Quote:
Originally Posted by Roughneck
The biggest value of a Toronto-Montreal high speed rail would simply be showing that we could do it. The kind of thing that could spur confidence in other mega projects.
I'll spare the clickbait of 'HSR killed Italian air travel' and just say that trains have successfully competed against air travel on a similarly distance route of Rome to Milan. Toronto to Montreal would be a bit longer, but if they can keep the stops just in Peterborough and Montreal then you're looking at a 3.5-4hr journey from downtown to downtown. Might be a 1.5 hour flight, but with commutes and security that would start to even out pretty quick for a lot of people.
Make it so it isn't more expensive to take the train, and don't cave to pressure to add regional stops to keep that travel time under 4 hours and it can be pretty successful. Montreal-Quebec City and London-Kitchener-Toronto as additional phases become very enticing as well.
But just get it done. Connect the country's largest city with the second largest with high speed rail. It's what a competent country should be able to do. Especially with the capital (and 6th largest metro to boot) in between.
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Just some quick back of napkin, but they advertise as HSR with ~300kph speed. Toronto-Montreal ~ 550 km, say 600km, so 2 hour straight time, with a single stop adding 30 min, 2.5 hour one way TO-Montreal should be achievable. One would assume a service would also contemplate direct express routes. Very competitive with Air, and that's why the CEO of Westjet was making social media posts in total outrage yesterday.