High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London

[danbrotherston]

Air Canada, and to a lesser extent WestJet and Porter, provide so much service on the Montreal-Toronto corridor. I think it must be like 10 times more than what VIA Rail provides right now. I do fly that route sometimes, and would really prefer not to.

I counted 34 direct flights from YYZ and YTZ to YUL, probably 150 seats on average, so that's roughly 5000 seats of capacity per day.

I think that’s more but not nearly 10x (more like 1.5x-2x) what via rail can carry. 

That said I think 150 is a low estimate unless many of those flights are embrarer or dash8 planes. Even small 737s seat more and the larger variants can seat around 200.

Still, it would be interesting to see the breakdown of  mode share for that destination pair. I suspect driving is still dominant by an order of magnitude. There are also a lot of buses and those might also outnumber via.