$29B road to a spring election?

[HillStreetBlues]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

Rail competes with car travel if it's both priced to compete with it and is fast and flexible enough to compete.

Making the trains faster than the car is a big component, but definitely not the only and perhaps not even the most important: if it's $100 to get from London to Toronto, most people who currently drive would have little incentive to make the switch. That's why, if/when built, the government(s) should cap (and subsidise, if necessary) the ticket prices to the cost of driving between two destinations.

Assuming that that means the price of gas, a ticket to Toronto would be priced at $20. To encourage groups and families to leave their cars at home, I would also hope to see something similar to the group rates they have in many European countries: in Germany, for example, a short-distance train ticket costs the same for one person as it does for five ― same as a car. All of a sudden, taking the train seems like a no-brainer and taking the car has little advantage.

So it is possible to curb automobile traffic with train service, but ― and I can't stress this enough ― the train has to compete with the car and not planes.

The economics of high-speed rail are such that it is more a competitor with air travel than car travel. What do you mean by “flexible” enough? Of course, private vehicle travel is more flexible than travel by rail…

When the TGV first opened, part of the promise was that tickets would be affordable for common people, as you suggest. They are not, however, anything like the price of gas. If you consider the huge fixed costs of car ownership, plus road tolls, it’s cost competitive with driving to take trains in France and Germany. The Quebec-Windsor system is estimated to cost more than $20 billion (a few years ago), with the most expensive components being through the GTA. Do you think tickets should cost $20 on 200 kilometer leg of that system? You’re right that it needs to balance ticket price and volume, and that we could easily have the volume necessary in this region, but should you be able to take a 300km/h train to Toronto for less than it would have cost to park your car for the day once you got there?

A 300km/h train would take an hour and a half to get from Toronto to Ottawa, a fraction of the time it takes to drive. Nobody should expect to be able to do that for the cost of filling up their tank. If it needed to be that cheap, that’s just not possible. But it doesn’t. It is both faster than flying when taking in to account the distance from airports to city centres, and cheaper than flying, and that’s plenty and it should be done.

If you want to curb automobile traffic with train service, though, you do not need to lay billions of dollars in new tracks for high-speed rail. Invest in commuter rail, and light rail within cities, and that’s what will reduce automobile traffic.

Out of curiosity, when you are driving on the 401 through London or Oxford or KW, how many passenger vehicles driving along with you do you suppose are headed to downtown Toronto?

[HillStreetBlues]

Originally Posted by GreaterMontréal

It's now 2M on the Island and 4.1M in the metro. The Qc City-Mtl corridor has 7.5M.

I think you guys might have missed my point about the population. If Montreal-Quebec City corridor has 7.5 million people, that’s a pretty good argument again to invest in high speed rail east from Toronto and not west.

[HillStreetBlues]

Originally Posted by Vertigo3000

It has little to do with total populations, it has to do with proximity and economic ties. With the argument of population, a NYC-TO makes a hell of a lot more sense... Why the hell would you build a HSR to Montreal if New York has a higher population.

Sarcasm aside, London-Kitchener-Toronto is a fantastic place to START high speed rail in Canada. And the most politically feasible option too. If we were to consider populations and the whole competing with planes logic, then we'd be better off connecting to the USA long before Montreal and Ottawa.

Political feasibility is a good argument for this, and I expect a lot of the reason we’re hearing about a Toronto-KW-London routing (for the first time ever, unless someone can correct me on that). Reason being, it would take effort on the part of our provincial government to engage the government of Quebec, and it’s easier to just promise a route in Ontario.

Montreal to New York, by the way, has been seriously proposed. I have no idea about Toronto to New York.

Re: commuting distances. It’s median distance, evidently, and Torontonians indeed do travel further than anyone else in the country: link.

[Pimpmasterdac]

Quite surprising the Liberals would promote any project outside of the GTHA, guess they realize their GTHA base isn't enough. The whole project reeks of pre-election posturing/desperation, plus given Liberal previous lack of keeping promises (Highway 7 KW-Guelph comes to my mind) I donno how sincere they are in carrying out this project.

Great though that there's at least a project on the books now. Really surprised they selected Toronto-KW-London as the proposed route. Honestly would've thought Toronto-Aldershot-Brantford-Woodstock-London would be the route of any HSR route.

Be curious as to know where any planned HSR would go through London? Whether they would use the existing Via Station on York, perhaps the CPR near the old station, or a new routing entirely..

[Aylmer]

Originally Posted by HillStreetBlues

The economics of high-speed rail are such that it is more a competitor with air travel than car travel. What do you mean by “flexible” enough? Of course, private vehicle travel is more flexible than travel by rail…

What I mean is that you have more than a train or two per day: for intercity travel, I figure that a good frequency goal is one per hour or so during the day with a couple early in the morning and a few late at night.

When the TGV first opened, part of the promise was that tickets would be affordable for common people, as you suggest. They are not, however, anything like the price of gas. If you consider the huge fixed costs of car ownership, plus road tolls, it’s cost competitive with driving to take trains in France and Germany. The Quebec-Windsor system is estimated to cost more than $20 billion (a few years ago), with the most expensive components being through the GTA. Do you think tickets should cost $20 on 200 kilometer leg of that system? You’re right that it needs to balance ticket price and volume, and that we could easily have the volume necessary in this region, but should you be able to take a 300km/h train to Toronto for less than it would have cost to park your car for the day once you got there?

A 300km/h train would take an hour and a half to get from Toronto to Ottawa, a fraction of the time it takes to drive. Nobody should expect to be able to do that for the cost of filling up their tank. If it needed to be that cheap, that’s just not possible. But it doesn’t. It is both faster than flying when taking in to account the distance from airports to city centres, and cheaper than flying, and that’s plenty and it should be done.

Actually, a trip on the ICE from Cologne to Frankfurt (almost precisely the distance between Toronto and London) will set you back €39 or 20₡/km. The price of gas is about 23₡/km, so it actually is competitive. However, Schnellverkehr doesn't offer the same 1-5 person tickets, but that's something that we could actually take the lead on

I revised my numbers up to about 20¢/km, so just under $40 per trip for 1-5 people, which really isn't unreasonable. As I said, I strongly suspect that it's less expensive for us to subsidize train tickets than to subsidize car trips. after all, a highway generally gets near-0 return on the capital investment, not counting health, environmental and congestion costs, all of which number in the tens and of billions each year.

If you want to curb automobile traffic with train service, though, you do not need to lay billions of dollars in new tracks for high-speed rail. Invest in commuter rail, and light rail within cities, and that’s what will reduce automobile traffic.

I completely agree, but we also need viable intercity transit to make it possible and attractive to not only live car-light, but car-free.
I agree that the billions would be better spent on urban transit. As such, I don't believe that it is necessary to have 300 km/h HSR (or at least at first): for such a short distance, it would win out against the plane even at 150km/h (assuming 30 minutes transit at each end and 30 minutes in flight).

Sweden achieves 200km/h even with at-grade crossings (albeit with object-detection) and I believe that we could achieve something similar with modest upgrades to infrastructure (twinning, grade-separation at major crossings, smooth turns, concrete ties, welded tracks and modern signalling). Note that it's a different story for longer distances (like Toronto-Ottawa) which need much higher speeds in order to be competitive with air travel.

With these more modest upgrades, we could quickly and cheaply achieve a complete and very populate network. I know that speed is attractive, but it can be a trap if all we get is a small, unaffordable system. Cheap tickets can also be a trap if they're for a pokey milk-run.
We need a balance and I think that it's this:
A system with competes with air travel for speed and car travel for cost.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by Pimpmasterdac

Quite surprising the Liberals would promote any project outside of the GTHA, guess they realize their GTHA base isn't enough. The whole project reeks of pre-election posturing/desperation, plus given Liberal previous lack of keeping promises (Highway 7 KW-Guelph comes to my mind) I donno how sincere they are in carrying out this project.

Great though that there's at least a project on the books now. Really surprised they selected Toronto-KW-London as the proposed route. Honestly would've thought Toronto-Aldershot-Brantford-Woodstock-London would be the route of any HSR route.

Be curious as to know where any planned HSR would go through London? Whether they would use the existing Via Station on York, perhaps the CPR near the old station, or a new routing entirely..

Highway 7 is still going through, but like all highway projects, has been delayed. 404, 400, 407, 7 etc. have all been delayed from their original opening dates, the 400 was originally supposed to be in sudbury by 2012 for example but because of a plethora of reasons from aboriginal negotiations to simply designing such a huge highway the project keeps getting delayed and is looking like the 400 won't reach sudbury until 2020 or so now. I feel it has to do with MTO giving way too optimistic initial opening dates to the politicians and them getting stuck in the mud when it comes time to actually cut the ribbon as every highway project is ALWAYS delayed 2 or 3 years. They seem to have finally learned their lesson and are giving the 427 extension a nice longggg lead time.

as for ignoring Southern Ontario, I don't really see that. not much in and around the London area sure, but its not like there is nothing going on. They twinned a bit of highway 3 around Essex a few years ago, there is the new Wonderland Road interchange, The beast of a highway project known as the Windsor Essex parkway, 401 widening outside of Windsor, etc. London has its age old issue of 401 access as always, but its a tough situation to fix with no cheap or easy solution, meaning addressing it has questionable money for value.

as for the station, I suspect you would see them rip down the existing VIA station and replace it with something that actually has some dignity. I'd love to see something sort of similar to Ottawa's VIA station.

[Stevo26]

Aylmer writes:

With these more modest upgrades, we could quickly and cheaply achieve a complete and very populate network. I know that speed is attractive, but it can be a trap if all we get is a small, unaffordable system. Cheap tickets can also be a trap if they're for a pokey milk-run.

We need a balance and I think that it's this:

A system with competes with air travel for speed and car travel for cost.

As to the first point, we already have something that does poky milk runs but ain't all that cheap: it's called Via Rail. Via Rail is already a small system that doesn't begin to live up to its potential, and that's because the feds won't fund it properly, and Via Rail haven't done a very good job of making railway travel a compelling alternative. Not when Via trains have to share tracks with CN/CP trains that take priority.

As to the second, I can't see high speed rail being priced the way you suggest. What I could see is HSR trips being priced in such a way that they at least partially recover what the federal and provincial governments would lose in gasoline taxes due to HSR.

[Pimpmasterdac]

With Highway 7 it became promoted and announced when the Liberals had a by-election in KW and knew it would be a tight race. They lost and now it's been relegated to beyond 2017 schedule, the nevereverland of political MTO promises. Not saying it won't be built, but sure we'll see a few elections and new leaders who won't honour old commitments as quickly.

SW Ontario gets a hobos dick cheese compared to GTHA. In London's case to be fair it's partially our fault in that it's behind the times, never has any bold or inspiring ideas. GTHA has soo many projects and variations that it commands reflections. London does have a great concept BRT plan, but can mark my words it will be watered down once the people along the routes see the extent of expropriation. Instead we have mushy middle of the road compromises, interchanges built where no one would complain or road widening that are decades behind their scheduling. Even Wonderland Rd Interchange, this is something that should have been built decades ago and is our consolation prize. Windsor & KW-Guelph are getting new, and very deserved highways, meanwhile VMP is set to be a freeway.. IN 60 YEARS!

But back to the HSR, it really will be interesting which route is used. I don't see VIA being torn considering it's ~16 years old, then again the old 10 storey CN building before only lasted 25 years. Either CP or CN route would be interesting, considering 10+ minimum overpasses and grade separations on either line required it would run into the $100s of millions on that alone, before even acquiring exclusive ROW. Great project and one that would totally transform London if it comes to fruition in the next 10 years as planned!

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Highway 7 is still going through, but like all highway projects, has been delayed. 404, 400, 407, 7 etc. have all been delayed from their original opening dates, the 400 was originally supposed to be in sudbury by 2012 for example but because of a plethora of reasons from aboriginal negotiations to simply designing such a huge highway the project keeps getting delayed and is looking like the 400 won't reach sudbury until 2020 or so now. I feel it has to do with MTO giving way too optimistic initial opening dates to the politicians and them getting stuck in the mud when it comes time to actually cut the ribbon as every highway project is ALWAYS delayed 2 or 3 years. They seem to have finally learned their lesson and are giving the 427 extension a nice longggg lead time.

as for ignoring Southern Ontario, I don't really see that. not much in and around the London area sure, but its not like there is nothing going on. They twinned a bit of highway 3 around Essex a few years ago, there is the new Wonderland Road interchange, The beast of a highway project known as the Windsor Essex parkway, 401 widening outside of Windsor, etc. London has its age old issue of 401 access as always, but its a tough situation to fix with no cheap or easy solution, meaning addressing it has questionable money for value.

as for the station, I suspect you would see them rip down the existing VIA station and replace it with something that actually has some dignity. I'd love to see something sort of similar to Ottawa's VIA station.

[Innsertnamehere]

anything after 2016 completion is given an "after 2016" or "After 2017" date as it is so far off. Construction for it is scheduled to start next year IIRC with completion in 2017. (which means 2018 as there is always delay in construction for some reason) the after 2017 has more to do with making sure they aren't making promises they can't keep than constantly pushing projects back. It has its funding secured, land purchasing is already beginning and there is multi-party support for it. I don't see it getting cancelled.

For the station, the new HSR station will be handling much, much larger amounts of passengers so I don't see the current one being adequate. I would expect it to be torn down and replaced with a parking structure of some sort with a larger station building.

The Kitchener route was likely chosen for several reasons.

Firstly, the way the conversation at MTO went.

Minister A - "Hey, lets bring AD2W service to K-W!"
Minister B - "Good idea, maybe we should stretch it to London?"
Minister A - "yea, hey, look at this report, it says that if we make it HSR its economic run off will hugely offset the increased costs!"
Minister B - "Good Idea!"

Bit simplistic, but I feel that is roughly how it worked.

Other reasons include ease of ownership of the Corridor, GEXR operates the corridor not CP or CN, and it is a very minor freight corridor. Buying it would be easy as in 2017 GEXR's lease will expire and there have been rumours that it will be ripped up as GEXR isn't interested in renewal. It would presumably be on fire-sale and the province can snap it up on the cheap. The lack of significant freight traffic is also a bonus that doesn't exist on the Woodstock - Aldershot alignment.

There is also the fact that they want the HSR to connect Toronto and Kitchener with its Tech sector, those companies have apparently been doing some heavy lobbying for a quick and easy connection to Pearson and Downtown Toronto.

[ssiguy]

This is interesting, unexpected, and somewhat bewildering.

VIA rail to downtown Toronto is actually quite fast already when taking the London Express and not the stupid milk runs that are most of the route. London to Union non-stop using VIA would be just as fast as any HSR if it has to divert to Kitchener with stops there and at Pearson. It will certainly look good on election flyers but in reality it won't be any faster than a VIA London Express and cost a small fortune.

As for VIA not getting enough money, I see your point but serive areas has more to do with it's lack of service than does a lack of government funding. The problem with VIA is that it has to heavily subsidize routes in rural areas, Western Canada, and the Maritimes.

If VIA was left to it's own devices it could provide and excellent service on routes that could support it but instead has to use tons of money on money losing routes usually due to political interference from politicians who want trains that no one takes still going thru town.

[MrSlippery519]

Interesting to say the least, I am most curious to see how and where the station would be handled. Would the Via station be expanded somehow to accommodate the volume and both operate out of the same building?? Add to that they would need to build a parking structure where the existing flat parking is currently (which should have been done in the first place).

In the end this would be a massive project for London and I feel it would really push the city to get BRT going immediately as well.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

This is interesting, unexpected, and somewhat bewildering.

VIA rail to downtown Toronto is actually quite fast already when taking the London Express and not the stupid milk runs that are most of the route. London to Union non-stop using VIA would be just as fast as any HSR if it has to divert to Kitchener with stops there and at Pearson. It will certainly look good on election flyers but in reality it won't be any faster than a VIA London Express and cost a small fortune.

As for VIA not getting enough money, I see your point but serive areas has more to do with it's lack of service than does a lack of government funding. The problem with VIA is that it has to heavily subsidize routes in rural areas, Western Canada, and the Maritimes.

If VIA was left to it's own devices it could provide and excellent service on routes that could support it but instead has to use tons of money on money losing routes usually due to political interference from politicians who want trains that no one takes still going thru town.

Current travel times are 2 hours on the corridor, with a singular daily train making that trip. cutting that to 1:30 or less is great, especially how it will now connect to Kitchener and Pearson. The access to the airport will be a boon for ridership.

[HillStreetBlues]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Current travel times are 2 hours on the corridor, with a singular daily train making that trip. cutting that to 1:30 or less is great, especially how it will now connect to Kitchener and Pearson. The access to the airport will be a boon for ridership.

Work is already ongoing on the Union Pearson train service, which includes upgrades to the Kitchener Go line. Once it is completed, travelers from KW will be able to connect at Weston quite easily to get to Pearson, and there was also some talk of Go trains from Kitchener station straight to Pearson (the Weston-Pearson leg would only .

I think you’re almost exactly right about how this High-Speed Rail “announcement” (I don’t know what to call it when you announce an idea without a price tag) came about. An excellent case has been made for all-day two-way service between Kitchener and Union. Stratford has already stated its desire to have service one day, too. So why not. After that, you may as well go to London. But that’s pretty far for Go, isn’t it? Well, we’ve talked about High-Speed Rail, so let’s make this High-Speed Rail. I think your analysis is probably pretty close.

And it’s too bad. Because all-day Go service between Kitchener and Toronto makes a great deal of sense, and real leadership would mean announcing incremental improvements to the line to that end. It would be possible to speed up service with some investment in track improvements. It would be possible to increase ridership with a few extra departures a day, or with a park-and-ride east of Kitchener. It would be possible to gauge interest in “outbound” service by introducing a westbound morning departure.

Likewise, London should have better connections with Toronto, and it’s possible to improve them- the provincial government could contribute to the cost of an extra Via departure express from London, perhaps.

Instead, we get the empty promise of a huge project that will come to pass. That’s the same as nothing.

Re: Highway 7. The expansion of Highway 7 is promised by almost every provincial government at almost every election cycle, for decades. Eventually, presumably it will happen. The Liberals did seem to suggest it would be sooner rather than later, but then the by-election passed. They are now saying “after 2017.” 2018 is after 2017, but so is 2030. It wouldn’t be a good idea for anyone to hold his breath until ground breaks.

[Pimpmasterdac]

Depending on what travel levels a HSR would expect a new station may be warranted. Parking garage no questions would be needed, but station has some quirks. It still has the original tunnels that use to hook up to L&PS commuter rail, and now sure the waiting area that exists in the lower levels of London Via.

GEXR would be a good route, it only uses a small portion of CN, which is currently triple tracked, and could be expanded to connect to the Via station. Major issue with GEXR would require a lot of grade separations; Egerton, Highbury, Dundas, Oxford, Clarke & VMP all have at-grade intersections. Those are all major roads that couldn't be closed, and would require expensive separations, so makes me weary of how realistic the project is, as opposed to a pre-election "promise". It would be great for the province to make an investment in London and SW Ontario, but given the lack of previous investment very cautious.

[Innsertnamehere]

5 grade separations are small change in a 3 billion or more project. Grade separations cost $10 to $15 million each, not much on a project of this scale. Highbury and Oxford may cost a little more due to their complexity (likely requiring an overpass) But they could spend $100 million and get the corridor 100% grade seperated in London. I'm more concerned about getting it through Guelph and downtown Brampton.

[haljackey]

Who says the line can't run in a new corridor?

It might even make sense to have it stop near the London airport or have it run north (or south) of the city to a new multi-modal station.

[MolsonExport]

I'd rather see it run through the heart of the city, as it can best serve the largest number of people in this fashion, and even some that may not wish to drive to the station. As for the airport, the HSR would make it somewhat redundant for half or more of the flights, being that they basically are a jump flight to Pearson. The airport has not lived up to its potential. Not nearly. You can't get anywhere from it. Although I dislike Pearson, it is heaven compared to Detroit Metro or O'Hare. I avoid American transfers at all costs.

[Simpseatles]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

As for the airport, the HSR would make it somewhat redundant for half or more of the flights, being that they basically are a jump flight to Pearson. The airport has not lived up to its potential. Not nearly. You can't get anywhere from it.

Unfortunately I would have to agree. I'm a supporter of London International and I really want it to succeed but it does seem to be stagnating. And like you mentioned the situation would only get worse with a high speed rail link to Pearson essentially eliminating the need for the current flights to Toronto. Take out all those flights and you're not really left with all that much. But anyways that's a discussion for another thread I suppose...

[haljackey]

320km/h is apparently the speed that the line will run at.

This will kill the airport's flights to Pearson. Looks like they'll have to start thinking out of the box for some other destinations.

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by Pimpmasterdac

SW Ontario gets a hobos dick cheese compared to GTHA.

If this is true (and I'm not convinced that it is), it's because the GTHA generates the lion's share of tax revenue and economic activity in this province. Starving he golden goose is a bad idea. Connecting a city like London to Toronto and the Waterloo tech sector, however, would be a huge benefit to London.

Originally Posted by ssiguy

This is interesting, unexpected, and somewhat bewildering.

VIA rail to downtown Toronto is actually quite fast already when taking the London Express and not the stupid milk runs that are most of the route. London to Union non-stop using VIA would be just as fast as any HSR if it has to divert to Kitchener with stops there and at Pearson. It will certainly look good on election flyers but in reality it won't be any faster than a VIA London Express and cost a small fortune.

As for VIA not getting enough money, I see your point but serive areas has more to do with it's lack of service than does a lack of government funding. The problem with VIA is that it has to heavily subsidize routes in rural areas, Western Canada, and the Maritimes.

If VIA was left to it's own devices it could provide and excellent service on routes that could support it but instead has to use tons of money on money losing routes usually due to political interference from politicians who want trains that no one takes still going thru town.

The northern route through Kitchener wouldn't be a diversion at all. That line is maybe 10 km longer. The problem is it's so slow. An HSR line with a more direct route between Kitchener and London would cancel out any distance advantage that the line through Brantford has. Anything going at 320 km/h would have to have new corridors bypassing Guelph, Stratford, and all the small towns along the line.