High Speed Rail in Canada

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Taeolas

Right, whihc is part of the reason I didn't really include BC as one of the areas that really needs PAX expansion (though it could probably stand its own system too; I'm just less familiar with it).

But there are areas of the country that could/should have systems that don't because we're stuck in this "Can't Do" mentality.

Even the "The population isn't there to support it" feels weak to me, since a lot of the rail networks that do exist started at much smaller population levels and grew from there. We need to be planting seeds where the growth seems to be there. (Note I am NOT proposing anything like a rail link between Yellowknife and Whitehorse; but for areas that are growing it should be done).

Alberta makes sense; hell it's got one of the only other HSR potential routes in the country too, and is way past due for a proper Pax rail network in general.

The Maritimes are in a similar situation. SJ to Halifax is about a growing 1.5M population area, and while it isn't flat, the topography isn't too bad for setting up (or expanding) the existing rail network.

Crosslinking across the prairies is a bit of a stretch due to distances, but it's also more topologically favourable to do at least.

I don’t think any country that isn’t the Soviet Union would build dedicated passenger service East-West across the Prairies. Winnipeg to Calgary is about the distance from London to Krakow.

The Maritimes doesn’t have any useful unused lines and nobody is going to kick all the freight going to the ports off of the rails, so basically a new railway is needed and I don’t think any country would build a new railway to connect two sub-million cities 400+ km apart.

[Innsertnamehere]

long haul has no real market for actual reasonable benefits against investment, even if some people will use it.

The reality is that the only areas with viable rail service in Canada is the Corridor (Windsor/Sarnia through to Quebec City plus the Niagara Peninsula), Lethbridge>Edmonton and maybe over to Banff, and then connections to the US (Vancouver>Portland, Montreal>NYC, etc.).

There are a few marginal routes that you could maybe, just maybe, justify a very basic rail service like Halifax to Saint John or Saskatoon to Regina.. but those routes shouldn't expect more than a handful of trains a day and not high speed.

Canada is just too big and spread out to be a great rail market across the country, and a lot of areas that otherwise may be feasible have geographic limitations. Vancouver and Victoria would normally be a great rail connection candidate for example given their proximity.. but, you know, the whole Vancouver Island thing..

Focusing investment on HSR in the Corridor and Alberta is the right move, and there simply isn't a market really anywhere else.

[someone123]

In practice there are a lot of small investments that could be made for twinning, new crossings, sidings, etc. It's not a binary question of building a new line or not or finding an abandoned line. Speeds can be similar too; getting to higher speeds is often a question of a lot of little improvements and there's a big spectrum between HSR and stretches of quasi-maintained old rail with go-slow orders.

The rail routes in the Maritimes won't get multibillion dollar HSR anytime soon but I think people underestimate how populated the main corridor is and how modest improvements could yield meaningful transport benefits while also helping with freight reliability. I doubt it is comparable to Saskatchewan; people just put the Maritimes in the "rural" bucket. Some upgrades around Halifax are already happening with expanded rail yard, restored twinned track, etc. But then again there are supposed to be more freight trains running too so I am not sure if it eases anything for VIA. The real limiting factor in the Maritimes right now isn't demand, it's interaction with freight trains along the main route.

[Taeolas]

The issue with the Maritimes is Via barely has any presence there as it is. It's route is Halifax to Moncton to Northern NB, so it bypasses the 3rd and 4th biggest cities in the region, and it's "service" is only a few times a week that don't really accomadate travellers between Moncton and Halifax as is.

There is a rail route between SJ and Moncton; all we need for PAX service is a trainset or two that can stay in the Maritimes and just run once or twice a day between SJ and Halifax by way of Moncton. An engine and 2-3 cars is likely all that is realistically needed for each direction/run basically. Once that is established, then upgrading the track and expanding it can be more seriously talked about; but we need that basic first step done so people can start thinking of the Train as an option for travel between them.

(Linking Freddy into the nascent network is much more difficult since that rail was lost a long time ago; we'll need well established PAX rail service between the trio before we can seriously consider blazing a new route to link Freddy in)

[Innsertnamehere]

I could see Halifax - Moncton - Saint John following a similar pattern to the Ontario Northlander, which operates 1 train a day. Morning train into Halifax, evening train out. If you want to be generous you could do a reverse train so people can day trip between any of the three cities.

Anything more than that is going to be overkill given the population involved, and even that will require a substantial subsidy which will really limit its true practicality.

The reality is that the Maritimes just aren’t populated enough, their freeway network is already wildly overbuilt as it is.. the Trans Canada and Highway 1 are downright vacant compared to any central Canada freeway. the region can barely support freeways between cities, yet alone frequent rail lines.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

I could see Halifax - Moncton - Saint John following a similar pattern to the Ontario Northlander, which operates 1 train a day. Morning train into Halifax, evening train out. If you want to be generous you could do a reverse train so people can day trip between any of the three cities.

Anything more than that is going to be overkill given the population involved, and even that will require a substantial subsidy which will really limit its true practicality.

The reality is that the Maritimes just aren’t populated enough, their freeway network is already wildly overbuilt as it is.. the Trans Canada and Highway 1 are downright vacant compared to any central Canada freeway. the region can barely support freeways between cities, yet alone frequent rail lines.

The main difference is that the Halifax to Saint John route is less than half the distance as the Northlander, so it would need a lot less ridership and/or subsidy to operate. I think that's one of the key things people overlook. While the total population isn't huge, total population is kind of irrelevant without considering the density. It's like comparing Canada to Spain and saying since we're over 3/4 their population that we can support over 3/4 their HSR without considering density differences. Obviously the Maritime density difference isn't as extreme, but it's certainly makes too big a difference to ignore.

[someone123]

This is getting off of HSR, but I think that those points about the Maritimes, overbuilt highways, and the Northlander are a bit off. Moncton-Halifax does have passenger rail and NS is studying additional passenger rail. Saint John could probably support some passenger rail too if the network worked out, but I'm not sure why it tends to be so prominent in these discussions, and the case for something like commuter rail which could be a Halifax-Truro service is much stronger. In fact it was studied and the problem wasn't a sparse population and low demand but scheduling time on busy railways.

The Northlander geography is more like northern NB than the corridors that could use more rail service in the Maritimes. It runs for around 700 km through very sparse areas. Halifax-Truro has 600,000 while all of northeastern Ontario is around 500,000.

Extensive highways in outer parts of the region are actually a plus for feeding into passenger rail with bus service, and the highways aren't overbuilt around Halifax. They're actually pretty congested, and this is one growing reason for passenger rail.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

The main difference is that the Halifax to Saint John route is less than half the distance as the Northlander, so it would need a lot less ridership and/or subsidy to operate. I think that's one of the key things people overlook. While the total population isn't huge, total population is kind of irrelevant without considering the density. It's like comparing Canada to Spain and saying since we're over 3/4 their population that we can support over 3/4 their HSR without considering density differences. Obviously the Maritime density difference isn't as extreme, but it's certainly makes too big a difference to ignore.

The main difference is that Ontario Northland owns the track as far as Washago, so it can prioritize passenger service over freight. In the maritimes the freight lines are bringing traffic to and from major ports.

The other major difference is that Ontario Northland doesn’t compete with a freeway for most of its trip. Halifax to Moncton is 2 hours by car and 4 hours by train, St John would probably be 8 hours by train. It is not going to get much ridership.

There is nothing stopping provinces in the maritimes from setting up rail services if they want.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by acottawa

I don’t think any country that isn’t the Soviet Union would build dedicated passenger service East-West across the Prairies. Winnipeg to Calgary is about the distance from London to Krakow.

The Maritimes doesn’t have any useful unused lines and nobody is going to kick all the freight going to the ports off of the rails, so basically a new railway is needed and I don’t think any country would build a new railway to connect two sub-million cities 400+ km apart.

I don't think this is accurate. Europe is building this kind of rail. You just need huge gas taxes, tolls and other incentives not to drive along with massive subsidies. They are building nearly HSR in the Baltics where the largest city is like 600k.

But yes in Canada it doesn't make much sense but then neither does HSR between Montreal and Toronto by any normal math.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by acottawa

There is nothing stopping provinces in the maritimes from setting up rail services if they want.

It's being studied in NS and some rail upgrades are already happening. There was a bridge failure along the main line a few years ago so I wonder if capacity improvements could piggy-back off of resilience upgrades.

There's also a highway between Toronto and Montreal that people can take; most urban rail routes are also served by road connections aside from remote train-only areas. I think train services are complementary. People don't necessarily want to drive downtown or to the airport. It could also connect to the Mill Cove ferry under development, which connects to the rest of the ferry system. And of course a train already runs, but it goes all the way to Montreal and runs only 3x per week.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

I don't think this is accurate. Europe is building this kind of rail. You just need huge gas taxes, tolls and other incentives not to drive along with massive subsidies. They are building nearly HSR in the Baltics where the largest city is like 600k.

But yes in Canada it doesn't make much sense but then neither does HSR between Montreal and Toronto by any normal math.

Where is Europe building this kind of rail? (i.e. a new or significantly renovated rail line to connect sub one million cities or new or substantially renovated rail lines to connect cities thousands of km apart with no intermediate population centres of any significance). You would struggle to even find any regularly scheduled train service at these distances even using existing rails (I think there is one, from Poland to Frankfurt that just launched last year).

North America is much larger than Europe and the Western European trains that most Canadians are familiar cover a relatively compact (and high density) area by North American standards.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by someone123

It's being studied in NS and some rail upgrades are already happening. There was a bridge failure along the main line a few years ago so I wonder if capacity improvements could piggy-back off of resilience upgrades.

There's also a highway between Toronto and Montreal that people can take; most urban rail routes are also served by road connections aside from remote train-only areas. I think train services are complementary. People don't necessarily want to drive downtown or to the airport. It could also connect to the Mill Cove ferry under development, which connects to the rest of the ferry system. And of course a train already runs, but it goes all the way to Montreal and runs only 3x per week.

Between Toronto and Montreal (at least of you are going from downtown to downtown) the train and car are in the same ballpark. I don't think anyone would take the train if the road was 5 hours and the train was 10.

Urban rail routes are usually taken to avoid congestion and or parking charges, I don't think they are comparable as a use case to intercity rail.

But Nova Scotia can build whatever it wants to meet local needs.

[Taeolas]

That's also why proponents for Maritime rail are saying we need track improvements so that the train can get ballpark similar numbers as car travel.

As a country we've been decreasing our investment in PAX rail for decades, and doing other bone headed decisions (like letting CP/CN degrade rail lines in general), so of course we have a lot of infrastructure debt.

Setting up an SJ - HFX route is possible, and probably a lot easier than most other areas. The track is there; it just needs twinning and/or upgrading so it can handle PAX speeds, as well as the rolling stock to actually run the service. Which means we need a government willing to step up to the freight companies and force them to finally maintain and upgrade the rail equivalent of dirt roads they've been running for decades and forcing VIA to share. Considering how port traffic at SJ and Halifax is growing (or potentially growing if chokepoints could be resolved), sorting out the rail seems a no brainer from many angles.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Where is Europe building this kind of rail? (i.e. a new or significantly renovated rail line to connect sub one million cities or new or substantially renovated rail lines to connect cities thousands of km apart with no intermediate population centres of any significance). You would struggle to even find any regularly scheduled train service at these distances even using existing rails (I think there is one, from Poland to Frankfurt that just launched last year).

North America is much larger than Europe and the Western European trains that most Canadians are familiar cover a relatively compact (and high density) area by North American standards.

RailBaltic is the former but I'm nitpicking and distracting your main point which is how delusional the idea of St. John to Halifax or Calgary to Winnipeg passenger service is which I completely agree with. But sure if we destroy the financial ability to drive a car then we can end up with Russian like rail service.

Originally Posted by Taeolas

That's also why proponents for Maritime rail are saying we need track improvements so that the train can get ballpark similar numbers as car travel.

As a country we've been decreasing our investment in PAX rail for decades, and doing other bone headed decisions (like letting CP/CN degrade rail lines in general), so of course we have a lot of infrastructure debt.

Setting up an SJ - HFX route is possible, and probably a lot easier than most other areas. The track is there; it just needs twinning and/or upgrading so it can handle PAX speeds, as well as the rolling stock to actually run the service. Which means we need a government willing to step up to the freight companies and force them to finally maintain and upgrade the rail equivalent of dirt roads they've been running for decades and forcing VIA to share. Considering how port traffic at SJ and Halifax is growing (or potentially growing if chokepoints could be resolved), sorting out the rail seems a no brainer from many angles.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Taeolas

Setting up an SJ - HFX route is possible, and probably a lot easier than most other areas. The track is there; it just needs twinning and/or upgrading so it can handle PAX speeds, as well as the rolling stock to actually run the service. Which means we need a government willing to step up to the freight companies and force them to finally maintain and upgrade the rail equivalent of dirt roads they've been running for decades and forcing VIA to share. Considering how port traffic at SJ and Halifax is growing (or potentially growing if chokepoints could be resolved), sorting out the rail seems a no brainer from many angles.

Twinning and upgrading (and providing a way to bypass freight) is a multibillion dollar project. Just look at what Metrolinx spends in the GTA to get frequent service on former freight lines. Via had the same problem with their "High Frequency Rail" project a decade ago. There were "existing lines" that just needed to be "upgraded" which was going to be cheap. Part of the reason why they are now pursuing high speed rail is the "upgrade" project was basically building a totally new line from scratch, which was fairly close in price to HSR.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

RailBaltic is the former but I'm nitpicking and distracting your main point which is how delusional the idea of St. John to Halifax or Calgary to Winnipeg passenger service is which I completely agree with. But sure if we destroy the financial ability to drive a car then we can end up with Russian like rail service.

Rail Baltic (and related upgrades) start in Warsaw which has a metro population of 3 million. If Halifax had 3 million and Truro, Moncton and Bathurst and 750k each and there was a city of 1.5 million a high frequency ferry ride from Bathurst then I would probably be talking differently about the feasibility of rail services in Atlantic Canada.

[MonctonRad]

If you build it they will come........

[MonctonRad]

As we all know, there are three levels of rail service - commuter rail, regional rain and national rail. HSR is a form of regional rail.

In the Maritimes, we are part of the national VIA Rail network, but just barely, with only 3x weekly service to Montreal from Halifax/Moncton. A service that sparse isn't really a "service" at all.

I think the time has come for commuter rail in central NS, connecting downtown Halifax to Windsor and perhaps as far as Truro on two different lines. Vehicular traffic in the city has reached a crisis point that bus service alone will not be able to solve. This is a municipal/provincial issue.

The main question is what to do with regional passenger rail? At present there is none (there used to be when I was a child). It would not be possible to rebuild a regional service to the levels that formerly existed half a century ago, but, I do think a single regional passenger rail service connecting Saint John/Moncton/Truro/Halifax on a single line perhaps 2x daily should be considered. There are about 1.25M people who would live close to this regional rail line. It would connect the three largest cities in the region and would provide an option to those people who prefer rail travel, or who do not have easy access to motor vehicles for travel. The bus service in the Maritimes remains suboptimal, and, there is no air service connecting the larger cities in the Maritimes. This is an important distinction from the west where every city is connected by commuter passenger aircraft.

Just because denizens from larger Canadian cities feel that regional rail in the Maritimes is not worth the investment and that our relatively smaller populations don't deserve the service levels available elsewhere does not mean that Maritmers don't still have a need.

Canada exists outside of the Quebec City/Windsor corridor.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by acottawa

The main difference is that Ontario Northland owns the track as far as Washago, so it can prioritize passenger service over freight. In the maritimes the freight lines are bringing traffic to and from major ports.

The other major difference is that Ontario Northland doesn’t compete with a freeway for most of its trip. Halifax to Moncton is 2 hours by car and 4 hours by train, St John would probably be 8 hours by train. It is not going to get much ridership.

There is nothing stopping provinces in the maritimes from setting up rail services if they want.

I don't think the freeway part has much to do with it. The highways are there because so many more people travel on these routes and the destinations are more evenly spread. So the much higher traffic volume is to be expected given how much closer the distances are. But as someone else already mentioned, there would need to be speed upgrades and that would also likely involve capacity upgrades at the same time to address the freight conflicts. And fortunately the speed difference isn't quite as extreme as you suggest. Well, unless it's someone who drives well above the speed limit.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I don't think the freeway part has much to do with it. The highways are there because so many more people travel on these routes and the destinations are more evenly spread. So the much higher traffic volume is to be expected given how much closer the distances are. But as someone else already mentioned, there would need to be speed upgrades and that would also likely involve capacity upgrades at the same time to address the freight conflicts. And fortunately the speed difference isn't quite as extreme as you suggest. Well, unless it's someone who drives well above the speed limit.

A freeway has a lot to do with it. Highways in a northern Ontario are slow and desolate, making the train a more appealing alternative that is probably comparable on the time front. I was going by Google Maps. It had a car trip to Moncton a little over 2 hours and the train a little over 4. If that is the wrong information then please feel free to update.