[Urban Sky]

China does greenfield or outlying rural/sub-urban areas for their HSR stations. Shanghai Songjiang is a Class 3 Station in the very south of Shanghai.

China has copied the worst part of French HSR planning, just on a much larger scale.

When I was lazily mapping this out I actually looked at Dundas as a potential "Hamilton North" HSR station as it would be easier to loop the line elsewhere without having to dead-end it in Hamilton itself.

Once you realize that the only suitable HSR corridor choice for Toronto-Windsor goes through Pearson and Kitchener (which is larger than London or Windsor!), you will acknowledge that it's Toronto-Buffalo services and not Toronto-London which determine the appropriate location for a Hamilton HSR station...

 

[Mihairokov]

China has copied the worst part of French HSR planning, just on a much larger scale.

I'd disagree, having travelled on both. The French system has the issues you've outlined (requiring vehicles) whereas the Chinese system has avoided this by providing each stations with multiple rail options.

Getting to Shanghai Pudong Airport was a hassle because it's truly in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully they had metro options and the Maglev, and they're opening the new Shanghai East HSR station at Pudong Airport in 2027. These things make sense!

Once you realize that the only suitable HSR corridor choice for Toronto-Windsor goes through Pearson and Kitchener (which is larger than London or Windsor!), you will acknowledge that it's Toronto-Buffalo services and not Toronto-London which determine the appropriate location for a Hamilton HSR station...

I personally don't care if our HSR goes to Hamilton or not because our focus there should be on increased GO capabilities, but our HSR should absolutely go to Kitchener. I will let others do the nitty-gritty of discussing CN versus CP lines or whatever other corporate overlords we have to kneel to and just draw my own HSR lines for fun in my own fantasy world because i'll be a very old man before any of this is ever up and running here.

 

[north-of-anything]

Once you realize that the only suitable HSR corridor choice for Toronto-Windsor goes through Pearson and Kitchener (which is larger than London or Windsor!), you will acknowledge that it's Toronto-Buffalo services and not Toronto-London which determine the appropriate location for a Hamilton HSR station...

I don't think HSR makes sense going to Niagara anyways. The population base isn't quite as big, and with having to go around Lake Ontario, it's less competitive with air travel than the straighter Kitchener-Windsor route. The viability of a Toronto-Buffalo HSR is pretty dependent on an HSR on the US side going to New York City via Binghamton; barring that, let's stick to incremental improvements to GO.

 

[Sauga89]

The primary purpose of Alto West would be to eliminate flights out of Pearson to London and Windsor by offering a land based alternative that is almost as fast. And to clear highway lanes. I'm not sure that there are currently enough flights to be a load on Pearson, and many run from secondary adjoining terminals that can't be shifted to long haul flights.

As a fantasy market survey, someone should stand on the Mavis overpass on the 401 with a sign reading "Honk if a High Speed Train stopping only at London and Windsor would get you out of your car". I bet very few would honk. Most of those car trips have a first or last mile component that a very limited stop HSR service doesn't facilitate at the moment.

A more conventional upgrade to existing rail service, with a much better network of local connecting buses and feeder routes, is needed more. It can be built for less in far less time. That need is already painfully obvious, HSR can wait.

- Paul

There's probably a middle ground somewhere. Maybe instead of high speed rail on either route, you start by upgrading the Kitchener-London section to handle express GO trains at 150 km per hour. And maybe at the same time you could rebuild the Brantford rail bypass, and see if that gets CN to allow an extra couple VIA trips per day.

A Hamilton station must not only serve the city, but also the existing and future passenger rail networks.

Sure, but if have to stop anyways again at Aldershot (i.e., after 5 km) to actually connect with the GO network (e.g, for onwards travel towards Niagara Falls or any of the smaller stations towards Toronto), why bother with Dundas at all?

This is why I'm starting to think a new Hamilton station should be built at Dundurn and Main in the middle of the junction there. It's the only spot remotely near downtown Hamilton with the potential to serve all three directions, and it will have an LRT connection too. I understand there are problems with the approaches in all three of those directions, but I'm thinking that perhaps a lot of those problems could be solved in the (very) long run with time and money. Dundurn and Main is also a better spot for buses coming off the 403 than either existing station.

 

[Bojaxs]

There's probably a middle ground somewhere. Maybe instead of high speed rail on either route, you start by upgrading the Kitchener-London section to handle express GO trains at 150 km per hour

Then we're looking at negotiating with CN to construct the 407 freight bypass in order to take freight off the Kitchener line and run a third track through downtown Brampton, hopefully all the way to Kitchener.

 

[guavadelic]

A more conventional upgrade to existing rail service, with a much better network of local connecting buses and feeder routes, is needed more. It can be built for less in far less time. That need is already painfully obvious, HSR can wait.

- Paul

Agreed, a reliable/frequent <200kph service similar to ones used in the Scandinavian countries would seem perfect for Toronto-Windsor.

 

[nfitz]

Sure, but if you have to stop anyways again at Aldershot (i.e., only 5 km later) to actually connect with the GO network (e.g., for onwards travel towards Niagara Falls or any of the smaller stations towards Toronto), why bother with Dundas at all?

To better serve Hamilton.

Though why extending one GO train an hour to Brantford, with a new station in Dundas isn't a no-brainer, I don't think I've ever seen that put out as an option.

I don't think HSR makes sense going to Niagara anyways. The population base isn't quite as big, and with having to go around Lake Ontario, it's less competitive with air travel than the straighter Kitchener-Windsor route.

Offhand, I can't think of any regular operators into any of the Niagara airports.

Niagara region population is over a half-million people now (in Canada alone and ignoring over a million in the USA), and growing quickly - the 2051 projection is 700,000. Quebec City is only 830,000. Honestly, in the long-term, HST from Toronto to Niagara seems to be very sensible. It's only about 110 km to St. Catherine and 130 km to Niagara Falls, even if you go around the lake.

All the more reason to have Hamilton to London service via Paris.

 

[Urban Sky]

I'd disagree, having travelled on both. The French system has the issues you've outlined (requiring vehicles) whereas the Chinese system has avoided this by providing each stations with multiple rail options.

Getting to Shanghai Pudong Airport was a hassle because it's truly in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully they had metro options and the Maglev, and they're opening the new Shanghai East HSR station at Pudong Airport in 2027. These things make sense!

I've never visited China, therefore I can only base myself on reports like this one:

Beijing South is at least just outside the Second Ring Road. Other stations are farther out. This is not just the beet field stations that characterize TGV service to small cities like Amiens or Metz, but also outlying stations in major centers. Shanghai Station only sees high-speed trains on the local line to Nanjing, providing a dedicated track pair equivalent to Kodama service while Nozomi-equivalent trains continue on to Beijing on their own tracks. The trains to Beijing get a separate Shanghai station, Hongqiao, colocated with the city’s domestic airport. The connecting subways tend to be better than at true beet field stations in France, which miss regional rail connections, but those stations are still well outside city center.

China is moreover exporting the bad more than the good. Chinese-funded projects in Africa are not fast – the average speeds are perhaps midway through China’s speed-up campaign, predating CRH. But they do have oversize, airport-like stations located well outside city centers. This happens even when right-of-way to enter city center exists, as in Nairobi.

The Different National Traditions of Building High-Speed Rail

I’ve written five pieces about national and transnational traditions of building urban rail: US, Soviet bloc, UK, France, Germany. I’m about to continue this series with a post about Ja…

pedestrianobservations.com

To better serve Hamilton.

Though why extending one GO train an hour to Brantford, with a new station in Dundas isn't a no-brainer, I don't think I've ever seen that put out as an option.

[...]

All the more reason to have Hamilton to London service via Paris.

You have to start looking at what is the commercial potential for a service and then what are the investments required to make it happen:

• GO to Brantford is 41 km (from Aldershot) of fighting against a stream of CN freight trains which often struggles to make it up the Niagara escarpment - and all of that to reach a city the size of Peterborough. The biggest showstopper, however, is that the all-stop services to Burlington will presumably be EMUs and only the Express trains Diesel. Assuming 2 trains per hour all-day to West Harbour, there is no obvious need for a third Express train during off-peak hours. It is easier to see the need for Express service every 15 minutes to Hamilton than every 60 minutes to a city one-seventh of Hamilton's size.
• As I've shown in one of my first posts here (some 10 years ago!) Toronto-Kitchener-London is much straighter, has much more and much larger population centers to serve and sees much less freight and especially much less exposure to CN. It's an absolute no-brainer that fast trains would use that route, which nicely separates fast passenger trains from slow passenger freight trains. The few remaining Toronto-Brantford-London trains can easily be diverted to Hamilton (West Harbour) just like in the pre-VIA days, as their end-to-end travel time will no longer matter...

 

[nfitz]

I've never visited China, therefore I can only base myself on reports like this one:

The Different National Traditions of Building High-Speed Rail

I’ve written five pieces about national and transnational traditions of building urban rail: US, Soviet bloc, UK, France, Germany. I’m about to continue this series with a post about Ja…

pedestrianobservations.com

You have to start looking at what is the commercial potential for a service and then what are the investments required to make it happen:

• GO to Brantford is 41 km (from Aldershot) of fighting against a stream of CN freight trains which often struggles to make it up the Niagara escarpment - and all of that to reach a city the size of Peterborough. The biggest showstopper, however, is that the all-stop services to Burlington will presumably be EMUs and only the Express trains Diesel. Assuming 2 trains per hour all-day to West Harbour, there is no obvious need for a third Express train during off-peak hours. It is easier to see the need for Express service every 15 minutes to Hamilton than every 60 minutes to a city one-seventh of Hamilton's size.
• As I've shown in one of my first posts here (some 10 years ago!) Toronto-Kitchener-London is much straighter, has much more and much larger population centers to serve and sees much less freight and especially much less exposure to CN. It's an absolute no-brainer that fast trains would use that route, which nicely separates fast passenger trains from slow passenger freight trains. The few remaining Toronto-Brantford-London trains can easily be diverted to Hamilton (West Harbour) just like in the pre-VIA days, as their end-to-end travel time will no longer matter...

It's 40-km to Aldershot, but only 10-km to Dundas. And the track up the escarpment is double-tracked.

I fully expect that they'd build HSR through Guelph/Kitchener. But we really don't know what form this extension would take.

Even the Dundas subdivision was mostly only about 135 mph (a couple of decades ago - I assume it hasn't gone up since then - more likely it's gone down); Strathroy and Chatham are even slower! Speeding it up to 175 km/hr might be a better use of money, given the relatively short distances between London and Toronto. Does passenger demand support a speed that would require grade seperations?

Can they push the speed limit to 200 km/hr if they meet the FRA guidelines for grade crossings at 200 km/hr?

 

[crs1026]

It's 40-km to Aldershot, but only 10-km to Dundas. And the track up the escarpment is double-tracked.

The grade from Bayview ends at Hiway 52 at Copetown, a distance of 9.3 miles - more, actually, if you consider that a heavy freight train 14,000 feet long must be at least half way off the grade before it can begin to accelerate. Westward freights commonly slow to a crawl on this grade - meaning a single westbound freight may use up one track between Bayview and the top of grade for an hour at a time. Assuming eight westbound freights a day during the hours VIA needs to get through, you have eight one-hour periods where there cannot be a westbound passenger train departing Bayview. More given that stalls and rescues are regular ocurrences. That pretty much prevents use of this line for frequent passenger service. Holding eastbounds at the top of the hill so that westbound passengers can overtake a freight is not really an option either, especially if you assume more frequent eastward passenger trains..

We just have to face it, there will not be potential for frequent passenger trains up this mountain, unless someone will spend billions to widen the right of way. Given terrain, that is simply not cost effective.

I fully expect that they'd build HSR through Guelph/Kitchener. But we really don't know what form this extension would take.

Even the Dundas subdivision was mostly only about 135 mph (a couple of decades ago - I assume it hasn't gone up since then - more likely it's gone down); Strathroy and Chatham are even slower! Speeding it up to 175 km/hr might be a better use of money, given the relatively short distances between London and Toronto. Does passenger demand support a speed that would require grade seperations?

Can they push the speed limit to 200 km/hr if they meet the FRA guidelines for grade crossings at 200 km/hr?

Probably not. PSO's at Bayview, Copetown, Brantford, and Paris Jct are likely beyond correction. Higher speeds between these does not materially improve the overall trip time, especially if stops at Brantford and Woodstock are assumed. And again, imagine a 200 km/hour passenger train departing Bayview with a slower freight train somewhere up the line towards London. Simple math says, the passenger train will eventually catch up. But again won't be able to overtake as there is likely opposing traffic coming eastwards. As much as we all grumble about CN, their operation of the current schedule over this route takes a lot of effort and clever dispatching.

- Paul

 

[Sunnyside]

The grade from Bayview ends at Hiway 52 at Copetown, a distance of 9.3 miles - more, actually, if you consider that a heavy freight train […………]

We just have to face it, there will not be potential for frequent passenger trains up this mountain, unless someone will spend billions to widen the right of way. Given terrain, that is simply not cost effective.

[………..]

- Paul

For reasons unrelated to the topic at hand, I really appreciate this breakdown of how the Dundas Sub works in this area.

………….

Apparently everyone is intent on skinning the cat here, which I was trying to avoid... But I’ve done too much crayoning for this… so I’ll be throwing my 200 cents in.

My posts allude to a set of solutions. These are not very ‘workable’ or ‘practical’ but little could be. This applies to any rail, not just HSR, but let’s get it out here.

Option 0. Brute force. Rebuild Bayview, force a single track into the Dundas Sub, and do an awkward back-in/out of Hamilton. Not worth it for intercity.

Option 1. Use CN Dundas, but rebuild CP’s (TH&B) Dundas line from the near-meet by Governors Rd. Gotta straighten two huge descending bends.
Problems: Reactivating a rail trail beside a creek, in a valley, with a new cut through Mineral Springs (rich people). Still need to work with CPKC, and still uses Bayview. Have fun.

Option 2. Build a third N/S ‘access point’ for lower Hamilton. Just east of Dundas by abt York Rd from CN’s line, via hydro corridor, along Cootes Paradise to Cootes drive/H&DER trail, continuing per Option 1.
Problems: Bayview, CN, CPKC, West Ham residents, and now scarring the RBG for a slow and circuitous routing. Yeah okay.

Option 3. Rebuild the beach Sub, diverting CN traffic off Bayview and using for through-running HSR. (I like this…).
Problems: Prob most expensive for a freight-usable bridge or tunnel. And it’s still quite a detour. You also still have the Fundas Sub.

Option 4. Tunnels. For billions, you can evaluate 20 options with innate scope creep. 5-10km will only offer DT, while needing double to clear Dundas Valley… which you can’t ignore.

Option 5. A highway alignment for entry/exit. Likely either the 403 or hwy 5 & 6, to a DT station of choice.
Problems: (1) entirely contingent upon grade tolerance. (2) Rails will be competing with the MTO for any potential deck-overs. Are we really going to triple-deck the 403? All for greenfield track atop the escarpment…

Station-wise, you have TH&B, WH/Liuna, Dundas Station, Dundurn Fortinos plaza (better location than name), Aldershot, or a new tunnelled DT station (see GO URBAN/ALRT). Say on York or Ferguson.

TH&B is locally constrained but best-located. WH/Liuna is a tad far, but that’s egregious if you’ve already spent billions to get here. ‘Dundurn’ is similar, tho better for local transit (LRT) today.

Dundas is on a grade, on the Dundas sub, at the very edge of the city. An LRT extension won’t save it. Better as GO, if at all.

Aldershot can work, but only if we (1) return the town to Hamilton (a hornets nest) and (2) go all-in on Chinese-HSR, airport-esque intermodality. RT is non-negotiable; I prefer an A-Line subway under the bay from James to Waterdown rd. Much crayon…

If we like Aldershot, I think a station near Hwy 6, likely within RBG lands, is better for proximity, transit links, distinction and aesthetics. I could believe it’s actually for Hamilton. But it is also a tight fit; the needed rebuilds will be for much more than just Bayview. Grab a gentle starchitect, then maybe…


Anyway, this is starting to get quite off topic for the actual Alto corridor. But the absurdity presented is precisely why the answer for Hamilton will require a Hamilton-centric solution; you can’t afford to spend the money on anything like these, and *not* achieve multiple long-term goals for the area at once in return. Luckily, there’s enough places bottlenecked by the city’s barriers to vastly broaden the benefits. And, a Niagara-bound HSR requires far less.

 

[innsertnamehere]

I've never visited China, therefore I can only base myself on reports like this one:

The Different National Traditions of Building High-Speed Rail

I’ve written five pieces about national and transnational traditions of building urban rail: US, Soviet bloc, UK, France, Germany. I’m about to continue this series with a post about Ja…

pedestrianobservations.com

You have to start looking at what is the commercial potential for a service and then what are the investments required to make it happen:

• GO to Brantford is 41 km (from Aldershot) of fighting against a stream of CN freight trains which often struggles to make it up the Niagara escarpment - and all of that to reach a city the size of Peterborough. The biggest showstopper, however, is that the all-stop services to Burlington will presumably be EMUs and only the Express trains Diesel. Assuming 2 trains per hour all-day to West Harbour, there is no obvious need for a third Express train during off-peak hours. It is easier to see the need for Express service every 15 minutes to Hamilton than every 60 minutes to a city one-seventh of Hamilton's size.
• As I've shown in one of my first posts here (some 10 years ago!) Toronto-Kitchener-London is much straighter, has much more and much larger population centers to serve and sees much less freight and especially much less exposure to CN. It's an absolute no-brainer that fast trains would use that route, which nicely separates fast passenger trains from slow passenger freight trains. The few remaining Toronto-Brantford-London trains can easily be diverted to Hamilton (West Harbour) just like in the pre-VIA days, as their end-to-end travel time will no longer matter...

While I agree HSR is likely to go the Kitchener route, you are downplaying it here a bit.

A rush-hour GO service to Brantford is likely fairly practical. All day service? less so.

Brantford in the latest CMA estimates is at around 175,000 - that is around where Barrie was when it got GO service 15 years ago, and Barrie is about the same distance from Toronto as Brantford. It's also larger than Peterborough, which is at 145,000 - and Brantford has a far larger rural population outside of the CMA surrounding it than Peterborough does, which is otherwise basically in the wilderness.

The mainline from Brantford to Bayview Junction is generally in excellent shape - partially double-tracked, and high speeds. A GO train service could set itself up with decent travel times almost immediately with very little investment, provided there were enough slots.

I do think a higher speed train service to London would be cheaper to take the Brantford route than Kitchener, simply because the infrastructure is already generally very good and the route is more direct. It would need some additional trackage between Hamilton and London, sure, but that's pennies compared to the Kitchener route which needs a massive amount of investment in what in many parts is basically an abandoned corridor at this point.

 

[Urban Sky]

While I agree HSR is likely to go the Kitchener route, you are downplaying it here a bit.

A rush-hour GO service to Brantford is likely fairly practical. All day service? less so.

Brantford in the latest CMA estimates is at around 175,000 - that is around where Barrie was when it got GO service 15 years ago, and Barrie is about the same distance from Toronto as Brantford. It's also larger than Peterborough, which is at 145,000 - and Brantford has a far larger rural population outside of the CMA surrounding it than Peterborough does, which is otherwise basically in the wilderness.

The mainline from Brantford to Bayview Junction is generally in excellent shape - partially double-tracked, and high speeds. A GO train service could set itself up with decent travel times almost immediately with very little investment, provided there were enough slots.

I do think a higher speed train service to London would be cheaper to take the Brantford route than Kitchener, simply because the infrastructure is already generally very good and the route is more direct. It would need some additional trackage between Hamilton and London, sure, but that's pennies compared to the Kitchener route which needs a massive amount of investment in what in many parts is basically an abandoned corridor at this point.

You are ignoring who owns the Dundas Subdividion and operates its transcontinental freight services over it. You can ask the owner what could possibly motivate them to allow you to fulfill your ambition, but I‘m highly skeptical that taxpayers and politicians will fancy footing the bill…

 

[innsertnamehere]

You are ignoring who own the Dundas Subdividion and operates its transcontinental freight services over it. You can ask the owner what could possibly motivate them to allow you to fulfill your ambition, but I‘m highly skeptical that taxpayers and politicians will fancy footing the bill…

Thus the qualification about getting a slot from CN. Given how many slots CN gives GO east of Bayview Junction though and elsewhere on their networks, I really struggle to believe GO couldn't secure a few rush-hour slots on the line.

Getting robust all-day service, yes, that opens a whole other can of worms..

 

[robmausser]

Thus the qualification about getting a slot from CN. Given how many slots CN gives GO east of Bayview Junction though and elsewhere on their networks, I really struggle to believe GO couldn't secure a few rush-hour slots on the line.

Getting robust all-day service, yes, that opens a whole other can of worms..

I think they were referring to running higher speed rail over a heavily active freight route.

Its not just about getting slots its trying to run 200kmh trains with freight going 60kmh. It's almost like people see the issues running VIA with freight to Montreal, the whole reason HFR was concieved and then completely ignore those same exact issues for another area.