Alto High Speed Rail

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by c_speed3108

I attended the open house. I learned a couple things.

1. The tracks are completely incompatible with any other trackage (via, freight, etc. ) So even at stations it would need separate tracks and platforms. Nothing will be shared.

2. Zero level crossings. Fully fenced the entire way.

3. The trains are expected to take about 7-8 minutes to reach full speed.


The dark purple parts are where stations are being considered. In Ottawa that is Tremblay to old Union along the Nicholas corridor. No where else.

The broader corridor map shows where tracks could potentially go (although common sense dictates some corridors are a bit more likely)


The plan _seems_ to be to keep a good portion of VIA's current routes. That would make Tremblay useful as it would allow transfers to VIA trains serving smaller places.

Re 1 and 2 Yes it's true HSR. 7-8 minutes is very long. I suspect they are giving that likely false number in order to keep political pressure down to add too many stops. Dorval seems like a missed opportunity. Heck arguably just sell the land the Ottawa Airport is on to help pay the bills if we can get a 50 minute train to Dorval.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

It would be foolish not to have 2 stations in Ottawa, to save a few minutes.

Not many cities with Ottawa's population end up with two stations on most international HSRs. So not unusual at all.

It's advantageous if the case can be made. But if you're driving from Kanata to go to the airport anyway (the real competition to HSR), you might as well stay on the 417 till Tremblay.

A simple Google search shows from Kanata North Business Park, by car, at 1130 today:

Fallowfield: 23 mins
VIA Tremblay: 23 mins

The actual difference in travel distance is 4.1 km.

And for the folks who will take transit there, a station that is not served by the LRT network is also pointless. Once you're on Line 1, it's easy to just stay on till Tremblay.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Ottawa has spent decades building rapid transit to both stations, with further plans at Fallowfield. Ottawa has become a very spread out city and to add an hour to reach your destination from a single central station defeats the benefits of what we are trying to accomplish.

Unless you literally live beside Fallowfield station, and you're planning to drive at rush hour or take transit, there's nowhere in the city where there's an hour difference between accessing Fallowfield vs. Tremblay. Heck, even driving between the two stations itself is 25 mins outside of rush hour. And it'll be under 1 hr by transit post-Stage 2.


What the ridership between Fallowfield and Ottawa Tremblay today? That should provide some indication of what the relative balance is with demand that would justify a second station. If it's 80-20? No point.

Edit: Based on this blog post from a transit advocate, Fallowfield is less than 15% of total boardings in the Ottawa area.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

One of the issues with current VIA route to Montreal is service to small towns. Then the consideration of maintaining service during construction. It was mentioned about a similar meeting in Madoc. This surprised me, so I asked about milk run service that would stop in a few smaller communities a couple times a day by building sidings at the station. Not in the card as I was told

I don't think that HSR is the right technology for milk runs. You add in 4-5 stops and the advantages over regular rail start to diminish very quickly. There is also very little potential ridership warranting a stop on either of the routes shown. The only significant population centre between the three big cities is Peterborough, and even 80,000 is pretty debatable to warrant a stop, particularly given that there isn't much around. Maybe it will be big with Toronto people wanting to get to the cottage more quickly.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by phil235

I don't think that HSR is the right technology for milk runs. You add in 4-5 stops and the advantages over regular rail start to diminish very quickly. There is also very little potential ridership warranting a stop on either of the routes shown. The only significant population centre between the three big cities is Peterborough, and even 80,000 is pretty debatable to warrant a stop, particularly given that there isn't much around. Maybe it will be big with Toronto people wanting to get to the cottage more quickly.

As discussed last night, Peterborough becomes a realistic commuting destination into Toronto. I think cottagers are the least consideration

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by phil235

I don't think that HSR is the right technology for milk runs. You add in 4-5 stops and the advantages over regular rail start to diminish very quickly. There is also very little potential ridership warranting a stop on either of the routes shown. The only significant population centre between the three big cities is Peterborough, and even 80,000 is pretty debatable to warrant a stop, particularly given that there isn't much around. Maybe it will be big with Toronto people wanting to get to the cottage more quickly.

Peterbrough CMA had 128k in the 2021 census. Estimate to hit 150K this year. When this line is complete, I expect Peterborough will become the exurban commuting capital of Canada. There's already exurban commuters in Kingston, Belleville, Trenton, Coburg, Port Hope, Kitchener, London, etc. All of those people have a longer commute than what Peterborough would offer on Alto. And less reliable too. Oh and Ottawa is less than 1.5 hrs away from Peterborough on Alto. Easy to see say a lawyer that works in both Toronto and Ottawa, living in Peterborough.

More than that too, Peterborough is less than an hours drive from Oshawa, Bowmanville, etc. Depending on where that GTA East station is, this might be more convenient in some situations.

I expect we'll see something crazy like Peterborough ends up having half the ridership of Ottawa, because of commuters.

[phil235]

Good points. I was mostly kidding about the cottagers, but it does make sense that you would get some commuting, particularly if the pricing of tickets was attractive for multiple trips a week. I do think that would more be a side effect of the new line, rather than a key objective of the project, because if commuters were your market, you would serve them far better by a southern route with a stop in north Oshawa or thereabouts.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by roger1818

Alto is a private consortium that is driven by profit. History and beauty don't generate revenue. Ridership does, and that is affected by both travel time and convenience. If having the station downtown increases overall ridership then it is worth considering.

Alto (VIA HFR - VIA TGF Inc) is a crown corporation. It will build whatever the 2030s federal government is willing to pay for. The private sector consortium will manage the construction and (it seems like) day to day operations (again, at whatever service level the federal government is willing to pay for).

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

So your argument is that Ottawa is used to a mediocre station location?

It isn’t a mediocre location. It is centrally located at the confluence of th city’s major highway and major mass transit line. The area around it is mediocre, but that is not a location problem, that is a NCC/city problem. This is a suburban-heavy, car centric city. If the objective is to get people to actually use the train it needs to be convenient.

[Nouvellecosse]

I just don't see the argument for more than one Ottawa station. Maybe I'm missing something, but the only reason two are viable for places like the GTA or Montreal is that they're orders of magnitude larger. Each station in the GTA or Montreal would serve more than the equivalent of the entire Ottawa metro area in population if located correctly. And geographically, the width of continuously built of part of metro Ottawa from east west is only about the width of Toronto city proper without any suburbs. That's why it can be justified for an HSR to stop more than once. These are extreme cases that other cities just don't represent.

[mxg308]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Re 1 and 2 Yes it's true HSR. 7-8 minutes is very long. I suspect they are giving that likely false number in order to keep political pressure down to add too many stops. Dorval seems like a missed opportunity. Heck arguably just sell the land the Ottawa Airport is on to help pay the bills if we can get a 50 minute train to Dorval.

Stop trying to kill YOW! If we had any foresight you co-locate HSR with YOW (or even South Keys/Greenboro) and then try and leverage it as a lower cost airport compared to YUL and YYZ. It really does appear that YUL will not be served by HSR which does seem like a huge miss.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Alto (VIA HFR - VIA TGF Inc) is a crown corporation. It will build whatever the 2030s federal government is willing to pay for. The private sector consortium will manage the construction and (it seems like) day to day operations (again, at whatever service level the federal government is willing to pay for).

The model is a PPP, so it’s not just the federal government paying. The private partner is responsible for the financing arrangement. The federal government will make contributions to the funding (possibly tilted towards operating costs), but a huge portion of the financing will be private money, and possibly money from development charges.

[Kitchissippi]

Originally Posted by mxg308

Stop trying to kill YOW! If we had any foresight you co-locate HSR with YOW (or even South Keys/Greenboro) and then try and leverage it as a lower cost airport compared to YUL and YYZ. It really does appear that YUL will not be served by HSR which does seem like a huge miss.

To me putting the HSR station in YOW would be super efficient. Run the tracks elevated through the Greenbelt, tunnel under the airport and across the Rideau River, then parallel Fallowfield Rd towards Perth. With super straight tracks, the dwell time in Ottawa could be whittled down to under 5 minutes on a Toronto-Montreal run. Vastly improve access to YOW by making it the terminus of a Bank Street subway, possibly crossing into Gatineau. All this would be cheaper than trying to revive the old downtown station.

If YOW was the only airport seamlessly integrated with the HSR, I think it could greatly improve its ability to grow instead of it fading in importance.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by mxg308

Stop trying to kill YOW! If we had any foresight you co-locate HSR with YOW (or even South Keys/Greenboro) and then try and leverage it as a lower cost airport compared to YUL and YYZ. It really does appear that YUL will not be served by HSR which does seem like a huge miss.

I mean if there is a stop at Dorval the airport is in real trouble. It's federal land but maybe they could sell it and use it to pay to add this second Ottawa stop people seem to want. (I think even cost aside two stops is crazy for a city of Ottawa's size. I think Osaka has one Shinkansen stop and is like the population of Ontario and Quebec combined.

[White Pine]

Apologies as I'm in a rural area. Just by what I see so far, I honestly think that HFR was a better idea.

Also, what clientele will really use this other than VIA's current ridership? Maybe it will be more effective for montreal or QC- Toronto, but I don't see it making a huge difference in ottawa. Maybe it might take a chunk from the Porter crowd. But I was under the impression that a lot of the market for yyz-yow-yul flights was for connections, and I doubt very much that alto will affect that. Does anyone actually fly from ottawa to Toronto just because?

I only really see this as a premium service that will financially crater VIA while offering no real benefit. Smaller places may end up losing service and people there are more likely drivers so it might be counter productive.

As for stations, for once (lol) I actually have some sympathy for lrt,s friend's point regarding a southern station. We'll see once stage 3 lrt happens how long a trip from barhaven takes, but getting to downtown is a significant (in terms of time) backtrack. Although one could argue that either the ultimate time savings may negate it or the lack of a station may preserve via, I don't know.

Regarding station location, I'm sympathetic to both.Union has good transit access but the multimodal benefits of Tremblay (ie VIA, Ontario Northland), better taxi/pickup options and such give it the edge. Although one could argue that Union's central location distributes the passenger load more evenly on transit instead of joining line one where it will likely be already busy.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by mxg308

Stop trying to kill YOW! If we had any foresight you co-locate HSR with YOW (or even South Keys/Greenboro) and then try and leverage it as a lower cost airport compared to YUL and YYZ.

This is somehow a worse idea than the people that keep pushing Union station downtown. The entire point of this is to improve convenience for travelers. Not duplicate how inconvenient the airport is.

Originally Posted by mxg308

It really does appear that YUL will not be served by HSR which does seem like a huge miss.

That is absolutely a shame. Massively improves access to a better and more competitive aviation market. Hopefully, the current route to the airport benefits from HSR work.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by White Pine

Also, what clientele will really use this other than VIA's current ridership? Maybe it will be more effective for montreal or QC- Toronto, but I don't see it making a huge difference in ottawa. Maybe it might take a chunk from the Porter crowd. But I was under the impression that a lot of the market for yyz-yow-yul flights was for connections, and I doubt very much that alto will affect that. Does anyone actually fly from ottawa to Toronto just because?

This is silly. Just because you don't know people that travel back and forth doesn't mean it doesn't happen. YOW is 6th busiest airport in the country by passenger traffic. Tremblay is the third busiest rail station for VIA. Yes, there are plenty of people who travel without connecting. Heck, there's airlines like Porter which heavily focus on non-connecting traffic.

Originally Posted by White Pine

I only really see this as a premium service that will financially crater VIA while offering no real benefit. Smaller places may end up losing service and people there are more likely drivers so it might be counter productive.

The focus on smaller places is what is killing VIA. Instead of offering a service that is competitive between Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal with a combined population of over 15M residents, VIA is forced to do milk runs and stop at every podunk town that generates 5-10 riders per departure. The end result is convincing millions that train service is ineffective and they are better off driving or flying. The survival of passenger rail is actually highly dependent on this project succeeding. People in big cities won't keep paying subsidies for services they don't find useful indefinitely.

Originally Posted by White Pine

As for stations, for once (lol) I actually have some sympathy for lrt,s friend's point regarding a southern station. We'll see once stage 3 lrt happens how long a trip from barhaven takes, but getting to downtown is a significant (in terms of time) backtrack. Although one could argue that either the ultimate time savings may negate it or the lack of a station may preserve via, I don't know.

When it's less than 15% of boardings in the Ottawa area, it's basically irrelevant. You wouldn't argue to build a second airport in Orleans, for example, to serve 15% of Ottawa travelers. Same idea.

[OTSkyline]

I agree, the point of HSR is to provide fast, reliable, frequent travel options between Canada's largest metros. To do so, I don't believe any city should have more than 1 stop.

If we could make Union Station work in Ottawa, I think it would be amazing to provide a central station that is connected to downtown, the LRT, most attractions, hotels, convention Centre, etc. If that can't happen due to costs, then Tremblay is the next best thing (a short LRT hop away from downtown). The idea that the station should be at the airport to provide travelers with better connections is horrible. This will be a very small market (compared to total passenger #s) and this options already exists (take VIA from Tremblay to Dorval, then free shuttle to YUL).

[Truenorth00]

People need to keep in mind to that is entirely separate from VIA and being run that way. That was a specific intention. Post HSR, VIA's services should change substantially. Hopefully, they stop being big city focused. Hopefully, they start originating out of London, Kingston and Quebec City instead of Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, offering schedules that make much more sense to smaller communities instead of the current schedules that do nothing for say Kingston travelers who want to get into big cities early for a meeting or appointment. VIA's services and hubbing should change.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

I mean if there is a stop at Dorval the airport is in real trouble. It's federal land but maybe they could sell it and use it to pay to add this second Ottawa stop people seem to want. (I think even cost aside two stops is crazy for a city of Ottawa's size. I think Osaka has one Shinkansen stop and is like the population of Ontario and Quebec combined.

I think you are vastly overestimating the convenience and underestimating the cost of taking HSR to YUL to fly. Not to mention the time, as you have to build in a buffer when connecting.

Ottawa will have 2 million people by the time this line is complete. Plenty of people in the market to sustain an airport with connections to Europe and the rest of North America. It's not like people are going to train to Montreal to take a flight to Chicago or New York, or even Calgary or Halifax.

I'd also point out that YUL is already a very congested airport and is likely going to reach capacity in the medium term. More feed of passengers to YUL is not a good long-term plan. An easy and efficient option like YOW that is an LRT or cab ride away for most people is always going to be more competitive for people in this market. If anything I would expect it to grow significantly.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

People need to keep in mind to that is entirely separate from VIA and being run that way. That was a specific intention. Post HSR, VIA's services should change substantially. Hopefully, they stop being big city focused. Hopefully, they start originating out of London, Kingston and Quebec City instead of Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, offering schedules that make much more sense to smaller communities instead of the current schedules that do nothing for say Kingston travelers who want to get into big cities early for a meeting or appointment. VIA's services and hubbing should change.

But wouldn't routes like Ottawa-Kingston and Toronto-London still be their busiest even once HSR is running?