Question asked by the media in Windsor this morning: "What is the timeline and the budget?" Answer: “As we are starting the procurement process for phase 1, phase 2 right now is we are examining options. Let me tell you concrete examples of what that means because we need to have concrete...

This map, from the Radio-Canada article, would be a radical departure from the previously published maps. I wonder how much of this is real.

Presumably that work being done tot reinstate the line will take care of that, in addition to restoring respectable track speeds along the route. The question is whether VIA Rail has enough long-distance equipment without the Rens, the short answer to which is "no" although making-do with far...

The question would be what origin-destination pairs in Canada would make the kind of huge difference that avoiding the I-95 does for AutoTrain passengers and could be better served by rail. If CP could offer an overnight trip from somewhere around Sudbury to somewhere east of Winnipeg, for...

Modal shift by any means possible is the low hanging fruit of climate policy. Getting people out of cars and planes on to trains, and long-haul freight off the highways on to trains. We could halve Canada's transportation emissions using diesel trains. The electrification of trains is an...

The mayor of Perth hasn't given up on an HFR stop: https://lake88.ca/2021/04/13/mayor-fenik-hopes-via-considers-perth-as-high-frequency-stop/

Policy resolutions in any party tend to be the blended efforts of dozens or hundreds of grassroots party activists, usually redrafted several times to fit within the word limit. The 2014 Liberal resolution for a national transportation strategy, for example, got the word "transit" shoved into it...

Only HSR Canada takes the all-or-nothing E300+ track. Other passenger advocacy organizations favour High Performance Rail now, to build up frequency and ridership. There are both public and internal discussions of whether the HFR proposal represents the best version of that approach, and...

There's a world of difference between the twice-daily Turbo/LRC "cannonball runs" in 3h59 or 4h15 and reliably getting 4h40 every hour all day, plus a vastly improved 3h15 for Toronto to/from Ottawa, again every hour. There's also a huge time and "frequency cost of time" difference for...

The suburb-to-suburb connection using the CP alignment is something the Toronto region would really benefit from, but I bet there are some raised eyebrows in Calgary this morning.

There's still a month for some kind of announcement to take place, so I wouldn't rule it out yet. If it isn't in the budget this year, it will be the airline lobby to blame, but I still find the "HSR-or-bust" narrative unhelpful. We need to actively build solutions to the mobility, economic...

Once life gets back to normal, post a few pictures of the business class meals and drinks on VIA on social media. Unless your friends are happy to fork out 10x more for business class air fares, they might be intrigued! At my previous company I introduced a simple travel perk policy: Take the...

The future I want: Hail an AV from a co-operatively-owned network, and have it serve fresh coffee while driving me to the train or bus station and booking another AV or maybe a bikeshare for the last mile at the other end. The future we'll get if we're not careful: "Your Bellcar will arrive...

The only major "real estate" opportunity seems to be the old CP station site in Brampton, but to build on that land would sever the corridor for trail or future transit use, which is in the provincial long term plan, and because it is an old station site meeting today's environmental standards...

Not quite sure what makes you think that. The delivery of the first series production cars to IDOT / Amtrak Midwest is news, which the post is sharing, while noting that the VIA interior design may differ. Twitter doesn't really allow enough characters for a complete history lesson. Brightline's...