High Speed Rail Forum!

[Dupcheck]

Everything can be built. If Japan can build theirs on earthquake prone tectonic land we can for sure build it on our flat Ontario safe as ever land. Let's cut the crap and the excuses, if there is a will it can be built.

[FFX-ME]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

You are assuming that conventional track is cheap to build in Southern Ontario. For VIA, they have the Shining Waters railway like unused. There's no such option in Southwestern Ontario that I know of. So they'd have to build a new corridor. I suspect the delta from regular rail to high speed rail is rather small when discussing constructing a corridor from scratch.

You're probably right... the highest costs in building railroads is usually expropriation.

[warpus]

Originally Posted by FFX-ME

The comparison is with respect to conventional rail on a dedicated track, not the status quo.

The province would never okay building anything like that. Why bother? It doesn't make any sense. If you're going to build a dedicated track, might as well make it high speed.

[Stevo26]

While I think a high-speed rail system is absolutely needed for the southern Ontario-Montreal-Quebec City corridor, I'm very skeptical it will ever get built.

If it does get built, it'll only be built after more decades of wrangling with environmental activists, NIMBY-ites and other professional axe-grinders looking to acquire what few tiny scraps of power they can, more endless environmental assessments, more studies and maybe a provincial/federal election or two.

AND it'll be 20 - 30 years late, over-budget and only a fraction of what's really needed in terms of services and scale.

A day late and a dollar or two short seems to be the Canadian way. Our counterparts in Europe and Japan never had this kind of difficulty, they just went ahead and built high-speed rail networks.

Wake me up when it actually gets built, m'kay? Maybe I'll still be alive then.

[jammer139]

The high speed rail "train" era may have already left the station.

The technology for "Hyperloop" transportation systems could make HSR obsolete within a decade.

[Stevo26]

Originally Posted by jammer139

The high speed rail "train" era may have already left the station.

The technology for "Hyperloop" transportation systems could make HSR obsolete within a decade.

Supposedly the US federal government and various states have given the go-ahead for a hyperloop tunnel to be built from Washington, DC to Boston.
This is going to be a massive, multi-year project and cost quite a lot of money.

I doubt that a severely indebted province like Ontario, even working in tandem with the federal government, would have the financial capacity to build a long hyperloop tunnel, so I think conventional high-speed rail is going to be what we get for the Windsor - Quebec City corridor. At least for the foreseeable future.

[MolsonExport]

pie in the sky (hyperloop). Will not happen for at least 50+ years. Let's proceed with HSR.

[kaiserLDN]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

pie in the sky (hyperloop). Will not happen for at least 50+ years. Let's proceed with HSR.

Agree. Keep going with HSR.

[Stevo26]

Originally Posted by Dupcheck

Ontario Premier what's her name should be fired. Did she just say it was "meant to be a study"! Who got the kickbacks of this study? Is this a joke to her? Does she have any shame!

HWY 407 ETR gov missed the boat on that and gave it away for 99 years for peanuts. That highway has paid itself over several times over a short period. Why are ON politicians so stupid to miss the boat here again with Highs Speed rail to connect TO with South Western ON. This would also be a great way to naturally cool down the real estate market in GTA.

407 got sold because Mike Harris wanted to look like Captain Save-a-Taxpayer to his low-information, anti-public infrastructure, anti-anything-created-by-government, anti-anything voter base. After all, a single taxpayer dollar spent on useful infrastructure that generates revenues for the provincial coffers is a dollar too much and necessarily wasteful, right?

Biggest mistake we've made as a province in decades, if you ask me.

[jammer139]

To be clear the highway was not SOLD. It is leased to a private consortium for a term of 99 years. (I agree 99 years is way to long) The portion they operate has had many expansions and improvements which the Ontario government (that would be us taxpayers) have not had to pay for. Those expansions are taxpayer assets as is the entire highway.

Don't forget that it was under the Mike Harris government that the expansion of highways 69, 11 and 400 was initiated to create 4 lane expressways north to Sudbury and North Bay. The replacement of the 2 lane death traps and opening up of access to the north is thanks to Mike. Infrastructure that generates revenues every day.

Originally Posted by Stevo26

407 got sold because Mike Harris wanted to look like Captain Save-a-Taxpayer to his low-information, anti-public infrastructure, anti-anything-created-by-government, anti-anything voter base. After all, a single taxpayer dollar spent on useful infrastructure that generates revenues for the provincial coffers is a dollar too much and necessarily wasteful, right?

Biggest mistake we've made as a province in decades, if you ask me.

[MolsonExport]

Mike Harris was an incredible asshole with an extra toe.



Ok, the first part is true.

[go_leafs_go02]

Mike Harris also the reason we have one of the most confusing signed road networks in North America. Even with the provincial highway transfers, I'd argue they should have remained signed as provincial highways to retain connectivity.

[jammer139]

If there is someone who is capable of doing it its Elon.

https://www.cnet.com/news/elon-musk-boring-company-hyperloop/

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

pie in the sky (hyperloop). Will not happen for at least 50+ years. Let's proceed with HSR.

[MolsonExport]

less than a snowball's chance in hell. And that is being optimistic. C'mon.

[Truenorth00]

This is why we can't have nice things:

https://www.albertafarmexpress.ca/daily/...o-farmers-protest-high-speed-rail-impact

They had a meeting and decided they are more important than hundreds of thousands of residents in London:

http://www.ingersolltimes.com/2017/08/22...tegy-for-a-proposed-high-speed-rail-line

[HillStreetBlues]

My father-in-law's farm, which the family acquired around the turn of the 19th century, has an old rail line running through the corner of it. That was laid down in the early 20th century. At the time, eminent domain was used to sever a corner of the farm and the right-of-way for the rail line.

The rail line has been disused for some time now (my wife remembers the trains running, but I don't recall offhand when they said they stopped) and, while there is sometimes complaining about people who dump there and so on, there's not a lot about the fact that the land was taken or that the trains ran along the fields for those decades. My in-laws will complain about all manner of absurd policies foisted on them but, generally, they understand that what's good for the cities- the residents of whom are "the market"- is probably good for them, too.

[haljackey]

Of course there's going to be opposition by the people that live and work on or nearby the proposed route.

Let's at least hear them out.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by haljackey

Of course there's going to be opposition by the people that live and work on or nearby the proposed route.

Let's at least hear them out.

One of their alternative proposals is to run the rail line along the 401. While this sounds like a good idea on paper, this is impossible on some of the urban sections, particularly in Kitchener/Cambridge and closer to Toronto. There's also the need to link it to Downtown London and Downtown Kitchener.

[HillStreetBlues]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

One of their alternative proposals is to run the rail line along the 401. While this sounds like a good idea on paper, this is impossible on some of the urban sections, particularly in Kitchener/Cambridge and closer to Toronto. There's also the need to link it to Downtown London and Downtown Kitchener.

In a lot of places, constraints of various kinds required new stations to be built on the outskirts (or, anyway, outside of the city centre) for new HSR lines. I'm thinking about Spain- many cities have new stations for the high-speed service.

I'm just playing devil's advocate here, because generally I think the proposed route is good, and the 401 corridor is a poor idea for the reasons you highlight. It's not impossible (except in some of the places you note, particularly Toronto), but it's not desirable. An existing right-of-way already exists.

[jammer139]

Hyperloop One announces the 10 strongest routes in the world. Canada has one of them.

http://www.itbusiness.ca/news/canada-could-be-getting-a-toronto-montreal-hyperloop-route/94888