11-05-2015, 03:21 PM
(11-05-2015, 03:00 PM)BuildingScout Wrote:(11-05-2015, 01:58 PM)plam Wrote: So here I am sitting on Via Rail train 65 from MTRL to TRTO. Current speed is 149km/h, which is the same speed the Turbo was allowed to run at in normal operation. At that speed, today's train could travel the 541km in 3 hours 36 minutes, which would be totally fine. I do think the Via Rail CEO is correct in saying that we need more frequent departures (the plane goes almost every hour, but not the train) rather than high-speed service.
But more departures requires a dedicated track, and once you build a dedicated track you might as well go HSR. So we are back to square one.
As I said before, I'd be quite happy with at 200km/h train if the HSR alternative was significantly more expensive. But this does not seems to be the case at all. Of course we won't know for sure until we see the final figures.
p.s. Germany announced a while back that it would convert all their actively used tracks to rails suitable for high speed over the next decade or so, with speed being limited by geographic layout. In certain cases they will straighten the track, in others the train will simply have to decelerate for that portion of the trip.
I'd still like to see better figures, but the Via Rail CEO claims that dedicated tracks ($2B) + new trains ($1B) cost $3B in all, plus $1B for electrification, while HSR costs $10B. The passenger estimates are 7M for dedicated tracks and 10M for HSR.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/11/04/...73342.html
I saw passenger numbers out of YYZ somewhere, and it does seem like there really is a lot of air traffic between YYZ and YUL. I think it was 2M/year?
I also noticed that we slowed down to 100km/h around Brockville. Level crossings, of course. Those slowdowns are probably the main reason we don't make 3h30 for Montreal-Toronto.