MONTREAL — The Government of Canada and the Canada Infrastructure Bank, an “arm’s length” Crown corporation formed to fund big transportation projects, announced Tuesday that they will help finance an exploration of VIA Rail Canada’s proposed separate rail line in the Quebec City-Toronto Corridor.
The government and infrastructure bank will commit C$71.1 million ($54 million in U.S. dollars) to establish a joint project team with VIA to examine the High Frequency Rail project.
It was in 2015 that former VIA president Yves Desjardins-Siciliano first floated the idea of moving most trains off their current busy and populous Canadian National routes as a means of increasing frequencies and reliability. But it took an impending election for Canada’s Liberal government to come up with the funds to “work to preserve the option of interoperability with regional transit providers in Montreal and Toronto,” according to a Transport Canada press release.
The announcement was made in Trois-Rivieres, Que., by Minister of Transport Marc Garneau, VIA Rail President Cynthia Garneau (no relation), bank officials, and a Liberal member of Parliament. Another ceremony with elected officials took place in Peterborough, Ont. Both communities had passenger service when VIA Rail Canada was formed in 1978, but were eventually bypassed.
CN and Canadian Pacific ran Quebec-Montreal-Toronto “pool trains” over their respective lines prior to the VIA takeover, but CP eventually ripped out what had become a secondary Montreal-Toronto route west of Smiths Falls. It is now a bicycle trail east of Havelock, Ont., and a low-speed branch line from there through Peterborough into Toronto. VIA’s plan would completely rebuild the route as a “high frequency” passenger route.
A Trains News Wire comparison of travel times on the proposed routes when they both hosted “pool service” trains in May 1965 with current VIA operations finds the routes to be resurrected were much slower:
Ottawa-Toronto via Peterborough (CP): 8 hours. 45 minutes (overnight)
Ottawa-Toronto via Brockville, Ont. (VIA-CN): 4 hours. 43 minutes (slowest schedule)
Montreal-Quebec via Trois-Rivieres (CP): 4 hours (average of all trains)
Montreal-Quebec via Drummondville (CN): 3 hours, 15 minutes (average)
The funding announced today will:
— finalize legal and regulatory work related to safety and environmental assessments
— consult with stakeholders and Indigenous communities
— examine required land and track acquisition
— complete the technical, financial, and commercial analysis required for a final investment decision
No target date to complete the study has been announced. Yet it is clear the Trudeau government has done little so far to advance the project, just as it has consistently declined to intervene on behalf of VIA’s customers to improve CN’s handling of passenger trains, despite substantial stimulus-funded capacity and station investments on the existing corridor dating from 2009.
@ Micheal Shore: Yes I believe the Conservatives will scrap this plan entirely and also to minimize VIA services as possible to operate routes only they are financially feasible. It is not surprisingly since they are a fan of flying their alternative is to invest on building smaller airports everywhere as well as enlarging airfields to convince as many Canadian travelers to fly as possible instead of driving and using the train even on short distances as low as 60 miles apart (Canada does not have a transcontinental bus service anymore). Then the Conservatives will intend to find various smaller airlines on their own financial costs by finding cheaper methods and costs to fly.
MICHAEL – Yeah, blame the Tories for VIA being an embarassing shambles. The Grits have been in power for several years and they haven’t done a damned thing with VIA except watch further decline. (Totally like USA – Amtrak stinks under both Dems and Repubs.)
Hopefully Trudeau Fils will be out of power soon. He doesn’t come up to the callouses under the feet of the late Trudeau Pere.
Michael: l think that will be the Conservatives’ problem to sort out if they get elected. It will be their problem if they prefer to promote flying over passenger rail.
I don’t see this happening, or at best not happening for a long time.
Firstly, if the Conservatives win the election in October they will squash this project. They have always considered VIA a Liberal project.
Secondly, the Globe and Mail newspaper today said that the new route, despite being developed on the ex Canadian Pacific route, would be subject to an environmental review and be subject to negotiations with First Nations. Canada doesn’t do environmental reviews and negotiations with First Nations very well. An example of this is the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline from Alberta to B.C. which was first proposed in 2012 and there are still no shovels in the ground.
Here is another example of freight companies are getting away without paying any contribution for their benefit traffic by pushing passenger traffic away from their direct traffic. Why should federal taxpayers should pay by re-routing most passenger traffic away from their frequently used routes such as Kingston, Belleville, Brockville, Cornwall,etc.? The scenic grandeur will be ruined east of Peterborough by excavating through pristine lakes, trees and rocks to straighten out the new track. The simple solution is: divert all Toronto-Montreal CN freight traffic onto the separate freight only CP line through Perth and Smiths Falls. And if they need to twin their own freight only tracks then can can easily afford it from their record excessive profits. Then the existing well built VIA twin and triple tracks between Toronto and Montreal can used just for passenger use at low minimal cost upgrades. For Peterboroians then a short feeding line can be built to connect southward onto the existing VIA Toronto-Montreal line. What ashamed that taxpayers are basically paying for the benefit of CN and CP freight use instead.
So often, ‘studies’ lead to no results. During the construction of the first Transcontinental Railroad, about the only study was surveying land for routing of tracks. Now bureaucracy, politics and the environment complicates the proposed new line for Via Rail Canada. NIMBY’s will inevitably emerge from the woodwork although the route is a former railway line.
As for Via Rail Canada’s long distance trains, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should introduce legislation to Parliament that would ensure priority and punctuality of passenger trains.
Canada could use private entities like Texas Central and Virgin Trains USA to revive passenger rail given the constraints of Via Rail Canada and its lack of enterprise like real estate investments. More variety would return to train travel beyond the blue and yellow paint scheme in Canada, and, blue with red and white trim in America.
Andrew
I should have also commented on how this will affect Air Canada and Porter Airlines. AC could probably weather a large transfer of passengers from air to rail but for Porter, who rely heavily on the Toronto – Ottawa/Montreal traffic, it could present major problems.
Compared to some of the pie in the sky proposals we have seen, this one seems realistic in comparison. Still in all, VIA could make a better case for itself if it ran more trains on the current network and ran them on time.