[smallspy]

Why is there no program to rebalast and upgrade roadbed to concrete ties on a massive scale all over the system?

First of all: there is.

Second of all: Why does there even need to be?

Dan

 

[generalcanada]

Are you enjoying that electrified UPX service? Why is there no program to rebalast and upgrade roadbed to concrete ties on a massive scale all over the system? Why does it take 20 minutes to come off the York and onto the Georgetown at 5kph? Why did it take a year to tie West Harbour into the Grimsby? Why is two tracking on the Stouville taking a decade? Why is four tracking the Weston and third platforming Bloor going to take a similar amount of time? Why is the best we can do for underpasses at new stations pass raw concrete? Why does the Belleville extension have no timeline? Why, as Marco Chitti rightly harps on, is none of this stuff public?

It's because rail, by and large, just isn't that important.

Youre talking about multiple things now.
Projects are happening, albeit slowly simply because metrolinx gave themselves such a long time frame to complete work that it seems slow. Most of these projects are just low-priority
Remember back in 2022 MX targeted 2032 for completion of the GO expansion program, which includes new track, electrification and service.

Anything outside of that program is very low priority and wont happen till closer to then.

West harbour is a nice service improvement, but not a direct part of go expansion/onexpress, neither is bowmanville.

Could they target these for faster construction? probably. Will they? probably not.

Like metrolinx has failures definitely, but theyre handling almost $80 billion through 20 separate projects.

To put this into context as you have said above, Can Canada build good HSR rail? yes. Can they built it on-time and under budget? Most definitely not. Is the 2037 time frame ambitious? Probably.

But will it happen? Eventually, yes. It can happen, We just need to focus on it and ensure the project continues through its development phase

 

[Urban Sky]

Youre talking about multiple things now.
Projects are happening, albeit slowly simply because metrolinx gave themselves such a long time frame to complete work that it seems slow. Most of these projects are just low-priority
Remember back in 2022 MX targeted 2032 for completion of the GO expansion program, which includes new track, electrification and service.

Anything outside of that program is very low priority and wont happen till closer to then.

West harbour is a nice service improvement, but not a direct part of go expansion/onexpress, neither is bowmanville.

Could they target these for faster construction? probably. Will they? probably not.

Like metrolinx has failures definitely, but theyre handling almost $80 billion through 20 separate projects.

Exactly! GO expansion project is constantly evolving, but it‘s definitely happening and it will be nothing short of a revolution when it comes to mobility in the GTHA…

To put this into context as you have said above, Can Canada build good HSR rail? yes. Can they built it on-time and under budget? Most definitely not. Is the 2037 time frame ambitious? Probably.

But will it happen? Eventually, yes. It can happen, We just need to focus on it and ensure the project continues through its development phase

The elephant in the room is funding: so far, nobody has committed a single billion towards actual construction of ALTO - and that‘s where all previous projects failed: lack of sufficient interest by potential investors (public or private). Ambition which is unmatched by the stomach to fund it is lethal for any megaproject…

 

[telefann]

This was a nation that stitched itself together coast-to-coast with a transcontinental railway in the late 19th century, and yet here we are in a far more advanced and enlightened age, doubting our ability to built its modern technological equivalent across a much shorter span.

I'm not saying that the naysayers and cynics here are unjustified, but it's just remarkable how diminished and "can't-do" the Canadian national spirit and chutzpah has become. We surely have greater tools and know-how at our disposal in 2025 than we did in 1885; is it not a pity that our once-macro ambitions (or at the very least, our belief in ourselves and our potential) have become so micro?

Yes, @ProjectEnd and others rightly point out that we have not properly developed (or more accurately, lost over decades of complacent stasis) the institutional and state capacity to undertake large-scale endeavours such as HSR, and that Alto may very well fail because we'd essentially be going from 0 to 100 in a nation that has long forgotten how to build.

But self-talk and narratives matter. We won't be able to do big things again as a country (which we indeed ought to) if we keep telling ourselves this or that "just won't happen". For goodness' sake, if the kind of attitude that prevails in Canada today was mainstream in the age when we proudly completed that "last spike", I'd reckon that our "nation" would still be languishing "happily" under the colonial bosom in 2025 as British North America...

 

[Urban Sky]

This was a nation that stitched itself together coast-to-coast with a transcontinental railway in the late 19th century, and yet here we are in a far more advanced and enlightened age, doubting our ability to built its modern technological equivalent across a much shorter span.

I'm not saying that the naysayers and cynics here are unjustified, but it's just remarkable how diminished and "can't-do" the Canadian national spirit and chutzpah has become. We surely have greater tools and know-how at our disposal in 2025 than we did in 1885; is it not a pity that our once-macro ambitions (or at the very least, our belief in ourselves and our potential) have become so micro?

The point you are missing is that nobody here denies that this country is capable of building a dedicated passenger rail line between Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, but that some of us doubt that the promoters of the current project will succeed in finding sufficiently exhaustive funding sources to match their ambition. The Canadian Pacific Railway construction succeeded because it was given the mandate and funding to build a railway line without mandating ambitious travel time targets like „Montreal to Toronto in no less than 3:07 hours“.

If there is one uncomfortable parallel to the troubled CAHSR saga, it would be that tying the Funding provided through Proposition 1A with a maximum travel time of 2:40 (IIRC) made any compromises to counter the capital cost explosion all but impossible. Whoever insists on costly features or targets should be held responsible for paying for them…

 

[generalcanada]

The point you are missing is that nobody here denies that this country is capable of building a dedicated passenger rail line between Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, but that some of us doubt that the promoters of the current project will succeed in findinging sufficiently exhaustive funding sources to match their ambition. The Canadian Pacific Railway construction succeeded because it was given the mandate and funding to build a railway line without mandating ambitious travel time targets like „Montreal to Toronto in no less than 3:07 hours“.

If there is one uncomfortable parallel to the troubled CAHSR saga, it would be that tying the Funding provided through Proposition 1A with a maximum travel time of 2:40 (IIRC) made any compromises to counter the capital cost explosion all but impossible. Whoever insists on costly features or targets should be held responsible for paying for them…

Are you sure about that? is this project defined on those strict limits? That was one source of problems with CAHSR where the speed and travel time and exact corridor was hardcoded into the project, but afaik theres no limit on this project saying it cant be 3.5 hell even 4 hours or even which exact route it has to take. Though it would lose a crapton of ridership and economic benefits

 

[Urban Sky]

Are you sure about that? is this project defined on those strict limits? That was one source of problems with CAHSR where the speed and travel time and exact corridor was hardcoded into the project, but afaik theres no limit on this project saying it cant be 3.5 hell even 4 hours or even which exact route it has to take. Though it would lose a crapton of ridership and economic benefits

It is only a promise made by ALTO and there is thankfully no legal mechanism (I know of) with which it could be enforced. Nevertheless, it raises expectations which I don‘t think anyone seems willing to pay for…

 

[kaptrice]

The point you are missing is that nobody here denies that this country is capable of building a dedicated passenger rail line between Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, but that some of us doubt that the promoters of the current project will succeed in findinging sufficiently exhaustive funding sources to match their ambition. The Canadian Pacific Railway construction succeeded because it was given the mandate and funding to build a railway line without mandating ambitious travel time targets like „Montreal to Toronto in no less than 3:07 hours“.

If there is one uncomfortable parallel to the troubled CAHSR saga, it would be that tying the Funding provided through Proposition 1A with a maximum travel time of 2:40 (IIRC) made any compromises to counter the capital cost explosion all but impossible. Whoever insists on costly features or targets should be held responsible for paying for them…

Notably, there is no legislation dictating any particular speed or travel time for the Canadian project, nor is there a specifically limiting funding measure a la cap-and-trade or Prop 1A suggested as a bottleneck. Of course, that will not stop anyone from saying "I don't like this anymore, terminate it"; but likewise there was nothing stopping anyone from saying this about the HFR scheme whose business case was far from waterproof either. If anything, that the Government actually acknowledges the existence of the project (and has notably committed billions of dollars to design and devleopment) shows some level of enthusiasm.

As for know-how and technical ability and whatever else, it seems evident to me that this will be a French export project rather than a crash programme of rediscovering various wheels.

 

[generalcanada]

Now we have seen this before in political platforms before, but noteworthy is the inclusion of "windsor to qc hsr"

 

[Urban Sky]

I‘m not certainly not saying that it is less pertinent today than it was back then, but „It‘s time to unite this country and invest in nation-building infrastructure on a scale not seen in generations“ could be straight from the 2015 liberal platform…

 

[micheal_can]

This was a nation that stitched itself together coast-to-coast with a transcontinental railway in the late 19th century, and yet here we are in a far more advanced and enlightened age, doubting our ability to built its modern technological equivalent across a much shorter span.

I'm not saying that the naysayers and cynics here are unjustified, but it's just remarkable how diminished and "can't-do" the Canadian national spirit and chutzpah has become. We surely have greater tools and know-how at our disposal in 2025 than we did in 1885; is it not a pity that our once-macro ambitions (or at the very least, our belief in ourselves and our potential) have become so micro?

Yes, @ProjectEnd and others rightly point out that we have not properly developed (or more accurately, lost over decades of complacent stasis) the institutional and state capacity to undertake large-scale endeavours such as HSR, and that Alto may very well fail because we'd essentially be going from 0 to 100 in a nation that has long forgotten how to build.

But self-talk and narratives matter. We won't be able to do big things again as a country (which we indeed ought to) if we keep telling ourselves this or that "just won't happen". For goodness' sake, if the kind of attitude that prevails in Canada today was mainstream in the age when we proudly completed that "last spike", I'd reckon that our "nation" would still be languishing "happily" under the colonial bosom in 2025 as British North America...

Making transit construction faster

I think the main reason that projects are slow isn't to do with environmental regs or grandiose stations. It's just manpower, pure and simple. In all industries reducing labor costs to increase profits has been the goal of businesses for decades, even if quality or speed suffer. Construction is...

urbantoronto.ca

 

[ProjectEnd]

First of all: there is.

Second of all: Why does there even need to be?

Dan

I know you know far more than I about this stuff, but trackage and roadbed mean a lot to user experience. It's not glamorous and no politician would take a photo with a new concrete tie, but holy hell, we're still nailing steel to creosote in 2025. It's bonkers.

People point to something like Al Boraq and say "if they can do it, why can't we" (ignoring the laughably colonialist nature of that statement) ignoring the fact that Morocco uses a mixture of Italian EMUs and French electric loco-hauls on concrete roadbed.

HSR is the crowning achievement on a legacy of railroad investment. Not only are we not doing this, we cannot do this, as sad as that is to say.

 

[chrisw]

I‘m not certainly not saying that it is less pertinent today than it was back then, but „It‘s time to unite this country and invest in nation-building infrastructure on a scale not seen in generations“ could be straight from the 2015 liberal platform…

To fact check you, you're thinking about the 2019 platform regarding Nation-Building Infrastructure. And even then, there's no mention of HFR. HFR wasn't mentioned until the 2021 Liberal Platform, and as part of a public transportation section.

The commitment today is stronger, and there's even more support for Nation-Building Projects.

2019 Liberal Platform:

2021 Liberal Platform:

 

[Urban Sky]

To fact check you, you're thinking about the 2019 platform regarding Nation-Building Infrastructure. And even then, there's no mention of HFR. HFR wasn't mentioned until the 2021 Liberal Platform, and as part of a public transportation section.

The commitment today is stronger, and there's even more support for Nation-Building Projects.

2019 Liberal Platform:

View attachment 645201View attachment 645202

2021 Liberal Platform:

View attachment 645203

I did not want to imply that it matched the 2015 language, but that the Liberal’s pledges made now sound suspiciously similar to what was already promissed to us for every single of JT‘s 3 terms as PM:

„We will fund historic investments in infrastructure - this time for real!“

Liberal Party of Canada 2015 platform

www.documentcloud.org

 

[Urban Sky]

I know you know far more than I about this stuff, but trackage and roadbed mean a lot to user experience. It's not glamorous and no politician would take a photo with a new concrete tie, but holy hell, we're still nailing steel to creosote in 2025. It's bonkers.

People point to something like Al Boraq and say "if they can do it, why can't we" (ignoring the laughably colonialist nature of that statement) ignoring the fact that Morocco uses a mixture of Italian EMUs and French electric loco-hauls on concrete roadbed.

HSR is the crowning achievement on a legacy of railroad investment. Not only are we not doing this, we cannot do this, as sad as that is to say.

Deutsche Bahn has last updated its manufacturing guidelines for wooden sleepers in 2007, so I wouldn’t be too surprised if they still accepted deliveries for some lightly used tracks:

https://lieferanten.deutschebahn.com/resource/blob/8732754/27406fd3f905620d1ecd3d7fc96baae9/TL889-0144-ungetraenkte-Holzschwellen-German-formerly-DBS-918-144--data.pdf

In the words of one such industry body of companies producing wooden sleepers in Germany:

Wooden sleepers continue to be used around the world in track construction and are used today as track, switch, tunnel and bridge sleepers in European and non-European state railways, in industrial and dock railways, private and branch lines, in light rail traffic (rapid transit and underground railways), and mountain, narrow-gauge and tourist railways.

[…]

Because of its favourable properties with respect to vibration and noise nuisance, without any misgivings and without any disadvantages the wooden sleeper can be put to use at a line speed of <160 km/h, even in state railways and long distance traffic.

Because of their outstanding properties, wooden sleepers are predestined in particular for use in industrial, dock and shunting areas. For any possible special needs they can be easily worked, planed, and for custom track gauges, drilled, and if necessary also milled.

https://www.holzschwellenoberbau.de...n/areas-where-wooden-sleepers-are-used-today/