After years of talk about a potential high-speed train that would link Toronto and the province of Quebec, the federal government has, at long last, officially announced the project and further details.
Anonymous inside sources disclosed to the Star that Transport Minister Anita Anand would be joining Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday to share the latest update on the rail initiative, confirming a new line to run at speeds of up to a mind-bending 300km/h between Toronto and Quebec City.
And, the news was confirmed by the PM this morning.
Spanning more than 1,000 km, the route’s stops will include Peterborough, Ottawa, Laval, Trois-Rivières, and Montreal, with passengers able to reach the latter city in three hours, Trudeau confirmed in a release — a huge improvement to the current travel time of 5 hours and 2 minutes from T.O. to MTL, at best, with VIA Rail.
The train, deemed “Alto,” will run on all-new electrified tracks, as opposed to an earlier high-frequency rail concept that would have used existing rail and moved more trains more often, but slower and over shorter distances.
Could Toronto-Montreal route be Canada’s first high-speed rail line? https://t.co/rD9gZ6XCFj
— blogTO (@blogTO) October 13, 2024
Three groups had been bidding to build the corridor, with the contract ultimately awarded to Cadence, which will now start on acquiring the necessary properties, conducting environmental assessments and creating early designs.
Trudeau wrote that the firm was “carefully selected to not only co-design and build, but also to finance, operate, and maintain this project,” praising it as “a consortium of world-renowned companies with expertise and know-how in the design, development, and operation of large-scale transportation infrastructure.”
He added that the game-changing undertaking will “drastically” improve commute times across the region, along with “turbocharging economic growth, creating thousands of good-paying jobs, improving productivity and reducing emissions.”
Anand had reiterated this sentiment during a conference back in the fall, adding that the infrastructure will also lead to more pockets of new housing to be built in the surrounding areas.
At that time, it was thought that particulars would be released to the public in only a matter of weeks, once the bidding process was complete. It seems things have taken a bit longer, this being, in the Prime Minister’s words, Canada’s largest ever infrastructure project.
Leaning into true high-speed rail, the trains will link the cities even faster than the 200km/h some had expected, making them the highest velocity in North America.
