Yes but the reason it was unpopular was because it's in the middle of nowhere. The planned express train from Mirabel to central Montreal was never built, let alone a connection to central Ottawa. Adding a high-speed rail link fundamentally changes the calculus for Mirabel's functionality. The...

Well yeah that's the whole point of the discussion. We're noting that selecting a Laval alignment instead of a Dorval alignment means that the line will not serve YUL, which is one of the main destinations for current train/bus trips in the Ottawa-Montreal corridor. It's also odd considering Air...

Many people call YUL "Dorval airport" (at least here in Ottawa), and there seems to be pretty universal knowledge that Dorval station is near YUL

Oh yeah easily well over 9. And that goes for the current Via service too - the only reason these buses can exist is that so many people are priced out by Via. And for every bus passenger there's probably another prospective rail passenger who decided to drive or carpool instead. I'm heading...

It's way more than that. I checked this Friday and there are 30 intercity bus departures from Ottawa Via Station, which is more than double the number of train departures: 15 buses per day go specifically from Ottawa Via station to Toronto Union station (in addition to all the buses from other...

The white bar is in the HTA, the issue is that everything else about the Waterloo signals is forbidden. I explain at 2:50 in this video:

Okay but global standard is to not build the entire route as a dedicated high speed line, at least not as part of the initial rollout. The Shinkansen and Alta Velocidad Española are obvious exceptions since they use different track gauges and/or loading gauges than the conventional network...

Obviously we're not talking about level crossings on the high-speed segments, we're talking about the approaches into Toronto and Montreal where trains will be travelling below 160 km/h. Anyway, considering the routes that seem to be the frontrunners (Toronto via the Don Branch or Stouffville...

It would only make sense to build a detour to a downtown station in Ottawa if there are separate Montreal-Ottawa, Ottawa-Toronto and Montreal-Toronto services. But for the first decade(s) of operation it would make most sense to have Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto through services to enable higher...

There is a case for this, and it's been done many times before in Toronto. See for example the line between St Clair and Summerhill that used to be above ground. However that has almost nothing to do with snow - it's extremely rare for snow to fall so quickly it overwhelms the trains' ability to...

White bar in Toronto means "turn left or right but do not go straight". For example, at King & Sumach, the eastbound and northbound white bar signals come on simultaneously, allowing eastbound right and northbound left/right turning streetcars to proceed simultaneously. The HTA also technically...

You can find the answer to this question by looking at train schedules.

This is the bracing that has allowed the former 10 mph (16 km/h) slow order for UP trains at high-level platforms to be increased to 30 mph (48 km/h). It's a very noticeable improvement for the speed of trains entering and exiting stations. 2-car trains can now accelerate at full power out of...

Given the size of Ottawa (1.5M metro area) it probably makes most sense to include a relatively central station location despite the travel time implications. In that case Alto could reuse the existing railway that the federal government already owns and the relatively central railway station...

That's where the original Transitway station was. It sucked because you always needed to cross the crazy pickup/dropoff lanes and bus lanes in front of the station to get between the OC Transpo station and the Via Rail station. The current location is much better since it allows people to...