Look. I like high speed trains. I’ve been on the TGV in France and the Shinkansen in Japan. A high speed train in Canada would be a dream come true.

I even like the existing VIA trains, while wishing they were faster and more reliable. I’ve ridden VIA and Amtrak across North America and GO here in Toronto.

I like trains. You probably knew that. (You can like them as they are and also and wish they were faster.)

But … the federal government is proposing to spend a boatload of money on Alto, a new high speed line between Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Québec, and it’s the wrong project, going to the wrong places.

Yes, let’s spend some billions, but let’s fix up what we already have.

How about we get back to the way it used to be?

Here’s an excerpt of a VIA Rail schedule from 1976.

Turbo train #81 leaves downtown Montreal at 08:00 and arrives at Toronto’s Union Station at 12:15. Seven trains a day each way. 4hr 15 for the Turbo. (I recall it used to be faster, Via bragged about 3h59 service on some express trains.)

Not only that, four trains a day each way from Toronto to London via Kitchener, and ten more from Toronto to London via Brantford.

I took the Kitchener to London train every couple of weeks for a few years.

Kitchener to London took an hour and twelve minutes. Four times a day.

And Via had lots of other routes - here’s the 1976 system map; many of these links have vanished over the past years with one cutback after another..

What’s it like today?

Today there is exactly one train from Kitchener to London, and it takes an hour and 55 minutes (and a few more trains on the other route from Toronto to London via Brantford.) It limps along between Kitchener and London at about 30 mph on track that has been neglected and deteriorated.

There are six trains from Toronto to Montreal, all of which take five hours or more.

Everything is

• considerably slower
• less frequent
• less reliable

than it was fifty years ago.

Freight trains continue to have the right of way over much of the routes that Via travels, causing passenger trains to stop and wait.

what is Alto proposing

The Alto project envisages spending up to 90 billion dollars on an all-new route, with speeds of 300 km/h or more, and a vague promise of a 3 hour journey between Toronto and Montreal.

But … They’re being very vague on the route and won’t even commit to having the Toronto end be the existing Union Station.

The route would bypass the existing rail corridor (along Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence) between Toronto and Montreal in favour of a new route through Peterborough.

Here’s the area they’re studying, with two possible vague routes under consideration.

This corridor would be exclusive to Alto and have no contention with freight service.

what’s wrong with that?

OK, just for the moment ignore all the expected complaining by anyone whose land might be impacted by this new route, which happens any time anybody tries to build anything.

It’s a huge expenditure and a huge project, and it bypasses a lot of population along the existing Via corridor. No Alto service to Oshawa, Belleville, Kingston, Brockville, Cornwall and more.

Alto won’t commit to where the Toronto station is. They say it’d be hard to run the new high speed track all the way downtown. Maybe it would end in Scarborough. Air Canada is somehow wrapped up in this process - maybe they want it to end at Pearson Airport.

Whatever they choose, it will take freaking forever to build and I’m confident it won’t be done in my lifetime.

And it’s spending tens of billions of dollars to build a service that is only slightly better than what we had with conventional rail service in the 1970s.

why don’t we do this instead?

Spend a few billion dollars to upgrade the existing VIA Rail right of way. Figure out a way to give the passenger service priority over freight on that corridor. Get back to the speed and service level we had in the 1970s.

Bring the trains right to DOWNTOWN Toronto. Maybe they can’t run at full speed for the last few miles, so what.

Improve service beyond Toronto to Kitchener, London and beyond, too. Can we just start by fixing the deteriorating track that’s already there and let VIA deliver reliable, timely service like they used to do?

High Frequency Rail.

Not High Speed Rail.

All that could be ready in a few years, not a few decades.

And I might even get to ride it before I die.