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Your Kids’ Bus Route and the ALTO Train
A proposed high-speed rail line through rural Eastern Ontario could close rural road crossings, force longer school bus detours, and push hundreds of students past their provincial ride-time limits.
High-speed rail cannot share the road with cars or buses. At 300 km/h, no at-grade crossing is possible. Every road that currently crosses the future corridor must be either bridged, tunnelled, or closed permanently. In rural Eastern Ontario, where north-south concession roads are spaced 1–2 km apart, closing crossings means school bus detours of 3 to 8 km and 10 to 20 minutes per trip — pushing many routes past the provincial ride-time ceiling.
The scale of what’s being proposed
What is the ALTO project?
ALTO is Canada’s first high-speed rail network, planned to connect Toronto and Québec City at speeds up to 300 km/h. It’s a joint venture between ALTO, a federal Crown corporation (a subsidiary of VIA Rail), and Cadence, a private consortium that includes Air Canada, SNCF (France’s national railway), and Atkins Réalis. The total cost is estimated at $80–$120 billion.
Between Ottawa and Peterborough, ALTO is studying two possible routes. The northern route follows Highway 7 through the Canadian Shield. The southern route swings south through agricultural communities in South Frontenac, Central Frontenac, Lanark, Leeds and Grenville, and Hastings counties — the same townships where thousands of rural children ride a school bus every morning.
No stop in Kingston
Under ALTO’s current plan, there are only three stops in Ontario: Toronto, Peterborough, and Ottawa. Despite the southern route passing close to Kingston, Kingston is not included. Kingston City Council passed a motion in February 2026 formally opposing the southern route unless a Kingston station is included.
Project Timeline
How could this affect my child’s school bus?
High-speed rail cannot share the road with cars or buses. At 300 km/h, no at-grade crossing is possible. Every road that currently crosses the future corridor must be either:
The three options for every rural road crossing
Option A — Grade separation built: A bridge over the rail line, or an underpass beneath it, is constructed. Expensive. Not every road will get one.
Option B — Crossing closed permanently: The road is dead-ended at the fenced corridor. Traffic must find the nearest alternate crossing.
Option C — Road does not cross the corridor: Roads running parallel to the line are not affected.
In rural Eastern Ontario, north–south concession roads are typically spaced 1–2 km apart. If some crossings are closed and others are not, a school bus that currently drives straight through must instead detour to the nearest open crossing — potentially adding 3 to 8 km to the route, and 10 to 20 minutes to your child’s ride.
“On rural routes covering 40–60 km with 15–25 stops, even one forced detour can add 6–16 km and 10–20 minutes per trip. Many routes already near the provincial ride-time ceiling would exceed it.”
Martin Imbleau confirmed: “Nothing can cross it. If at 330 kilometres you cross a deer, it’s a huge incident… overpass and underpass will have to be strategically positioned.” He described the scale: “We’re talking a thousand kilometres and 300 community. So it’s thousands of crossings that we’re talking about.”
“Strategically positioned” means crossings will be placed to serve the most critical uses. Farm access distances and firefighter access were both named as active issues. School bus routes were not mentioned. Every school board and transportation consortium in this corridor has a stake in ensuring school bus routes are included in those criteria before decisions are locked in.
What about bus stop locations? Bus stops can’t be on bridges or inside underpasses. NHTSA recommends stops be at least 90 metres away from any railway structure. For students on the far side of the corridor from their school, this could mean a longer walk to a new stop in an area with no sidewalks, roadside ditches, and fast-moving traffic — especially in winter.
What about during construction? Construction of a 1,000 km rail network will take many years. Throughout that time, road configurations along the corridor will change constantly. School bus planners at STEO would face an unusually unstable environment, needing to re-optimize dozens of routes potentially every school year as construction advances through different sections.
Your school board and STEO are already in trouble
The school bus consortium that serves the affected area — Student Transportation of Eastern Ontario (STEO) — is already in serious financial difficulty, entirely separate from the ALTO project.
STEO already aims to keep 97% of students under 60 minutes. Under the new provincial funding formula, that ceiling is being raised to 75 minutes for elementary students — meaning the system already has less slack. If ALTO crossing detours push routes longer, affected routes will need to be split or restructured, requiring more buses and more drivers that STEO cannot fund.
Affected school boards and transport consortia
STEO serves UCDSB and CDSBEO — Upper Canada District School Board (Leeds, Grenville, Lanark, portions of Frontenac) and Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario.
Tri-Board Student Transportation Services serves LDSB (Frontenac and Lennox & Addington), HPEDSB (Hastings County — directly in the southern corridor), and ALCDSB.
Consortium de transport scolaire d’Ottawa (CTSO) serves CEPEO (French public board, Frontenac through Leeds-Grenville) and CECCE (French Catholic, Kingston and Ottawa areas).
In this part of Ontario, school bus transportation is not a convenience — it is the only realistic option. There is no urban transit, no walkable school, and for many farming families, no practical way to drive children to school every day.
How could school attendance boundaries be affected?
The impact of the ALTO corridor goes beyond longer bus rides. The project has the potential to disrupt school catchment boundaries, fragment established school communities, and accelerate the rural school consolidation pressures that Eastern Ontario towns have been fighting for years.
When a family is forced off their property through expropriation, they must relocate. In rural Eastern Ontario, the nearest affordable replacement property may be in a different township, county, or school board catchment area. A family displaced from South Frontenac might find land in Lanark County or Hastings County — crossing from UCDSB territory into LDSB or CDSBEO territory, or into a community served by different schools altogether. For families with children in specialized programs — French-language instruction, Catholic education, gifted streams, special education — relocation across a board boundary may mean those programs are no longer accessible.
A fully fenced 60-metre right-of-way with limited crossing points creates a hard new physical barrier through communities that are currently continuous. Where the nearest open crossing requires a 5–10 km detour, students on the far side of the corridor may be reassigned to a different school — even if their family has always attended the original school and it remains geographically close as the crow flies.
How Ontario calculates school boundaries
Ontario school boards assign students and calculate transportation eligibility based on road distance — the actual route a student must travel, not straight-line distance. When crossing closures force longer detours, the road distance from a home to its current school increases. This can trigger:
- Previously ineligible students becoming bus-eligible (detour makes walking unsafe or too long)
- A different school becoming “nearest by road,” triggering a boundary review
- Reassignments that split siblings between different schools
- Loss of continuity for students mid-program
Ontario school boards must conduct a Pupil Accommodation Review (PAR) when a school’s enrolment falls below defined thresholds. Rural schools in Eastern Ontario are already below optimal enrolment. Any additional loss — from expropriated families leaving, catchment fragmentation, or young families choosing not to move into affected communities — pushes schools closer to the threshold that triggers a formal review. A school closure removes a community gathering space, reduces property values, and accelerates demographic decline. These second-order consequences of the ALTO corridor have not been assessed, and are not part of any current impact analysis.
What parents are asking
Probably not. Under the current plan, there are only three stops in all of Ontario: Toronto, Peterborough, and Ottawa. The southern corridor would pass through communities in South Frontenac, Lanark, Leeds and Grenville, and Hastings counties without stopping. Kingston — the largest city along the southern route — has no stop planned. The train would pass through your region at 300 km/h without serving it.
That has not yet been determined. ALTO is in the corridor study phase — the exact 60-metre right-of-way, and which road crossings will receive grade separations vs. be closed, will not be decided until much later in the process. This is exactly why community input now matters: you need to identify which crossings are critical for school buses before crossing decisions are made.
A grade separation does preserve road access, which is better than a closure. However, bus stops cannot be placed on bridges or directly adjacent to underpasses due to safety requirements. The physical structure changes where stops can be located, potentially lengthening the walk for students on either side. More critically, not every rural concession road will receive a grade separation. The ones that don’t will be closed.
Yes, and this is one of the most important things that can happen. U.S. FHWA guidance explicitly includes school bus routes as a priority criterion when evaluating which crossings can or cannot be closed. The same principle should be applied here. For this to happen, STEO, Tri-Board, CTSO, and all affected school boards need to be formally engaged as stakeholders in the ALTO process — not treated as ordinary members of the public. Parents can push for this by contacting their school board trustees.
Potentially, yes — in two ways. First, if your family is expropriated and must relocate, your new address may fall in a different school board catchment area. Second, even if you stay put, if the corridor closes a road crossing that your child’s school uses to draw students from a particular area, the boundary of that school’s catchment may be redrawn. Ontario uses road distance — not straight-line distance — for boundary and eligibility calculations, so any detour caused by crossing closures directly affects those calculations.
It’s a real risk over time. Ontario school boards must conduct a Pupil Accommodation Review (PAR) when enrolment falls below defined thresholds — and a PAR can lead to school closure. Rural schools in Eastern Ontario already operate with lower-than-ideal enrolment. If the ALTO corridor causes families to leave the area through expropriation, splits a school’s catchment, or makes the community less attractive to young families, enrolment could decline enough to trigger a review. A school closure is a documented second-order risk of major infrastructure corridors running through rural communities — and it has not been assessed as part of the ALTO impact analysis.
What you can do right now
The consultation window is open until April 24, 2026. Here is exactly how to make your voice heard:
Submit a comment to ALTO directly
Use ALTO’s online consultation platform to flag school bus route crossings in your area. You can also place a pin on the interactive map showing where critical crossings are. en.consultation.altotrain.ca →
Contact STEO and your school board
Ask your school board trustee and STEO what formal submission the board intends to make to the ALTO process — and push them to map every school bus crossing in the study area. steo.ca →
Contact your MP and MPP
Write asking that: (a) a Student Transportation Impact Assessment be required; and (b) STEO, Tri-Board, and CTSO be formally engaged as stakeholders.