MONTREAL — The federal government wants construction on a planned high-speed rail line between Toronto and Quebec City to begin within four years. On Thursday, Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc said the government’s new major projects office will work to speed up engineering and regulatory work on the Alto high-speed rail line. “This is a […]
  • dermanus@lemmy.caEnglish
    171·
    10 days ago

    I can’t believe how much mileage they’re getting out of this, despite not having built a damn thing.

    I’m 40 years old. I’ve been hearing about high speed rail my entire life. Forgive me if I’m skeptical.

  • 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works
    11·
    10 days ago

    It’s infuriating that we can give away $500M to car companies to immediately put shovels in the ground and then go bankrupt and run away with the money (see: Northvolt)

    but with trains its always 5 years away, pending yet another feasability study and environmental impact report…

    • Auli@lemmy.caEnglish
      210·
      9 days ago

      They know it’s not feasible in Canada our cities are not dense enough. But it lets them siphon money to their donors.

      • pedz@lemmy.ca
        6·
        9 days ago

        They know it’s not feasible in Canada our cities are not dense enough.

        This is false. The corridor has a density comparable to other countries with high speed networks.

        The Quebec City–Windsor Corridor is the most densely populated and heavily industrialized region of Canada. As its name suggests, the 1,150 km-long region extends from Quebec City in the northeast to Windsor, Ontario in the southwest. With more than 18 million people, it contains about half of the country’s population and seven of Canada’s 12 largest metropolitan areas, 3 of which are in the top 4. Its relative importance to Canada’s economic and political infrastructure renders it akin to the Northeast megalopolis in the United States.

        FFS, Sweden has a rail network with trains going at 200 km/h and is currently building sections where trains can go up to 250 km/h, but somehow it’s impossible in Canada because we’re not dense enough?! Somehow we can expropriate people in a few months and build entire expressway sections, all over the country, sometimes in complete fields, with bridges, but linking a few cities with trains is impossible?! This is just car dependency propaganda.

        EDIT: This fucking country was founded on railways. The west wouldn’t be as populated as it is without these. Today we’re talking about establishing a high speed line over a fraction of that distance, linking multiple major cities with millions of people, and we don’t have the density? What a fucking joke.

  • pedz@lemmy.ca
    3·
    9 days ago

    I’ll believe it when I’ll be in one of the trains. This has been promised for years, along with other major rail overhauls, that have never materialized. This time it seems like it may have a chance of being constructed, but so far it’s also just money dumped into consulting firms. And for multiple years still, without anything being physically constructed.

    I’m unfortunately a Via Rail user. I’d like to get excited for this project but the proposed route is not going to help me with my current needs along the corridor. I’ll still need to use Via Rail trains, they’ll still be late and I’ll still miss my connections. They’ll still promise to take bikes in a few years without actually taking bikes. They’ll still charge $75 for a last minute 60 km trip, in economy. They’ll still only have a few trains a day.

    When the federal announced Alto/high speed rail, it apparently forgot about the high frequency proposal from Via. So I guess things will continue to be shitty on that side.

    I’d really really like to get excited for any type of new transit, but rail projects and services in Canada are so abysmal, that I prefer to have very very low expectations. If it eventually gets built, I’ll happily be wrong.