TGV plan announced
Ottawa has announced that it will go ahead with a project that’s been discussed for years – a fast train between Quebec City and Toronto. A top speed of 300 km/h is mentioned. A new track will have to be built for this electric train service. Thoughts on possible consequences from CBC.
I saw a tweet saying that 40 flights go between Montreal and Toronto daily. It would be good to cut those down for the people who want to move between the cities in three hours.
Dizzying estimates in the billions are being cheerfully tossed around.
Joey 10:26 on 2024-10-30 Permalink
What does Pierre Poilievre think? Because the next PM will decide whether we have a high-speed train, a high-frequency train, a high-frequency/high-speed train, or a subsidy for single-passenger gas-powered vehicles and the end of Via Rail.
Blork 11:25 on 2024-10-30 Permalink
That will be fantastic if it ever happens. One promising thing is that it uses all new tracks; there is no way they can run high-speed trains on the existing tracks because (a) they’re in bad shape, (b) they’d need to share with freight trains, and (c) too many level crossings.
The level crossings thing is huge. You simply can’t have a 300kph train whizzing across roads, and the existing tracks cross hundreds of large, medium, and small roads between here and Toronto. If they run a new line, and run it north, away from most major highways, it eliminates the need for most of those, and the ones that remain will cross via tunnels or bridges. (Check the high speed rail lines in Europe; hardly any level crossings, and those that exist are close to towns where the train slows down.)
But oh, the billions to do that!
Blork 11:26 on 2024-10-30 Permalink
…tunnels, bridges, and under/overpasses. (To be precise.)
Anton 13:02 on 2024-10-30 Permalink
I wonder how this train would go between Gare Centrale and Laval
Nicholas 13:08 on 2024-10-30 Permalink
Anton asks a good, simple question with no simple answer, now that the REM has taken over the Mount Royal tunnel. Fortunately we’ll have at least the rest of the decade to ponder it as this project is likely to be killed by the next PM, and only potentially revived after that.
MarcG 13:09 on 2024-10-30 Permalink
Shuttle bus from Laval
Ephraim 13:23 on 2024-10-30 Permalink
To cut down on cost they could build just the Montreal/Toronto at extreme high speed and other parts of this at lower speed and make the areas outside of that high speed but not extreme high speed, connecting in Montreal to Toronto. At 300 k/mh we could bring down the time between Montreal to Toronto to about 2.5 hours which would be fast enough to kill a lot of car, bus and plane traffic between the two. Prioritize overpasses rather than underpasses, which can flood. Remember to put in some underpasses though, for wildlife. Have the stops at Ottawa and Peterborough less frequently in order to maximize speed between the two cities.
This will clear up a lot of car and bus traffic. If you can leave early in the morning, sleep on the train, do your work, and sleep on the train back, you have a winner of a combo for many businessmen, who can also work on the train with wifi. Being how long you have to spend in an airport pre-flight, it’s likely at 2.5 hours to cut down on the travel time.
Now, to see who’s trains they are going to buy. Also, since they are building new, they can certainly properly bank the track and they can look at the best gauge and electrical systems for these trains. Europe hasn’t even standardized their electric trains.
Joey 13:48 on 2024-10-30 Permalink
Assuming the CPC wins a majority sometime next year and shelves the project, best-case scenario is that a new government comes in five years later and begins five years of work to plan the project (unless the folks at Via keep working in defiance of a Poilievre government) that will take several years to build, right? So we’re, what at least 10 years away from shovels in the ground? Given the kinds of impacts we’ve seen from increasingly not-extraordinary climate events all over the world, it’s hard to imagine what our geography will look like 10+ years out; I wonder what the implications for a new rail line would be.
James 15:08 on 2024-10-30 Permalink
A very exciting project that has been talked about many times over the past several decades. It has never been this close to actually happening. If done correctly,thousands of car trips could also be eliminated because of the intermediate stations. Currently if you live in Peterborough (perfect example for this demonstration) you could drive to one of the Toronto airports and then fly to Montreal or, more likely, simply drive from Peterborough to Montreal. If HFR happens could could get on a train in Peterborough and travel to Montreal. This doesn’t mean that all trains would stop – there likely would be through-running trains with the fastest Toronto to Montreal times mixed with trains stopping at the intermediate stations.
As anton correctly notes, actually getting to downtown montreal reasonably quickly is a challenge! Running at 300km/h in the country-side doesn’t help too much if you crawl along for ages in the approaches to the city cores. Even the french TGV uses conventional tracks on the approaches. I expect that the three consortiums involved in this phase (my company is a member of one of them) have made some interesting proposals…
Kevin 20:32 on 2024-10-30 Permalink
If I were to build this thing, I’d just give up on actually coming to Montreal and hook up with the Concorde train and metro station in Laval.
It’s got minimal expropriation impact, it’s already a transit hub, and it appeals to all the swing voters in the suburbs.
As an alternative you could dump people at the Deux-Montagnes end of the REM line, but that’s much more of a psychological burden.
Either way, you avoid having to build another tunnel through the mountain.
Mark 21:29 on 2024-10-30 Permalink
Assuming that the new tracks of this train would run somewhere around the 401 corridor, I’m wondering why a south shore route wouldn’t be considered. It could follow the path of the 20 to Les Cèdres, then follow the path of the 30, which has large swaths of less developed land around it (aka less costly expropriations). Then land somewhere on the south shore in connection to a REM station.
I guess getting to Quebec City would be more complex from the south shore, but realistically, if this gets built, it will be MTL to Toronto, then who knows.
carswell 23:13 on 2024-10-30 Permalink
If, as it should be in this era of global warming, one of the main reasons for investing in a high-speed train is to lure travellers away from the airport and out of their cars for trips between corridor cities, particularly Toronto and Montreal, adding a half-hour REM or metro ride plus connection time is a deal breaker. The three-hour downtown TO to downtown MTL travel time would be closer to four hours and involve the hassle of making a connection (not always fun with luggage, especially during rush hour).
For the short to medium term, the obvious solution is to run occasional trains between Toronto and Quebec City with stops at Dorval, Jean Talon Station and/or Concorde (but not Central Station) and more frequent trains between Union Station and Central Station with a stop in Dorval until such time as a tunnel can be built between Central Station and Jean Talon Station, ideally one that also accommodates a new metro line.
Travellers between downtown Montreal and Quebec City would still have no option other than taking the metro, bus or REM into and from the centre city, but they’re a much smaller group, a higher percentage won’t necessarily be heading downtown (as opposed to the suburbs) and the train portion of their trip isn’t as long.
Kate 23:26 on 2024-10-30 Permalink
I haven’t seen anything about surveys or studies asking people flying between the cities whether they would take a train if it was almost as fast as a flight, and (ideally) going from downtown to downtown, or as close as we can manage.
Also, with all the billions being airily spent on this project, when it’s completed is there any chance it would be cheaper than the cheapest plane ticket?
I suspect it will have to be both cheaper than a plane and more convenient, or the kind of people who fly between Montreal and Toronto won’t consider it. And there are definitely people who feel themselves to be the kind of people who fly, the train being for the hoi polloi.
carswell 09:07 on 2024-10-31 Permalink
I have a vague memory of reading about studies, Kate. Maybe on Agora MTL? Work, book hauling and hosting the book hauler for dinner will keep me from looking today but I’ll do so later if someone doesn’t beat me to it.
France recently banned short-haul domestic flights between cities that have fast train connections. Nothing to prevent Canada from following suit. Similarly, tolls can be implemented on major intercity highways.
Forget 1.5C. Unless things change (and not only are GHG emissions not currently falling, they’re increasing — we are all in denial), global warming is now forecast to reach 3.1C by the end of the century. A recent Guardian article asked a bevy of climate experts what are the top five things ordinary people can do to fight global warming; stop flying was at the top of every expert’s list. Either we get serious about cutting GHG among other actions or life as we know it is doomed.
Joey 09:12 on 2024-10-31 Permalink
Hard to imagine the feds building a flagship high-speed/high-frequency rail line that doesn’t go all the way to the downtown stations in Montreal and Toronto.
Kate, I think it would – in ideal circumstances, door-to-door travel time by air from downtown Montreal to downtown Toronto is about four hours. Figure 30 minutes to arrive at YUL an hour before your flight, 90 minutes gate to gate, and another 45 minutes from landing to downtown (YYZ or the Island airport are more or less equivalent, given the UP Express train). Realistically, it’s a four+ hour trip and would cost upwards of $450 for a round-trip flight ticket. Put in comfy seats and fancy amenities in business class and you’ve got a compelling offering to businesspeople.
If the train can (likely) save you some time, (definitely) save you some hassle, and (probably) save you some money, it’s a no-brainer. High-frequency will be critical, it can’t just be three trains a day with the last leaving at supper time, though.
John B 11:21 on 2024-10-31 Permalink
Last I saw something about the HFR, (not this new HSR), proposal that used this route I think the plan was for the Montreal station to be somewhere north of the mountain, maybe a revival of the Parc station, or maybe even north of the 40, both of which would obviously suck and eliminate half of the time gained from high-speed rail by adding last-mile time and inconvenience.
On the other hand, maybe the tunneling machine used for the REM is still around somewhere and they’ll punch another hole through the mountain. Coming in via the existing rail corridor to the west, then leaving to the north would make a ton of sense. The western corridor already has no level crossings west of the Turcot interchange.
anton 12:42 on 2024-10-31 Permalink
Globally, there’s a clear relationship between HSR travel time and market share. So you don’t really need to do a study specific to Toronto-Montreal to know it’ll probably work (quick Google gave for example this: https://hotrails.net/2024/04/rails-market-share-against-air-a-global-review/)
In general, a 4h travel time can get at least a 50% market share, a 3h travel time around 70% and more. Montreal-Toronto should definitely do well within a global comparison, because both cities are strong public transit cities where the downtown station is the most important center in the metro area.
Of course you need the capacity to move those people. And at those ridership levels, there would be so many people traveling that prices should be competitive with flying (i.e. cheap earlier, expensive on the day of travel). This presumes the project is set up for high capacity and frequency (cf. in the States, the Acela between NYC and DC wasn’t set up for high capacity, it’s an expensive premium service).
Within that framework, only a downtown station works. A station anywhere else will effectively slide down along the market share graph. In effect, it is likely more useful to cut Quebec city out altogether but connect Montreal-Toronto downtown-to-downtown, rather than have some suburban station in Montreal.
This was discussed at length 8 years ago when the REM proposal came about. Ironically, Quebec may have cut itself off by not asking CDPQInfra to accommodate Heavy Rail. For example by sharing the tunnel (dismissed by CDPQInfra because they said they don’t have the time to implement more complicated signalling technology, they wanted to start operation in 2020 or 2021), or even leaving accomodations in place during the reconfiguration of gare centrale to allow the insertion of a second tunnel. Now it will be very difficult.
Through-routing at Gare Centrale, the ideal operationally ideal scenario, may require not just a new tunnel, but also a new tunnel station under Gare Centrale. That is where the real cost will come from.
Perhaps the most feasible, but also operationally annoying, and also a bit slow, would be to use Gare Centrale as a terminus. Trains would come in from Toronto or Quebec from the south side, turn around and back out on the south side to go to the other city. It would also mess with all other trains (commuter trains).
Mark 17:47 on 2024-10-31 Permalink
Thanks for that detailed information Anton. So basically, a South Shore or north of the city station ends up losing billions in fares and riders, but a downtown station costs billions more, presumably. I guess seeing some of the numbers being thrown around (60B, 100B, 180B), what’s an extra 5B?Although considering how expensive the blue line is, I’m worried that the technical hurdle of getting this line to downtown is 10B or more.
What about downtown Toronto? Isn’t that a challenge too? There isn’t a dedicated track going straight to union station….but in that case, they build a new line to as close to downtown then jump on existing tracks?
anton 08:23 on 2024-11-01 Permalink
Toronto is currently electrifying the GO commuter rail network, I think it involves a lot of dedicated track as well. Afaik VIA Rail was gonna share track with GO. The issue then is more about what platform heights should be chosen. GO tends to use low platforms, i.e. the lower floor of their bilevels. Then again, it is conceivable to share tracks but not platforms, meaning there need to be dedicated platforms at the few stations where HSR stops.
I think it would make sense, if there was a dedicated electric HSR line, to combine that with some electric commuter rail / regional rail updates. HSR generally only runs once an hour, maybe twice, so there should be some room in the schedule in the metro areas for local services.
Orr 17:06 on 2024-11-01 Permalink
The last time a Windsor to Quebec City High-Speed Rail project was costed, at least a decade ago, the total system cost/total distance, it was $10,000 per metre.
Per metre.
The new proposal stops at Toronto, so watch out for fudged numbers for this plus “cost increase” to inevitably add HSR west of Toronto, where obviously it needs to also go, not least to link up to the inevitable US HSR network that will happen sometime between 2050 and 2200.