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

[trainfiend]

That's odd ... I thought the last time I drove around there (and discovered I could no longer drive down Ahrens) I thought I saw that they'd left a pedestrian crossing; clearly though I'm wrong. Shame there's nothing recent in Google Streetview.

Yes, I can see it would be a bit more of a walk without Ahrens. Seems to me there's a perfectly easy solution. Put in a temporary pedestrian crossing at Ahrens until the bridge is fixed. Though here's an article about that in The Record. Sounds to me like someone has their head up their ass if they can't figure out how to quickly put in a temporary crossing in their somewhere without spending a lot of money.

Margaret might not be possible, but Ahrens could easily be setup with one of those miniature pedestrian crossing barriers like I've seen on other parts of the Kitchener line. In fact the last time I checked the original crossing lights and barriers are still in place (minus the arms) and they still make a racket while trains are in the station... could easily retrofit those guys with short arms and put an opening in the stupid fence.

 

[mpd618]

Margaret might not be possible, but Ahrens could easily be setup with one of those miniature pedestrian crossing barriers like I've seen on other parts of the Kitchener line. In fact the last time I checked the original crossing lights and barriers are still in place (minus the arms) and they still make a racket while trains are in the station... could easily retrofit those guys with short arms and put an opening in the stupid fence.

The city of Kitchener recently had a report regarding Ahrens St - here's the download link.

 

[DonValleyRainbow]

From the Minister's mandate letter, released today:

Your ministry’s specific priorities include:

* Advancing environmental assessments for high-speed rail — building on the GTHA’s forthcoming Regional Express Rail network — which will link Toronto, Lester B. Pearson International Airport, and Waterloo Region and London, as well as London and Windsor

This thing is still alive.

 

[SaugeenJunction]

Windsor is still a part of the plan despite the Liberals not winning Windsor seats... thats a bit of a surprise. I am glad to see that it is still moving ahead however.

 

[gweed123]

Windsor is still a part of the plan despite the Liberals not winning Windsor seats... thats a bit of a surprise. I am glad to see that it is still moving ahead however.

I wouldn't be surprised if Windsor is "Phase 2". If they can make some serious advancement on Phase 1 in the next 4 years, then they'd be in a better position to use Phase 2 as an election carrot for seats in Windsor. They weren't really pushing the HSR thing in Windsor this year.

 

[1overcosc]

I'm a little disappointed that we're still only talking Toronto-Windsor. Given that the plan I imagine is that Toronto-London to be funded and Windsor to be studied and kept on the table as a Phase 2 for future use, couldn't they just go whole hog and study a route all the way to Ottawa? That way we can have a corridor reserved at least even if there's no money to build. This is important as almost the entire route from Toronto to Ottawa would have to be on a new greenfield ROW. Also, that way we can make sure that Metrolinx ensures that track space for HSR is protected along the rail corridors going east from Union.

 

[BurlOak]

I'm guessing they will do as liitle as possible and eventually decide the limited stop GO is adequate.

Toronro to Detroit is a huge corridor for goods, not so much for people. Mayybe we can have HSR for freight.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Given Trudeaus talks on infrastructure investment I wouldn't be surprised if he hops on with a Toronto-Montreal HSR route, federally funded through VIA. Provided he wins of course.

 

[1overcosc]

Gweed's theory that there's some sort of secret deal between Wynne & Trudeau for Ontario to build HSR west of Toronto, and Trudeau to do so east of Toronto, might be true. It would explain the complete lack of any conversation from the Wynne government about Toronto-Kingston-Ottawa-Montreal HSR.

Alternatively, it could be a bit simpler. There might be no deal at all, and this lack of chatter is simply Wynne's belief that it's a federal responsibility to build HSR out to Ottawa/Montreal.

 

[gweed123]

Gweed's theory that there's some sort of secret deal between Wynne & Trudeau for Ontario to build HSR west of Toronto, and Trudeau to do so east of Toronto, might be true. It would explain the complete lack of any conversation from the Wynne government about Toronto-Kingston-Ottawa-Montreal HSR.

Alternatively, it could be a bit simpler. There might be no deal at all, and this lack of chatter is simply Wynne's belief that it's a federal responsibility to build HSR out to Ottawa/Montreal.

Haven't heard any talk from either end to refute my theory, hahaha. If this talk of Harper calling a snap election comes true, we may see Trudeau's hand relatively soon. If not, we're probably waiting until next summer to see if there's any HSR mentioned in the Liberal platform.

But yes, it is certainly odd that there hasn't been even the faintest mention from the Ontario government about anything east of Union Station when it comes to HSR. That seems like too big of an omission to be done by accident, and too viable of a route to be completely ignored in favour of a Toronto-London route.

 

[lead82]

Haven't heard any talk from either end to refute my theory, hahaha. If this talk of Harper calling a snap election comes true, we may see Trudeau's hand relatively soon. If not, we're probably waiting until next summer to see if there's any HSR mentioned in the Liberal platform.

But yes, it is certainly odd that there hasn't been even the faintest mention from the Ontario government about anything east of Union Station when it comes to HSR. That seems like too big of an omission to be done by accident, and too viable of a route to be completely ignored in favour of a Toronto-London route.

I don't even get the need for a high speed train to London. London and Toronto may have a lot of highway traffic between them but how many cars are travelling between London center to Downtown Toronto? Via can barely fill the handful of trains that run between the two cities. Yes the trains are fairly slow, I believe it takes 2.5hrs to get from London to Toronto. The high speed train would do it what, maybe 90 mins? It's a bit of savings yes, but is there really demand for it?

I'd much rather than beef up the VIA service back to pre-2011/12 cuts. First lets see if VIA can support bi-hourly service and then upgrade to hourly or electify the line before building a high speed pet project.

Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal definitely has enough demand, but even then, I would first like to beef up the existing service. It's ridiculous that we only have 1 express train to Ottawa and Montreal per day. We should have hourly service, much like the flight schedules, and add a lot more express. Also if VIA could get funding to upgrade this main line, the trip can shave off 30-45mins and make it competitive for downtown to downtown travel with flying even from Porter.

My bet is the high speed train service never sees the light of day, but instead we get an expensive report prepared by a highly paid consulting firm.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Remember that the HSR would run on a completely different corridor than the current London VIA train, and it would serve Kitchener and Pearson airport as well. The London and Kitchener regional airports would likely loose a lot of traffic as HSR would provide a quick and easy connection to Pearson. The proposed setup works fine and I can actually see where the ridership will come from. Its not all going to come from London, thats for sure.

 

[reaperexpress]

I'm guessing they will do as liitle as possible and eventually decide the limited stop GO is adequate.

I really hope that is what happens. It doesn't make sense for us to invest in a new dedicated HSR line from Kitchener to Toronto yet, given that the bulk of demand will always be the shorter trips (Kitchener-Guelph-Brampton-Toronto, not London-Kitchener-Toronto), even if we provide only minimal regional GO service as the HSR proposal seems to assume.

Dedicated HSR through the GTA would make more sense decades in the future, after we've diverted freight traffic off the line in Brampton but are still running into capacity problems due to our intensive services. At this point, I would limit dedicated lines to ROW acquisition and a new line between Guelph and Georgetown, the longest inter-station distance on the regional service and the one with the sharpest corners.

 

[reaperexpress]

I don't even get the need for a high speed train to London. London and Toronto may have a lot of highway traffic between them but how many cars are travelling between London center to Downtown Toronto? Via can barely fill the handful of trains that run between the two cities. Yes the trains are fairly slow, I believe it takes 2.5hrs to get from London to Toronto. The high speed train would do it what, maybe 90 mins? It's a bit of savings yes, but is there really demand for it?

I'd much rather than beef up the VIA service back to pre-2011/12 cuts. First lets see if VIA can support bi-hourly service and then upgrade to hourly or electify the line before building a high speed pet project.

Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal definitely has enough demand, but even then, I would first like to beef up the existing service. It's ridiculous that we only have 1 express train to Ottawa and Montreal per day. We should have hourly service, much like the flight schedules, and add a lot more express. Also if VIA could get funding to upgrade this main line, the trip can shave off 30-45mins and make it competitive for downtown to downtown travel with flying even from Porter.

The problem is that to first beef up the service between Toronto and Ottawa, we'd need to invest even more heavily in the existing tracks than we already have. If the eventual goal is HSR, we might as well use new dedicated tracks to ease bottlenecks, rather than spending billions on capacity that will become wasted once we switch to HSR. Unlike west of Toronto, the bulk of travel in the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor is actually between those 3 cities.

My suggestion would be to start with a dedicated HSR line from Kingston to Ottawa, built to 300 km/h standards. It would be limited to 200 km/h (or 177 km/h with current equipment) until we electrify the whole line, but would still provide significant time savings on the Toronto-Ottawa trip. This would allow us to consolidate service onto the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal route, rather than Toronto-Ottawa and Toronto-Montreal separately. With most of the service lumped into one, hourly frequencies would be much easier to attain.

The California HSR project is using a similar implementation strategy. They are building a 209 km segment between Fresno and Bakersfield to 320 km/h standards, and it will be used by the existing Amtrak trains at 177 km/h until the full route is complete. But even under diesel operation, the line would apparently save 45-60 minutes of travel time.

My bet is the high speed train service never sees the light of day, but instead we get an expensive report prepared by a highly paid consulting firm.

Sadly, history is on your side.

 

[mpd618]

High speed rail would do something you can't measure on any existing modes of travel: induce demand. The ability to get from Kitchener to London in 25 minutes, or from Toronto to Kitchener in 45 minutes would result in a radical change in what is possible in terms of economic connections and commutes. As one example, it would bolster the tech sector in Kitchener as companies would be able to recruit from the much broader pool of talent in Toronto (i.e. not just engineering).

The case for HSR isn't a transportation spending efficiency one, it's an economic development one. Transportation projects aren't just about meeting current needs, and that's been recognized by those who built out our existing transportation networks.