Quote:
Originally Posted by Metro-One
There are two things this country needs, and is decades over due for, a coast to coast thoroughfare highway and a coast to coast decent rail system.
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There are not enough passengers or interest to support a decent coast-to-coast rail system. That's more nostalgic thinking.
Rail can't compete with relatively cheap airfares over the long distances. Canada is just to vast a country east to west, with large spans of sparsely populated areas.
Ditto goes for the coast-to-coast freeway - too many sections of the TCH, particularly in the BC mountains, across the prairies and through northwestern Ontario have too little traffic (go through sparsely populated areas) to make it viable cost-wise. The stretches of the TCH that are multi-laned/Near-Freeway are near the population centers where it's warranted.
Most people going from the heavily populated areas in the east to the western cities do so by air - both to save time and expense.
For Canada, the Windsor-Montreal corridor is the only viable HSR route right now.