That’s quite a big detour from the previously proposed route. I’m not completely against it. It make way more sense to have the route go through Kingston and along Lake Ontario so you could have future stops along the much higher population areas, maybe Oshawa as well.
Right now just sending it through the middle of nowhere through Peterborough always seemed weird, unless the idea is to make Peterborough a major city moving forward.
VaderBinks on
Just build high speed rails everywhere, it makes so much sense for a developed nation.
netanyahu4eva on
This thing is never going to be built especially if they’re still arguing which routes to use.
Amutoji on
With regard to the route possibly changing for the sake of appeasing Mirabel, those guys have massive trauma from past expropriations for their airport. If any single place in Quebec would rally to kill this project, it’s there. I’m half excited about a new Kingston station and half concerned about the cost to go there, but the Mirabel thing could only increase the odds this train is built.
Edit: Oh, not in the article or in much English-language news. Weird, but I suppose that’s my bit of news to all you guys from Quebec.
Living near Kingston, I’ve been seeing a number of signs protesting against the proposed train. Why do some folks not want this train?
I love trains.
Strict_Common6871 on
That’s the problem with highspeed rails – we don’t have enough density on any reasonable route, either building huge detours and your highspeed is not highspeed anymore, or useless stops at Smith Falls
Feel free to downvote, I know you guys love money pits especially when some money are going directly into Liberals pockets via their spouses
Quirky-Cat2860 on
I disagree with this change. Having the line go through Kingston adds another 50 km in track length, not to mention a whole station. Those concerned about cost overruns are going to jump on this in a bad way.
I think a better option would be to keep the HSR route run to Ottawa directly from Peterborough, and run HFR trains between Kingston and Peterborough. But that would mean our lame duck Premier would have to get off his ass and build more infrastructure outside Toronto.
NZafe on
Wait they weren’t *already* going through Kingston? Why? It’s the biggest town between Ottawa and the GTA.
sdbest on
This should be treated as just another part of the Liberals‘ „Announcement-a-Day“ show to keep them in the news, e.g. earned media, cycle. None of these theatrical announcements can be relied on as portending anything serious.
Specialist_Ad7798 on
Kingston should definitely be a stop on the route.
DeanPoulter241 on
I do not know one person who will use this service. Yet EACH AND EVERY CANADIAN will be expected to pay $2k plus for this.
This train will not even move goods!
Tired of looking at empty buses clogging up streets. You aint seen nothing yet. Same with GO trains outside of rush hour or special events. Practically empty.
This is a vanity project that will enrich liberal insiders, go grossly over budget and extend way beyond a reasonable launch date.
Perhaps this govt should fix VIA first before it dumps $80B which will morph into $160B into this project.
modsuperstar on
It’s mental people arguing about high speed rail when in Waterloo Region and Guelph we’d bite your hand off to be able to get to Toronto in under 2 hours by rail. They’re building it through areas that don’t really live their lives commuting between those major centres. I’d love to be able to take the train to London and be there in half an hour for a concert. So many people to the west want to get into the GTA without driving a car, but often it’s the most efficient way.
Proper-Bee-4180 on
So they should
Getting to and from Kingston is a lot of work if you don’t have a car
GuzzlinGuinness on
Ottawa is the actual problem in this routing. Montreal to Toronto hugs the 401 directly.
It’s trying to shoehorn in Ottawa that makes this wonky AF
Equivalent-Card8949 on
This is genuinely stupid and indecisive. The way they are deciding to include Kingston is a flip-flop way of getting the downsides of each routing.
Going along the Northern route is likely the shortest path but goes through the least people, which also means it also should have the least opposition locally. (also could have some difficulties through the Canadian shield.
Going along the 401 corridor has pre-existing infrastructure (the 401 and VIA rail), but goes through the largest population centres of Eastern Ontario and most important land, which would mean a compromise in speed.
I don’t get this Southern route flip-flop route. It goes through farmland where there is opposition, and takes a longer path, for reducing the engineering costs and adding a station only near Kingston. There’s no point if you need to drive 30 minutes to the station just to take the train when you could just drive to the cities, where Kingston is perfectly in between. We are compromising speed, cost, and likely more opposition if we pick this routing.
The idea to add Kingston is just sacrficing the ideas of HSR. No, not every city has to be on the tracks, and that’s okay. That’s why we should also upgrade VIA rail while we’re at it.
caspertheghost on
I thought they were starting with the Peterborough to Ottawa corridor because there was pre-existing track or old rail corridor that would make it easier to build through and require fewer properties to expropriate?
holeycheezuscrust on
Kingston makes sense there’s a CAF base there
supermau5 on
I mean from Toronto to Montreal the obvious stops should be Belleville , Kingston Ottawa and maybe Brockville and Cornwall
Unlikely-Estate3862 on
Options for high speed rail lines starting from Toronto
-> Guelph, Kitchener, London, Windsor
-> Orangeville, Owen Sound, Sauble Beach
-> Bradford, Barrie, Collingwood
-> Mississauga, Hamilton, Niagara Falls
The_Eggo_and_its_Own on
I think a lot of people are jumping on the idea that this is Kingston vs. Peterborough. What can be done instead could be what they do with Japanese Shinkansen and have alternating, less frequent stops, where a less busy station gets bypassed sometimes. The ideal scenario would be an alternating route between a Peterborough line and a Kingston line from Toronto to Ottawa. Of course this would be more expensive but with Alto is being built in stages, a second line through Ontario would not disrupt service while being built
konathegreat on
Add some more to the price estimate with that fucking detour.
sbianchii on
So the train will never reach full speed. It’d effectively be a HFR at the cost of a HSR
njpg on
Is this meant to cut out Ottawa and just go along the 401?
Jumpy-Requirement389 on
send it to windsor
Tandy2000 on
I’m going to be honest, I already thought it was going through Kingston.
It seems silly that this isn’t already the plan even if it comes at additional cost.
differing on
If the math still works with the speed and timing, I’m all for it, but I’m skeptical that they can preserve the business case with this big detour.
i_never_ever_learn on
Take a breakthrough and add politics to get a breakdown
EP40glazer on
Of course they’re extending it. I guess $90B wasn’t enough.
Eskomo on
I live in Peterborough, and I feel like this increases the chance our city loses a stop.
Please just listen to the ALTO engineers/planners. This project is going to fail if we try to appease everyone.
Fireside_Cat on
Feature creep will guarantee it will become prohibitively expensive and less likely to actually happen.
callofdoobie on
High speed rail in north America is just people talking about trains and getting paid.
MrNostalgiac on
Cool.
Kingston is a great stop between Ottawa and Toronto.
NIMBYs can pound sand.
GHR-5H_Grasshopper on
The line is so odd. Quebec covers the normal Windsor-Quebec corridor, Quebec, Trois-Rivieres, Montreal and Laval, that everyone expected but the moment it goes to Ontario in Ottawa it just cuts straight from Ottawa to Toronto with Peterborough being directly in between.
jatd on
This is like the Simpsons mono-rail, this shit is never getting built. Yikes.
CapableWill8706 on
We really need far better public transport all over Canada. I would love to see an affordable high speed rail going from B.C. to NS. It is a nice Dream.
112iias2345 on
The only place this train will be stopping is fantasyland
Responsible_CDN_Duck on
There’s a key distance between high-speed stations that needs to be maintained. Places between need other rail or transit to get people to places in between.
In France that’s about 300KM. Unclear what it will be in this region, but we need to start by asking the experts rather than hoping what we find intuitive is accurate.
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37 Kommentare
That’s quite a big detour from the previously proposed route. I’m not completely against it. It make way more sense to have the route go through Kingston and along Lake Ontario so you could have future stops along the much higher population areas, maybe Oshawa as well.
Right now just sending it through the middle of nowhere through Peterborough always seemed weird, unless the idea is to make Peterborough a major city moving forward.
Just build high speed rails everywhere, it makes so much sense for a developed nation.
This thing is never going to be built especially if they’re still arguing which routes to use.
With regard to the route possibly changing for the sake of appeasing Mirabel, those guys have massive trauma from past expropriations for their airport. If any single place in Quebec would rally to kill this project, it’s there. I’m half excited about a new Kingston station and half concerned about the cost to go there, but the Mirabel thing could only increase the odds this train is built.
Edit: Oh, not in the article or in much English-language news. Weird, but I suppose that’s my bit of news to all you guys from Quebec.
https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/2026-06-22/tgv-quebec-toronto/alto-ouvre-la-porte-a-des-modifications-du-trace-a-mirabel-et-a-l-ajout-d-une-gare-a-kingston.php
Living near Kingston, I’ve been seeing a number of signs protesting against the proposed train. Why do some folks not want this train?
I love trains.
That’s the problem with highspeed rails – we don’t have enough density on any reasonable route, either building huge detours and your highspeed is not highspeed anymore, or useless stops at Smith Falls
Feel free to downvote, I know you guys love money pits especially when some money are going directly into Liberals pockets via their spouses
I disagree with this change. Having the line go through Kingston adds another 50 km in track length, not to mention a whole station. Those concerned about cost overruns are going to jump on this in a bad way.
I think a better option would be to keep the HSR route run to Ottawa directly from Peterborough, and run HFR trains between Kingston and Peterborough. But that would mean our lame duck Premier would have to get off his ass and build more infrastructure outside Toronto.
Wait they weren’t *already* going through Kingston? Why? It’s the biggest town between Ottawa and the GTA.
This should be treated as just another part of the Liberals‘ „Announcement-a-Day“ show to keep them in the news, e.g. earned media, cycle. None of these theatrical announcements can be relied on as portending anything serious.
Kingston should definitely be a stop on the route.
I do not know one person who will use this service. Yet EACH AND EVERY CANADIAN will be expected to pay $2k plus for this.
This train will not even move goods!
Tired of looking at empty buses clogging up streets. You aint seen nothing yet. Same with GO trains outside of rush hour or special events. Practically empty.
This is a vanity project that will enrich liberal insiders, go grossly over budget and extend way beyond a reasonable launch date.
Perhaps this govt should fix VIA first before it dumps $80B which will morph into $160B into this project.
It’s mental people arguing about high speed rail when in Waterloo Region and Guelph we’d bite your hand off to be able to get to Toronto in under 2 hours by rail. They’re building it through areas that don’t really live their lives commuting between those major centres. I’d love to be able to take the train to London and be there in half an hour for a concert. So many people to the west want to get into the GTA without driving a car, but often it’s the most efficient way.
So they should
Getting to and from Kingston is a lot of work if you don’t have a car
Ottawa is the actual problem in this routing. Montreal to Toronto hugs the 401 directly.
It’s trying to shoehorn in Ottawa that makes this wonky AF
This is genuinely stupid and indecisive. The way they are deciding to include Kingston is a flip-flop way of getting the downsides of each routing.
Going along the Northern route is likely the shortest path but goes through the least people, which also means it also should have the least opposition locally. (also could have some difficulties through the Canadian shield.
Going along the 401 corridor has pre-existing infrastructure (the 401 and VIA rail), but goes through the largest population centres of Eastern Ontario and most important land, which would mean a compromise in speed.
I don’t get this Southern route flip-flop route. It goes through farmland where there is opposition, and takes a longer path, for reducing the engineering costs and adding a station only near Kingston. There’s no point if you need to drive 30 minutes to the station just to take the train when you could just drive to the cities, where Kingston is perfectly in between. We are compromising speed, cost, and likely more opposition if we pick this routing.
The idea to add Kingston is just sacrficing the ideas of HSR. No, not every city has to be on the tracks, and that’s okay. That’s why we should also upgrade VIA rail while we’re at it.
I thought they were starting with the Peterborough to Ottawa corridor because there was pre-existing track or old rail corridor that would make it easier to build through and require fewer properties to expropriate?
Kingston makes sense there’s a CAF base there
I mean from Toronto to Montreal the obvious stops should be Belleville , Kingston Ottawa and maybe Brockville and Cornwall
Options for high speed rail lines starting from Toronto
-> Guelph, Kitchener, London, Windsor
-> Orangeville, Owen Sound, Sauble Beach
-> Bradford, Barrie, Collingwood
-> Mississauga, Hamilton, Niagara Falls
I think a lot of people are jumping on the idea that this is Kingston vs. Peterborough. What can be done instead could be what they do with Japanese Shinkansen and have alternating, less frequent stops, where a less busy station gets bypassed sometimes. The ideal scenario would be an alternating route between a Peterborough line and a Kingston line from Toronto to Ottawa. Of course this would be more expensive but with Alto is being built in stages, a second line through Ontario would not disrupt service while being built
Add some more to the price estimate with that fucking detour.
So the train will never reach full speed. It’d effectively be a HFR at the cost of a HSR
Is this meant to cut out Ottawa and just go along the 401?
send it to windsor
I’m going to be honest, I already thought it was going through Kingston.
It seems silly that this isn’t already the plan even if it comes at additional cost.
If the math still works with the speed and timing, I’m all for it, but I’m skeptical that they can preserve the business case with this big detour.
Take a breakthrough and add politics to get a breakdown
Of course they’re extending it. I guess $90B wasn’t enough.
I live in Peterborough, and I feel like this increases the chance our city loses a stop.
Please just listen to the ALTO engineers/planners. This project is going to fail if we try to appease everyone.
Feature creep will guarantee it will become prohibitively expensive and less likely to actually happen.
High speed rail in north America is just people talking about trains and getting paid.
Cool.
Kingston is a great stop between Ottawa and Toronto.
NIMBYs can pound sand.
The line is so odd. Quebec covers the normal Windsor-Quebec corridor, Quebec, Trois-Rivieres, Montreal and Laval, that everyone expected but the moment it goes to Ontario in Ottawa it just cuts straight from Ottawa to Toronto with Peterborough being directly in between.
This is like the Simpsons mono-rail, this shit is never getting built. Yikes.
We really need far better public transport all over Canada. I would love to see an affordable high speed rail going from B.C. to NS. It is a nice Dream.
The only place this train will be stopping is fantasyland
There’s a key distance between high-speed stations that needs to be maintained. Places between need other rail or transit to get people to places in between.
In France that’s about 300KM. Unclear what it will be in this region, but we need to start by asking the experts rather than hoping what we find intuitive is accurate.