The asterisk is in french despite the rest of the slide deck being in English, for some reason, but google translate says that it says "conservative approach with low speed segments", which I assume is intended to say that travel times are conservative estimates and could actually be better.
Wow, that website is tough to navigate - here's the link for the presentation -
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13dz3mo91nVOH7EYxYAl1p6Kod7wbry0Q
It is interesting to see that they achieve 3 hours from Montreal to Toronto, despite much of the route only being 144 km/hr or 200 km/hr.
It would be interesting to compare to previous studies, with more complete HFR, to see what travel time they predicted.
The presentation, in particular this figure, does make it abundantly clear why Montreal to Toronto service using the HFR model and a travel time of over 4 hours, will not attract many more travellers than now (which I've been saying for years now. Even 3 hours is pushing it. If they could upgrade Union to Peterborough, and by pass Ottawa, they might get closer to the 2.5 hour sweet spot. Assuming Hitachi's number's are correct.
For reference, the current VIA route along Lake Ontario is about 530 km, and the HFR route through Ottawa is about 555 km. Perhaps someone has the proper distances?