@ottaross Kingston-born boy here.

Kingston has always been fortunate in having far more rail service than their population justifies, simply because they're the halfway point between Toronto and Montreal. I'm sorry that will change, but it really doesn't justify spending (10s of?) billions more to bring the line south, and upend the lives of many thousands more people, for a few dozen Kingston rail passengers on a typical day (maybe a couple of hundred on a holiday weekend for QueensU).

It's only 2½ hours to Union Station or the Gare Centrale anyway, so 3–4 regular-speed trains/day on the CN mainline will be more than adequate.

#YGK #rail #AltoHSR

@mpjgregoire @andrew @johnefrancis

@alan Yes, the flights are most important. I don't know the exact percentage, but a huge proportion of Canadian airline flights are in the Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal triangle. Those could all be rail trips, esp. with high-speed rail.

If we could eliminate even 25% of those flights, we could cancel the planned Pickering airport, pacify the affluent condo owners on the Toronto waterfront who hate flights into YTZ spoiling the lake views that they block out from the rest of the city 😒, postpone any expansion at YOW or YUL for decades, shut Mirabel right down and return the land to agriculture (because YUL would have capacity for the cargo ops), and reduce traffic on the 401 and Autoroute 20 heading to/from the airports. The spin-off benefits are almost immesurable.

#rail #AltoHSR #Canada

@johnefrancis