How high-speed rail would change Ontario and Quebec — if it actually happens
How high-speed rail would change Ontario and Quebec — if it actually happens
17 comments
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I'll be dead in 2078 when it will be announced for the 134th time, at the cost of 860 billions$
I'll tell you then
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This would save me some time travelling between Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto for work, as I absolutely hate travelling by plane.
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Please. It could cost $300B by the time it's built but we need this. I think we can put 21st century investment in what's currently an early 20th century system.
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Research from Japan suggests high-speed rail can help ease the cost of housing and congestion on the roads, by making it easier to live further from urban centres.
Doug Ford is rolling his eyes. Don't you guys know? Bike lanes are the reason we have so much congestion, unaffordable housing, and homelessness! /s
But in all seriousness, all the things that other countries have done with great success are all things we can implement in Canada: high-speed rails, REMOVING cars from cities, improving public transportation networks, expanding cycling infrastructures, and creating more room for public spaces, as examples.
We only need the political will to, since I'm sure most people would want to live in a better version of what they have now.
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Isn't Canada too big for bike lanes? I can't bike from Toronto to Halifax! And the train would take ages to go from Montreal, QC to Victoria BC. Why are you assaulting my freedom of movement by pushing these things on us!?!?!? /s
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We only need the political will to, since I'm sure most people would want to live in a better version of what they have now.
You would think, but a fair amount of people I talk to in the 40+ do not want to change and actually are opposed to change.
People seem to think this is how we have always lived, and it's only really been 2 or 3 generations that have lived with so much excess.
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You would think, but a fair amount of people I talk to in the 40+ do not want to change and actually are opposed to change.
I'm in that group, and I have no problem seeing positive changes happen. What's the point of being resistant to change, if it means living in a worse situation? To me, it makes no sense.
I want to see our communities become more human-centric, because the direction we are going would not be the future I want my kids and grandkids living in.
People seem to think this is how we have always lived, and it’s only really been 2 or 3 generations that have lived with so much excess.
Exactly! These things aren't some long-standing traditions we need to cling onto. They are recent problems (that we created) that can be corrected if we act quickly. And we sure as shit can't fix things with a government who wants to push Ontario in the opposite direction.
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the things that other countries have done with great success are all things we can implement in Canada
At least in parts of Canada.
I doubt high speed rail is a viable solution between Vancouver and Calgary.
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I doubt high speed rail is a viable solution between Vancouver and Calgary.
Yeah, that route would suck for anything land-based. Flights are around $100, and would get you there in 1/10 the time that driving would.
But you wouldn't build high-speed rail lines for routes nobody would take. I don't even think Via rail has a station in Calgary... Edmonton, yes, but Calgary is on its own!
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Narrator voice: it won't but the money will be wasted
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I hate when they compare us to Europe though. Maybe Toronto and Quebec are different since they are older but our cities are generally more sprawled with fewer people then Europe.
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Not in the Quebec-Windsor corridor. There's enough people, and the density is high enough for rail to be useful.
The environmental benefits are great and all, but you'll get downtown to downtown faster and cheaper than car or train with high speed rail. Like, get off work in downtown Toronto, eat on the train, and watch a Sens game at 7 at LeBreton Flats, and back home for midnight sort of speed.
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That is 100% part of our problems with housing, road maintaince and municipal budgeting. We don't have to sprawl just because we have massive amounts of land, we can also build denser cities, transit oriented develolments, and walkable neighbourhoods.
Cities in Europe have managed to build modern neighbourhoods without sprawl, we could too. We need to stop using the excuse "my country/province is too big for transit" when the majority of people travel within their own metropolitan area on a daily basis.
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There's a sense in which cars by their nature produce sprawl. Cars are larger than people, so if I want a building to contain N number of people, I need an empty space nearby that contains 3N of just emptiness waiting for a car, so our buildings can't be too close together. There needs to be that buffer space between them for their cars.
Then people have to get to the parking lots, so we need roads. But if I want N people to be able to get here, I need more than that space between our parking lots for enough cars to be able to reach me. Not to mention left turning lanes and big intersections, and of course long stretches to get past the long parking lots.
So if we don't have space for that in a city, we either have to knock down a bunch of buildings to make room for these things, it we have to expand outwards into the larger empty space outside the city. Which naturally leads to sprawl.
It's amazing to actually do a satellite view of an area, take a screenshot, and then colour in the parts that are actually a building or shop or home, and then colour all the other parts that are road, driveway, parking lot, intersection. It's this foam which sprawls.
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It's also worth saying that with cars vs transit the incentives flip. With cars I don't want to make things too far away, but like in my previous comment I have to space things out some, and cars are good at going distances, so it's not too bad for business to sprawl. Also, because I need parking for everyone, density of my building (like a multi-story building) requires an even greater density of parking. But parking garages are expensive, so it's easier for me to build a bunch of single story buildings with big surface parking lots.
On the other hand, with transit and pedestrians distances are much more significant. The goal now is to try and get as many things as possible to where the people already are. In this mode, building up is much more sensible because the more housing or offices or businesses you can put on this plot, the less people will have to walk to get there and the closer they are to prominent transit stops, etc. And if I don't need parking, then I'm incentivized to put another building right next to this one to try and hit those same people without them taking more than 20 steps.
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Metro Vancouver is by no means on par with Europe, lots of fraser valley sprawl, that is slowly being developed to be higher density, but transit is not too bad. The bus and skytrain are linked so I can travel 45km to work in 1.5 to 2 hours depending on which method I choose, while taking the car to work can be 1.25 to 1.5 hours due to traffic. New skytrain lines are being extended outward also.
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17 comments