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Stephen Schijns's avatar

A worthy and thoughtful commentary, with which I fully agree (as a transportation engineering consultant). It's hard to imagine an effective construction process, if it even launches. Of course, having studied this issue for fifty years, Transport Canada should have it all figured out by now. On the other hand, they are probably as shocked as anybody that the government has finally decided to move ahead with HSR.

I haven't looked yet, but am somewhat surprised that the proposed line does not extend past Toronto to Waterloo; there is great interest in tying "Silicon Valley North" more effectively to Pearson and Toronto in this manner. A future phase? Of course, serving Pearson with such an HSR line (which I studied) is a pretty big challenge that will take a lot of $ to create, but it's doable.

I will disagree on the Gordon Lightfoot front, though; there are some shockingly laborious rhymes in "Edmund Fitzgerald" that I can't get past, so "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" gets top billing from me (a practicing folk-rock musician).

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Andrew Simpson's avatar

Toronto hasn't even put a shovel in the ground for a north south subway line it had been planning for decades, and finally said it would start building six years ago. This HSR fantasy doesn't even promise that much, just 4 - 5 years of planning. It will never be built in our lifetimes, if ever. This isn't Europe. Their cities are compact, and have good intra city transit. Toronto? It would take me an hour to get to a station, plus another 30 minutes buffer time. I can just drive directly to my destination in Ottawa almost certainly in less time in aggregate. And if I'm really in a hurry, or want to go further, it's actually easier to get to an airport. I'll be in Ottawa or Montreal in a hour. Quebec City, 90 minutes.

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