Quebec’s Alto says a new study from Vision Transport and the UPA does not reflect the complexity of meeting mobility needs on the Quebec City–Toronto corridor.
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The Crown corporation behind Alto’s proposed high-speed rail link between Quebec City and Toronto says a newly released study arguing for a cheaper, slower alternative is “not as simple as it sounds.”
The study was released by Vision Transport and the agricultural group Union des producteurs agricoles, and was written by Vincent Duguay, a master’s student in research at the École nationale d’administration publique, and Pierre DuSablon, an expert with extensive experience in the rail industry.
It compares two scenarios: a route serving the same 22 stations currently served by Via Rail, and an express route with stops only in major cities. The authors say a modernized route serving intermediate stations such as Saint-Hyacinthe or Drummondville would reduce travel time to six hours and 40 minutes, while an express route would take five hours and 50 minutes.
Alto’s high-speed rail proposal targets a Quebec City–Toronto travel time of four hours and 30 minutes, while rail travel currently takes eight hours and 40 minutes.
UPA president Martin Caron said farmers do not want land expropriated only to discover the project is too expensive to proceed. He said the question should be whether other alternatives can have less impact and cost less.
Alto said it cannot simply add more passenger trains to existing tracks owned by other railway companies such as CN, CPKC or CFQG because freight trains have priority. It added that slowing or interrupting freight trains during construction or operation would have serious consequences for the Canadian economy, including businesses’ ability to export goods and farm operations.
The study describes five major proposals. The largest and most costly involves doubling existing tracks along the entire route by adding tracks over 407 kilometres; it notes 37 per cent of the corridor has only one track and passenger trains are regularly forced to pull onto a siding to let freight trains pass.
It also proposes upgrading the signalling system to reduce the distance between trains and increase maximum speeds to 177 km/h, up from 153 km/h, and strengthening the Canadian Transportation Agency’s authority to give passenger trains priority over freight.
The plan outlines differences in how level crossings would be handled compared with Alto’s approach: it says 924 level crossings would be retained, with 533 secured with full barriers, and it says replacing one-third of the level crossings with overpasses could reduce travel time between Montreal and Toronto by an additional eight minutes.
The fifth element would replace rolling stock with tilting trains and adjust tracks with steeper bank angles on curves, which the authors say would allow higher speeds.
The study estimates the modernization project would cost $9 billion to $9.4 billion, adding a 20 per cent contingency reserve to bring the initial cost to $11 billion. It also estimates additional costs if electrification is included, adding $3 billion to $7 billion for overhead wires and rolling stock, for an approximate total of $30 billion.
By comparison, the study places Alto’s high-speed rail project cost estimates between $60 billion and $90 billion from Alto, while a parliamentary budget officer is cited as estimating $73 billion to $113 billion and other independent industry sources putting the price at $150 billion.
The UPA opposes a north-shore route that would involve expropriations of farmland and traffic headaches, and Caron compared the situation to large expropriations in the 1960s for the Mirabel airport project, whose terminal was demolished in 2014.
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