High-speed rail in Canada
[1] In the press and popular discussion, there have been two routes frequently proposed as suitable for a high-speed rail corridor: Edmonton to Calgary via Red Deer and Windsor to Quebec City via London, Kitchener-Waterloo, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.
[10] CN's, and later Via Rail's, TurboTrain service was marred with lengthy interruptions to address design problems and having to cope with poor track quality (accounted for by dual passenger-freight use).
Beginning in the 1970s, a consortium of several companies started to study Bombardier Transportation's LRC, which was a more conventional approach to high-speed rail, in having separate cars and locomotives, rather than being an articulated train.
[citation needed] The Calgary–Edmonton corridor is about 300 km (190 mi) long and takes about three hours to traverse by car via the Queen Elizabeth II Highway.
A 2011 update to a 2004 study by the Van Horne Institute[11] concluded that "high-speed rail would bring significant benefits to the Calgary–Edmonton corridor and Alberta as a whole".
On September 22, 2006, the government of Alberta announced that it was deploying video cameras along a stretch of the Queen Elizabeth II Highway to measure the number of cars that travel between the two cities.
[13] On April 7, 2011, Premier Ed Stelmach said that the land being purchased for the new location of the Royal Alberta Museum could be used as the Edmonton terminal.
[16] The Standing Committee on Alberta's Economic Future studied the feasibility of high-speed rail between Calgary and Edmonton in 2014.
The report released in May 2014 stated that although Alberta was not ready for high-speed rail, the government should start planning for it by acquiring land along a transportation corridor.
[17] In 2015, the provincial New Democratic Party government stated it was reviving the possibility of a bullet train operating between Edmonton and Calgary.
The Minister of Infrastructure, Brian Mason, said the government had issued a request for a proposal to plan and implement a study "to determine the future needs for the QE II highway" due to high traffic volumes.
[20] On July 8, 2021, EllisDon formed a partnership with AECOM to plan a high-speed rail line between Calgary and Edmonton, running through Red Deer.
[26][27] In 1998, the Lynx consortium, including Bombardier and SNC-Lavalin proposed a 320 km/h (200 mph) high-speed train from Toronto to Quebec City via Kingston, Ottawa and Montreal based on the TGV and the French Turbo-Train technology.
[29][30] In February 2009, The EcoTrain Consortium, consisting of firms Dessau, MMM Group, KPMG, Wilbur Smith & Associates and Deutsche Bahn International, were awarded a contract to update the feasibility studies for high-speed rail (HSR) in the Quebec City–Windsor corridor.
[33] Michael Ignatieff, then-leader of the Liberal Party said in 2011 that he would agree to fund the Quebec corridor and described it as a means to unite the country, similar to early railway projects in Canada.
Detroit is already part of higher speed rail initiative in the United States to connect to Chicago, Illinois, and to St. Louis, Missouri.
[44] Unlike the earlier EcoTrain study, which proposed to build a completely separate line for HSR, FCP proposed to share the existing rail corridor from Toronto to Georgetown which is being upgraded with 4 to 6 tracks and will be electrified for use by GO regional trains and Toronto's Union Pearson Express.
In October 2014, High Speed Rail Canada announced that it would release to the public a number of feasibility studies done on the corridor.
[36] On December 5, 2014, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation approved starting an environmental assessment on the best route for a high speed rail connecting Toronto, Kitchener–Waterloo, London and Windsor for 2015.
[47] Collenette delivered the Special Advisor's Final Report to the provincial government on December 2, 2016,[48] On May 19, 2017, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Transport Minister Steven Del Duca announced the first steps in having a high-speed rail route in place by 2025 from Toronto to London, extending to Windsor by 2031, based on the recommendations on Collenette's report.
The environmental assessment for this would reportedly be coordinated with the Metrolinx project to enable two-way, all-day GO Transit trains to Kitchener and will be sharing that corridor.
The rail network was proposed as an alternative to supplement the growing capacity demands along the British Columbia Highway 99 corridor.
The proposal was for an end-to-end transit system running from Whistler to Chilliwack, with stops in major municipalities like Surrey, Vancouver, and Squamish.
The State of Washington completed in December 2020 an ultra-high-speed study titled, "Cascadia High Speed Ground Transportation".
In the 1970s, the Mayor of Montreal, Jean Drapeau, announced his project to build a TGV (high-speed line) to New York in order to replace the slow and unreliable Adirondack service operated by Amtrak.
