I have to wonder, could we STILL have yul as a Terminus à la train de l’ouest for the TGV?
Would make some sense is cadense is selected with air Canada in the party
Building a TGV via Peterborough or a TGV via Kingston really makes no difference, and many of the conclusions being drawn here are not taking into account the reality on the ground.
If following the Peterborough alignment, there are several pros and cons:
Pros:
- A large portion of the alignment is through crown land and land with little to no value, with very low expropriation costs.
- There are significantly less overpasses and underpasses to build on the route between Peterborough and Ottawa thanks to the remoteness of the region
- There is significantly more potential for commuter ridership between Peterborough and Toronto than other corridors mentioned. Peterborough would essentially become the next Barrie owing to its new proximity to Toronto.
- Only one major city on the alignment means the TGV would only ever need to make 1 stop between Toronto and Ottawa.
Cons: - It’s hillier
- Peterborough CMA is, as of today, slightly smaller smaller than Kingston CMA. (120,000 vs 160,000)
In the grand scheme of things, I think folks are making far too big a deal out of this. If you go via the lake, you have to expropriate far more valuable farmland and homes than going via the north. You also have to build several times more overpasses and underpasses, and probably several quite complex viaducts to negotiate passage through the many large towns. You are going to have speeding trains passing through about a dozen cities, with no stops, because HSR is not meant to serve every town on the route. Essentially, every city on the lakeshore except for Kingston is irrelevant when it comes to ridership because they won’t be served. You also lose the easy new commuter hub, because Kingston is much further from Toronto than Peterborough (107 km vs 235 km).
So we either spend lots of money negotiating hills and lakes, or we spend lots of money negotiating hundreds of overpasses and underpasses, highways, towns and complicated expropriations. All with 10x the NIMBYs.
Have fun trying to find an easy HSR alignment that passes through here:
that doesn’t set off a tidal wave of NIMBYs
Additionally, there’s the whole question of service patterns. Passing through Peterborough, it makes perfect sense to have Montréal-Ottawa-Toronto be only one route. But passing through Kingston? Then it looks more favourable to have 2 routes, because you add almost 50km to go back south to lakeshore to Kingston from Ottawa. This means either twice the trains for the operator or half the frequency for both cities.
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This is a dangerous assumption. There is a far greater need for wildlife crossings along the Peterborough route.
As for the alignments
The CP ROW can have tracks added to handle all freight through here, leaving the CN ROW for HSR. A small taking through farmland is neaded east of Trenton to ease a curve.
This is one of the trickier spots, for which a shallow tunnel under public right-of-way probably makes the most sense.
The CN right-of-way is pretty straight here for HSR. The problem is that not all freight can be removed from this corridor. Belleville has a significant yard which is not accessible from the alternative CP right-of way, on top of the CP right-of-way being not very wide and thus even 2 tracks is a tight fit when 3 are probably needed for capacity. A solution whereby 2 HSR and 1 freight track run through on the CN ROW might work, with appropriate protection to guard against freight fowling the HSR track also installed.
Just bypass. There are trickier spots between here and Kingston. I would suggest that Napanee is where HSR should leave the lakeshore corridor, with a local connecting train providing service to Kingston (and Brockville and Cornwall).
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Est-ce que c’est le genre de détail qui devait être dans les propositions des consortiums? Ou ca va être à planifier avant le développement?
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Je ne pense pas. Ça ne sert pas à grande chose de dévoiler tous les détails au public, avec le risque qui le nimbys s’en prend a votre proposition. Je pense que les détails qui vont être montrés au public vont être assez simple. Jusqu’à ce qu’on choisi le consortium préférer.
Could smaller ‘commuter’ trains run along an HSR alignment?
For example, could a person living in T-R commute to Montreal or Quebec City for a day of work?
I imagine that there won’t be enough demand for regular ‘all-stops’ HSR trains, but could smaller trains operate on the same tracks with higher frequencies on segments where there is enough demand?
Your tunnel under Cobourg could easily add 5 billion to the price tag.
As for trenton, no private partner is going to add a side quest of completely reorganising the eastern Canadian freight rail industry for giggles by closing the CN mainline. You’d need to build a multi billion dollar viaduct going over all of that development in trenton.
The second you start having to tunnel and bridge over every town on the lakeshore, it’s a no brainer that it becomes easier to just bypass them via the northern alignment.
Personally, I don’t know why this idea exists of switching the alignment from the Peterborough route to the lakeshore. VIA’s entire basis for this project was that building a new rail corridor is cheaper in the north. If it was cheaper to just build a parallel dedicated corridor on the lakeshore, VIA would never have suggested using the Peterborough alignment. Now that the project is HSR, it’s impossible to follow the CN Row on the lakeshore or the old CP alignment through the north route. Both will have to be greenfield, so just do the greenfield construction where it’s simpler and less intrusive on a half dozen cities. Blowing up rocks to cut trenches for trains and highways is something we’ve been doing in Canada for 200 years and we’re damn good at it now.
It is hilly between Ottawa and Peterborough, but it is not that hilly. We aren’t talking the rockies here, we’re talking a series of drumlins and long linear hills that are quite conducive to construction. We managed to build a highway through it in the 30s, we can do it again now. As for wildlife crossings, that is entirely valid, however wildlife crossings can be built at much wider intervals than road crossings and for a fraction of the cost
Finally, afaik there are about 400 level crossings between Toronto and MTL on the CN line. A lakeshore HSR route would have to deal with every single one, maybe even more. According to my very quick count, the northern route has about 140 between Toronto and Ottawa.
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I am sure the consortiums will try to tap into commuter markets, possibly with early trains arriving before 9 in Montréal and Québec.
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There’s also the fact that there’s a lot of rivers and marshes due to the topography.
I don’t have an exact count, but last I checked, the northern route had at least 400, and that does not account for the numerous marshes that will have to be crossed. About half of those are between Toronto and Tweed. The place is absolutely riddled with small roads. When Ontario was settled, they cut the land into square plots and built a road between them. On average, that’s one road every kilometer.
What is thankful is that the hwy 7 corridor is so sparsely populated, most of those roads can just be closed. On the lakeshore however, there are a lot more roads that cannot be severed.
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On peut rêver ! «if you build it, they will come» !
Non, mais juste de construire une ligne dédiée, aux normes, qui permettrait déjà à Amtrak de rouler à une vitesse décente ! Mais c’est mon erreur, je croyais que la ligne actuelle allait à Boston, alors que c’est New York. Pas normal que le bus soit plus rapide que le train ! Le train actuel a une vitesse moyenne de 50km/h, aussi rapide que les prévisions du tramway de l’est !
Peut-être que le tramway de l’est pourrait se rendre à New York
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C’est bien de penser à Montréal pour un TGV vers les USA mais je crois que les Américains seront plus intéressé à relier Toronto à New York surtout qu’il y a plus d’arrêts intéressants le long du Empire Corridor entre Buffalo et Albany…
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oui, on pourrait prolonger le tunnel de repentigny vers Plattsburgh et ensuite suivre l’autoroute jusqu’à Manhattan. Le tunnel pourrait doubler comme un nouveau accélérateur de particules pour CERN pendant la nuit
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Un tramway couchette? Une première mondiale certainement 
Sinon je tiens à rappeler l’existence de cette étude/crayon avancé que j’avais trouvée qui analyse le prix d’une ligne TGV avec les modalités du contrat VIA HFR, mais en assumant les meilleurs coûts possibles qu’on peut voir à l’international et en optimisant la vitesse avec toujours une optique du coût par seconde de trajet optimisé.
C’est utile pour rappeler les bases d’un projet HSR sur cet alignement, notemment que oui, c’est parfaitement possible d’avoir Toronto Montréal en trois heures en passant par le Bouclier Canadien. Même avec toute cette section de 67km à seulement 150kmh, ce qui évite de devoir tout tunneler.
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So basically via rail would be the one rebuilding the Dorval multimodal station to then relinquish it to via hfr-tgf
CBC Front burner podcast with @reecemartin
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Great summary of not just the value of HSR but also the greater systemic issue of Canada being bad at megaprojects and our current deficiencies with VIA.
overall if somebody with 0% knowledge of rail listened to this they’d leave informed, if not a fair bit disheartened by our chances of actually building a TGV.
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@reecemartin était invité au balado Front Burner de CBC pour parler de TGV
C’est sur YouTube
Why can’t Canada have fast trains? | Front Burner
The federal government is set to announce plans for high-speed rail between Toronto and Quebec City. Will Canada finally get on board with rail travel?
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