I guess the same could be said about Canada
America's Trains Suck Because Most Americans Don't Ride Them
Yesterday, the New York Times reported that the US devotes so little to train improvements that it may be affecting overall passenger safety. Our per capita spending on rail is much less than most nations—far behind all of Europe and Japan
If you isolate it to the province of Ontario alone, it is much higher per-capita, thanks to Metrolinxs' massively hugely increased budgets of recent years. (GO expansions, Lakeshore 30-min, Georgetown corridor, UPX, the Union redo, GO RER, etc). Ontario then shows up as an outlier in the statistics, to the scale that the budgets currently being talked about -- if hugely increased rail spending continues -- HSR is probably happening in Ontario by the 2030s -- but only if the spending rate continues beyond GO RER introduction.
There's certainly a business case for it - IIRC the Windsor-QC corridor basically breaks even every year without the factoring in the subsidy. Most of the subsidy covers the rest of the country
I believe that London-Kitchener-Tororonto is a quite viable corridor to gradually push into high speed direction through incremental upgrades (electrification, grade separation, and new straighter corridors). By 2030s when High Speed construction starts or completes, the population density along the corridor is viable. In France and Japan high speed trains are used like commuter trains.
Toronto-Kitchener-Ottawa-Montreal is another great combination that probably would also be viable within a couple of decades, with a few semiexpresses & expresses. The semiexpress high speed trains (e.g. a few selected extra stops on various HSR routes like Guelph, Brampton, Oshawa, Belleville, Kingston, Brockville, etc) mixed with express high speed trains (nonstop to Kitchener/Ottawa, or Kinston/London), in the Japan/France style model of express and semiexpress. Toronto housing market is permanently overpriced to a lot of people, and such people who do not want a condo, will buy along a high speed corridor, and will be even more viable when there's already really good transit networks in the cities (e.g. Ottawa's Confederation, Waterloo's ION LRT, Toronto's transit expansions over the next 20 years). If Kingston is only an hour away from your Toronto or Ottawa office, it easily is a future population-doubler.
Windsor may be a tougher sell until there are good high speed connections into the USA, with fast on-board pre-clearance so we can zoom across the country border like an Eurostar train.
I'd imagine London-Kitchener-Toronto can occur as a "GO RER Phase II" type 10-year plan -- before Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal, just because it's something well within Metrolinx's new modern spending budget trends (billions spent on several megaprojects), contrasting with VIA's cash-starved nature at the current moment. Five years ago, GO didn't know they would get a $13.5 billion dollar budget for a large electricifation initiative. Census
statistical analyses say, that by 2041, GTA's population will be
almost 50% bigger (Which is by the time HSR is finished built), and if current Ontario rail-happy spending accelerates (if GTA loves the new LRTs and RER trains), a new RER II budget could possibly include GO HSR (e.g. a future 10-year plan ~2025-2035). There are some HSR corridors in Japan and France that has lower average population density than than London-Kitchener-Toronto, and even Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal, but add 50% more to that! And the business case becomes even more solid, considering continued population growth beyond.
In both France and Japan, are single train stations that are serviced by
more high speed trains than today's Toronto Union servicing GO trains! Over 300 high speed trains in one day at respective flagship high speed train stations! Even an Ontario HSR introduction will just bring relatively few high speed trains (profitable) at first; certain sections of corridor can sustain it by 2030s especially if healthy population growth continues.
Even nonwithstanding Canada being the only G8 country without a HSR route -- we really need to begin planning HSR. If we begin planning for it now, it is probably not going to be running before the 2030s, and maybe not until around the 2040s. The
The Ontario HSR EA/feasibility study that's just been started, is as far as I know, the most serious study since the TurboTrain days of yesteryear. When the EA completes and comes out perhaps by 2018-ish into a new government (possibly as an election issue; and possibly a favourable new government), it might even be the one that very well eventually approve incremental construction during the 2020s that ultimately completes by the 2030s-2040s, for the most financially-viable segments of the corridor. Current Georgetown work and electrification initiatives count towards HSR progress, so the more incremental work that continues to be done, the less work, less budget, and less political capital it will take to introduce HSR. Ultimately, eventually, GO and VIA can both share the high speed corridor, much like TGV (France domestic HSR) and Eurostar (Europe international HSR) often share the same dedicated high speed track.
There is already at least a three-city corridor that is already viable for HSR. Even if not yet necessarily all the way to Windsor or QC (the starter will help begin that eventuality when financially viable to stretch to Windsor/Quebec). So we got to begin planning now for a starter three-city segment, before we're forced to expand the freeways even far more massively than many of us would like.
By 2030s, HSR is really a no-brainer...
