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Originally Posted by acottawa
So if Via’s math is correct, Montreal-Toronto passengers will save 20 minutes, which hardly justifies a multi-billion dollar project.
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How do you figure it will only save 20 minutes? VIA's fastest train from Toronto to Montreal currently takes 4 hours 49 minutes (train #68). If that is cut to 4 hours, that is a savings of 49 minutes. On top of that, with the current route, the trains keep getting slower and slower due to increased freight (in
this post in 2016, that train was listed as being "4 hrs 42 minutes"). Also, that is the scheduled time. VIA's on time performance is getting worse and worse due to freight conflicts. Dedicated tracks would make both of these issues go away.
On top of that, you are forgetting the time savings on the Ottawa-Montreal and Ottawa-Toronto routes. Those fastest times are currently 1 hours 55 min and 4 hours 05 min respectively (once again, worse than they were in 2016 as shown
here). If those can be cut to 1 hour 20 min and 2 hours 30 min respectively, that is time savings of 35 minutes (Ottawa-Montreal) and a whopping 1 hour and 35 minutes on the Ottawa-Toronto route.
The other thing is, these are all fastest times. Many trains are much slower than that. With fewer possible stops and less freight interference, the difference between the slowest trains on the old and new routes will be even greater.
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There is up to 17 trains per day per direction serving the lakeshore. There are no significant gaps in service.
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I guess that depends on your definition of significant. According to the PDF schedule (there seems to be a bit of a discrepancy between it and the online timetable) midweek, train 52/62 arrives* in Kingston 2 hours 27 min after train 50/60. Also train 54 arrives in Kingston 2 hours 10 min after train 46.
On the other extreme, train 668 arrives in Kingston 5 minutes after train 54, train 65 arrives in Toronto 14 minutes after train 63, train 69 arrives in Toronto also 14 minutes after train 647 and train 61 arrives in Toronto 16
minutes after train 43. That is 4 times that trains less than 20 minutes of each other (not counting the fact that 50 and 60 as well as 52 and 62 have identical schedules between Toronto and Kingston).
If you take out the trains that are less than 20 minutes apart, you end up with only 14 westbound and 12 eastbound trains.
* I used arrival times as they seem more important than departure times.