[ownthesky]

Okay so I've come to the conclusion the primary benefit of alto is basically to spend $90B to allow people to move up to 2 hours away by train to wherever they work. (I've implied a lot but basically flying roundtrip can be done in a single day for business meetings).

And why would people do that to themselves? That's right because rent is too expensive in the city they work or they want to raise a family and houses are too expensive in the city they work.

The correct solution is spending $90B building so much PBRs like the commies did in Vienna, that private land lords have zero price control. Build some fantastic family sized rentals all across the GTA go train line (I'm looking at you mimico).

It's absurd the Federal government is able to expropriate land for HSR but can't expropriate land next to a commuter train station to build family oriented apartment buildings?

Open up the departures page for Pearson and Bill Bishop, CTRL+F and search for "Ottawa" or "Montreal". There's your answer. The business model already exists today, this nonsense about "moving up to 2 hours away" is either because you're massively overthinking this or twisting reality into a bizarre fantasy.

 

[ownthesky]

At the very least, including more intermediate stations along the line for an overlaid regional service would help provide some tangible benefit to the communities the line passes through, which would reduce political opposition. The current Alto plans seem to be only 1 or 2 trains per hour in each direction which is only about 10% of the capacity of a high speed line. It's pretty common for high speed services to only a small proportion of a high-speed line's capacity, hence why many other countries use the spare capacity to run fast regional trains on the line.

Here's a summary I made of the conventional services on high-speed railways in the Netherlands (starting at 7:00 in the video). At the time there were up to 5 conventional trains per hour on the high speed line, and just 1 or 2 high-speed trains. There are now up 6 conventional trains per hour (still 1 or 2 high speed).

I agree that a local service would fall under Provincial jurisdiction, but I'm not convinced Alto would allow the Province to operate any service on the high speed tracks even if they did offer funding. They seem pretty adamant that they want no infrastructure shared with Metrolinx or the RTM even if it means increasing the project budget by billions of dollars and leaving 90% of the railway's capacity unused.

In addition to a Toronto-Peterborough GO service, Montreal's St-Jérome and Mascouche lines would benefit massively from a direct connection to downtown via Alto's proposed Mont-Royal tunnel rather than their current circuitous route around the mountain or a transfer to the metro.

Excuse my ignorance of track engineering, but if hypothetically a bunch of switches are added to the section between, say Peterborough and Ottawa, to allow small towns to access the mainline, wouldn't this add a ton of maintenance complexity to the part of the line that needs to remain at top speed for this business model to work? Sounds like a ton of liability for a rail line that will see terrible winters with zero benefit.

 

[lenaitch]

At the very least, including more intermediate stations along the line for an overlaid regional service would help provide some tangible benefit to the communities the line passes through, which would reduce political opposition. The current Alto plans seem to be only 1 or 2 trains per hour in each direction which is only about 10% of the capacity of a high speed line. It's pretty common for high speed services to only a small proportion of a high-speed line's capacity, hence why many other countries use the spare capacity to run fast regional trains on the line.

Here's a summary I made of the conventional services on high-speed railways in the Netherlands (starting at 7:00 in the video). At the time there were up to 5 conventional trains per hour on the high speed line, and just 1 or 2 high-speed trains. There are now up 6 conventional trains per hour (still 1 or 2 high speed).

I agree that a local service would fall under Provincial jurisdiction, but I'm not convinced Alto would allow the Province to operate any service on the high speed tracks even if they did offer funding. They seem pretty adamant that they want no infrastructure shared with Metrolinx or the RTM even if it means increasing the project budget by billions of dollars and leaving 90% of the railway's capacity unused.

In addition to a Toronto-Peterborough GO service, Montreal's St-Jérome and Mascouche lines would benefit massively from a direct connection to downtown via Alto's proposed Mont-Royal tunnel rather than their current circuitous route around the mountain or a transfer to the metro.

Assuming the proposed northern corridor, other than Toronto-Peterborough, which others have discussed, any other regional or local service would only avail very small population centres, probably much smaller that any encountered in Europe. Perth is about 6500, Smiths Falls about 9500. The others along that corridor barely break a couple thousand. Again assuming many actually want to go to a city, in a hurry.

 

[crs1026]

Excuse my ignorance of track engineering, but if hypothetically a bunch of switches are added to the section between, say Peterborough and Ottawa, to allow small towns to access the mainline, wouldn't this add a ton of maintenance complexity to the part of the line that needs to remain at top speed for this business model to work? Sounds like a ton of liability for a rail line that will see terrible winters with zero benefit.

The number of turnouts for two or three local stops is marginal compared to the baseline number that will be included for crossovers, assuming a double track line.

A local station would need an over or underpass as there would be platforms on either side. The sidings for local stops would need to be longer than for a normal GO line, and turnouts would likely be higher speed and therefore more expensive. One would not want commuter trains slowing to the conventional 30 or 45 mph before vacating the main line - as that affects any following express trains. Turnouts exist that allow up to 80 mph, but the siding would then have to be longer to allow acceleration/deceleration from that speed to a stop..

So yes station infra would be expensive and elaborate, but turnouts are only one part of that.

- Paul

 

[McGillicuddy]

Excuse my ignorance of track engineering, but if hypothetically a bunch of switches are added to the section between, say Peterborough and Ottawa, to allow small towns to access the mainline, wouldn't this add a ton of maintenance complexity to the part of the line that needs to remain at top speed for this business model to work? Sounds like a ton of liability for a rail line that will see terrible winters with zero benefit.

It also demands a fundamentally different kind of engineering.

When you're designing high-speed rail, you're trying to triangulate between various requirements (minimizing curves, minimizing changes in elevation, avoiding obstacles, etc.) which tend to steer you away from any population centres that you don't intend to serve. If you're trying to build out a low-speed commuter service, you want to reach exactly those population centres. You'd therefore have to deviate significantly from the high-speed alignment, slowly eroding the economic argument. (If we end up building two distinct but loosely parallel sets of tracks, we aren't really saving much money.)

 

[EtoV]

Good write up from Reece about Pierre Poliviere coming out against the HSR. It seems like pretty terrible political instincts to say "we don't want to do this because we think it'll be too hard".

Also, some of the arguments used against it will bite him if he gains power and then tries to build a pipeline. All the arguments such as being against expropriation and/or the negative impacts on communities, only benefiting specific parts of the country, could also be used for pipelines.

High-Speed Rail and Canada's Lost Conservatives.

A sad pairing.

nextmetro.substack.com

 

[Thaboss]

Here's a summary I made of the conventional services on high-speed railways in the Netherlands

Netherlands imo does not make your case at all for a whole host of reasons, I'm sorry to say.

The netherlands is so highly urbanized, densely populated, population nodes decentralized, and simply a small country, that it would make almost no fiscal sense to limit high speed ROW to connections between "major" urban centers in the country.

In paticular, the population delta and strong NS railway usage between its larger cities and smaller towns are so much smaller than what we see in ontario and quebec that not serving them in anyway was probably a non starter for dutch planners.

In fact, given how effective dutch NS is, many observers questioned the need for HSR in the netherlands to begin with! Afterall, they have regional trains traveling at speeds of over 140km!

By contrast, ALTO aims to serve a corridor, where the major urban centers at the core of the ROW have populations and public transit ridership so much greater than smaller townships inbetween these cities that an alto connection or even a sort of go transit arrangement is hard to fathom fiscally making sense. Especially as part of the initial buildout.

Long term I do forsee some sharing of tracking between regional passanger rail and ALTO, but I cannot see that being a priorty for a decent while, outside of toronto (midtown line, pearson transit hub) and montreal, if quebec elects a transit friendly provincial govt.

 

[reaperexpress]

Assuming the proposed northern corridor, other than Toronto-Peterborough, which others have discussed, any other regional or local service would only avail very small population centres, probably much smaller that any encountered in Europe. Perth is about 6500, Smiths Falls about 9500. The others along that corridor barely break a couple thousand. Again assuming many actually want to go to a city, in a hurry.

Netherlands imo does not make your case at all for a whole host of reasons, I'm sorry to say.

The netherlands is so highly urbanized, densely populated, population nodes decentralized, and simply a small country, that it would make almost no fiscal sense to limit high speed ROW to connections between "major" urban centers in the country.

In paticular, the population delta and strong NS railway usage between its larger cities and smaller towns are so much smaller than what we see in ontario and quebec that not serving them in anyway was probably a non starter for dutch planners.

In fact, given how effective dutch NS is, many observers questioned the need for HSR in the netherlands to begin with! Afterall, they have regional trains traveling at speeds of over 140km!

By contrast, ALTO aims to serve a corridor, where the major urban centers at the core of the ROW have populations and public transit ridership so much greater than smaller townships inbetween these cities that an alto connection or even a sort of go transit arrangement is hard to fathom fiscally making sense. Especially as part of the initial buildout.

Long term I do forsee some sharing of tracking between regional passanger rail and ALTO, but I cannot see that being a priorty for a decent while, outside of toronto (midtown line, pearson transit hub) and montreal, if quebec elects a transit friendly provincial govt.

The suggestion that Alto could share its track with a regional rail service is something that one should not assume as a slam-dunk. It's doable, sort of, but....

Where this is the case overseas, it's the result of already having infrastructure in place that enables this.
[...]

I'm not sure Ontario would actually be willing to foot this bill. It certainly isn't an Alto responsibility to build this in at Alto's expense.

I think you guys are missing my point.
- I'm not claiming that intermediate stations are a good financial decision
- I'm not claming the stations would be well used.
- I'm not saying it would be Alto's or the Province's "responsibility" to build those stations.
- I'm not suggesting that the alignment be in any way optimised for the intermediate communities.

My point is that including some token intermediate stations, built as cheaply as possible in locations the railway happens to go anyway and served by a handful of trains per day, could significantly reduce the public opposition from communities along the line by splitting a united front of opposition into a mix of internally clashing support and opposition. If the political opposition appears to be a legitimate threat to the construction of the line, adding stations in places like Markham, Brooklin and Perth could potentially be in Alto's own interest if they want the project to actually be completed rather than just being another waste of millions of tax dollars that results in no new rail service.

I think it's also worth distinguishing between the distinct characteristics of the segments. Between Toronto and Peterborough there is a fair amount of population, with the line passing near fairly substantial communities like Markham, Pickering, Brooklin and Port Perry. These are all communities who would be thrilled by a GO service, which could be in the Province's political interest for some fairly easy political points. Between Peterborough and Ottawa there's obviously no case for an overlapping GO service so any intermediate stations would just be served by a handful of Alto trains per day.

 

[reaperexpress]

Any regional or commuter train stop on a high speed line would need safety and security measures to keep the local passengers separated from the through high speed trains passing through. That might involve additional trackage, platforms separated from the main line, extra signalling, all sorts of fencing and barriers. Likely staffing for security reasons.

If a province were willing to pay for this, perhaps Alto would accommodate. But it's not a small cost. It would take its own design and construction effort. It wouldn't just happen. It can't be simple whistle or flag stops along the HST line.

I'm not sure Ontario would actually be willing to foot this bill. It certainly isn't an Alto responsibility to build this in at Alto's expense.

The number of turnouts for two or three local stops is marginal compared to the baseline number that will be included for crossovers, assuming a double track line.

A local station would need an over or underpass as there would be platforms on either side. The sidings for local stops would need to be longer than for a normal GO line, and turnouts would likely be higher speed and therefore more expensive. One would not want commuter trains slowing to the conventional 30 or 45 mph before vacating the main line - as that affects any following express trains. Turnouts exist that allow up to 80 mph, but the siding would then have to be longer to allow acceleration/deceleration from that speed to a stop..

So yes station infra would be expensive and elaborate, but turnouts are only one part of that.

Yes, a local station on a high-speed line obviously needs protection between the 300 km/h running line and the platform. Where space is available (basically everywhere except a handful of stations in Japan) the typical solution is to add sidings for the platforms, with fences separating the main running lines from the sidings.

Here's the brand new Merklingen station on the Stuttgart-Ulm high-speed railway, which features the typical safety features of a modern local station on a high-speed line, including fences, a pedestrian bridge, sidings and stub tracks to act as flank protection while the light is green for the mainline.

The sidings do not need to be any longer than usual. Merklingen station has a total siding length of about 320 metres, which is actually less than the length of a GO train.

Conventional 45 mph (72 km/h) switches are fine because the stopping trains will be slowing down to below 70 km/h regardless and it's not like we need to squeeze every drop of capacity out of the line. Alto is only talking about running a couple trains per hour on the line, out of a theoretical capacity of about 20 trains per hour, or about 12 trains per hour for a line with a mix of service patterns. Even between Peterborough and Toronto we're only optimistially talkinga about maybe 6 trains per hour during peak periods (4 Alto and 2 GO). There's plenty of buffer available to schedule the GO trains to slow to 70 km/h without impacting the Alto trains.

 

[zang]

I think you guys are missing my point.
- I'm not claiming that intermediate stations are a good financial decision
- I'm not claming the stations would be well used.
- I'm not saying it would be Alto's or the Province's "responsibility" to build those stations.
- I'm not suggesting that the alignment be in any way optimised for the intermediate communities.

My point is that including some token intermediate stations, built as cheaply as possible in locations the railway happens to go anyway and served by a handful of trains per day, could significantly reduce the public opposition from communities along the line by splitting a united front of opposition into a mix of internally clashing support and opposition. If the political opposition appears to be a legitimate threat to the construction of the line, adding stations in places like Markham, Brooklin and Perth could potentially be in Alto's own interest if they want the project to actually be completed rather than just being another waste of millions of tax dollars that results in no new rail service.

While I agree it'd quash complaints, I think it would ultimately kill Via on the Corridor; which if I'm correct is one of a small handful of the profitable lines they have.

 

[reaperexpress]

While I agree it'd quash complaints, I think it would ultimately kill Via on the Corridor; which if I'm correct is one of a small handful of the profitable lines they have.

If they choose the southern alignment, maybe. But it's looking increasingly unlikely Alto would pass anywhere near Kingston, so Via will still be way faster for all the Lakeshore communities than driving dozens of kilometres north to the high speed line.

What will end Via's profitability is the loss of the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal through passengers. Whether there are local stops in northern Whitby or Perth is inconsequential to that.

 

[StreetcarRider]

"Alto boss defends high-speed rail project as fears and criticisms mount"

Gift-redeem

www.thestar.com

 

[just east of the creek]

Okay so I've come to the conclusion the primary benefit of alto is basically to spend $90B to allow people to move up to 2 hours away by train to wherever they work. (I've implied a lot but basically flying roundtrip can be done in a single day for business meetings).

And why would people do that to themselves? That's right because rent is too expensive in the city they work or they want to raise a family and houses are too expensive in the city they work.

The correct solution is spending $90B building so much PBRs like the commies did in Vienna, that private land lords have zero price control. Build some fantastic family sized rentals all across the GTA go train line (I'm looking at you mimico).

It's absurd the Federal government is able to expropriate land for HSR but can't expropriate land next to a commuter train station to build family oriented apartment buildings?

You are thinking Baron Haussmann and Napoleon III re Paris between 1850'ish and 1870? And yes NIMBYS existed 160 or so years ago - lots of them. The thought of a Haussmann redo on portions of single family Toronto is tantalizing in the extreme - even if not the scope and scale of the Paris 'redo' - and although not for all the same reasons - even in a smaller scale focusing on major transit corridors, that could be really tantalizing.....and as with most large public outcries as we hear now, about farms being cut in half (wait until Doug Ford tries to route the 413 through the Escarpment and it will be Edward Abbey and the Monkey Wrench Gang all over again) those objections are long forgotten with a satisfying result to the project. But can you imagine the Politics?

 

[lenaitch]

t's absurd the Federal government is able to expropriate land for HSR but can't expropriate land next to a commuter train station to build family oriented apartment buildings?

The federal and Ontario expropriation acts differ in their text but, generally, they have the power to acquire land and real property adversely (i.e. not a willing seller) for a public purpose. Unless it is intended for the government to become a landlord, taking land from one private owner only to be turned over to another private owner is probably outside of their statutory authority.

Between Peterborough and Ottawa there's obviously no case for an overlapping GO service so any intermediate stations would just be served by a handful of Alto trains per day.

Given the size of the communities and surroundings in that area, I suspect a handful of trains would serve a handful of passengers, most likely between Perth/Smiths Falls and Ottawa. If the ultimate line touches Carleton Place or Stittsville, then you are into the Ottawa commuter shed.

 

[guavadelic]

That the project is already getting this politicized this early 3-4 years until shovels are in the ground isn't the best sign. Will take a tremendous amount of political will to see it through completion.