Quote:
Originally Posted by acottawa
There's no way to get the reductions in travel times (90 minutes) they're talking about on the Ottawa-Toronto route without taking a more direct route, which means either a greenfield railway from Kingston to Smiths falls (which as lrtfriend pointed out never existed as the old K&P took a direct route to Pembrooke and you pointed out involves major geographic impediments) or using the CPR from Belleville to Smiths Falls. Not sure which they're planning although with only a 1.5B track budget it sure looks like the latter.
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The current route from Ottawa to Toronto is 446km. If upgraded to allow full speed, that route could be done in about 2 hours and 50 minutes with current equipment assuming a single stop in Kingston. 2 hours 30 minutes may be an exaggeration.
That inland CP route (the Belleville Subdivision, if I'm not mistaken), would be a pretty useful shortcut but it's in poor condition, very curvy (thus slowing down trains), and CP is hard to deal with (CP is much more hostile to passenger service on their lines than CN--this is a huge issue in the GTA with Metrolinx). I doubt $1.5B could do that one either.
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