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VIA Rail Stimulus Upgrades Coming
Ottawa will spend $300 million from the economic stimulus fund to upgrade Ontario's railway corridor. VIA Rail Canada will use the money on improving accessibility for the disabled, introducing fuel efficient locomotives, and reducing travel time between Montreal and Toronto by a whole 30 minutes. Construction is set to begin in the next few weeks.
New tracks will be laid in 8 locations along the corridor in hopes of resolving tie-ups between passenger and freight trains. These bottlenecks occur when VIA attempts to pass CNR (Canadian National Railway) trains but can't due to track restrictions. Additional railway will be strategically laid alongside the 539 kilometer route so VIA trains can pass by quickly and safely.
In 2008, VIA moved over 4.6 million people and brought in a revenue of $299 million. With ridership expected to rise about 40% over the next five years, two trips will be added from Toronto to Montreal upon the project's completion in 2011. I don't understand why high-speed rail isn't being implemented if the amount of people and trips are expected to rise? I'm sure that a speedy Windsor-Quebec City route would help alleviate some of the passenger traffic.
Gary Goodyear, the Minster of State for Science and Technology called the stimulus upgrades "an intermediate solution", but warned that such a project was at least a decade away. Meanwhile Joe Volpe, the transit critic for the Liberals added "These guys are re-announcing something that doesn't serve much purpose," also saying that the Conservative government should invest in high-speed immediately; a notion that I am completely on board with.
Think about it. A trip from Toronto to Montreal would take about 2 - 3 hours. Businessmen and tourists alike would be able to take advantage of this speed; forgoing the 6-hour trip we might have to endure today. This would allow others and myself, to take a weekend off in Montreal quite easily and vice-versa. The 'high-speed bridge' would also improve the economies of smaller cities, as there would be increased traffic from other major cities. I have always been puzzled as to why our country is in absence of this technology while the States and most of European countries reap the benefits.
Although it's a distant dream of mine, high-speed rail has been discussed many times in 2008. My hopes are that this project will begin to build a basis for this kind of infrastructure in the future. High-speed rail isn't exactly something that is easy to pull off, but once it is there, it becomes extremely advantageous its users.
Photo by HighPlainsDrifter Photography.
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It's time to talk seriously about high rail all through Ontario (BOTH East AND West!)...or let's reverse the commute and really take hold of technologies that keep folks more local...
The locomotives that VIA owns today are already pretty good and could go much faster than they do. The problem at present is that between Toronto and Montreal there are in excess of 200 level crossings, the detectors that turn on the flashing lights (and where present gates) are located 1/4 mile from the crossing, at the current top speed of 160km/hr the train reaches the crossing 9 seconds after the flashing starts. Just rewiring the signals to allow for faster speeds using current rolling stock would cost hundreds of millions. Even Amtrak Acela style psuedo-high speed needs tracks with no level crossings. Would cost Billions.
Turbo train. The Rapido was 4 hours 59 minutes from its
first runs in the late 1960s.
It was a major selling point for the Turbo that it could
shave one hour off the Rapido's running time.
I don't remember any Rapido able to achieve such a high
speed and quick inter-city run.
The corridor most likely to get high speed rail and be economically viable is, whisper it, Edmonton-Calgary - 300km, only one major stop en route, not a hugely challenging topography. Get high speed rail done there, and properly, and Ontario will follow.
http://www.nationalpost.com/related/topics/story.html?id=1317670
All levels of government are in the hole.
Massively more than Pearson expansion was.
What are the passenger numbers of QC-W corridor vis a vis Pearson? 1.5-2 orders of magnitude.
Never mind that we have a much faster way of getting to Montreal from Toronto: Porter. Flight is an hour, it's 5 minutes from the core, and a taxi from Trudeau to downtown Montreal is 25 minutes.
Plus there's the problem that getting to Union is a hassle for people who don't live in the core (no parking, hard to drive to, expensive taxis). Pearson is much easier to get to for people off of the subway (and even then...).
On the re-announcment: feds of both parties will announce spending as many times as they can. Provinces and municipalities do it to (Miller especially), So call them on it but lets not pretend its part of some scary hidden Harper agenda.
maybe have a team of french engineers come across and do some consultation on what problems they think may arise if we were to build a dedicated hi speed rail line..
just food for thought
name in the fourth paragraph to Gary Goodyear?
Speaking of Goodyear, did you notice the flurry of
announcements from his and his position in the
government that took place yesterday. I suspect they
were trying to make people forget the Valerie Goodyear
adoption fraud scandal--particularly since Gary's chiropractic practice office is in one of those building
in the bankruptcy filing.