Urban Sky
Senior Member
Nobody stops anglophone newspapers to pick up and report on stories published by their francophone peers...
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VIA Rail
- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
Northern Light
Superstar
It only takes one or two interested reporters; and the proportion of the market traveling by train between Montreal-Ottawa is reasonably material, particularly to the Montreal market, plus VIA's HQ is in Montreal.
I don't think he was suggesting that.......
I do think, Toronto newsrooms are thinner than they used to be, and the number of reporters who read French probably isn't great either.
innsertnamehere
Superstar
VIA is based in Montreal and HFR is a very Quebec based project (it will probably benefit Montreal more than any other city), so it's understandable that it gets the most media attention there.
Xav
Active Member
The mayor of Québec City retweeted the article and said he'd advocate for HSR when he meets with Justin Trudeau.
crs1026
Superstar
The various municipal and provincial officials in Quebec have been far more vocal about wanting this project than their counterparts in Ontario.
Not surprising that the media would have made more of this in Quebec.
- Paul
Not surprising that the media would have made more of this in Quebec.
- Paul
nfitz
Superstar
Globe seems to have coverage much of the time. I'm not sure about the other national paper.
kEiThZ
Superstar
It's also an attempt by Alstom to get a larger contract with little to no additional engineering. Just ship Avelia Liberty north.
kEiThZ
Superstar
This has been covered so many times. Once you cross the threshold speed for grade separation there's no point stopping at 200 kph. The marginal cost to 300kph is low.
crs1026
Superstar
For the equipment, certainly. But it’s a whole whack of right of way engineering and grade separation over and above what the vanilla HFR (if it still is relevant) requires. I presume they have a consortium helping them with the pitch.
- Paul
- Paul
SaugeenJunction
Senior Member
innsertnamehere
Superstar
Took a look - quite interesting.
Travel time proposals:
The asterisk is in french despite the rest of the slide deck being in English, for some reason, but google translate says that it says "conservative approach with low speed segments", which I assume is intended to say that travel times are conservative estimates and could actually be better.
Travel time proposals:
The asterisk is in french despite the rest of the slide deck being in English, for some reason, but google translate says that it says "conservative approach with low speed segments", which I assume is intended to say that travel times are conservative estimates and could actually be better.
CapitalSeven
Senior Member
Interesting play. A couple of takeaways. The maps and zooms show they envisage using the don valley route rather than the link through Scarborough. And the map shows 200-300 kph through the existing Havelock-Tay railbed section with no indication of how that could be achieved. Straightening it through earthworks and bridges, or bypassing it to the south, would cost billions. Whose billions?
nfitz
Superstar
Wow, that website is tough to navigate - here's the link for the presentation - https://drive.google.com/file/d/13dz3mo91nVOH7EYxYAl1p6Kod7wbry0Q
It is interesting to see that they achieve 3 hours from Montreal to Toronto, despite much of the route only being 144 km/hr or 200 km/hr.
It would be interesting to compare to previous studies, with more complete HFR, to see what travel time they predicted.
The presentation, in particular this figure, does make it abundantly clear why Montreal to Toronto service using the HFR model and a travel time of over 4 hours, will not attract many more travellers than now (which I've been saying for years now. Even 3 hours is pushing it. If they could upgrade Union to Peterborough, and by pass Ottawa, they might get closer to the 2.5 hour sweet spot. Assuming Hitachi's number's are correct.
For reference, the current VIA route along Lake Ontario is about 530 km, and the HFR route through Ottawa is about 555 km. Perhaps someone has the proper distances?
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robmausser
Senior Member
Yeah this map makes no sense to me. The Toronto to Peterborough segment once outside of the city proper is actually straighter and less curved than the section they are saying they can go 200-300kmh on.
nfitz
Superstar
I'd think it would be a combination of level crossings being much more frequent there, and that it would interfere too much with CP. What are the track separation distances like at 300 km/hr - especially between passenger and freight?