RedRocket191
Senior Member
How long does border screening usually take on a train?
VIA Rail budgets an hour on the NYC - Toronto run, but it has been known to take double. 30-45 minutes is apparently the record coming back into Canada.
How long does border screening usually take on a train?
In some border trains in Europe and Asia, the entire process can easily take two or three hours.
I think an important question to ask is what a future HSR is supposed to accomplish?
What about relieving Pearson/avoiding building Pickering? It would also help tourism by bundling Montreal and Toronto.
What about relieving Pearson/avoiding building Pickering? It would also help tourism by bundling Montreal and Toronto.
That would be one benefit. Before recent reductions in air traffic, the high rate of growth in air traffic - has created a crowded sky's (limited routes, traffic closer together, etc.). When I was flying to Toledo - 15 years ago (don't ever want to go to that city again), the proximity alarm in the cockpit was almost constantly going off (closer to Detroit). One of the goals should be to remove all short-haul traffic from the Montreal/Toronto/Ottawa and even Kingston - from the airports -- opening up those slots for long-haul travel. There is a lot of business travel between these cities - where people are traveling for a meeting and want to go there and return the same day. Rail would make it more efficient - in fact if it is a half-day meeting - you could return in the afternoon.
^^^
I think HSR can be justified to improve connectivity between MTL-OTT-TOR, though the Windsor & QC branches are probably not necessary at first. A few things would have to happen before this is practical though. Firstly, gas prices will have to continue to climb above wage increases. Recent set backs aside, I think most people are still bullish on the long term price of gas. In other words, I would be surprised if oil was 60$/B in 2030 (adjusted for inflation). We saw earlier in this summer how poorly the airlines were able to cope with rising gas prices. Given the industries absurdly low margins (really, I don't even know why people invest in airlines...), it would have a tough time if gas prices started to average out at 150$/b or higher. I doubt air travel would disappear, but I don't see how cutbacks could be avoided. The Tor-Mtl especially. As I understand it, short-medium haul flights tend to be the least fuel efficient and most sensitive to fuel jumps (compared to an A380 hauling 850 cattle class passengers over the Pacific). So, I think if oil prices follow their long term trend lines would improve the business case of HSR relative to Air and road. (that is, unless Canada opts for that idiotic Bombardier JetTrain proposal. What an idiotic idea that is...)
Secondly, if we were serious about HSR, we should sell off the 401. It makes absolutely no sense to subsidize competing modes. In 2006, Indiana leased it's toll road for 75 years for an upfront fee of roughly 15m per km. Prorating that to 401 would land Ontario with roughly 12b (though, the 401 should be much more valuable being the busiest highway on earth and all). That alone should be able to incentavize a private consortium to build a HSR. The resulting tolls I imagine the 401s owners would implement would shift some demand towards rail.
1. I think that the point of HSR would be to significantly increase the capacity and speed of the transportation system within city regions that are expected to grow and compete with hundreds of other global city regions that have similar or better infrastructure connections.
2. HSR is also a valve for growth that isn't pegged (nearly as much) to a dwindling and increasingly expensive resource.
3. HSR promotes the growth of cities at their cores rather than in the socially vacuous and oil gobbling edges of the suburban periphery.
4. HSR essentially knits together disparate city regions into one network. In Germany, which I know a little more personally, a large number of people who work in Frankfurt commute in from Stuttgart on the ICE; the creation of a HSR and supplementary rail networks across the continent have strengthened the role of the dominant city in a city region while plugging formerly backward hinterland regions into the global economy.
Finally, a personal anecdote:
5. Air travel is a fucking pain in the ass that nobody enjoys.
Having operated in the Toronto Terminal Area, I can tell you that, while it's crowded, it's nowhere close to the level of proximity alarms engaging on a regular basis....which brings to mind the question of what the heck was going on Toledo that the TCAS was going off as often as you say it was? That's pretty serious business.
Another significant question here is...what's so bad about the skies filling up? Competition for slots will actually improve the efficiency of the system by forcing airlines to use bigger aircraft. Air Canada has over two dozen departures a day from Toronto to Montreal alone, most of them on A319s and A320s sitting 120 and 140 pax respectively. Fewer slots would actually prompt AC to use larger aircraft as traffic increased for that city-pair.
Don't know, landed in Detroit, then took a short hop in a turbo-prop of some sort - with an open cockpint - to Toledo. The alarms were going off constantly, I remember thinking to myself - boy - that is useless if it is always going off.