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High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - Printable Version

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High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - Canard - 12-05-2014

Ontario Moving Forward with High-Speed Rail

Let's hope it's not just another in the stack of EA's (Rick Mercer!), and actually happens this time!


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - panamaniac - 12-05-2014

The London-Windsor leg seems to be a new addition to the plan.


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - DHLawrence - 12-05-2014

Councillors from Windsor went to Queen's Park and called the government on the carpet for forgetting that Ontario doesn't end at Wellington Street. Building to Windsor the first time around saves them from having to do a rush job if it ever hooks up with a Detroit-Chicago line.


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - BuildingScout - 12-05-2014

Looks like yet another environmental assessment will take place.


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - panamaniac - 12-05-2014

Has there been an EA previously?


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - BuildingScout - 12-05-2014

(12-05-2014, 08:55 PM)panamaniac Wrote: Has there been an EA previously?

I seem to remember reading in the press that there have been quite a few already.


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - Canard - 12-05-2014



Tongue in cheek, of course Smile

You can find details of previous HSR studies on Paul Langdon's High Speed Rail Canada website here.

I have a much-cherished ABB Sprinter brocheure from the late 80's when I was a kid, showing their proposal for putting the X2000 trains along the Windsor-Quebec City corridor. When I finally got to ride those very trains a couple of years ago while touring Scandinavia, it was a real treat.


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - DHLawrence - 12-06-2014

There have been 17 studies since the 1980s. If memory serves, there was one released only two years ago.


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - plam - 12-06-2014

(12-06-2014, 02:10 AM)DHLawrence Wrote: There have been 17 studies since the 1980s. If memory serves, there was one released only two years ago.

Yes, the link that Canard posted has 19 links to studies. However, a quick Google search didn't reveal any Environmental Assessments, either on the Internet or on the highspeedrailcanada site. The 2011 study, for instance, was a feasibility study, not an EA. Some of the documents there are polls, others are economic impact reports or other such studies.

I'm still not holding my breath. But it seems to me that an EA is the first step that one would need to do before launching a project. Necessary, but certainly not sufficient.


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - BuildingScout - 12-06-2014

(12-06-2014, 10:39 AM)plam Wrote: The 2011 study, for instance, was a feasibility study, not an EA. Some of the documents there are polls, others are economic impact reports or other such studies.

Wasn't that the one that "discovered" that if you bypass it's main potential users (that is, 0.5m people living about 100km away) then there is no demand for the service?


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - plam - 12-06-2014

(12-06-2014, 01:22 PM)BuildingScout Wrote:
(12-06-2014, 10:39 AM)plam Wrote: The 2011 study, for instance, was a feasibility study, not an EA. Some of the documents there are polls, others are economic impact reports or other such studies.

Wasn't that the one that "discovered" that if you bypass it's main potential users (that is, 0.5m people living about 100km away) then there is no demand for the service?

Might be in the fine print, but not in the main recommendations.

The 2011 feasibility study finds:

  • must have government pay at least half of upfront costs
  • full Quebec City - Windsor not sustainable, but for the Canadian economy, electric 300km/h on Montreal-Toronto would have net present value of $869M; diesel 200km/h on Montreal-Toronto NPV = $817M; E300 on Quebec City-Toronto NPV = $257M.
That study also says that an EA would need to be done. So I'm skeptical that an EA already exists. It's hard to carry out a stealth EA. They're pretty noticeable.


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - BuildingScout - 12-06-2014

(12-06-2014, 01:46 PM)plam Wrote: The 2011 feasibility study finds:




  • must have government pay at least half of upfront costs
  • full Quebec City - Windsor not sustainable,

Exactly, that's the one I'm referring to. Quebec-Windsor was not sustainable because the Toronto-Windsor segment skipped over the stop at KW. If you think about it KW is likely to be an end point of 60-70% of the ridership in that segment: if the Toronto-Windsor corridor were to be built the majority of the riders would be people commuting from London<->KW and KW <-> Toronto (either direction), with the remaining 30% being Toronto<->London and Windsor<->Toronto.

Here's the quote:


Quote:From the point of view of the Ontario economy as a whole, all scenarios were shown to be economically

feasible, except the Toronto – Windsor segment with E300+ technology, which had a negative NPV.



RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - Canard - 12-06-2014

Is anyone here old enough to have ridden (or remember having seen) the Turbo in operation? I wish I had been alive when it was in operation. Such a beautiful machine.


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - jgsz - 12-06-2014

(12-06-2014, 04:15 PM)Canard Wrote: Is anyone here old enough to have ridden (or remember having seen) the Turbo in operation?  I wish I had been alive when it was in operation.  Such a beautiful machine.

Ah, the Turbo.  I was living and working in Montreal so I took the Turbo to Toronto every chance I got.  It had a nice elevated  bar, from what I can remember.   

...still waiting for a high-speed train. 


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - DHLawrence - 12-06-2014

Canada: the only country to have a high speed train and give it up.