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
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
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.