Canada is great at high-speed rail studies — but not at actually building high-speed rail. So why is it the only country in the developed world considering a new conventional-speed passenger network?
Created by Paige Saunders with special guest Reece Martin
I don’t see why we should go for HSR when we haven’t even gotten close to the top speeds of our existing rolling stock, let alone the cutoff for “low speed” rail at around 200 km/h.
If VIA trains actually maintained that across the whole Windsor-Quebec City corridor I think you could satisfy the majority of people without needing the huge investment that true HSR requires.
For ViaRail to maintain max speed across The Corridor, they would have to rebuild most of it, which outside of those 2 Class 5 sections, they don’t own. If you’re building new tracks anyways, it might be worth building HSR.