High Speed Rail in Canada

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

They can't "buy off" politicians, but can't they make political or campaign donations?

Corporations and unions can't donate to political campaigns in Canada. Only individuals can donate. And so it's not enough to really sway governments. The bigger threat is simply public lobbying. See the Big 3 Telcos campaign against the possible entry of Verizon into Canada, for what a campaign against HSR could look like.

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Aren't we already doing that? There's a reason why the Liberals, NDP, Block and Green Party received 64% of the 2019 votes cast, while Conservative campaigns only received 36%.

Sure that indicates a certain preference for political action on climate change. Not sure that support translates into very specific action, such as rail investment. Generally, the public also tends to prefer local investment (transit in their town) over national or regional investment (intercity rail).

Originally Posted by J.OT13

The HFR proposal includes dedicated passenger rail tracks, a straighter alignment and grade separation, correct? And hopefully electrification.

The HFR proposal is largely based around repurposing an old rail line (CP Havelock Subdivision) and existing trail (that was part of that old rail line). There's not much investment on grade separation, straighter alignments, etc. It's single track and electrification is optional. All this means that running speeds will be limited to 110 mph (177 kph). .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_s...#Track_classes

125 mph can be achieve without grade separation (Class 7) for passenger service. But requires proper barriers, sensors, train communication and signals at every crossing. Put in grade separations, fix some of the curves, add more passing tracks or twin track, and speeds can be increased beyond 125 mph/201 kph.

Originally Posted by J.OT13

What stands between HFR and HSR? Is it double tracking? Is it Fort Knox grade separation (elevated, trenches, heavy fencing)? Do they use the same type of tracking?

Mostly about corridor segregation, twin tracking and alignment. HSR would require twin tracks, gentler curves, and complete grade separation. That is what makes its expensive. Given the right corridor though, upgrades can be done to achieve some of this over time.

Building HFR should give us a base to build on. Investment can be prioritized based on payoff. For example, spending $2-3 billion to make the Ottawa-Montreal corridor high speed capable would enable those cities to effectively become one metropolis with 1 hr trip times between the cities. This would also cut about half an hour off the Toronto-Montreal trip. Or spend $3-5 billion upgrading the Toronto-Ottawa portion and knock 45 mins to 1 hr off the Toronto-Ottawa and Toronto-Montreal trips but leave the Ottawa-Montreal segment unchanged. There's investment choices once HFR is built. And ridership growth and return on investment can drive those investment choices.

Originally Posted by J.OT13

I guess it goes back to the proof of concept and business case. We have to start somewhere, and that's the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal triangle. I hope that when the time comes to extend to Q.C., we'll be ready to fund a new tunnel through Mount Royal.

It's not just Montreal-Quebec. West of Toronto arguably has greater ridership potential with London, Kitchener and Pearson airport.

[J.OT13]

Thanks for the info!

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Thanks for the info!

No problem!

I wish people stopped looking at HFR as some cheaped out alternative to HSR, instead of a downpayment. This will be the first exclusively passenger intercity rail corridor in a very long time in Canada. This will be the first time that Canadians see what frequent and reliable intercity rail service looks like.

And it gives us path to slowly move to HSR. That's the downpayment part. The Ecotrain study looked at a 200 kph diesel HSR service and a 300 kph electrified HSR service on the Quebec-Windsor corridor. The most relevant part was that it costed out the diesel service at $9.1B for Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal and $18.9B for the full Quebec-Windsor corridor, in 2009 dollars. With inflation, the diesel HSR would be about $12B today for Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal. Electrified HSR would be about $15B today for the TOM triangle.

What this tells us is that once HFR is built, spending $9-10B progressively over the next decade would get us that diesel HSR service they studied for Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal at least. But, since GO and AMT have done a lot of suburban grade separations since then. And since that study modelled going through Kingston, the HFR routing would probably be several billion cheaper to upgrade. We could probably achieve fully electrified and grade separated HSR with operating speeds higher than 200 kph for that amount.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

As for the Mount Royal Tunnel....Keep in mind that the original HFR proposal never included Montreal-Quebec. That was a change. And likely one made to get buy in from Quebec and possibly CDPQ investment. I suspect that VIA is simply going to leave it up to Quebec and REM owner CDPQ to solve that one. They can launch Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal without the tunnel.

It seems to me that the importance of the tunnel for Montreal-Quebec HFR is over emphasized. I mean, yes having a stop right downtown is great but the amount of time, money and fuss that would need to be made just to close a 4-5 km gap is a bit much considering that without it, the station could still provide convenient, central access to the city with fast transit connections to downtown. It could still come into town using the Trois-Riviere and Lachute subdivisions, but then use the Adirondack sub and St.-Luc branch to cross town and connect to the Vaudreuil Sub heading back out of town. There could be a stop in Laval at De la Concorde connecting to the Orange line, at Pac connecting to the Blue line and various bus routes, plus a stop near the Canora REM station. The current stop at Dorval could be maintained.

Of course many trains between Montreal and Ottawa-Toronto would still terminate at Central rather than through-routing onto the northern route to QC, as would all trains along the old southern routes. This should work out fine considering that there would be more traffic between Montreal and the Ontario destinations than to QC. This would still be a major improvement to the service for Montreal-QC even if it isn't perfect.

http://img.src.ca/2014/01/20/480x320...al-railway.jpg

[Truenorth00]

It might be possible to create a routing where Montreal-Quebec trains use the St-Laurent Sub, Montreal Sub and Westmount Sub to access Gare Centrale. It's probably a minutes longer than a transfer and REM ride but that routing would provide a connection to Dorval as well.

In any event, I hope that the focus is on Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal. Other extensions should take a back seat to the core and high ridership triangle.

[Nouvellecosse]

That would be fine for people just going from QC to Montreal but it's an extra detour for anyone from QC continuing further west. Basically an extra 13km jog each way. Although i suppose with high enough frequency there could be both trips terminating in downtown Montreal and trips though routing to Ontario without going downtown.

I also heard people raise concerns on another online discussion site (I believe cat-bus?) with frequent passenger trains having to pass through a busy rail yard if they used the St. Laurent sub.

[Urban_Sky]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

The HFR proposal is largely based around repurposing an old rail line (CP Havelock Subdivision) and existing trail (that was part of that old rail line). There's not much investment on grade separation, straighter alignments, etc. It's single track and electrification is optional. All this means that running speeds will be limited to 110 mph (177 kph).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_s...#Track_classes

125 mph can be achieve without grade separation (Class 7) for passenger service. But requires proper barriers, sensors, train communication and signals at every crossing. Put in grade separations, fix some of the curves, add more passing tracks or twin track, and speeds can be increased beyond 125 mph/201 kph.

Just cross-posting a post I wrote one-and-a-half year ago on Urban Toronto:

As I posted already in July, Transport Canada's Grade Crossing Regulations explicitly prohibit the construction of any level crossing where "the railway design speed on the line of railway is more than 177 km/h (110 mph)". The Ecotrain study has investigated such a scenario ("F-200", with a travel time of 3:38 hours between TRTO and MTRL, as mentioned earlier in this post) and calculated construction costs of $11.8 billion (i.e. almost exactly three times the projected construction costs of HFR), of which more than $3 billion fall on grade separations alone:

Source: Ecotrain (2011, Deliverable 6, Part 1, pp.26+49)
Notes: Conversion factor: 1.1404 (Bank of Canada), re-post from post #3042 (Nov 11, 2017)

Note that the item for grade separation alone is almost the entire budget for HFR (if kept unelectrified) with $3.48 billion (inflated to 2017 values) and that this figure is only insignificantly higher in the E-300 scenario with $3.62 billion (both figures in 2017 CAD). In fact, almost two-thirds (63.8%) of the cost premium for E-300 over F-200 can be attributed to the "power supply" category (i.e. electrification)...

Bottom-line is that 110 mph is the sweet spot, as everything above that speed requires grade separation, which escalates construction costs in a way that it could only be possibly justified for true HSR (of the 300 km/h sort), provided you can afford it. I understand the sentiment that HFR should be built "future-proof" or something, but the nature of cost-benefit analyses is that the faster you build HFR, the more difficult it will become to justify the incremental cost of going HSR...

[milomilo]

110mph isn't awful, the UK has its railways running at a max speed only a little faster (save HS1) over distances similar to Toronto-Montreal. What average speed would we expect though?

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by milomilo

110mph isn't awful, the UK has its railways running at a max speed only a little faster (save HS1) over distances similar to Toronto-Montreal. What average speed would we expect though?

One of the articles I read had Toronto-Ottawa at 3:15 hrs and Toronto-Montreal at 4:45hrs. Upgrading the Ottawa-Montreal corridor to HSR standards would cut that trip down to 1:11 hrs as per the Ecotrain study, saving 22 mins over HFRs projected 1:33 mins between the two cities. Such an upgrade would knock 22 mins off the Toronto-Montreal trip too.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Urban_Sky

Bottom-line is that 110 mph is the sweet spot, as everything above that speed requires grade separation, which escalates construction costs in a way that it could only be possibly justified for true HSR (of the 300 km/h sort), provided you can afford it. I understand the sentiment that HFR should be built "future-proof" or something, but the nature of cost-benefit analyses is that the faster you build HFR, the more difficult it will become to justify the incremental cost of going HSR...

I think future proofing such that it doesn't preclude some upgrades or future capital investment. Not that it be built to offer a direct path to HSR. That is understandably difficult with an existing rail line.

Personally, I would love to see the build them Toronto-Ottawa HFR corridor as planned, and take the extra year or two building Ottawa-Montreal to Class 7 or Class 8 standards so that they can get Ottawa-Montreal to more commutable times and Toronto-Montreal under 4.5 hrs. But scope creep is understandably a danger to guard against.

[Nouvellecosse]

44 minutes savings for that amount of money? Meh... not worth it.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

44 minutes savings for that amount of money? Meh... not worth it.

What trip is saving 44 mins?

[Nouvellecosse]

In the post when you mentioned the 22 min savings in the Ottawa-Montreal trip and then mentioned it saving 22 min in the Toronto-Montreal trip, I misinterpreted it as another 22 min saved in the section from Ottawa-Toronto. I guess I expected it would go without saying that a 22 min saving already mentioned for part of the corridor wouldn't need to be reiterated.

[Truenorth00]

HSR is usually built to serve city pairs that can generate substantial traffic between them. Make Ottawa-Montreal close to 1 hr and there would be substantial traffic between those two cities. Commuter traffic. Tourist traffic. Business traffic to access Dorval airport. Achieving the same effect on the Toronto-Ottawa stretch would be more expensive. Making that Ottawa-Montreal stretch Class 7 track (201 km/h) might be a $2-3B project. Doing the same on the Toronto-Ottawa stretch might be a $3-5B effort.

But all of this is moot till we actually have HFR in service.

[Urban_Sky]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

HSR is usually built to serve city pairs that can generate substantial traffic between them. Make Ottawa-Montreal close to 1 hr and there would be substantial traffic between those two cities. Commuter traffic. Tourist traffic. Business traffic to access Dorval airport. Achieving the same effect on the Toronto-Ottawa stretch would be more expensive. Making that Ottawa-Montreal stretch Class 7 track (201 km/h) might be a $2-3B project. Doing the same on the Toronto-Ottawa stretch might be a $3-5B effort.

But all of this is moot till we actually have HFR in service.

Given that the cost breakdown we have seen published so far indicates that the investments into the Ottawa-Montreal segment will be very modest, this will leave significant travel time savings for HSR to justify the required cost of upgrading from HFR to HSR at a later point. For Toronto-Ottawa, I’m curious how HSR would reap sufficient travel time savings and frequencies (to yield incremental benefits over HFR) without building the entire Oshawa-Kingston-Smiths Falls segment to HSR standards in one go...

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Urban_Sky

Given that the cost breakdown we have seen published so far indicates that the investments into the Ottawa-Montreal segment will be very modest, this will leave significant travel time savings for HSR to justify the required cost of upgrading from HFR to HSR at a later point.

True of any HSR project, no?

And cutting from 1:33 to 1:11 is about a 24% reduction in travel time. Not small. Mostly in would think it moves the trip from "occasional for business" to daily commutable, as you get closer to 1 hr. Station access time on both ends adds to this.

Originally Posted by Urban_Sky

For Toronto-Ottawa, I’m curious how HSR would reap sufficient travel time savings and frequencies (to yield incremental benefits over HFR) without building the entire Oshawa-Kingston-Smiths Falls segment to HSR standards in one go...

I think any investment in Toronto-Ottawa is about capturing air travelers. Gets Toronto-Ottawa under 2 hrs and Montreal-Toronto under 3 hrs and you capture a lot of air travelers. I don't see why investment on the Oshawa-Kingston-Smiths Falls alignment is relevant.

I wish the Ecotrain study had looked at a more northern corridor that bypasses Kingston. The Lakeshore would seem to be much more expensive to develop into an HSR route.

[Urban_Sky]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

I think any investment in Toronto-Ottawa is about capturing air travelers. Gets Toronto-Ottawa under 2 hrs and Montreal-Toronto under 3 hrs and you capture a lot of air travelers. I don't see why investment on the Oshawa-Kingston-Smiths Falls alignment is relevant.

I wish the Ecotrain study had looked at a more northern corridor that bypasses Kingston. The Lakeshore would seem to be much more expensive to develop into an HSR route.

The only reason why Kingston is supporting rather than opposing HFR is because they will gain indirectly from HFR as the diversion of end-to-end travel between the primary markets (i.e. TRTO-OTTW/MTRL) away from the Kingston Sub will allow them to receive a much more focused service with more frequent trips to places like CBRG, BLVL and BRKV, better timed trips to OTTW and MTRL (there isn’t a morning departure and late-evening arrival on these routes as all trains are currently running through beyond KGON towards TRTO and therefore need to arrive/depart in TRTO at a reasonable time.

Whereas HFR will strengthen Kingston’s position as most important city between TRTO and OTTW or MTRL, any HSR proposal bypassing it would be met with fierce opposition, making just the commissioning of a study with such a routing unpalatable. However, what would be interesting is to add a TRTO-P’boro-KGON-OTTW routing (i.e. to add P’boro onto the HSR route). That way you’d only need to build an approximately 240 km long HSR segment from east of P’boro via KGON to SMTF), thus serving P’boro and KGON, while avoiding most of the Canadian shield. If we assume an average speed of 120 km/h for HFR (3:15h equals 195 minutes for 400 km between TRTO and OTTW) and 240 km/h for HSR, then this segment alone should cut a full hour off TRTO-OTTW and TRTO-MTRL, bringing them to 2:15h and 3:45h (or 3:30h, if OTTW-MTRL is already upgraded to HSR), thus below the magical 4 hours (where the train starts to become competitive) or 3 hours (where the airplane is no longer competitive against the plane).

This is also why I would try to avoid bypassing places like Perth, Sharbot Lake or Tweed: since the P’boro-SMTF segment is most likely to become obsolete once we proceed to HSR. Conversely, having stations in these communities might make continuing some very limited non-HSR service over the HFR line (maybe twice per day?), which would allow to preserve this line as a diversion route in case there are any disruptions on the P’boro-KGON-SMTF HSR line...

[Truenorth00]

It'll be interesting to see how this evolves. To be honest, I think once HFR is up and running, the temptation to upgrade that same corridor progressively will outweigh any desire to build a whole new HSR corridor for a few reasons:

1) Funding. It's a lot easier to lobby for and receive piecemeal funding to improve current service than it is to get a massive new funding package just a few years after a major capital investment.

2) Politics. Start planning a new connection between Peterborough and Kingston and there'll be a whole new political fight from other Lakeshore communities asking why they are excluded. And if buy some miracle an entire Lakeshore HSR line comes to fruition, these communities will be asking for the same level of service as Kingston too.

3) Demand. Connecting TOM with HFR will see VIA's passenger and demand growth mix change substantially. A lot of passenger growth will be coming from the big metros. And those passengers won't see much benefit in higher fares and longer travel times to hit up a town on 140k.

I agree that Kingston will gain more prominence with services hubbed there. Not sure, it buys them enough clout to become critical to HSR plans. Especially if Peterborough sees some explosive growth coming out of HFR, which is a realistic possibility. It'll be interesting to see how plans and arguments evolve post-HFR.

[Nouvellecosse]

HSR seems almost impossible along the current Lakeshore corridor precisely because of all the communities along route. Not only is building a new route through a densely populated area going to be more expensive due to land acquisition and grade-crossing removal, but HSR is kind of useless if there are tons of stops. A 300km/h train gives fast trips because of being able to maintain the high top speed not because of fast acceleration which is often actually be poorer than conventional electric trains. The current corridor should really be limited to local trains whether HFR or HSR.

Makes me wonder... if grade crossing removal is only necessary for speeds over 177km/h, would there not be numerous stretches on parts of the northern HFR route where trains could exceed that due to a lack of crossings? Considering how much more isolated the route is, with the right rolling stock HFR might be able to take advantage of some of the benefit of HSR without the huge cost removing all the grade crossing or rebuilding the whole corridor to straighten all the curves. Acela express seems to be similar in that the speed varies across the route with certain sections reaching 240km/h.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

HSR seems almost impossible along the current Lakeshore corridor precisely because of all the communities along route. Not only is building a new route through a densely populated area going to be more expensive due to land acquisition and grade-crossing removal, but HSR is kind of useless if there are tons of stops. A 300km/h train gives fast trips because of being able to maintain the high top speed not because of fast acceleration which is often actually be poorer than conventional electric trains. The current corridor should really be limited to local trains whether HFR or HSR.

Exactly. The concept of Lakeshore HSR is done. It's already at least $15B for electrified HSR (Ecotrain study adjusted for inflation) and that number is growing higher as the suburbs in Toronto and Montreal and towns en route encroach on possible alignments. There will never be money for this. Best case scenario is a few billion for Kingston to get something like HFR service. Higher frequency and reliability.

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Makes me wonder... if grade crossing removal is only necessary for speeds over 177km/h, would there not be numerous stretches on parts of the northern HFR route where trains could exceed that due to a lack of crossings? Considering how much more isolated the route is, with the right rolling stock HFR might be able to take advantage of some of the benefit of HSR without the huge cost removing all the grade crossing or rebuilding the whole corridor to straighten all the curves. Acela express seems to be similar in that the speed varies across the route with certain sections reaching 240km/h.

It's not just crossings. It's also about the curves and grades. You don't want an intercity trip becoming a rollercoaster ride. But if I had to bet, I would think upgrading the HFR alignment to entry level HSR (200-250 km/h) would cost less than half of what building a new HSR corridor along the Lakeshore would.

And Acela is a great example of why top speed is less relevant than average speed. It doesn't spend much of its run on sections supporting max speeds. Building a corridor that consistently supports 200 kph with limited stops is more valuable in the real world than building a corridor with sections of 300 kph and stops every 30 km.