a line in London and found out it was owned by Canadian pension plans!

The only further "flushing" out it got prior to the election was that it would now include London.......but other than that....what are the "plans"?

How can VIA (a body that acutally runs trains and knows a bit about the economics of rail travel) be "competing" with something that is essentially just a line drawn on the back of an envelope by the former MoT? Has the current MoT spoken much about it? Have the plans been "fleshed out" at all in the 2+ years since that election?

 

[mdrejhon]

VIA's HFR will not getting any new riders. Speed counts and HFR doesn't offer enough time savings

HFR actually beats more than 50% of high-speed train routes, in real-world average speed!

I believe reaperexpress or Urban_Sky posted a chart already -- not necessarily in HFR context, but that the existing 4-hour Ottawa VIA service outperformed many HSR routes already -- and other information. And another chart I saw about the world's average HSR train speed between sets of two stations, I'm not sure where I saw it. But VIA surprisingly ranked well.

2.5 hours Toronto-Ottawa is quite damn impressive and will more than double ridership between Toronto-Ottawa, especially if VIA uses similar double-decker trains that the Rocky Mountaineer uses, or some other nice upgraded coaches during their fleet renewal.

What good is a high speed train when it has to crawl sub-100kph more than half of the time in many other parts of the world already?

The so-called HSR trains are hobbled by their track geometries. VIA is fortunate to have a corridor between Brockville and Ottawa that has good straight-arrow sections. Even (an optimized version of) the Peterborough corridor is less curvy than many existing HSR corridors. Resulting in many of those only allowing very short HSR sprints with lots of time of sub-HFR speeds. That many European/American already-installed HSR corridors can only dream of. This causes HFR to have a higher average speed than many HSR train routes.

(Did you know VIA owns some similar coaches as Rocky Mountaineer, for some non-TOM/non-TKL routes -- not quite exactly the same, but similar? A fleet renewal during HFR will also help too!)

Yes, I'd like HSR, they should find a way to slap the "high speed train" label onto a bullety-nose locomotive (a short section of 225kph track mid-route will do the job), to increase marketing the chic-factor, the "WAUW REEL FAST TRAIN!!!!1!" audience, but the fact is plain old HFR is still faster than a lot of HSR routes.

 

[steveintoronto]

What are the HSR "plans" though. As far as I can recall it was a hastily announced campaign platform by then Minister of Transportation Glen Murray....I happened to be at one of the first events (perhaps the first, I don't recall) he mentioned it at and it dropped out of the sky as a huge surprise ....but was just a plan to run High Speed trains from Kitchener to Pearson to Union....no mention of any details other than it would be fast and cheap and was an idea he got when he rode a line in London and found out it was owned by Canadian pension plans!

The only further "flushing" out it got prior to the election was that it would now include London.......but other than that....what are the "plans"?

How can VIA (a body that acutally runs trains and knows a bit about the economics of rail travel) be "competing" with something that is essentially just a line drawn on the back of an envelope by the former MoT? Has the current MoT spoken much about it? Have the plans been "fleshed out" at all in the 2+ years since that election?

There's this:
http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/pu...ontario-high-speed-rail-feasibility-study.pdf

And nothing more since! But...wait...hang on:...(...sound of crickets chirping...)

 

[crs1026]

What are the HSR "plans" though. As far as I can recall it was a hastily announced campaign platform by then Minister of Transportation Glen Murray....I happened to be at one of the first events (perhaps the first, I don't recall) he mentioned it at and it dropped out of the sky as a huge surprise ....but was just a plan to run High Speed trains from Kitchener to Pearson to Union....no mention of any details other than it would be fast and cheap and was an idea he got when he rode a line in London and found out it was owned by Canadian pension plans!

The only further "flushing" out it got prior to the election was that it would now include London.......but other than that....what are the "plans"?

How can VIA (a body that acutally runs trains and knows a bit about the economics of rail travel) be "competing" with something that is essentially just a line drawn on the back of an envelope by the former MoT? Has the current MoT spoken much about it? Have the plans been "fleshed out" at all in the 2+ years since that election?

The original announcement created a flurry of skepticisim

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitch...speed-rail-proposal-a-reality-check-1.2655761

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/com...en_murrays_highspeed_rail_plan_is_flawed.html

...but the band wagon was jumped on

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/winds...ed-rail-proposal-by-october-mp-says-1.3440700

http://www.lfpress.com/2016/04/27/rail-needs-speed-not-own-track-group-says

The most recent evidence I could find that Mr Collenette is still on the case

http://www.newcreditfirstnation.com/uploads/6/6/0/2/66028275/2016apr_11_-_e__ss_-_public_minutes.pdf

The original announcement of Mr Collenette's engagement was an official government statement

https://news.ontario.ca/mto/en/2015/10/ontario-appoints-special-advisor-on-high-speed-rail.html

Most importantly, Minister Del Duca has made statements to the Legislature about Mr Collenette's work.

http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/committe...s=Ministry+of+Transportation&DocumentID=30523

To the extent that a Minister is accountable for what they tell the Legislature (directly or in committee), Mr Del Duca should expect some followup questions about where Mr Collenette has gotten to. In any event - all he's doing is reporting as an advisor. No evidence that he was asked to prepare a full business case analysis or doing any technical work towards an EA.

- Paul

 

[steveintoronto]

The original announcement created a flurry of skepticisim
- Paul

Excellent links!

I'm slogging through Cmte Proceedings one right now....Yikes! Thank God for page search and fast scrolling. Del Duca et al make Cassius Clay appear to have been a humble man...

[...]We announced that we were launching the environmental assessment in London. I know that just in that community alone, whether we’re talking about the municipality itself or we’re talking about a number of those from the private sector or from the university and college sector who are looking at the future with respect to creating that kind of higher-speed connectivity between London and the GTA, there was tremendous excitement. That excitement remains. Of course, not that many months after we launched the environmental assessment, we announced that former federal transport minister David Collenette had been appointed to serve as a special adviser to both myself and Minister Duguid with respect to doing some additional work on this important project. Of course, Mr. Collenette brings a tremendous breadth of experience in the transportation and transport realm to that work. I know that he has been out in communities along that potential new corridor to have conversations with First Nations and municipalities and others to gather feedback as part of his work.
[...]
I mentioned earlier the Toronto-to-Waterloo innovation corridor, but I think that that’s the kind of technology that we are able to not only harness and work on here in Ontario—I know that we all do feel a great deal of pride about what’s happening within that realm and recognize that we’re going to continue to go forward and be aggressive. I think that we have to take advantage of all of the benefits and be prepared for some of the challenges that might exist as more of those technologies evolve.
[...]

http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/committe...s=Ministry+of+Transportation&DocumentID=30523

The von Münchhausen method is making my eyes roll inwards..."That excitement remains". Is he on drugs?

 

[kEiThZ]

I don't blame VIA for their lobbying. HSR has never come to fruition in the past. And they probably don't want to see federal funds diverted to supported TKL. Let's be clear, HFR isn't just about the Corridor. VIA's survival is at stake. Spiralling operational costs could kill VIA. HFR will reverse that trend. So good on Desjardins-Sciliano for protecting his plan.

 

[crs1026]

I don't blame VIA for their lobbying. HSR has never come to fruition in the past. And they probably don't want to see federal funds diverted to supported TKL. Let's be clear, HFR isn't just about the Corridor. VIA's survival is at stake. Spiralling operational costs could kill VIA. HFR will reverse that trend. So good on Desjardins-Sciliano for protecting his plan.

I would go a bit further and wonder whether D-S saw the Ontario announcement as the beginning of the end, in the sense that it gave Ottawa a perfect reason to toss the ball over the fence and let Ontario take the whole business west of Toronto away from VIA. Doing things at cross purposes to Ontario may not have been his preference, but as a last resort.....

VIA is being killed one subtle paper cut at a time, there's no doubt about it. It's all very well to put the Pearson Airport on a commercial footing, now that all the runways are built and there are two modern terminals to generate revenue. VIA is being forced to swim a river - commercial sustainability from the get-go- that airports and highways never had to get over. I'm all for public investment to get HFR done, then we can talk about who to sell part of it to or how the private sector could do the operations.

- Paul

 

[Palma]

Excellent links!

I'm slogging through Cmte Proceedings one right now....Yikes! Thank God for page search and fast scrolling. Del Duca et al make Cassius Clay appear to have been a humble man...

http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/committe...s=Ministry+of+Transportation&DocumentID=30523

The von Münchhausen method is making my eyes roll inwards..."That excitement remains". Is he on drugs?

reading that committtee transcript, these politicians must major in communication. I can't believe the talking they do for pretty well not saying anything concrete and how everything is great. But I have to give deluca some accolades by being able to speak and say what he does without a prepared speech for an extended period of time

 

[Urban Sky]

The most recent evidence I could find that Mr Collenette is still on the case

http://www.newcreditfirstnation.com/uploads/6/6/0/2/66028275/2016apr_11_-_e__ss_-_public_minutes.pdf

I was just going through those minutes mentioned above and came across the following quote:

Chief questioned why the southern route is being considered more than the northern route. Mr. Howe answered it is because the southern route carries more people. The future growth will be in the Kitchener/Waterloo area.

Did anyone hear anything about those Northern and Southern routes? Have there been any maps or anything?

 

[steveintoronto]

Did anyone hear anything about those Northern and Southern routes? Have there been any maps or anything?

Yes! IIRC, TorStar had an article on it, and I took note because I was wondering what the issue was, and where the affected areas were.
(Edit: The mailing address and name of the Tribe is misleading. Here's some essential info as to "routes":
Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation is a Mississauga Ojibwa First Nation located near Brantford in south-central Ontario, Canada. In May 2008, New Credit had a registered population of 2,330 (as of April 2015) people, of which their on-Reserve population was 850 people.

Mississaugas of New Credit First Nation reside on the 2,392.6-hectare parcel of New Credit 40A Indian Reserve known as Reserve 40B near Hagersville, Ontario. This Reserve is located near the Six Nations of the Grand River in Brantford.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississaugas_of_the_New_Credit_First_Nation

See: http://mapcarta.com/24520704 Note electric xmssn RoW to immediate north running east-west. (Smooth Town on map)

The TorStar article, IIRC centred on "Six Nations....High Speed Rail" and the maps of the various land settlements were displayed in the article. What cued my interest was the number of rail trails through the area coming into the south side of Brantford. I'll keep digging, but meantime, this has shown in Googling:

Further information on this project
is available on page 23.
http://www.newcreditfirstnation.com/uploads/6/6/0/2/66028275/mncfn_eaglepress_june_2016.pdf

 

[steveintoronto]

http://www.sixnations.ca/LandsResources/resCompensation.htm

Whether or not this is what the 'debate' is about or other potential RoWs, this corridor (historically it used to go right up the entire Grand Valley) is now having the owners laying claim to their Rights.

Here is the article I may have been thinking of, but it still illustrates how sensitive the province has become to this issue of *any* RoW through the Reserve:

Paul Bliss and Sean Davidson, CTV Toronto
Published Thursday, November 5, 2015 5:26PM EST
Last Updated Thursday, November 5, 2015 7:06PM EST

A CTV News investigation has revealed that a $100 million transmission line intended to bring electricity into Ontario from the United States is not delivering any energy. With the project blocked by the Caledonia land claim dispute, the line is costing taxpayers millions in interest instead.

The 76-kilometre line was built to bring electricity into Ontario from Niagara Falls, New York but because of a Six Nations land dispute in Caledonia, Hydro One has been unable to complete the last 5 kilometres of the power line.

And that’s costing Ontarians, when it comes to their monthly hydro bill.

Since 2007, Hydro One has had permission from the provincial government to bill taxpayers for its interest payments on the $100 million capital cost to build the powerline. To date, taxpayers have paid nearly $50 million in interest alone, for a powerline that has never transmitted any electricity.

“It's one of the costs of respecting First Nations rights. It's a dispute between two First Nations that needs to be resolved by the federal government. It's unfortunate,” Chiarelli said.

"We need to be respectful of their rights. We need to be respectful of their process. And sometimes that has a price to it," Chiarelli told CTV’s Paul Bliss.

But Chiarelli also says that local native groups in Caledonia can’t agree among themselves whether or not to allow the power lines to be completed.

The powerline was designed to bring 800 megawatts worth of electricity into southern Ontario. This is equivalent to the amount of power that Ontario gets from one of the nuclear reactors at the Darlington Nuclear Station. [...]

http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/powerline-to-nowhere-100m-powerline-costing-taxpayers-millions-1.2644932

IIRC, Paul may have offered comment on this some months back.

 

[timio]

It is the only way to access Moosonee, as no roads exist.

There is an ice road in the winter, but nothing permanent. (Source: friend in Cochrane)

 

[kEiThZ]

The $5 billion figure expressed in the Band's minutes were surprising. I wonder if that is for Toronto to Windsor.

 

[ssiguy2]

No matter which way you slice it the fact remains...........the SWO route carries 5X {248 vs 49} more annual riders than all the non-corridor combined. That tiny 3% of all the track is being held back by truly excellent and fast service due to having to subsidize these non-corridor routes.

Ditch every single train outside The Corridor and create a world class train system. If there are any non-Corridor routes that are reasonably viable in the summer tourist months than fine but outside that get rid of them. No one uses them anyway and 99% of the population outside The Corridor wouldn't even notice. The only other route that is viable is Calgary/Edmonton which is the one route that doesn't exist which speaks volumes about how VIA has become more of a political gravy train than a passenger one.