I dont see a point to this honestly. It would save what, 5 mins while reducing the potential ridership pool by hundreds of thousands without peterborough and trois-rivieres, or more than a million without ottawa. Improve the approach speeds to Montreal and Toronto and this definitely isnt necessary
Id also like to add that for a train that currently doesnt even exist and has no solid plan to exist, its a bit premature to be reducing its theoretical coverage lol
The Ottawa bypass is definitely a bad idea, but I’m not completely against express trains skipping some stops. For example there’s commonly 3-4 stops proposed in the greater Montreal; does every single train needs to make every single stops?
I’ve been messing with NYMBI rail ( its a game simulation where you design and operate a rail network ) and measuring platforms. One of the common themes seems to be that a lot of the existing platforms are rather narrow by modern standards. Platforms lengths get longer as we go westward along the proposed line.
The platform at Gare du Palais is by far the shortest at 200 meters with the nose pointing out of the building. My best guess about Bonaventure’s platforms is that they are somewhere between 300 and 380 meters long. The longest platform in Ottawa is 560 meters long. In Toronto, most platforms are 380 meters long while the longest is a ludicrous 720 meters long. Do they even have use for such a long platform?
With Québec having the shortest platform of the proposed line, I’m wondering if that’s going to be an issue? All other locations have platforms of at least 380 meters. There definitely isn’t sufficient space in Québec to lengthen the platform at the current location. The platforms are already as long as they can be without intruding on the switches. Also, the newer part of Gare du Palais is seriously ugly when compared to the beautiful old building in front of it.
I believe it’s for the Canadian train service between Toronto and Vancouver. I don’t know if the train is still that long in 2023 but according to this forum, back in 2004, the consist was half a mile long.
La plupart des quais des grandes gares en Europe font 400 m de long, et les rames TGV font 200 m de long (ça permet de faire des unités multiples de 400 m).
Cependant, les Avelia Liberty d’Amtrak font 212 m et à ma connaissance, ils ne roulent pas en unités multiples. On peut probablement se débrouiller avec des trains de 200-250 m pour commencer.
250, ça ne rentre pas dans la gare du palais. 200, c’est vraiment juste, et il n’y a véritablement que 2 des 4 plateformes qui font cette longueur. Après ça, on dépasse la switch, et on juste après ça, il y a le pont qui traverse la rivière. Sérieux, cette gare là, elle est vraiment mal faite.
Honnêtement, je pense que ce n’est pas un problème. Si nous dépensons 20 milliards pour ce projet (ce qui est douteux parce que les conservateurs détestent les trains et détestent dépenser de l’argent - c’est ça le projet en gros lol), nous pouvons consacrer quelques millions à la construction d’un nouveau pont et l’aiguillage. Cela peut nous rapporter 50m supplémentaires.
Cars = freedom 
Yep.
For a train once an hour, there should be enough capacity, even with only 200m long trains, to adequately serve Québec City. Gare Centrale is the bigger problem. Ideally, you’d want to be able to run 400m trains from Montreal to Toronto, but we’ll probably have to make do with 300m trains due to the constraints at Gare Centrale.
Ce n’est pas une question de “construire un nouveau pont”. L’aiguillage est coincé entre le bâtiment et le pont. Il y a une voie du pont qui est réservé pour le port de Québec et qui occupe une partie de l’espace. Le pont est coincé entre le boulevard Jean-Lesage et l’usine White Birch Paper. Il y a une autre série d’aiguillage de l’autre bord de la rivière. Ce second aiguillage est en partie en dessous du viaduc de l’autoroute 440 et passe entre ses piliers. Il y a également la cour de tri du port de Québec de l’autre coté de l’autoroute. Bref, c’est un cas de une chose va rapidement mener à une autre et une autre.
Si on décide un jour qu’on veut une gare plus longue, la meilleure chose à faire va être de mettre ça dans un tunnel en dessous du terminus d’autobus de la gare. Ça va être moins compliqué que d’essayer de faire quoi que ce soit avec ce qui existe. Il faudrait réserver l’espace adjacent au boulevard des Capucins parce que c’est probablement là qu’il faudrait mettre le portail. Le poste Limoilou d’Hydro-Québec occupe l’espace de l’autre coté.
Pour le segment Québec/Montréal si on veut avoir une offre en adéquation avec la demande et maintenir un service fréquent (disons 1 train/h en moyenne) je doute fortement qu’on ait besoin de trains de 400 m de long. 200 sera probablement amplement suffisant, quitte a utiliser des voitures a 2 niveaux comme les TGV duplex.
In my fortwo (diesel) I could drive West Island to the Capital and back on one $48 tank. In my MINI I can do it on about $30 of electricity – though in a BEV with greater autonomy it would cost closer to $20 round-trip. You really think they can fill one 200 metre train an hour to Quebec by attracting drivers away from their cars? I can see Montreal-Toronto being successful if travel times are truly shortened; I can’t see the attraction of an expensive, two-and-a-half hour train ride to Quebec.
I don’t know the exact number of people who do Montreal-Quebec, there doesn’t seem to be any public data on that. But on the 20 between Montreal and Trois-Rivières there is an average of about 40k cars everyday and between Trois-Rivières and Québec about 30k. Obviously I don’t know exactly from where they come and all, but there is a lot of cars alone on the 20. On the 40 it’s about equal, but with a bit less cars (-10k average per day compare to the same segment on the 20)
https://geoegl.msp.gouv.qc.ca/igo2/apercu-qc/?context=mtq&visiblelayers=circulation_routier
So I do think a 200 meters long train every hours could absolutely be filled if it competes with cars in term of price and usefulness.
Paris-Dijon (similar distance to Montreal-Quebec) cost between 10€ and 45€ for second class (between 30 and 100€ for first), they have at least 16 trains per day despite the city being 1/2 the size of Quebec and it takes between 1h30 and 2h to do the trip.
Agree. It would have to be quite a bit faster than driving, to make up for a true lack of flexibility at each end (“freedom”), and would have to be as cheap or cheaper than driving. But we – federally and provincially – are investing heavily in EV charging infra, so a very average EV (Ioniq 5, Tesla Model 3, etc) has 400+ km of range and costs around $4 to “fill up” at home. On that $4 it can make it from here to Quebec, and easily back to Trois-Rivières, at which point it’ll need about another 22 kWh to get home, which will cost around $11 at a Circuit Électrique. There really isn’t any way that a non-HSR can compete with that.
I agree that electric car are making it a bit harder, but honestly i don’t think they’re so important. If the train is competitive solo and in family vs a gaz car it’ll be perfectly good. In France trains are very used despite their electricity coming from nuclear. And HSR yeah, but I don’t think it’s absolutely needed. Just a train that can do 250km/h on a lot of the way so that it takes 1h30-2h30 like in France that would be good enough. You can still take a train in the morning and one in the evening and have time to do stuff.
But it’s true that their would need to improve transit in Quebec for visitors. Which with the destruction of the tramway we have seen a really good one go away sadly. But I think it could still work out.
250km/h is HSR…
That is the problem. Trains can be competitive solo, but with a family, not a single chance ! Even the subway in Montreal isn’t with a family of 5. It’s often cheaper to pay the parking !
3 kids is really not all that typical of families with children anymore, plus under 5yo it’s free, and if theres that many kids, they’re often grown enough for it to be practical. If that wasn’t the case, schools and daycares would just not use the metro.
That’s why I don’t understand the Liberals — clearly vote seeking — obsession to add so many stops. It’s fine if in some localities the car is the better option; don’t degrade the overall service just to make it marginally attractive there.
I agree it’s hard to be competitive outside of solo travel, but still. Rn doing Montreal-Québec next weekend with a family of 4 (2 adults, 1 kid who’s 8 and one 13) cost 595$ before taxes for the round trip (and in two weeks it cost 430$ with that being the cheapest price they offer). Departing at the cheapest time on Friday and coming back on Sunday afternoon.
Using SNCF connect, to do a similar trip with the same family in France between Paris and Dijon it would cost 189€ or 280$ after taxes which is still a lot. But it’s reasonable I think.