Alto High Speed Rail

[lrt's friend]

We need to take off the rose colour glasses.

Legacy VIA service will be reduced when Alto opens.

Ottawa-Montreal may go from 5 trips to 2 or 3
Ottawa-Toronto may go from 8 or 10 trips to Ottawa-Jingston 4 trips
Montreal-Toronto may go from 5 or 6 trips to Montreal Kingston, 3 trips
Kingston - Toronto may go from around 12 trips to 7 trips

This reflects much lower ridership overall.

Also, Kingston becomes a hub so you may need to change trains in Kingston with additional wait times.

We use the same corridor Ottawa-Smiths Falls on separate tracks passing Fallowfield without stopping. A great look especially as a long term project.

We place Ottawa station downtown. Great for visitors. What about Ottawa residents? OK for
central Ottawa residents and some along Line 1. What about everybody else?

Ottawa has changed substantially since 1966 when Union Station closed. Ottawa is now three times bigger east-west and north-south.

What is our HSR market? Short-haul airline passengers? Others?

It is doubtful, I would ever use HSR if I have to go all the way downtown to reach HSR, whereas I use legacy much slower legacy VIA service. Why? It takes an hour to reach downtown by OC. There will be no parking option. Taxi-Uber will be around $50 each way. So we speed up train service while making access much worse.