Canada is great at high-speed rail studies — but not at actually building high-speed rail. So why is it the only country in the developed world considering a...
Canada is great at high-speed rail studies — but not at actually building high-speed rail. So why is it the only country in the developed world considering a new conventional-speed passenger network?
Created by Paige Saunders with special guest Reece Martin
That assumption is not a good one. The video highlights that both competing proposals, which include Siemen’s conventional “high frequency” option and Alstrom’s high speed rail option, are set to build new track through the Canadian shield in the area around Peterborough which would slow down speeds significantly. There’s too much geography navigate around on this proposed route for HSR. Instead the video hosts suggest using the existing freight lines beside Lake Ontario and extending GO service to Peterborough which has much more potential for HSR.
I’m not a rail engineer, but I assume if grades and curves are done for higher speeds off the hop, then the non-earthworks conversion later should be relatively easy?
There can be no crossings. If someone looks both ways and crosses the tracks they can be hit by a train they didn’t see or hear. This means a lot more work than just curves.
Exactly. The line connecting London to Kitchener-Waterloo, two cities of a half-million people, spends most of its length doing 50-60km/h because of the lousy rail lines that have been largely un maintained for forty years. What should be a 45 minute ride ends up being over two hours. We can get so much improvement to our system by just fixing the shit we already have, or had fifty years ago.
It’s more complicated, and the Kitchener to London route is a good example with which I’m familiar.
I used to take this route a lot in the mid-Aughts and I think it was roughly 45-60 minutes. I moved back to the area ~5 years ago and was flabbergasted when I found out how long it takes now. I thought, “the government should fix this!” However, when you dig into it more, you find out CN owns that route and they’ve made the calculation that upkeep is more expensive to them than slow trains. Sure, “the government” could pay CN to fix the rails, but I don’t think we want CN getting tax dollars, and even then, back when it was reasonably fast, you’d often experience huge delays because of freight.
Rumours are, GO has been eyeing that section of track and if they buy, they’ll obviously fix it up. However, this whole thing demonstrates how important it is to have designated passenger train tracks. And if you’re building dedicated tracks between two of the biggest cities in North America, it’s probably worth investing the extra money in HSR.
I don’t see why we should go for HSR when we haven’t even gotten close to the top speeds of our existing rolling stock, let alone the cutoff for “low speed” rail at around 200 km/h.
If VIA trains actually maintained that across the whole Windsor-Quebec City corridor I think you could satisfy the majority of people without needing the huge investment that true HSR requires.
For ViaRail to maintain max speed across The Corridor, they would have to rebuild most of it, which outside of those 2 Class 5 sections, they don’t own. If you’re building new tracks anyways, it might be worth building HSR.
Paige points out in the video that you can’t just trivially convert curvy conventional rail to high speed. He also points towards, without explicitly saying, that with the projected winding route, trains will spend a lot of time at slower than max conventional speeds.
“Speed costs, how fast can you afford to go?” Doesn’t matter if it’s cars, motorcycles, trains or sailboats. It’s not a linear increase either.
Having said that, what I’d love to see is all fixed rail infrastructure turned over to a non-profit corporation. Private or public rail companies with the rolling stock would pay fees to run trains on given schedules controlled by the infrastructure company, with priority given to passenger trains. The fees would be enough to cover the costs of rail maintenance and expansion.
With railways open to anyone with rolling stock, competition is increased. Exclusive routes would be eliminated, which would help reduce freight rates.
Over time, separate passenger rail lines would be developed, at least partially subsidized by fees on the freight companies, as passenger rail typically has very thin margins.
This is key. I used to work for one of the major railroad companies, and passenger trains are an afterthought. There are so many freight trains traveling that there isn’t time for anything else. There was barely time for us to get on the track to do maintenance.
Nope, haven’t seen it. I will now though.
I have a soft spot for trains in general. Dad (marketing director) and my grandfather (sales agent) worked for railways. Some of my ideas come from them.
They talked me out of following suit. It’s a pretty tough business these days.
I agree when it comes to transporting goods, but low speed rail isn’t good enough to transport people. Remember, isn’t actually that insanely fast. They start at 200km/h, so aren’t anything too amazing at the lower end.
That said, if we can get some more low speed rail for goods installed, the tax revenue from that alone should give the governments more than enough to set up high speed rail lines soon after. Canada has a serious internal trade problem. Every single province trades more with the US than their neighbouring province. More cargo rail would help fix that.
In addition, since cargo and passenger rail is combined right now, passenger trains need to wait hours for cargo trains to pass through sections of it because they have priority. Just building a new cargo line would significantly reduce this one problem even if cargo trains are still allowed to use the old lines.
But I’ll point out that 200km/h is still ~50% higher than highway speeds, with no traffic, and you can still focus on other things.
So even low end rail is still better than driving.
I just don’t feel like 50% faster is enough. People are just so attached to their cars that they’ll just rent one if they can’t afford to own one. People in Canada compare things against planes if they talk about riding, so I think 200km/h is still a bit low unless if it’s a short trip, which I doubt it would be. Most likely it’ll be something like between Toronto and Ottawa, or Ottawa and Montreal.
200km/h isn’t quite enough to make the trip feel short. I think you’d have to be closing in on 300km/h before people take high speed rail seriously, as then you’d be doing less than 2 hours including boarding for a trip like that, where boarding on a plane alone would take much of those 2 hours, though the flight itself would be quite a bit faster.
Trains competing with planes don’t have to win by speed. Even if it takes 5x longer, I’d prefer taking the train. And that’s a feasible speed for HSR. The current state is >20x longer, so yeah if we don’t put in the effort of building HSR through the rockies, they will never compete indeed.
I agree with the need for more lines. Here in Ontario, I think ViaRail has to share the only line with other rail companies. So, if a train needs to get past in the other direction, you have to sit on a side line and wait. So annoying!
I priced a return trip from Ottawa to London for three and it was almost $900+tax (I think it didn’t include tax), taking 8-10 hours.
Sharing lines isn’t that unusual, it’s been done since the dawn of the railroads. It’s just that freight would be waiting on sidings while passenger and mail moved. Via Rail is just bass-ackwards.
I suppose the problem is that CN or CP own the tracks, and Via is just the renter, so CN and CP give lower priority.
Canada used to have that. But then we decided to urbanize, which allows people to walk everywhere, and thus we eventually had no need for the transit and eventually we ripped it up. It’s interesting we want to go back to the rural lifestyle again.
I do think it’s worth proposing a high speed railway line. If we’re going to spend 25 years to build it anyway, might as well make it a more competitive option than air travel or car. Air travel can’t go much faster than how it is without making it way unreasonably expensive to operate. The cost to operate is more for High speed rail but not as much, it is more in the initial investment.
Canada doesn’t want to end up with “high-speed rail” like the Northeast Corridor, so it’s prioritizing HFR to begin with…
We should probably start planning out an HSR right of way, but I’m not against expanding our conventional network in lieu of burning money on shit trains that run on shit tracks below conventional speeds for most of the trip anyway.
God the Northeast Corridor sucks and the fact that Amtrak is willing to call it HSR is a disgrace.
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Conventional speed it still 200 kph (177 on the last gen locomotives), if you don’t have to wait for freight.
While I’d prefer HSR, I’ll take HFR over fighting between the two and building nothing.
I assume HFR can convert to HSR later?nopeThat assumption is not a good one. The video highlights that both competing proposals, which include Siemen’s conventional “high frequency” option and Alstrom’s high speed rail option, are set to build new track through the Canadian shield in the area around Peterborough which would slow down speeds significantly. There’s too much geography navigate around on this proposed route for HSR. Instead the video hosts suggest using the existing freight lines beside Lake Ontario and extending GO service to Peterborough which has much more potential for HSR.
I agree with you but I don’t think you can simply convert. HSR take a lot more engineering and careful planning.
I’m not a rail engineer, but I assume if grades and curves are done for higher speeds off the hop, then the non-earthworks conversion later should be relatively easy?
There can be no crossings. If someone looks both ways and crosses the tracks they can be hit by a train they didn’t see or hear. This means a lot more work than just curves.
I’m no expert either but from what I gather, that’s a big part of their cost so you end up spiking your normal rail construction by quite a bit.
Any rail is good rail though, I just want them to get on with it.
Exactly. The line connecting London to Kitchener-Waterloo, two cities of a half-million people, spends most of its length doing 50-60km/h because of the lousy rail lines that have been largely un maintained for forty years. What should be a 45 minute ride ends up being over two hours. We can get so much improvement to our system by just fixing the shit we already have, or had fifty years ago.
It’s more complicated, and the Kitchener to London route is a good example with which I’m familiar.
I used to take this route a lot in the mid-Aughts and I think it was roughly 45-60 minutes. I moved back to the area ~5 years ago and was flabbergasted when I found out how long it takes now. I thought, “the government should fix this!” However, when you dig into it more, you find out CN owns that route and they’ve made the calculation that upkeep is more expensive to them than slow trains. Sure, “the government” could pay CN to fix the rails, but I don’t think we want CN getting tax dollars, and even then, back when it was reasonably fast, you’d often experience huge delays because of freight.
Rumours are, GO has been eyeing that section of track and if they buy, they’ll obviously fix it up. However, this whole thing demonstrates how important it is to have designated passenger train tracks. And if you’re building dedicated tracks between two of the biggest cities in North America, it’s probably worth investing the extra money in HSR.
I don’t see why we should go for HSR when we haven’t even gotten close to the top speeds of our existing rolling stock, let alone the cutoff for “low speed” rail at around 200 km/h.
If VIA trains actually maintained that across the whole Windsor-Quebec City corridor I think you could satisfy the majority of people without needing the huge investment that true HSR requires.
For ViaRail to maintain max speed across The Corridor, they would have to rebuild most of it, which outside of those 2 Class 5 sections, they don’t own. If you’re building new tracks anyways, it might be worth building HSR.
We don’t even have classifications for 200kmh rail yet and only 2 small sections in Canada are Class 5 (160km/h). The rest is lower class.
Paige points out in the video that you can’t just trivially convert curvy conventional rail to high speed. He also points towards, without explicitly saying, that with the projected winding route, trains will spend a lot of time at slower than max conventional speeds.
“Speed costs, how fast can you afford to go?” Doesn’t matter if it’s cars, motorcycles, trains or sailboats. It’s not a linear increase either.
Having said that, what I’d love to see is all fixed rail infrastructure turned over to a non-profit corporation. Private or public rail companies with the rolling stock would pay fees to run trains on given schedules controlled by the infrastructure company, with priority given to passenger trains. The fees would be enough to cover the costs of rail maintenance and expansion.
With railways open to anyone with rolling stock, competition is increased. Exclusive routes would be eliminated, which would help reduce freight rates.
Over time, separate passenger rail lines would be developed, at least partially subsidized by fees on the freight companies, as passenger rail typically has very thin margins.
By law passenger rail does get priority.
It’s just that the fee is so small that it’s worth giving priority to freight.
There’s a US law that passenger trains get priority, but that’s rarely enforced. In Canada, there’s no such law.
This is key. I used to work for one of the major railroad companies, and passenger trains are an afterthought. There are so many freight trains traveling that there isn’t time for anything else. There was barely time for us to get on the track to do maintenance.
Are you a regular Paige Saunders viewer? That’s exactly what he proposed in another one of his videos!
Nope, haven’t seen it. I will now though.
I have a soft spot for trains in general. Dad (marketing director) and my grandfather (sales agent) worked for railways. Some of my ideas come from them.
They talked me out of following suit. It’s a pretty tough business these days.
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I’m not even sure I mind low speed rail. I just want more and cheaper lines to everywhere. It’s way nicer than busses.
High speed can come afterwards if we can get public thinking behind trains as regular transport
I agree when it comes to transporting goods, but low speed rail isn’t good enough to transport people. Remember, isn’t actually that insanely fast. They start at 200km/h, so aren’t anything too amazing at the lower end.
That said, if we can get some more low speed rail for goods installed, the tax revenue from that alone should give the governments more than enough to set up high speed rail lines soon after. Canada has a serious internal trade problem. Every single province trades more with the US than their neighbouring province. More cargo rail would help fix that.
In addition, since cargo and passenger rail is combined right now, passenger trains need to wait hours for cargo trains to pass through sections of it because they have priority. Just building a new cargo line would significantly reduce this one problem even if cargo trains are still allowed to use the old lines.
I agree with you mostly.
But I’ll point out that 200km/h is still ~50% higher than highway speeds, with no traffic, and you can still focus on other things. So even low end rail is still better than driving.
100% increase, if you’re talking about 100kmh roads. You’d need to be doing 130 for it to be a 50% increase.
For a fair comparison I’m assuming that most people will speed on the highway
I assume you mean 150 unless I’m misunderstanding something.
130 to 200 would be an increase of 50%, ish, 65 being 50% of 130.
I thought you meant 100 to 150. My bad.
I just don’t feel like 50% faster is enough. People are just so attached to their cars that they’ll just rent one if they can’t afford to own one. People in Canada compare things against planes if they talk about riding, so I think 200km/h is still a bit low unless if it’s a short trip, which I doubt it would be. Most likely it’ll be something like between Toronto and Ottawa, or Ottawa and Montreal.
200km/h isn’t quite enough to make the trip feel short. I think you’d have to be closing in on 300km/h before people take high speed rail seriously, as then you’d be doing less than 2 hours including boarding for a trip like that, where boarding on a plane alone would take much of those 2 hours, though the flight itself would be quite a bit faster.
Comparing to buses, sure, LSR is fine.
Vancouver to Toronto takes 4 days by train, though. So if we want trains to compete with airplanes, it has to be HSR.
Trains will never compete with planes on a route that long, even if they were high speed. Also good luck building HSR through the rockies
Not with that mentality! lol jk
Trains competing with planes don’t have to win by speed. Even if it takes 5x longer, I’d prefer taking the train. And that’s a feasible speed for HSR. The current state is >20x longer, so yeah if we don’t put in the effort of building HSR through the rockies, they will never compete indeed.
I agree with the need for more lines. Here in Ontario, I think ViaRail has to share the only line with other rail companies. So, if a train needs to get past in the other direction, you have to sit on a side line and wait. So annoying!
I priced a return trip from Ottawa to London for three and it was almost $900+tax (I think it didn’t include tax), taking 8-10 hours.
Sharing lines isn’t that unusual, it’s been done since the dawn of the railroads. It’s just that freight would be waiting on sidings while passenger and mail moved. Via Rail is just bass-ackwards.
I suppose the problem is that CN or CP own the tracks, and Via is just the renter, so CN and CP give lower priority.
Canada used to have that. But then we decided to urbanize, which allows people to walk everywhere, and thus we eventually had no need for the transit and eventually we ripped it up. It’s interesting we want to go back to the rural lifestyle again.
Nationalize it*!
No ifs ands or buts: nationalise it!
I do think it’s worth proposing a high speed railway line. If we’re going to spend 25 years to build it anyway, might as well make it a more competitive option than air travel or car. Air travel can’t go much faster than how it is without making it way unreasonably expensive to operate. The cost to operate is more for High speed rail but not as much, it is more in the initial investment.
Canada doesn’t want to end up with “high-speed rail” like the Northeast Corridor, so it’s prioritizing HFR to begin with…
We should probably start planning out an HSR right of way, but I’m not against expanding our conventional network in lieu of burning money on shit trains that run on shit tracks below conventional speeds for most of the trip anyway.
God the Northeast Corridor sucks and the fact that Amtrak is willing to call it HSR is a disgrace.