Wanderings – Focus on frequency and access over speed

The long-awaited announcement for high speed rail in Canada has come and gone, and you’ll be waiting at least a decade before any appreciable work will be seen. In fact, if all things go according to the plan announced by outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on February 20, we should all be able to ride on the new Alto high speed train line between Toronto and Québec City by 2040 or so.

This plan is the latest in a 60-year span of ad nauseam studying and announcing a high speed passenger rail system in Canada. To say this has been studied to death is an understatement.

The goal of high speed trains between Toronto and Montréal – a 300 kilometre per hour “bullet train” connecting Canada’s two largest cities in under three hours – is a pipe dream. It’s unattainable for one big reason: we’ve put the cart before the horse (or in this case the caboose before the engine.)

Canadian officials – including Trudeau – admire the gleaming French TGV or the Shinkansen in Japan as the ideal model to follow. These systems operate on dedicated right-of-ways, are electric powered, and run twice as fast as the conventional passenger rail system. They are not wrong, but they also were not built overnight. Those high-speed thoroughfares are backed by a state-run network of regional connecting trains, and a vast rail network that has been in place for over 100 years and maintained.

Canadians have been married to their cars for many decades, with passenger rail declining since the end of World War Two. Between the 1950s to 2012, Canada’s rail network has been cut to the bone through deregulation, privatization, and abandonment.

After VIA Rail was created in 1978 to operate money-losing passenger rail routes, these cuts accelerated. All this while roads were increased, highways expanded, and vehicle ownership became nearly mandatory in order to be able to live outside of a large urban centre.

The Alto, Canada’s high-speed rail system is the exact opposite to what is needed. You have to walk before you run.

Our current VIA Rail network is a mess. Twenty-five years ago, equipment on the line could run express from Toronto to Montréal in three hours and 59 minutes. That’s only an hour more than this up-to-$80 Billion (capital B) mega project will do. Who remembers the LRC – the wedge-shaped diesel-powered lightweight trains that zipped along? The last of the engines were retired in 2001, but many of the passenger cars make up the current VIA fleet still.

Alto is planned to build a new dedicated rail line, through developed cities with high land costs, while the existing rail network rots. For $80 billion, an extensive revitalized conventional rail network could be had, and then some. One that would connect more Canadians to urban centres, and lessen the need for expanding highways or digging massive tunnels (think Doug Ford.) That is the foundation needed for high speed rail, and we know this from the examples in France, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, South Korea, and even China. We don’t have a viable foundation to build on.

Proponents of the Alto Scheme say they cannot use conventional rail networks for high speed trains due to grade crossings, freight traffic, and other obstacles. What happens when our highways are over-capacity or in need of safety upgrades? They are expanded or refurbished. The money planned for Alto could upgrade and expand existing routes. It will cost less than the $80 billion price tag. Grade crossings can be eliminated with bridges; two track rail lines can be expanded to separate passenger and freight traffic; and stations can be reopened to increase access to transit.

Sure, Alto could take passengers from Toronto to Montréal in three hours, imagine not needing car to get to Toronto? You have to be able to walk before you run – and to travel on bullet trains, you need to have a network to build off. We don’t.

For decades, politicians have trotted out these studies, reports, plans, and action lists to launch high speed rail in Ontario and Quebéc. Every one of those plans has ended on a shelf in some filing room to gather dust. What was hailed as a landmark study in 1995 became a paperweight less than a month later.

This latest plan will pay a contractor consortium $3.9 Billion and take four-to-five years to plan its system. That consortium includes the French TGV operator, but also AtkinsRéalis Group, the company formerly known as SNC-Lavalin. That company has a less-than-stellar track record of delivering rail transit projects on-time.

Converting the approximately 85 grade crossings on the existing VIA Rail route between Toronto and Montréal, at an estimated cost of $20 million per crossing, would only cost $1.7 Billion. That is less than half of what is being spent to plan Alto, and that action will increase safety and allow higher speeds on the existing route.

Investing in what we have, is the more practical and affordable solution to eventually getting faster rail service. And it will connect more people between the main cities, which is to the benefit of all those who live along that route, not just those in the big metropolises. Frequency and access over speed wins every day.

This column was originally published in the February 26, 2025 print edition of the Morrisburg Leader.