Quote:
Originally Posted by J.OT13
I ask again, why is it ok to spend billions to get HSR to Downtown Montreal, Toronto and Quebec City but its inconceivable to do the same for Ottawa?
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by YOWetal
Yeah I'm surprised by that argument from Ottawa urban enthusiasts. Tremblay is next to the highway and very suburban. LRT connection is nice but it seems strongly preferable to be a downtown to downtown connection.
|
There's a large contextual difference. Most notably starting with travel time. Alto has target travel times. Toronto-Ottawa: 2 hrs. Toronto-Montreal: 3 hrs. Those travel times are needed to be competitive with air, to attract high yielding passengers. Given that any move to a downtown station slows down the larger group of passengers going to Montreal this basically means spending billions more to speed up the Ottawa-Montreal sector to make that travel time competitive (Alto says 1 hr). Toronto-Ottawa and Ottawa-Montreal travel times are already competitive with Tremblay. Moving to downtown won't make much of a difference in Ottawa. But it could hurt the much larger group of Montreal bound passengers and injure the overall business case. This is how scope creep kills these projects. Also, that extra spending just means higher ticket prices or more debt (which we will pay through taxes). It's not justifiable value for money. For me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by YOWetal
If we really want to save the through passengers why go via Ottawa at all?
|
There's no real business case without serving Ottawa. But that doesn't mean the station has to be downtown either.
Threaded Mode