Quote:
Originally Posted by Truenorth00
If VIA hits the 2.5 hrs pledged on Toronto-Ottawa, it would be competitive with air, given the location of the Ottawa airport and the double transfer required to get downtown, and the location of Pearson in GTA.
|
Who flies to Person if they are going to downtown Toronto these days? Even still, a 2.5 train ride (if VIA can do it) is very competitive with flights to Billy Bishop. Having said that, VIA's not targeting the airlines, but drivers.
Quote:
If VIA hits 4 hrs on Toronto-Montreal while maintaining the same fares, they will decimate the bus industry and actually get some people moving over from driving.
And if they get the 1hr and 20 mins between Ottawa and Montreal and hanve hourly frequencies? Ottawa-Montreal will become commutable.
|
To achieve those times they will need to
average 160 km/h between Toronto and Ottawa and 150 km/h (unless they use a shorter route) from Ottawa to Montreal. That's faster than they currently do, but not in the realm of HSR. More important than speed is frequency and reliability.
Quote:
|
We can spend $4-6 billion on high frequency rail or $12-15 billion on high speed rail. Nobody wants to spend $12-15 billion, so high frequency rail it is. If you can find a way to make the $6-10 billion additional cost that would be needed to upgrade from HFR to HSR, VIA will happily build HSR.
|
The other thing is, I can't think of any country in the "west" that has built HSR where they didn't previously have frequent train service. HFR is a good stepping stone to HSR. I would take HFR (even if they don't meet their projected travel times) over a continuous stream of studies about HSR that never get funded.
Threaded Mode