Whatever the cost, I am so happy this finally got greenlit. Quick and effective public transportation is so beneficial to society in myriads of ways. I hope this is the first of many big...
Whatever the cost, I am so happy this finally got greenlit.
Quick and effective public transportation is so beneficial to society in myriads of ways. I hope this is the first of many big transportation projets. The car-dominant mindset needs to die.
One of the consortiums has both the RATP and Renfe in it. I am no expert, but that one sounds like the best choice, since the French and the Spanish have a lot of experience building HSR....
One of the consortiums has both the RATP and Renfe in it. I am no expert, but that one sounds like the best choice, since the French and the Spanish have a lot of experience building HSR. Hopefully this goes through and goes reasonably well, in order to have an example to follow of true HSR in North America.
I'm sure there's plenty of valuable experience anyway but RATP is not SNCF. It's like the equivalent of New York's MTA instead of having someone from Amtrak.
RATP
I'm sure there's plenty of valuable experience anyway but RATP is not SNCF. It's like the equivalent of New York's MTA instead of having someone from Amtrak.
I'm not Canadian so I'd be interested to hear from those who are: can we simply expect that this will be cancelled (or watered down to mediocre insignificance) after the impending Conservative...
I'm not Canadian so I'd be interested to hear from those who are: can we simply expect that this will be cancelled (or watered down to mediocre insignificance) after the impending Conservative landslide?
Given high speed rail is trotted out whenever the Liberals are down in the polls, and the long history of Conservative governments cancelling transit projects, I doubt this will ever happen. Some...
Given high speed rail is trotted out whenever the Liberals are down in the polls, and the long history of Conservative governments cancelling transit projects, I doubt this will ever happen. Some fun background reading:
Comment box Scope: analysis Tone: neutral Opinion: lightly Sarcasm/humor: none Cool project. Not clear on routing. If they’re serving Peterborough, it looks like at least a partially greenfield...
Comment box
Scope: analysis
Tone: neutral
Opinion: lightly
Sarcasm/humor: none
Cool project. Not clear on routing. If they’re serving Peterborough, it looks like at least a partially greenfield route, depending on whether they rejoin the existing right of way or build new from Peterborough to Ottawa.
From a network perspective, it’s more important to boost connections between Toronto and Montreal with each other than Quebec City with anything else, and the cost-to-benefit of including Ottawa initially seems relatively favorable. The first two are large population centers; the other two are politically relevant, but have smaller populations. For reference:
Toronto: 2.73 million
Montreal: 1.83 million
Ottawa: 934k
Quebec City: 532k
Laval: 423k, but this is functionally part of Montreal
Trois-Rivières: 139k
Peterborough: 81k (???)
A routing from Peterborough to Ottawa would potentially bypass the small cities of Belleville (51k), Kingston (132k), and Brockville (22k), which slightly lessens the benefit of going to Ottawa.
Ottawa is sizable and is worth routing to somehow, if nothing else as a spur, but it’s a more indirect route between the big cities and would increase travel times against a hypothetical direct route if it’s the only high-speed option. The advantage is that it would strengthen the Toronto–Montreal city pairing by default… but I think it would only be a net positive with a greenfield route, not a spur off the existing right-of-way.
The viability of a high-speed rail line is directly proportional to the ratio between the population of the city pairs (nodes) and the length between each pair (edges). Multi-node routes can have stacking ridership, so it would be great to add smaller cities later, but the key part is large cities that are near each other. Delahanty calls this a “gravity model,” as in large cities have larger gravity and routes between them induce more demand than routes between smaller cities. This is why the US Northeast Corridor is so profitable.
In existing trackage, Ottawa is sort of on the way to Montreal (if you consider a perpendicular spur “on the way”), but the routing is not ideal. The right-of-way along Lake St. Francis is much straighter than the inland route. It’s owned by Canadian National (private) rather than Via, but if the government is committed to making this high-speed, it would be easy to add additional electrified trackage as needed. They could even purchase the land for the electric tracks. The straightness of the right-of-way is what allows for higher speeds. Bendy tracks cause constant slowdowns. The existing track near Ottawa would need significant realignment if it’s going to be 300 km/h.
It would be possible to prioritize the Toronto–Montreal route along the existing right-of-way and then later build a greenfield route to Ottawa by way of Petersborough, because the existing spur is not direct. But perhaps that is too expensive. It would be a lot of new track, and somewhat redundant. From an infrastructure cost perspective, I would be happy with Toronto–Ottawa–Montreal entirely greenfield, but there’s going to be a financial temptation to use the existing tracks east of Ottawa to Montreal, which are going to be pretty slow for the above reasons.
Quebec City is small and quite far from Montreal, with no significant population centers between. That should also be a later portion constructed to high-speed standards.
Anything will be an improvement over Canada’s existing rail system. I’m interested to see where this project leads and if it breaks ground.
Obligatory video whenever this comes up. And this is from 12 years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W32klYkTxCQ
"The future, never!"
Too perfect.
Whatever the cost, I am so happy this finally got greenlit.
Quick and effective public transportation is so beneficial to society in myriads of ways. I hope this is the first of many big transportation projets. The car-dominant mindset needs to die.
One of the consortiums has both the RATP and Renfe in it. I am no expert, but that one sounds like the best choice, since the French and the Spanish have a lot of experience building HSR. Hopefully this goes through and goes reasonably well, in order to have an example to follow of true HSR in North America.
I'm sure there's plenty of valuable experience anyway but RATP is not SNCF. It's like the equivalent of New York's MTA instead of having someone from Amtrak.
Yeah that's fair. I was a bit surprised about that as well.
I'm not Canadian so I'd be interested to hear from those who are: can we simply expect that this will be cancelled (or watered down to mediocre insignificance) after the impending Conservative landslide?
Given high speed rail is trotted out whenever the Liberals are down in the polls, and the long history of Conservative governments cancelling transit projects, I doubt this will ever happen. Some fun background reading:
https://activehistory.ca/blog/2020/02/21/end-of-the-line-the-history-of-canadas-precarious-passenger-rail-network/
https://www.cbc.ca/archives/35-years-of-toronto-transit-that-never-happened-1.5094563
Comment box
Cool project. Not clear on routing. If they’re serving Peterborough, it looks like at least a partially greenfield route, depending on whether they rejoin the existing right of way or build new from Peterborough to Ottawa.
From a network perspective, it’s more important to boost connections between Toronto and Montreal with each other than Quebec City with anything else, and the cost-to-benefit of including Ottawa initially seems relatively favorable. The first two are large population centers; the other two are politically relevant, but have smaller populations. For reference:
A routing from Peterborough to Ottawa would potentially bypass the small cities of Belleville (51k), Kingston (132k), and Brockville (22k), which slightly lessens the benefit of going to Ottawa.
Ottawa is sizable and is worth routing to somehow, if nothing else as a spur, but it’s a more indirect route between the big cities and would increase travel times against a hypothetical direct route if it’s the only high-speed option. The advantage is that it would strengthen the Toronto–Montreal city pairing by default… but I think it would only be a net positive with a greenfield route, not a spur off the existing right-of-way.
The viability of a high-speed rail line is directly proportional to the ratio between the population of the city pairs (nodes) and the length between each pair (edges). Multi-node routes can have stacking ridership, so it would be great to add smaller cities later, but the key part is large cities that are near each other. Delahanty calls this a “gravity model,” as in large cities have larger gravity and routes between them induce more demand than routes between smaller cities. This is why the US Northeast Corridor is so profitable.
In existing trackage, Ottawa is sort of on the way to Montreal (if you consider a perpendicular spur “on the way”), but the routing is not ideal. The right-of-way along Lake St. Francis is much straighter than the inland route. It’s owned by Canadian National (private) rather than Via, but if the government is committed to making this high-speed, it would be easy to add additional electrified trackage as needed. They could even purchase the land for the electric tracks. The straightness of the right-of-way is what allows for higher speeds. Bendy tracks cause constant slowdowns. The existing track near Ottawa would need significant realignment if it’s going to be 300 km/h.
It would be possible to prioritize the Toronto–Montreal route along the existing right-of-way and then later build a greenfield route to Ottawa by way of Petersborough, because the existing spur is not direct. But perhaps that is too expensive. It would be a lot of new track, and somewhat redundant. From an infrastructure cost perspective, I would be happy with Toronto–Ottawa–Montreal entirely greenfield, but there’s going to be a financial temptation to use the existing tracks east of Ottawa to Montreal, which are going to be pretty slow for the above reasons.
Quebec City is small and quite far from Montreal, with no significant population centers between. That should also be a later portion constructed to high-speed standards.
Anything will be an improvement over Canada’s existing rail system. I’m interested to see where this project leads and if it breaks ground.