I honestly have a hard time seeing a private partner proposing anything below 250 km/h. With that said, the one thing that kind of scares me is that this HFR thing has been in planning for a while. Now, we are talking about HSR and back into the planning phase once again… It just seems like this is a never ending cycle of getting near a project that can be built and then starting over the whole process. At this point, I just want to see shovels in the ground.
It really seems like we might have been better starting off with smaller upgrades and working our way up. We’ve been trying to chew the whole project as one large package the entire time and it has taken us a really long time to just get to the point where the government is seeking private partners. I see it as a recognition from the government of their failure to get this off the ground.
When I did my internship at VIA, the prevailing feeling in engineering was this was the exact reason they didn’t get HSR or why it was taking so long. I’m glad it seems we’ve moved past it or that they underestimated either the pressure from the people or of the government’s willingness.
honestly… even if it’s 3h or 3h30m it would be a success.
YUL-YTZ total from your house to your office in Toronto is on average 3 hours. People will accept a 30 minute penalty if it means more reliability, ability to work for that entire time rather than just the hour it takes to fly, etc. And even if individuals don’t accept it, you can bet company policies will shift pretty fast in favour of the train. It’s a very low hanging fruit from a sustainability perspective.
I work in one of the largest professional services firm in the country, and flights account for 75% of our total emissions. 80% of our workforce is split between London and Québec City, I can totally see a world where the firm forces us to use VIA for corporate travel within the corridor, even if it means it takes an extra half hour to get there (they already provide incentives for us to take the train, such as booking business class, etc.)
I’m not saying there will be no one using it above the case, but the usage needs a baseline to reach profitability, especially in a ppp environment.
3h-3h30 will see usage, but enough to make the segment profitable and pull from the airlines? Less sure. Also customers will have less tolerance towards delays/issues when the comparison is more borderline.
Finally, don’t forget that increasing the travel time implicitly increases the cost to maintain an equivalent frequency to something faster. More trains, more staff, more garage space, etc.
I think it will absolutely pull from the airlines. Probably not from YUL-YYZ, as that is much more connection oriented, but definitely YUL-YTZ. Service doesn’t have to be faster. It just needs to be more reliable, frequent and comfortable. And the same goes for YOW-YTZ.
Also, the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor via Havelock sub. is about 560km, but about 110km of that is within the urban areas, where speeds will not be 300km/h. As it stands it takes 45 minutes to get from Coteau to Gare Centrale. Just here we’re already at 2h15m, without counting the time within Ottawa and Toronto urban areas. I think realistically if we have 300km/h service it’s going to be closer to 3 hours, which honestly sounds pretty amazing anyway. Don’t forget that this would make Montréal-Ottawa a 1h20m service, which would also be a game changer.
Je suis quand même sceptique du train à haute-vitesse considérant qu’il a été dit que le corridor ne serait pas électrifié dans son entièreté. Il y a probablement des experts en train qui pourrait confirmer ou infirmer, mais est-ce que ça existe vraiment du train haute vitesse bi-mode ?
Les ALP-45DP peuvent théoriquement atteindre 200 km/h en mode électrique (NJT ne les utilise pas à cette vitesse il me semble - leurs voitures sont certifiées pour 160 km/h)
Le Royaume-Uni opère plusieurs types d’automotrices bimodes à 200 km/h.
Siemens a vendu de nombreux trains bimodes (locomotive Charger + voitures Venture dont une voiture possède un pantographe et peut alimenter les moteurs de traction de la loco). 200 km/h.
Le Talgo 250 Dual peut circuler à 250 km/h avec ses voitures pendulaires.
Enfin, il existe une version de la Siemens Vectron certifiée pour 230 km/h et une autre version bimode. Je ne sais pas s’il est possible de combiner les deux technologies dans une même loco.
Also, I expect/hope that there will be express MTL-Toronto lines in operation, so at least 3 tracks around stations, and not be locked in a serial operation.
With a high-frequency operation (about every 30 mins), ballpark estimations is that we’ll need 4 more trains at least if the segment runs in 3h30 instead of 2h30. As mentioned, there are costs associated with slowing things down, which ideally we should compare to the costs associated to speeding up. In short, it’s not only about the infrastructure, the rolling stock is also affected.
I’d go out on a limb and say that it’s because we’re all assuming the necessary infrastructure will never be built. When the Shinkansen was built, viaducts were built to new auxiliary stations if necessary so trains can continue at speed in cities (Shin-Osaka for example). That will basically never ever happen here. The other option could be a tunnel, like the new HS backbone in the UK is planned to have under london. Again, horrifically expensive with zero political backing in North America for that kind of infra. The best we can hope for is collaboration on the west-island corridor between Exo, railway companies and via to have trains circulate at normal speeds
HS2 in London cannot run at full speed. The Montreal metro is a very good demonstration of why. You can feel a strong draft before the train arrives in the station. The train is effectively pushing a mass of air in front of it. The tunnel can be made larger to compensate, but this creates other problems. Larger tunnels create more opportunities for mayhem should a train jump the track. They also cost more. One of the solutions that was implemented in London is located under the passager platforms. The space under them is fully open which allows the air to move to the side. The ventilation systems, both passive and active are massively oversized.
As for viaducts, they aren’t a solution. The problem is the noise. Even the most aerodynamic High Speed Train create a lot of noise. Putting the train on a viaduct does not change that basic fact. The only difference is where the impact of that noise is felt. This isn’t too dissimilar from the noise near a highway and the noise near highway viaduct.
There are two main reasons why Japan built on viaducts. Japan is a country of mountains, which means that they have to bridge valleys and tunnel through mountains to deal with the constant elevation changes. In cities, the tight city grid makes it really hard to build a line at ground level.
In Montreal, Highway 20, the CN and CP alignment already form a barrier that is really hard to cross. It is also a natural corridor. There’s enough space to add two more tracks, but there might be other issues that we have to deal with. California kind of clues us into what we might be looking at since our railroads are integrated and operate mostly under the same regulations. They ended building a massive concrete wall between the freight railway and the high speed rail to prevent intrusion. It is a contingency for something that can be prevented with proper maintenance. It is the most stupid thing there is. You won’t see that on any other continent. It takes a heck of a lot of concrete to actually be able to stop a freight train. The entire thing has to be anchored into the ground with piers which take even more concrete. We might as well just build a viaduct at that point.
I was indeed thinking of the Shinkansen in my question, since that thing blasts through urban centers at speeds like it’s nobody’s business, and it’s absolutely beautiful seeing it do that.
I understand they’re noisy, but this is really a cultural issue rather than a technical one. The high speed trains we’d have running on our viaducts would pale in frequency compared to the non stop takeoffs and landings at the airport, or the droning of the highways blasted through our neighborhoods. I know, not a reason to add more noise, but I’d argue that the benefit outweighs the (at most 10 seconds) of noise of a train passing very quickly every 30 mins. We wouldn’t be the first to do it
The fact that they built viaducts for mountains and valleys is true, but they already had a railway network with large terminal stations and local lines when the Shinkansen was built. They could have done like us and had the trains plod through the last kilometers at regular speeds through the sinuous network to their terminals. But they really went for the gold and the viaducts and station in Osaka are extremely efficient. They’re totally a viable solution but we don’t have the will to do it
If I’m being generous, there’s 40 kilometer just to get from Vaudreuil-Dorion to Gare Centrale. There’s at least that many to exit on the other side. There’s another 30 kilometers in Toronto and the track has more bends which already limits the maximum speed possible. We can’t even seem to be able to get a project off the ground as it is and you want us to build dozens of kilometers of viaduct in Montreal and Toronto? The track is already mostly grade separated, so given our budget constraints, I’m willing to call it good enough. We could take care of the missing grade separations, but I really have a hard time justifying more than that.
Several reasons. Trains travelling at that speed require more distance between the tracks to account for the increased air pressure effects created by those speeds. That’s not always possible in urban areas. Also it takes a TGV about 10 minutes to reach 300km/h over 15-20km. In Montreal that’s the distance between Gare Centrale and Dorval. A more realistic expectation would be dedicated HFR tracks in the A20/CN/CP corridor that go up to 130-150km/h, with higher speeds after Vaudreuil.
The most recent Avelias and Fuxings can accelerate at 1.5 to 2 km/h/s, getting them to HSR speeds in three minutes. I’m not sure if the French/Europeans use that rate from urban stations, but the Chinese certainly do. But yes, even at that rate, it’s still West Island before top speed.
Another thing to consider is switches. The existing switches don’t allow for a train going anywhere near that speed to run through them. A standard switch has a maximum speed of 100 km/h. That means that to run at 300km/h, you either need a dedicated right of way, or a specialised high speed switch. Not counting the switches on the Gare Centrale viaduct, there’s 6 before we even get to Turcot. There’s quite a few near the train yard, and a few more in Vaudreuil-Dorion. That’s another reason why train speed is limited near population center, and likely one of the major reason why the Shinkansen runs on dedicated tracks. You really don’t want more switches than you strictly need.
I ran some numbers on expected travel time to get off island for a few different scenarios.
Using the existing Via Rail route with upgraded tracks, it takes 10 minutes to get to Dorval (with a stop at Dorval; the first 5 minutes are just to get past St.-Henri), 19.5 minutes to get to St.-Anne-de-Bellevue, and 21min to get to Projet des Pins afterwhich 300km/h is possible. Everything on-island, from St.-Henri to St.-Anne-de-Bellevue is limited to 200km/h given various constrained slight curves.
From Lucien-l’Allier, you save 2.5 minutes, but that’s probably not worth the worse access at Lucien-l’Allier unless a tunnel is driven eastward.
From du Parc, it’s about 20 seconds faster than from Gare-Central, which puts you on the way to Quebec, saving at least an additional 3 minutes for onward journeys even if a completely new du Parc tunnel were driven.
Calculated using Alon Levy’s code Speed Zones on Railroads | Pedestrian Observations
with .5 m/s² initial acceleration, 20 kW/ton, up to 2 m/s² horizontal acceleration in corners, and his ‘typical’ HSR wind resistance values.
What if we decided to completely bypass Gare Centrale? Personally, I think that the better solution would be to build a brand new station at Canora on elevated track. That would remove the need to go around the mountain to reach Gare Centrale. With the REM, it would still put the station within a few minutes of the city center. It would save time on a trip from Québec to Ottawa, or Toronto. It just seems like the logical choice given that the north shore of the St-Laurence is the chosen alignment from Montréal to Québec.
Also, FYI, if you want to drive an east west tunnel through the city center and land under Gare Centrale, the Westmount sub isn’t usable. From Vendôme, it goes downhill at almost the maximum slope that can be handled by trains all the way to Lucien L’Allier. That means that you really don’t have enough slope left to be able to get into a tunnel. If you want to get into a tunnel, you would have to use the alignment that was reserved during the Turcot interchange project and dive underground right as you get to the interchange. From there, you basically have a straight shot to Gare Centrale, but you would end up rather deep as you have to go under the orange line and the green line, as well as under all of the tracks and tunnels already present at Gare Centrale. Given just how much infrastructure there already is in that neighborhood, it would be a highly complex, costly project that could easily take a decade to build.
