andrewpmk
Senior Member
Does the 11B figure assume that GO and AMT have already electrified their segments?
If it doesn't, then the cost of HSR could be knocked down by a fair margin, based on the costs of the GO and AMT projects that are going ahead regardless.
The GO and AMT segments don't make up a very large portion of the T-M route, but they would probably have a significant impact on the overall costs of electrification. GO will be taking responsibility for electrifying the USRC - a massive undertaking, as well as the electrifying route from there to the VIA TMC, which is also helpful. Urban electrification is also much more expensive than rural electrification, presumably because construction needs more impact mitigation and there are generally more nearby objects needing grounding.
As a side note: It's interesting that GO chose to only electrify the lines are also shared with VIA services.
The trouble is that a VIA train in rush hour spends a lot of time waiting in Union Station, so if high speed VIA trains are added, this limits the number of GO trains that can operate out of Union. This I think will force the construction of a downtown tunnel to operate more GO services, which is needed anyway because Union Station is near its maximum capacity in rush hour.
For comparison, my understanding is that a large percentage of the cost of HS2 in the UK is expanding Euston Station, to accommodate high speed rail as well as the existing commuter rail services.