City Is Nowhere On High-Speed Rail Project
The federal government is considering building a high-speed rail line from Toronto to Quebec City.
A high-frequency line, slower than high speed, would cost between $6 billion to $12 billion. High speed? Well that would be more.
And what ripples of interest are being heard at Ottawa City Hall about it?
Nothing. That’s troublesome.
It’s a lot easier to build high-speed rail straight through from Toronto to Quebec City than make a detour to Ottawa. Bypassing Ottawa could turn the nation’s capital into an economic backwater combined with work-at-home (or in Calgary or the Bahamas) moving federal public servants out of the city. Or they move themselves. The Bulldog has been published a number of times out-of-town with the aid of an internet connection, a phone and a laptop. It’s easy.
Imagine writing a local Ottawa website from the Cayman Islands. The feds could move its operations most anywhere and still make it work. Bye-bye Ottawa.
So the city should be lobbying for an Ottawa stop on the high-speed line. It should be preparing where the train should stop here. Tremblay Road and then take light-rail downtown (when it’s working)? Fallowfield and extend light rail there? Kanata, the future of Ottawa? Or take high-speed rail right downtown and forget using light rail as a connector? Maybe something else?
Those might be ideas to consider for our city planners who are spending their time now destroying our neighbourhoods with extremification.
So where is Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe on getting Ottawa on the high-speed line? This might be the biggest infrastructure project in Canada this century and Ottawa City Hall is nowhere to be found on this issue. Maybe the mayor and council could draft a letter to the feds reminding them of where Ottawa is and what a great addition it might make to the line. Remind them that Ottawa is the capital of Canada and the seat of their government.
There are some problems that need to be discussed by the federal government before going forward. It’s expensive. Can we afford it? What will this do to the airline shuttle services? To Porter? Have we moved into a post-transportation era with work-at-home taking over … with home in most any place with an Internet connection?
One aside … why is the train not going to Windsor? Why is it not going to the high-tech hub of Waterloo? Why not London, Ont., the retail centre of southwestern Ontario? Hamilton? Good cities are being missed. Might one of those be Ottawa?
Why we could lend our expertise in light rail to high-speed rail … or not.
So if high-speed rail works, Sutcliffe should be all over this like a bad smell.
He’s not. Change that.
Ken Gray
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– The Bulldog – News Feed Enter 
Don’t worry. High speed rail between. Que city and To has been talked about since the 1970’s. No serious planning was ever done.
Well Robert:
Sometimes even a blind squirrel can find a couple of acorns.
So using the analogy of the blind squirrel on the feds …
cheers
k
Don’t worry. Dug Ford is going to take that $60+ billion originally ear marked for T.O.’s 401 and spend it on a tunnel under the 416 from K town to Ottawa.
Trying to tunnel through leda clay is the perfect Dug Ford boondoggle. We just need the right developers to ask him for it.
Ken,
Sutcliffe has, in fact, set up a meeting with the people at VIARail who are looking at this. I’m not sure, though, if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. He’s not exactly someone to be looked to for his expertise in building or operating trains. What is he going to say to them? What can he say to them? And how much heed will they pay whatever he does say?
They kind of have to at least go through the motions of meeting with him since Ottawa is in the plans as a stop on their new line. I would imagine there will be some difficulty respecting anything he has to say. Unless, of course, they view him as a cautionary tale who can tell them all the wrong ways to go about all things train-related so they can avoid doing anything he recommends.
Voter:
I just did a search and didn’t find the meeting.
Where did you hear that?
cheers
kgray
Ken,
He hosted Martin Imbleau, head of the VIA HFR corporation in charge of developing the high frequency rail project, for a chat at his Mayor’s Breakfast in June. Prior to the event, they met together. Three and a half months later, it was the subject of a podcast last week. Sutcliffe obviously doesn’t see it as a front-of-mind issue or one that requires mobilizing any support.
Ottawa is already on the list of seven stops for the new line so the lobbying only has to deal with keeping us on the list. My understanding is that this is an initial route from Quebec City to Toronto and other communities such as London and Windsor might be added in the distant future. It’s already a twenty-five-ish year project so, like Phase One of LRT, the first phase will include a long development stage before any construction actually starts.