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TerryJohnson said:
Dropping Toronto-Ottawa to two hours and Toronto-Montreal to three would wipe the floor with the airlines, and would no doubt be the subject of fierce lobbying them, a fight HFR was also designed to avoid by targeting the much larger number of drivers between those city pairs.
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The narrative I've seen is that they'll bundle it all in with the privatized Corridor and this should make it immune to politics. This is what Reece Martin is suggesting in his video today:


Colour me skeptical. I don't think a change of government, especially to a party whose leader favours expansion of the Island Airport and eschews most concerns about climate change, means that cancellation is possible because there's private sector participation.

TerryJohnson said:
My question is different: What's the opportunity cost of the "High Speed" buff for one corridor relative to using the same amount of cash to provide a halfway decent conventional rail that relieves car dependency across a much larger number of city pairs across a lot more provinces?
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Based on that La Presse article, I'm pretty much convinced that sober policy and well considered opportunity costs are not part of the decision-making at all. They are being driven by optics. And yet bizarrely are neither willing to admit they are pursuing HSR or to announce a full upgrade to HSR. They are basically hoping that industry will take the $12B the government wants to spend and then put in the rest and build HSR. It could work. Or we'll find out in 2024, that industry wants $20B and since the government doesn't want to commit to that, we just wasted another 9 years.
 
yrt+viva=1system said:
Was just reading up on Sweden's plans for a high speed train that recently got shelved for being too expensive. The Swedish government wanted to contain the cost of the project to 205 billion Swedish Krona (20 billion EUR, 2017) but was revised to about 29 Billion EUR (2021). That's about 42 Billion CAD. The large cost was due to having centrally located stations.
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It's worth noting that Sweden already has frequent 200km/h electric trains along the same routes that were being considered for new HSR. This summer I traveled from Stockholm to Malmo in 4h26m, a journey of 585km at an average speed over 130km/h. Certainly not as fast as true highspeed rail but it is comparable with the original HFR proposal and goes to show that it is increasingly hard to justify constructing a new corridor once a baseline reliable service is offered.

Personally, I don't see how the HFR project can be seen as a precursor to HSR unless it starts with 300km/h capacity over the new built sections. Sure, it will be cheaper to construct a new alignment with a lower operating speed and that will be a significant upgrade to what we currently have, but I just don't buy the arguments of it being a first step in a greater system. Still, any progress will be a great improvement from my perspective given how VIA has degraded so far that it is less reliable, slower, and more expensive than busses along the routes I often travel.
 
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innsertnamehere said:
The question is if it will really be a $5 billion premium. If you need a brand new corridor anyway, will the incremental cost really be that high?

The existing Havelock corridor is extremely windy and likely won't be able to support 177km/h rail in the first place.

The options for that stretch may be more like:

1. $200m - rebuild existing corridor, operate at 100km/h
2. $3 billion - build new corridor, operate at 200km/h
3. $4 billion - build new corridor, operate at 300km/h

If you are going to pick #2, is it really that crazy to go for #3?
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Is option 2 with an electric alignment or a diesel one? Because while all these numbers might be pie in the sky, curve straightening the Havelock for 300 PLUS electric for a billion is way out there.
 
dowlingm said:
Is option 2 with an electric alignment or a diesel one? Because while all these numbers might be pie in the sky, curve straightening the Havelock for 300 PLUS electric for a billion is way out there.
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I don't think there's any costed plans but spending a billion to make a new alignment from Peterborough to Smith Falls at 300km/h vs 200km/h sounds plausible. Especially given that the original alignment of the Havelock sub wasn't 200km/h ready as I believe was discussed a while back in this sub. IIRC it was projected to be above 100km/h but rarely reaching 177km/h in during a discussion of curve superelevation vs tilt trains.
 
If we assume that HSR from Toronto to Quebec via Ottawa and Montreal requires about $20-25B, I wonder how much fares and ridership have to ride to close the business case.

The beauty of the original HFR proposal was that it provided just enough capacity and speed to justify current or slightly higher fares, along with a moderate reduction in modal shift.

I'm trying to understand how modal shift works for a project that has to recover $20-25B of capital costs would work. How many $200-300 tickets can they sell?
 
kEiThZ said:
But yet they say about HSR, "The federal government assessed this option, but ruled it out because of the prohibitive cost (at least $65 billion for the Quebec-Toronto corridor) and the risks associated with operating a TGV during the winter season." So I have no idea what asking for 300 kph speed means when they have assessed the cost and thought it was too much. But yet he still wants it? Bizarre.
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IMHO, the off the cuff 300 km/h response was designed to get the HSR or nothing (the latter being more likely) crowd on board with the project. Once the numbers come in, the government can then say that they tried but HSR is too expensive. Hopefully, if that happens, they will go with HFR instead of cancelling the whole thing.
 
Maybe. Everyone is missing the point that this should be viewed as a long term investment in rail infrastructure. The populations of these cities will only continue to grow and this will be worthwhile if we can get electric and higher speed rail option to connect 2/3 of the Canadian population. A difference of a few billion dollars is not material long term. This should have been built 20 years ago.

The goal of this project should be to eliminate the need for most air travel within Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec. If a train get get you from Toronto to Ottawa in 3hrs and Montreal in 4hrs centre to center then most people won’t need to fly. The base VIA lakeshore corridor route should be still beefed up to offer local connections to the main hubs, so that should mean more service from Kingston to Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa and allow for more commuter trains in between to boost network effect for ridership.

I’m cautiously optimistic we will get something good out of this.
 
lead82 said:
Maybe. Everyone is missing the point that this should be viewed as a long term investment in rail infrastructure. The populations of these cities will only continue to grow and this will be worthwhile if we can get electric and higher speed rail option to connect 2/3 of the Canadian population. A difference of a few billion dollars is not material long term. This should have been built 20 years ago.

The goal of this project should be to eliminate the need for most air travel within Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec. If a train get get you from Toronto to Ottawa in 3hrs and Montreal in 4hrs centre to center then most people won’t need to fly. The base VIA lakeshore corridor route should be still beefed up to offer local connections to the main hubs, so that should mean more service from Kingston to Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa and allow for more commuter trains in between to boost network effect for ridership.

I’m cautiously optimistic we will get something good out of this.
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Agree with you 100% about the desirability of providing a fast and reliable passenger train service between the major population centres between Windsor and Quebec City so that people travelling up to ca 600km can get there faster or as fast by train as by air. Not so sure I share you optimism that this effort will be any more successful than those that have preceded it for the past 50 years. I guess we shall see!
 
The Canadian was baking up the Bala Sub to Doncaster with two buffer cars at the end. Maybe one was deadheading to Vancouver....

I guess the usual diamond is under construction?
 
kEiThZ said:
If we assume that HSR from Toronto to Quebec via Ottawa and Montreal requires about $20-25B, I wonder how much fares and ridership have to ride to close the business case.

The beauty of the original HFR proposal was that it provided just enough capacity and speed to justify current or slightly higher fares, along with a moderate reduction in modal shift.

I'm trying to understand how modal shift works for a project that has to recover $20-25B of capital costs would work. How many $200-300 tickets can they sell?
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Forgive me for being naive but is a business case necessary for a project like this? For the capital investment I mean. I understand wanting fares to cover the cost of operations and maintenance, but I don't see how a High speed corridor isn't considered invaluable. As far as I'm concerned it makes perfect sense to work backwards from the passenger experience to dictate the needs of the project. The starting point should be a trip that is significantly more comfortable, convenient, cheaper, and faster than driving or flying.

Would a business case account for things like; increased productivity, climate goals, lives saved on the 401, increased freedom for millions of people? It's not my field, so I don't know how it works, but it's such an enormous public good that I can't wrap my head around the need for it to operate like business.
 
Ward8 said:
Forgive me for being naive but is a business case necessary for a project like this?
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Well. The government says that the CIB will "invest" $8-12B. The expectation is that industry will put up the rest and that will yield some overall budget that is sufficient to build some kind of HSR. Let's say it's $20B. At current rates, it would require at least $1B in net operating profits per year just to pay the interest. I would presume that there would need to be some effort to reduce that debt over time. So add more....
 
allengeorge said:
If I’m reading the various articles right, the point at which serious money starts flowing is over 4 years in the future, correct?

There’s a 2-month RFQ phase, followed by a 9-month RFP phase, followed by a 3.5-year co-production phase (I assume this means shared design etc.) and only then will a decision be made on proceeding. Plenty of opportunity for this to be stalled or quashed.
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Maybe if a contract is signed with a private entity with sufficiently large penalties for breaking, this project can be made to survive the next Conservative government. Of course, I expect PP to rant against elitist gatekeepers and their fascination with trains.
 
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