VIA Rail network developments

[urbanforest]

A story from the Montreal Gazette that includes a bit of new info. My emphasis below.

From the Montreal Gazette
Quebec City-Toronto high-speed rail expected to cost between $60B and $90B

By Jack Wilson

High-speed rail will run from Quebec City to Toronto no earlier than 2041, according to estimates shared Thursday by the Crown corporation tasked with its construction.

“This is not a calendar we’re committing to,” Alto CEO Martin Imbleau said, but an early estimate provided one day after the project’s announcement.

The rail line is projected to cost between $60 billion and $90 billion, another early-stage estimate subject to change, Imbleau said. But with projections of 24 million round trips per year and a $24.5-billion boost to the annual GDP, Imbleau said the project was well worth the price tag.

Announced Wednesday in Montreal, Canada’s first high-speed rail project is set to span from Quebec City to Toronto, with stops in Trois-Rivières, Laval, Montreal, Ottawa and Peterborough. It will be “the largest infrastructure project in Canadian history,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters during the announcement. Thursday marked the first day of the project’s planning phase — shovels aren’t expected in the ground for at least five years.

And whether ground is broken at all will soon be beyond Trudeau’s control. In less than three weeks, he’ll be replaced as prime minister. An election call is expected soon after.

Assuming high-speed rail ambitions stay on track, the line would connect an area of about 24 million people, 60 per cent of Canada’s population.

“The intent is to increase the productivity and the connection between those communities,” Imbleau said. The project will cut travel time between cities on the route by about half, he said, making those in the area “live way closer to one another.”

From Montreal, a trip to Toronto is projected to take three hours and seven minutes, a trip to Ottawa would take 58 minutes and a trip to Quebec City would take one hour and 29 minutes.

The project is a public-private partnership between Alto, a Crown corporation, and Cadence, a consortium of six companies that includes AtkinsRéalis (formerly SNC-Lavalin), Air Canada and SNCF Voyageurs, a rail company owned by the French government.

Alto, called VIA HFR until Wednesday, is headquartered in Montreal, with satellite offices in Quebec City, Ottawa and Toronto. Its staff of about 140 “started the project development today at 9 a.m. sharp,” Imbleau said Thursday.

Construction will take place in phases, Imbleau said, with trains projected to run on a portion of the route in 2037. The sample timeline provided shows trains running along the full route in 2041.

Alto has yet to select which cities will be served first, Imbleau said, but will aim to provide a “meaningful service,” from the get-go.

“We don’t want to start in the middle of nowhere and end the first phase in the middle of nowhere.”

Planning is based on costs between $60 billion and $90 billion, Imbleau said, but those numbers are subject to change.

“We don’t have a true project scope that would allow us to have a real budget,” he said.

Ottawa had initially pitched a “high frequency” rail project, which would have seen conventional trains run along the planned length of dedicated track. Having asked bidders to pitch both conventional and high-speed options, Wednesday’s announcement selected high-speed over “high frequency” rail.

High-speed rail will cost 20 to 30 per cent more than a conventional line would have, Imbleau said, but will offer a “significantly different” impact.

Fast and frequent travel on the line will grow the annual GDP by $24.5 billion per year, he said, a figure that could potentially reach $35 billion. The projection shows most of that boost coming from increased productivity resulting from shorter travel times.

By 2050, 24 million annual round trips are expected on the line, Imbleau said, compared with the four million annual round trips taken now.

This story was originally published February 20, 2025, 4:19 PM.

It's crazy that, even if everything goes right and successive future governments follow through on this, we won't be riding from QC City to Toronto for 16 years. I'll be an old man