[Adjei]

I’m in Italy at the moment on vacation and it has been a good experience using high speed rail to get around their cities. The top speed is 300 km/h but the fastest I saw it go was 275 km/h. I hope this project is built and we can finally have high speed rail in Canada.

 

[Urban Sky]

Inflation due to trade war will be a problem in the short term, but many economists agree CPI will rise sharply and then flatten out. I.e. BOC may hold to asses but won't do so for more than a few months. If a recession takes hold, BOC will lower rates because that would be the only med - longterm option.

We are still 5 years away from a final decision and until we hit actual shovels in the ground, we simply won‘t be able to spend enough money for the tarrifs-induced decline in interest rate to be relevant.

Agreed on the facts, but the politics don't always follow facts. If the govt wants to show action, it wouldn't be a stretch for them to push alto as one of many solutions to combating the recession/tarrifs, as trudau did one week before leaving office

Same here: by the time the fate of ALTO is decided, the tarriff war will only be a faint memory and the industry (especially the construction sector) will be overheating again.

I'm not a politician so I won't suggest it makes sense to do it that way, but I'm reminded of how ford likes to promise projects that at functionally nowhere near shovels to the ground, just to make a political point. I wouldn't put it past any govt to do something like that.

The way things are looking right now, we‘re probably going to elect Carney to guide us through the trade war, but nobody knows which leader and party will preside over the „final funding decision“ which decides the fate of ALTO.

I’m in Italy at the moment on vacation and it has been a good experience using high speed rail to get around their cities. The top speed is 300 km/h but the fastest I saw it go was 275 km/h. I hope this project is built and we can finally have high speed rail in Canada.

The real transport revolution in Europe is an integrated and highly convenient mass transportation network on which HSR is only the icing on the cake. We should look at emulating the cake, not just the flashy decoration…

 

[DSCToronto]

The real transport revolution in Europe is an integrated and highly convenient mass transit network on which HSR is only the icing on the cake. We should look at emulating the cake, not just the decoration…

Hear, here!!

 

[micheal_can]

The real transport revolution in Europe is an integrated and highly convenient mass transportation network on which HSR is only the icing on the cake. We should look at emulating the cake, not just the flashy decoration…

Would that be like how the GTA/parts of ON have Presto where you have money on it and just tap and go? What is missing in Canada to make ours integrated?

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

Would that be like how the GTA/parts of ON have Presto where you have money on it and just tap and go? What is missing in Canada to make ours integrated?

Where do you begin????

1) More than one major/central rail station is needed in each major city. I can imagine at least 6 locations that could/should have major/inter city rail service. Not necessarily high speed rail, but simply rail.
2) More rail service than simply the corridor. A quick look at railway lines in Toronto should give an idea of potential rail lines.
3) Service frequency. More than a handful of trips per day is needed.
3) Related to 2. Connect/Reconnect smaller communities with rail service.
4) Integrate passenger rail with local transit.
5) Look at secondary hubs. KIngston, London, Hamilton, etc could serve as hubs for secondary lines.

Florence. For example, is a city of about 350,000 people (roughly the size of London Ont) is served by about 10 train stations. Not just Santa Maria Novella.

 

[north-of-anything]

Where do you begin????

1) More than one major/central rail station is needed in each major city. I can imagine at least 6 locations that could/should have major/inter city rail service. Not necessarily high speed rail, but simply rail.
2) More rail service than simply the corridor. A quick look at railway lines in Toronto should give an idea of potential rail lines.
3) Service frequency. More than a handful of trips per day is needed.
3) Related to 2. Connect/Reconnect smaller communities with rail service.
4) Integrate passenger rail with local transit.
5) Look at secondary hubs. KIngston, London, Hamilton, etc could serve as hubs for secondary lines.

Florence. For example, is a city of about 350,000 people (roughly the size of London Ont) is served by about 10 train stations. Not just Santa Maria Novella.

I'm really not sure what you're getting at with some of these points.

If you're implying in 1) that Toronto needs an additional major/central station, I say absolutely not. Toronto is blessed to have a single, dominant station in a convenient location for intercity travellers. When a city has multiple major hubs, nearly all services skip one, introducing more transfers than should be necessary. A lot of locales are now attempting to do the opposite of this by merging or otherwise connecting two disparate transit hubs; Barrie, for example, wants to eliminate their downtown bus terminal and coordinate all operations out of Allandale Waterfront GO a short drive away.

The next two kind of contradict each other. You can have more rail service and you can have more frequent service, but not both in the same places. Unless you want to bring back long distance trolley lines, you need considerable latent demand to justify building up new rail infrastructure, and in my mind the only place that really warrants that now is the Guelph-Cambridge-Hamilton corridor. Anything smaller can just be satisfied now with a bus; I'd rather we focus rail investment where we need more rail transit right now.

I looked up Florence's train stations and it appeared to me that it only has SMN and two shoulder stations on the outskirts. Toronto already has that in the form of Exhibition and Guildwood, and will soon have another in East Harbour. If we were to bring back substantial cross-country rail through the Prairies to Vancouver, the prime shoulder stations are Oriole, Langstaff, and Bloomington.

This isn't specifically related to Alto, either, where we can honestly suffice with putting in platforms on sidings just outside places like Sharbot Lake and Smiths Falls that would be skipped by nearly all trains...

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

I'm really not sure what you're getting at with some of these points.

If you're implying in 1) that Toronto needs an additional major/central station, I say absolutely not. Toronto is blessed to have a single, dominant station in a convenient location for intercity travellers. When a city has multiple major hubs, nearly all services skip one, introducing more transfers than should be necessary. A lot of locales are now attempting to do the opposite of this by merging or otherwise connecting two disparate transit hubs; Barrie, for example, wants to eliminate their downtown bus terminal and coordinate all operations out of Allandale Waterfront GO a short drive away.
...
I looked up Florence's train stations and it appeared to me that it only has SMN and two shoulder stations on the outskirts. Toronto already has that in the form of Exhibition and Guildwood, and will soon have another in East Harbour. If we were to bring back substantial cross-country rail through the Prairies to Vancouver, the prime shoulder stations are Oriole, Langstaff, and Bloomington.

What I meant was secondary or shoulder stations. Currently Toronto has two stations where via trains stop, Union Station, and Guildwood (Exhibition doesn't have VIA service), and I can imagine at least 4 more. Toronto-Pearson, Summerhill, a station on the Lakeshore W corridor, and a Northern Gateway station.. They don't all have to be served by HSR, but they should be served by reliable intercity rail.

In addition to SMN. Firenze is served by Rovezzano, Campo di Marte, Le Cure, Rifredi, Castello, Le Piagge, San Marco Vecchio, and Statuto, with Belfiore under construction. Only SMN and Campo di Marte see HSR rail service, while Rifredi sees standard national rail, and the remaining seeing regional trains (not commuter trains but actual regional rail). In comparison London Ont has how many train stations? 1. With 1 rail line

 

[micheal_can]

Where do you begin????

1) More than one major/central rail station is needed in each major city. I can imagine at least 6 locations that could/should have major/inter city rail service. Not necessarily high speed rail, but simply rail.
2) More rail service than simply the corridor. A quick look at railway lines in Toronto should give an idea of potential rail lines.
3) Service frequency. More than a handful of trips per day is needed.
3) Related to 2. Connect/Reconnect smaller communities with rail service.
4) Integrate passenger rail with local transit.
5) Look at secondary hubs. KIngston, London, Hamilton, etc could serve as hubs for secondary lines.

Florence. For example, is a city of about 350,000 people (roughly the size of London Ont) is served by about 10 train stations. Not just Santa Maria Novella.

I read what you wrote as confirming that what I say is not fantasy....in Europe. It is here in Canada as we don't care about rail.

 

[crs1026]

^As someone whose through intercity train skipped SMN and made its Florence stop somewhere in the burbs, leaving me having to find my way across town, I'm not sure I see the merit in the argument.

A better analogy might be to the use of Pearson versus Billy Bishop. One can make the argument that Billy Bishop is a far more convenient terminal for many people flying from Ottawa, Montreal, or Quebec City..... but would we ever decide that ALL flights from those cities must use Billy Bishop, and there will be no flights that land or depart at Pearson? That would be hugely inconvenient for many west-enders as well as anyone connecting to an ongoing flight out of Pearson.

So the dilemma for the analogy becomes - what proportion of the air traffic is best offered out of each airport? The airlines balance that as they see the market demand.

Same applies to North Toronto versus Toronto Union as rail terminals. My own view is that Union is still Pearson and North Toronto is Billy Bishop, or more accurately Buttonville or Pickering. Some day, we may have enough business that many would find North Toronto preferable.... but for the time being there are only a fraction of riders who would find North Toronto more convenient, and a huge proportion who need or prefer to pass through the main hub. So let's not get carried away with North Toronto as a priority.

And, if we are considering a second rail terminal, why are we proposing a second one that is only 4 kms away? The growing choice for Pearson is not to send some flights to Brampton Flying Club.... it's whether to send them to Oshawa, Waterloo, or Hamilton. Maybe Markham or Malton or Hamilton or Kitchener is where we need trains to end up when they skip downtown.

- Paul

 

[micheal_can]

I am going to put my 'fantasy' hat on to answer where logical stations would make sense.
1) Pearson - This would allow those that are flying to use the transit and intercity rail as needed. It may even help cut down flights to areas served by HSR going forward.
2) All GO stations that connect to a subway, streetcar, LRT or BRT station/stop.
3) Via rail stations
Part of doing this would require those stations currently not served by a clear local transit to be. For instance, Is the London Via station actually served by transit? The answer is, it kinda is, but could be done better. Part of that better is a bus that has some sort of clear indication that it does go to the station.The good thing is, with the changes being made in the downtown, this could be an easy thing that most would not even notice.

 

[just east of the creek]

Hear, here!!

Completely agree. For a while now I have been reading about Starline, a rethink of European HSR, and while not a complete blueprint for Canadian HSR (as the two land mass areas are very different) there is much that makes a lot of sense. Start here:

Starline - 21st Europe

Starline is a vision to change this. More than a high-speed rail network, itâs a rethink of how design, technology, and culture can create infrastructure that is seamless, sustainable, and exciting.

21st-europe.com

 

[micheal_can]

What would need to happen if the government wanted this built faster and sooner? Right now, 2040 is an expected opening year. What if the government wanted it opened in 2035, or even 2030? What would need to change? Could it even be done that quick?

 

[reinventingthewheel]

What would need to happen if the government wanted this built faster and sooner? Right now, 2040 is an expected opening year. What if the government wanted it opened in 2035, or even 2030? What would need to change? Could it even be done that quick?

For perspective: the Ontario line is 15km, has been under construction for multiple years, and still won’t open by 2030. This is an underdeveloped proposal for a rail project 50 times the length, at least 10 times the length for an initial phase.

In five years we may have a half-detailed design draft. From there it will take more time to flesh out and secure funding. Regardless of whether it is privately or publicly funded, there won’t be extra money invested to rush the construction.

 

[Urban Sky]

Florence. For example, is a city of about 350,000 people (roughly the size of London Ont) is served by about 10 train stations. Not just Santa Maria Novella.

We need to compare metropolitan population figures: London‘s is 543k (earning it rank #11 among the CMAs in Canada), which only equals that of Reggio Calabria (rank #13 within Italy and I‘m fairly certain that it has only one major rail station), whereas Florence‘s is a sliver above a million (ranking it the ninth-largest metropolitan city in Italy):

Metropolitan cities of Italy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[rdaner]

^Great point! One could also use the Urban Area measure used by the OECD.