11-05-2015, 04:36 PM
(11-05-2015, 04:20 PM)tomh009 Wrote:(11-05-2015, 03:21 PM)plam Wrote: 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.
Thanks for the link. The difference seems huge (not all the new infrastructure spend can go into this single rail corridor), but those might be apples and oranges as the $10B is an earlier study, and $3/4B is a VIA number. Not sure whether the latter number includes the elimination of level crossings, either.
One note of caution when looking at YYZ-YUL air traffic numbers: there is a lot of connecting traffic, especially YUL pax connecting to an overseas flight in YYZ. Most of those people would not switch to rail even if we had HSR, simply because AC can sell them an entire (reasonably convenient) journey on a single ticket.
Yeah. I also think that's why there's, for instance, flights from YYZ to Kingston and London. They don't make sense as standalone flights. YYZ is still more of a pain to transfer at than other airports, but it remains a better option than UP to Union Station and then a train. (There are also some destinations which are YUL-specific like Geneva, I think).
The train does seem to maintain 150km/h at level crossings, so I'm suspecting the $3B number does not include elimination of level crossings. I don't know for sure. Level crossings are also terrible.
Now this train is slowing down 13km out of Cobourg and there's a freight train passing us on the right...