Montreal City Weblog

Kate 07:57 on 2019-03-06 Permalink Reply  

• Roman 08:40 on 2019-03-06 Permalink

  A few decades to too late. I don’t know what the timeline is, but I imagine at least 10 years to build. By then we’ll have self driving electric vehicles. I’ll be sitting back doing work or sleeping on the commute. No need for trains.

• thomas 09:17 on 2019-03-06 Permalink

  So we spend $4B to save 5 min. on the trip between Toronto and Montreal?

• Daniel 09:18 on 2019-03-06 Permalink

  Oh dear, the first commenter is going to be disappointed in a decade’s time when self driving cars are still a pipe dream _and_ no fast train lines have been built.

• Steve Q 10:34 on 2019-03-06 Permalink

  It doesn’t really matter is eventually we end up with self driving cars because most people wont be able to afford one ? There will still be a need for a high speed train beetwen Quebec-Windsor and more specifically beetwen Toront-Montreal. Just like most people today can’t afford electric cars, they need buses and metros.

• Tim 10:41 on 2019-03-06 Permalink

  @Thomas: the numbers for the Montreal/Toronto route must have a typo. It should be around 3 hours total if the trains are traveling at 180 km/hour.

  Rapid train service will never happen as it would kill Air Canada’s most profitable flight. I remember reading years ago (sorry no source) how rapid train service kills airline flights. Imagine how much more expensive air travel would be if Air Canada couldn’t gouge people traveling between Montreal and Toronto?

• Ephraim 11:34 on 2019-03-06 Permalink

  @Tim, that’s not a typo. All trains would go through Ottawa, then Smith Falls and then Peterborough and on to Toronto, rather than directly. Essentially, they are lengthening the route and making too many stops to really have it TGV. This proposal is for trains at 180 km/h, while the real TVG actually travels at 270 km/h to 320 km/h. That’s 50% to 75% faster…. or in other words, Toronto would be then be just about 3 hours away, even with stops. But this proposal is useless…. the biggest traffic you want to handle is Montreal/Toronto, having it route through Ottawa and stop in Smith Falls and Peterborough just makes it so slow that you won’t compete with air traffic.

  Here’s the point, a flight is scheduled for 1 hours, plus you need to be at the airport 1 hour in advance, plus it takes 30 minutes to get to the airport and another 30 minutes from the airport to town. So that’s 3 hours. If you can beat this end to end, you cut down on the air traffic and make it viable. So viable that people will seriously consider not bothering to fly unless it’s for connections.

  So Montreal to Toronto, end to end by car, station to station is about 540km. At 270km/h that is 2 hours. At that speed, not only do you compete, you kill flying and buses and in fact, take away a serious chunk of car travel between the two cities. Heck, you might even have people commute between the two rather than sleep over, for day trips. That’s the connection we need between the two cities.

• Spi 11:44 on 2019-03-06 Permalink

  @Ephraim is right, except that a TGV line is orders of magnitude more expensive because of technical constraints (grade separated rail, the necessity for straight lines) and would require a completely different business case in order to justify that level of capital investment. I’m unsure potential ridership along that corridor would ever justify TGV.

  If I remember correctly VIA’s plan is to offer a more reliable and predictable service to gain ridership, departures every hour in each direction and more reliable arrival times with its dedicated tracks. The goal isn’t to compete and make air-travel between the 2 cities obsolete, the goal is to capture enough of the inter-city travel to fill your service offering.

  Also, I’m uncertain whether stops at Smith falls and Peterborough would be necessary for each service. You could easily make it every other train.

• Clee 14:39 on 2019-03-06 Permalink

  my dream would be TGV between MTL and NYC.

• mare 15:45 on 2019-03-06 Permalink

  Building the track via Ottawa would probably also cheaper. The current train need to run while building the new train and there’s not much room next to the current track and the 401 and the river. And lots of commuter towns.

• JaneyB 20:24 on 2019-03-06 Permalink

  @Clee. Too true! Or even Boston.
  @Ephraim. If we had a 2 hr commute time between TO and MTL, it would raise real estate prices in Montreal too – people could finally live in Mtl and work in TO.

  Will never happen because it will kill the only profitable route for our airlines and buses. Put that $4 billion into urban transit measures. Daily commute times are a huge, daily quality of life issue for most people.

• Ephraim 21:48 on 2019-03-06 Permalink

  @Janey – Lyon is 2 hours from Paris by TGV and yet, people aren’t doing a daily commute from Lyon. The train time from Paris to London is about 2 and a half hours. And Brussels is under 1 and a half hours. But there are still flights, life goes on. But it eats into the flights and into the road traffic… which is exactly what you need.

• ant6n 08:37 on 2019-03-08 Permalink

  In Germany, the planning consensus is that trains become competitive with air travel if the travel time is less than four hours. Generally the network does support super high speed operation, most of the network only allows 200-250km/h. Other countries in Europe focus on frequeny and coverage over high speed and are very succesful with that (although these are smaller, like Switzerland).

  Id say the travel time Montreal-Toronto has to be below 4h to be viable. We dont really need TGVs for that, 230km/h would probably do. VIA ordered 200km/h conventional trains, but faster conventional trains are possible (e.g. Austria its 230km/h, Germany just ordered 230km/h conventional trains). I wish VIA was a bit more ambitious with speeds and travel times, without necessarily going full TGV.

• ant6n 08:38 on 2019-03-08 Permalink

  I meant “Generally the network does not support”