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Rail: Ontario-Quebec High Speed Rail Study

kEiThZ said:
It's not just US bound flights that are impacted by the rules for maintaining pre-clearance at these facilities. These rules also govern how baggage is handled. And I suspect some of our own rules are probably quite similar as well. Either way, train station check-in would not necessarily be essential to displacing or re-locating some air traffic.
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The point is this: Let's say I live in London and am planning to go to the other London. Currently I will have to take an airport bus to YYZ or DTW and go from there. Eats up your whole day.

Now let's say we have High Speed Rail in the corridor. Air Canada sells London (ON) - YYZ - Heathrow tickets, except the first leg will be on the train. This is similar to how several airlines "codeshare" with SNCF from the Charles de Gaulle airport to TGV stations across France. I can check in my luggage at the London station and not see it until the baggage carousel at Heathrow, and the overall ticket is less than buying the train and plane tickets separately. Meanwhile, British Airways does not offer this air-rail service. This gives AC a competitive advantage.

Another example: this morning I flew into YYZ from Victoria, BC on Air Canada, and my final destination is Waterloo. I had two pieces of luggage, which were painful to lug around the 192 TTC Bus, Subway, and Greyhound bus. Wouldn't my journey have been much easier if I checked in my bags at Victoria, flew into YYZ, transferred to the HSR, and then claimed my luggage at Kitchener Station?

//note: I'm a broke student at the moment, so I probably still would have taken the hard way, but if I had a decent income on the other hand...

Small airports generally cater to business or general aviation. Basically, only Kingston, London, Hamilton and Windsor have commercial air service which could be displaced by an HSR.
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This is true. But many municipalities have lately invested millions into expanding the passenger terminals at their airports. Much of this investment could be going to waste if short haul air travel along the corridor contracts.

As a side note: the HK - SZ Airport express rail line will be a big white elephant. The construction cost is estimated between 30 and 50 billion HK Dollars, and a one-way fare is estimated at 400 HKD (or 80 CAD). Digging a 40 km-long tunnel under the sea and through mountains in order to serve 9000 passengers per day is just silly. It would be far more efficient to improve the ferry connection between the two, and to build a one-seat ride from Kowloon to SZA.
 
urbanfan89 said:
The point is this: Let's say I live in London and am planning to go to the other London. Currently I will have to take an airport bus to YYZ or DTW and go from there. Eats up your whole day.
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Why wouldn't you simply fly from London, Ontario to Toronto, to catch a connecting flight?
 
Another example: this morning I flew into YYZ from Victoria, BC on Air Canada, and my final destination is Waterloo. I had two pieces of luggage, which were painful to lug around the 192 TTC Bus, Subway, and Greyhound bus. Wouldn't my journey have been much easier if I checked in my bags at Victoria, flew into YYZ, transferred to the HSR, and then claimed my luggage at Kitchener Station?
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Wouldn't your journey have been easier if you had flown directly into the Waterloo airport and collected your bags there? It would have likely involved a transfer in Alberta, but your bags would go right through to Waterloo.

EDIT: is there no bus (shuttle of some type or GO) that goes to Kitchener from Pearson? If not, that sounds like a market deficiency that someone should fill.
 
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There's the private airport shuttle that you have to hire, and we're getting GO buses connected to the Georgetown line in a few months' time. Other than that, nothing.
 
Yes, it would have been easier if he had flown into Waterloo directly, but that would leave him with yet another leg of his trip, trying to get home from an isolated airport.

Thats the real advantage with using HSR for the first or last leg of the trip. You never have to go to an isolated airport, you just show up in your downtown train station.
 
With all this talk of just being able to fly into Pearson and take HSR to Waterloo...

Is HSR really going to have that complete a network? I assumed that building HSR would just consist of one Detroit/Windsor-London-Hamilton-Toronto-Ottawa-etc. route. Would HSR actually branch in Toronto to go through Waterloo and then to Sarnia, as well as going to Windsor?

If the line actually did branch like that, I would expect that it would be a revolution for rail in the region, much like Red Rocket's RailOntario. Not that that's a bad thing at all, but I can't see it actually happening.
 
The '95 study concluded that the only routes really worth considering would be Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal through Dorval. In Toronto we could probably drag it a bit west into Mississauga and into Pearson, but that is probably all the network we will have for awhile.
 
HSR going as far as Pearson would be essential because replacing connecting flights is an important part of the HSR business plan. If it ever gets built to Windsor it would have station in Kitchener and London, and the stations wouldn't necessarily be downtown. The TGV has stations in small towns like Le Creusot and Macon, both on the outskirts of town. Lyon has a major TGV station integrated with its airport.

Taking HSR downtown in small cities is a tradeoff because it slows down all trains, including the ones that don't stop there. Some countries have a lot of downtown stations, others have them mostly in the suburbs.

Is HSR really going to have that complete a network? I assumed that building HSR would just consist of one Detroit/Windsor-London-Hamilton-Toronto-Ottawa-etc. route. Would HSR actually branch in Toronto to go through Waterloo and then to Sarnia, as well as going to Windsor?
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HSR networks have stations in smaller towns and cities. But just like with VIA Rail and GO Transit, express trains don't stop at those stations. The likely route for HSR to Windsor would be Toronto-Pearson-Kitchener-London-Windsor, and I'd add a stop in Chatham as well.
 
The HSR infrastructure may not go all the way to windsor until well into the future, but the trains certainly can continue on existing tracks. Somebody going from London to Montreal shouldnt need to take an old VIA train to Toronto (or pearson) then switch to a new high speed train.

This is typically how its done in france. The TGVs are extended along the old rail infrastructure to serve cities that dont yet justify a huge investment in infrastructure.

Also, yes there is no guarantee that downtowns will be served. But I imagine they will. Most french TGV stations in the middle of nowhere are there because of two reasons: first, you cant ram more infrastructure through historic french towns and cities. Luckily for us, we dont have much worth preserving around our urban rail corridors in southern ontario. Secondly, one station is sometimes used to serve two adjacent cities.

This could happen in kitchener/cambridge if a station was built along the 401, but I cant see it being used anywhere else. Some less visited cities would likely be bypassed by the HSR line with connections to the existing network to allow for stopping trains. Places like stratford or chatham, for ex.
 
If they could get all tracks in the corridor capable of 120 km/h and a train to Sherbrooke then the ridership might increase to a level where it seems more feasible to build HSR. If we can't achieve that minor objective I don't see how anyone can believe HSR is around the corner.

Average speeds:
Toronto-Kitchener-London 60km/h
Toronto-Niagara 66km/h
London-Sarnia 84km/h
London-Windsor 84km/h
Toronto-Brantford-London 85km/h
Toronto-Ottawa 100km/h on the fastest train
Toronto-Montreal 116km/h on the fastest train

You really don't need HSR to improve this. There are reasonably fast trains in Britain using lines nowhere near as straight as the ones VIA is currently using. Even here in the mid-70s using the exact same tracks using technology from 40 years ago they had trains averaging 134km/h from Toronto to Montreal.

At 134km/h on average:
Toronto to Montreal 4:01 (currently 4:38)
Toronto to Ottawa 3:20 (currently 4:28)
Toronto to London (via Branford) 1:23
London to Windsor 1:20
Toronto to Niagara 0:59
Toronto to Kitchener 0:45
London to Sarnia 0:43
Kitchener to London 0:42

While the Montreal and possibly Ottawa times might need HSR to be competitive with air travel, all the locations in Southwest Ontario would be very competitive with all modes using technology from the 70s.
 
They should start with double tracking. I got stuck for an hour at Smiths Falls tonight. They then took everyone off and bussed them into Ottawa. We got in at 1am instead of 1140pm as planned...all because a train stalled on the track between Smiths Falls and Fallowfield.
 
After the Toronto-Montreal section is built, I think the next logical steps would be both Toronto-Hamilton-US Border, Montreal-Quebec and Toronto-Kitchener. All of these routes have right of ways which are relatively straight for long stretches and would not require much curve modification to become high speed corridors.

Knowing the topography and urban layout of the Region of Waterloo, there is no real place that a high speed rail right of way high could be rammed through either north or south of the 401 without unreasonable cost and/or river crossings. Also, by following the 401, you would have to deal with the environmental damage of putting wide radius curves through a wider section of the escarpment west of Milton.

Conversely, apart from the section around Acton, the CN Guelph subdivision is relatively straight in its path between Pearson and Kitchener, would not require as much land expropriation and would significantly reduce the environmental impacts associated with creating shallow grades and large curves through hilly terrain.

Of course, the section through Acton would probably need to be bypassed entirely.
 
dunkalunk said:
Conversely, apart from the section around Acton, the CN Guelph subdivision is relatively straight in its path between Pearson and Kitchener, would not require as much land expropriation and would significantly reduce the environmental impacts associated with creating shallow grades and large curves through hilly terrain.

Of course, the section through Acton would probably need to be bypassed entirely.
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The section through Acton has only 2 curves - neither of which are as tight as the one at Rockwood. I can't imagine a by-pass being built these days that's any better.
 
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