Quote:
Originally Posted by lrt's friend
That may only true in theory at the present time, or with a great deal of delays, like a two hour bus ride. I believe that Kitchener GO rail service is presently operating in peak hours and in the peak direction only. Not very useful to go to any event in downtown Toronto other than a 9 to 5 job. The problem with GO bus service is that it is considerably slower than a private car and is subject to all road congestion. There needs to be regular rail service that by-passes road congestion. Only then does it become a real option for most people.
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GO RER will cure most of that.
In any event, the idea that we're building HFR or HSR to sprawl is rather specious. We build them to connect Metros together. Sprawl can be a side-effect for cities on the line. And that can and should be addressed by other policies.
With high speed rail in particular, what's commonly used to decide where to build is the number of flights between a city pair that's within about 600 km. And with that guideline, Barcelona-Madrid is most instructive:
http://www.ferropedia.es/mediawiki/index.php/Archivo:ET_B-M_cuota.jpg
It's a bit longer than Toronto-Montreal. And when they built the line, had almost as many flights as Toronto-Montreal today. With Ottawa along the way, we arguably have a better case for high speed rail than they did back then.
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