High-speed rail line proposal connecting southern Ontario to be tabled in May

[TheAverageJoe]

 

 

Transport Minister Steven Del Duca will reveal plans at Queen’s Park next month for a new high-speed rail line to ease the burden on Ontario’s increasingly traffic-choked highways.

 

 

 

The Collenette report puts forward a business case for the construction of a high-speed rail link joining Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, London and Windsor, according to Premier Kathleen Wynne.

 

 

 

http://www.cp24.com/news/high-speed-rail-line-proposal-connecting-southern-ontario-to-be-tabled-in-may-1.3385168

 

 

[2281]

Fool me once...

[tomsbuspage]

What are the passenger loads on the Toronto-London-Windsor route compared with the Toronto-Kingston-Ottawa and Toronto-Kingston-Montreal routes?

[WMATAC40LF]

This seems ridiculous to me. I think if they were to make the corridor high speed, Toronto-Ottawa or Toronto-Montreal would bring in much more ridership and revenue. The province should not venture into high speed rail until they get secure financial backing from the Federal Government. In my opinion projects like these are too big to be handled by a Province or State. Look at California, where they have resorted to selling bonds to help construct their behind schedule and massively over budget system. Also, I wonder why the Liberals are coming up with these sorts of plans with just over a year until the Ontario General Election... 

[smallspy]

3 hours ago, tomsbuspage said:

What are the passenger loads on the Toronto-London-Windsor route compared with the Toronto-Kingston-Ottawa and Toronto-Kingston-Montreal routes?

 

If you go back 30 or 40 years, the passenger loads were probably pretty close to equal. Railfans who rode back then certainly seem to think that to be the case. Since then, however....

 

2 minutes ago, WMATAC40LF said:

This seems ridiculous to me. I think if they were to make the corridor high speed, Toronto-Ottawa or Toronto-Montreal would bring in much more ridership and revenue. The province should not venture into high speed rail until they get secure financial backing from the Federal Government. In my opinion projects like these are too big to be handled by a Province or State. Look at California, where they have resorted to selling bonds to help construct their behind schedule and massively over budget system. Also, I wonder why the Liberals are coming up with these sorts of plans with just over a year until the Ontario General Election... 

These plans have been underway for over 3 years now - this is not a pre-election "surprise" by any stretch of the imagination.

 

As for why the Province is doing it? VIA doesn't seem to be nearly as interested in the area south-west of Toronto as they do to the north-east, thus why the Province is stepping in.

 

Dan

[Transit geek]

I say it's way too early. No country as far as I know has ever built the kind of high-speed rail the Wynne Liberals want to propose without building electrified long-distance rail lines before. (The only other country I'm aware of that made such a proposal was Vietnam, which obviously stalled.) I'm assuming the line would be electrified at 25 kV AC (as does Amtrak's Northeast Corridor), which in Canada is only used on AMT's Deux-Montagnes commuter line (and the Mont-Royal Tunnel it passes through), and nowhere else. Period.

I would suggest that they just electrify the main line, then run electric trains for about a decade or so before considering building anything comparable to Amtrak's Acela Express.(Amtrak had electrified trains on the Northeast Corridor for over half a century before Acela began.) I would wait till the entire VIA Windsor-Quebec corridor is electrified before we think about going high-speed, and when we do, upgrading would be much easier with the necessary infrastructure in place.

P.S. Another possibility to consider is the usage of ridiculously expensive and unreliable DMUs like Germany's ICE TD (which have mostly been withdrawn after less than two decades of service).

[Shaun]

Are the Sumitomo cars used on the UP express suitable for long distance travel? What if you used different seats? 

[WMATAC40LF]

11 minutes ago, Shaun said:

Are the Sumitomo cars used on the UP express suitable for long distance travel? What if you used different seats? 

They are extreme lemons so I wouldn't use them anyway (although theoretically you could configure Multiple Units for longer trips, its been done in Europe). The Diesel trainsets that Brightline will use down in Florida would be a less expensive alternative to high speed rail, which alongside track improvements might make Higher Speed Rail more viable in Southern Ontario.

6 hours ago, Transit geek said:

I would suggest that they just electrify the main line, then run electric trains for about a decade or so before considering building anything comparable to Amtrak's Acela Express.

Electrified HSR or Higher Speed Rail would be nice, but I have yet to see in-depth studies regarding the costs and benefits (especially for Southern Ontario). In the long term, it might work out for Toronto to Montreal services though.

[smallspy]

16 hours ago, Transit geek said:

I say it's way too early. No country as far as I know has ever built the kind of high-speed rail the Wynne Liberals want to propose without building electrified long-distance rail lines before. (The only other country I'm aware of that made such a proposal was Vietnam, which obviously stalled.) I'm assuming the line would be electrified at 25 kV AC (as does Amtrak's Northeast Corridor), which in Canada is only used on AMT's Deux-Montagnes commuter line (and the Mont-Royal Tunnel it passes through), and nowhere else. Period.

 

So what? It's not like sending a man to the moon - all of the technologies and skill-sets are out there and in place already. All that is being suggested is that we bring some of that here to Canada.

 

 

16 hours ago, Transit geek said:

I would suggest that they just electrify the main line, then run electric trains for about a decade or so before considering building anything comparable to Amtrak's Acela Express.(Amtrak had electrified trains on the Northeast Corridor for over half a century before Acela began.) I would wait till the entire VIA Windsor-Quebec corridor is electrified before we think about going high-speed, and when we do, upgrading would be much easier with the necessary infrastructure in place.

 

I think that you are mistaking high speed for "high speed". It doesn't seem like they are looking at running 300+ km/h, but rather a standard that is a bit more - well - reasonable.

And again, why? How much electrified track did China have before they started building their high speed lines? France? Germany? Many of the regions within those countries that the high speed lines now run to didn't have any form of electrification prior to the opening of the lines. England electrified the East Coast Main Line in the 1980ies and immediately began running trains at 125mph on it - was it wrong of them to do that, too?

By the way, don't think that Acela is so special. The Metroliners and TurboTrain were supposed to be doing those same speeds in the 1960s.

 

16 hours ago, Transit geek said:

P.S. Another possibility to consider is the usage of ridiculously expensive and unreliable DMUs like Germany's ICE TD (which have mostly been withdrawn after less than two decades of service).

 

You may want to brush up on your history of the ICE TDs. For all of their troubles, they had been providing generally headache-free service for the past 10 years in Germany and Denmark until being retired late last year.

 

10 hours ago, WMATAC40LF said:

They are extreme lemons so I wouldn't use them anyway (although theoretically you could configure Multiple Units for longer trips, its been done in Europe). The Diesel trainsets that Brightline will use down in Florida would be a less expensive alternative to high speed rail, which alongside track improvements might make Higher Speed Rail more viable in Southern Ontario.

 

Less expensive - how? Considering how new those Siemens sets are, I don't think that it's fair to assume anything just yet.

 

Dan

[WMATAC40LF]

1 hour ago, smallspy said:

Less expensive - how? Considering how new those Siemens sets are, I don't think that it's fair to assume anything just yet.

I wasn't thinking about purchase costs of equipment, I was thinking more of the infrastructure costs. Electrifying the line from Toronto to Windsor would cost a pretty penny, and would take a while. Diesel Higher speed rail would take less time to complete, and the overall costs would be cheaper. 

[smallspy]

3 hours ago, WMATAC40LF said:

I wasn't thinking about purchase costs of equipment, I was thinking more of the infrastructure costs. Electrifying the line from Toronto to Windsor would cost a pretty penny, and would take a while. Diesel Higher speed rail would take less time to complete, and the overall costs would be cheaper. 

 

Electrification is much more expensive up front, yes.

 

But the equation isn't so cut-and-dried, either. If you're only running one or two trains a day, you'll never recoup the additional costs of the installation and the equipment required of electrification. But if the service is going to be more frequent - especially once you get into the realm of half-hourly for any stretch of time - electrification becomes cheaper in the long run.

 

By the by, my point about the Siemens trainsets is that at this point no one knows what their maintenance costs will end up being like. If one were to consider only Siemen's track record of late, it wouldn't sound promising, either - although I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, as the ACS-64s seemed to be well-liked by the Amtrak crews and maintenance staff alike.

 

Dan

[skyfirenet]

22 hours ago, WMATAC40LF said:

I think if they were to make the corridor high speed, Toronto-Ottawa or Toronto-Montreal would bring in much more ridership and revenue.

Those two routes would have higher startup ridership and revenue figures.

However, those two routes also have a lot more problems with CN and CP.

 

[rollsign29]

On 4/28/2017 at 2:29 PM, skyfirenet said:

Those two routes would have higher startup ridership and revenue figures.

However, those two routes also have a lot more problems with CN and CP.

That may be so, but where do you think this "high speed" line is going to run? In many instances, it'll run along the same corridor (maybe not the same rails) as CN, GEXR, and GO. Just because you introduce a railway name, like CN or CP, doesn't automatically mean problems. You can't judge the outcome of anything until a firm plan on an alignment, trackage options, etc. is finalized.

[skyfirenet]

7 hours ago, rollsign29 said:

That may be so, but where do you think this "high speed" line is going to run? In many instances, it'll run along the same corridor (maybe not the same rails) as CN, GEXR, and GO. Just because you introduce a railway name, like CN or CP, doesn't automatically mean problems. You can't judge the outcome of anything until a firm plan on an alignment, trackage options, etc. is finalized.

Yes. However, CN has all but abandoned Komoka to Windsor, the last I heard is that the plan involves building new rights of way from London to Georgetown due to the speed requirements, and GO will already be solving the capacity and electrification issues between Georgetown and Toronto.

[WMATAC40LF]

15 million for an environmental assessment... Phase 1 from Toronto to London might be feasible, but all the way down to Windsor for phase 2? 

https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2017/05/19/wynne-is-all-aboard-21b-high-speed-rail-project.html