The wet dream of some bureaucrat the idea of building a high-speed train between Quebec City and Windsor. A distance of 1,100 km with thousands of viaducts. The Mexicans are, right now building a tourist train in the Yucatan and not a high-speed train and the total bill is just around US$ 20 billion, and that's going to be a diesel train.
It's a stupid project in Mexico, and it is even more idiotic here in Canada. Problem #1 population density is just not there. There are currently 20 flights a day with an average flight time of 75 minutes at a cost of C$ 250 return (so $125 each way).
Looking at the pure transport economic perspective: Right now you can leave Montreal downtown at 6 am, and catch the 7:00 AM flight to Toronto, and be in the business district around 8:30 am. So a 150-minute door to door. The train has to equal that measure to be worthwhile. The distance is 560 KM and a TGV average speed of 320km/h so it could notionally do the trip in 200 minutes. So the travel time is 50 minutes longer on the train than on the aircraft (add 20 minutes of traffic and you are closely matched). However, for this to work the train would need a minimum of 12 departures per day. Currently, there are ten per day, so again an additional two per day and the two mods of transport are comparable. In terms of costs to passengers, the plane can be as low as $80 each way and the train NOW can be as low as $40.
So right now, you can take a VIA Rail train from Montreal to Toronto (on average 5 hours) but as high-speed train would cut the travel time to 100 minutes the train would win. The big difference is in cost to society. The plane ticket pays for all services provided, from airport to traffic control to luggage handling, the cost includes everything, whereas there is virtually no way for the train to pay its way. The French government indicated that the cost to build the TGV is 20 million Euro per Kilometer, A $65 billion price tag at 5% interest rate with a loan to value of 80% interest expenses alone would be 800 million per annum, or about $250 per passenger... or $1000 per round trip (10 trips a day 365 days a year, both direction) so 2.9 million passengers per annum.
BTW as of today (08/02/22) there were a total of half a million passengers transported on Air Canada and Porter airlines (95% of all Montreal to Toronto flights) including connecting flights to Pierson airport. Bottom line, for a TGV to be reasonable with a load factor of 80% then traffic between the two cities would have to rise eightfold. Even then, the infrastructure cost per passenger of the TGV would be substantially more than C$250 each way.
Even in terms of pollution, all the electricity would have to be generated by green energy, which is not the case in Ontario where 95% of the rail link will be located -- so not that green either
This has all been debated in the Canadian press and the funniest bit is that again this is seen as a plot to give business to Quebec enterprises, specifically SNC Lavalin and Bombardier. Only problem, Bombardier is no longer in the rail business and SNC has no special knowledge of rail transport. knowledge
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