This is false for Germany and misleading as a blanket statement across all five countries. The countries named do not uniformly support the claim.

Germany is the clearest counterexample. Deutsche Bahn’s long-distance division, which operates the ICE high-speed network, reported operating losses of −€43 million in 2023 and −€96 million in 2024. DB’s own CEO described 2024 as “the biggest crisis since railway reform.” Germany’s high-speed rail does not make operating profits.

France is more nuanced. SNCF Group as a whole is profitable, and TGV train operations contribute positively to that result. However, SNCF Réseau — the company that owns and maintains the TGV lines — carries €52 billion in debt and negative free cash flow. The train operator profits while the infrastructure it runs on does not sustain itself. The French government has also committed to investing nearly €100 billion in rail infrastructure by 2040: not the behaviour of a financially self-sufficient system.

Italy does offer the strongest case, with genuine competition and profitability on the Milan–Rome corridor. Spain is mixed — the Madrid–Barcelona route works; politically-driven lines built to lower-demand regions do not. Britain is complicated by billions of pounds in annual state support to rail infrastructure that operators depend on.

Even where operating surpluses exist, they measure the cost of running trains — not the return on the capital investment. The question of whether ticket revenue covers a $60–90 billion construction cost is different, and ALTO’s own internal analysis found a benefit-cost ratio of approximately 0.4: 40 cents returned for every dollar spent.

This projection is 25 to 67 percent higher than ALTO’s own official ridership forecast and relies on assumptions about Canadian travel behaviour that have not been publicly validated.

The Paris–Lyon TGV — the most frequently cited model — serves one of Europe’s highest-density travel corridors and has built its ridership over more than 40 years. It was constructed in 1981 at approximately $4 million per kilometre: a small fraction of current costs. Projecting comparable ridership onto the Toronto–Quebec City corridor requires assumptions about Canadian travel behaviour that differ substantially from current patterns and have not been published or peer-reviewed.

There is also an internal contradiction in this line of argument: the claim that lower fares will stimulate travel (Claim 3 below) also reduces revenue per passenger. Lower fares and high revenue together require very high ridership — which means projections that exceed ALTO’s own already-optimistic forecasts.

These three sub-claims — low fares, high revenue, and a 50% operating margin — cannot all be true simultaneously at realistic ridership levels. The arithmetic does not hold.

It is accurate that some European HSR tickets are inexpensive: SNCF confirmed in 2024 that roughly 50% of TGV tickets sold for under €45 (approximately CAD $65–70), partly through its low-cost Ouigo service. That directional point is fair.

The problem is the combination. At $3–4 billion in revenue and an ~$80 average fare, the corridor would need 37–50 million passengers annually. At ALTO’s own 24 million ridership projection, $80 fares yield approximately $1.9 billion — not $3–4 billion. Every version of the numbers requires either very high ridership or fares that are not particularly low.

A 50% operating margin would be extraordinary by any standard in the transportation industry. Eurostar — one of the world’s most successful HSR operators — has historically achieved margins of 15–20% in its best years. Japan Railways achieves 20–30% on its strongest corridors. No new-build HSR corridor has ever achieved 50%.

ALTO’s own internal business case, obtained through Access to Information requests, found a benefit-cost ratio of approximately 0.4. A McGill University analysis found a payback period of 40–50 years — and only if land value uplift around stations is captured and reinvested, which is not guaranteed.

The corridors that work share specific conditions. The Toronto–Quebec City corridor does not fully match them — and the international evidence on cost overruns is substantial and directly applicable.

The two HSR projects widely considered financially successful — Paris–Lyon (1981) and Tokyo–Osaka (1964) — share a distinct profile: very high population density along the entire route, deeply embedded rail culture, corridor lengths in the 400–600 km range, and construction costs far below anything achievable today. Both were built before the era of modern P3 financing, environmental regulation, and land cost.

• The European Court of Auditors found average cost overruns of 44% across HSR projects in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Austria
• Britain’s HS2 was originally estimated at £37 billion; the northern sections have since been cancelled, with remaining costs exceeding £100 billion
• California’s HSR had a voter-approved budget of $33 billion USD in 2008 and now carries an estimate of over $100 billion for a shorter alignment

Canada also faces structural challenges that most European comparators do not. There is currently no Canadian track standard, safety standard, or equipment certification process for trains operating above 160 km/h. This is a legal and technical gap — not a political problem — that will take years to resolve regardless of which party governs, and it has not been publicly acknowledged in ALTO’s published timeline.

The previous High Frequency Rail proposal faced real challenges. But characterizing those challenges as fatal impossibilities — while simultaneously treating a $60–90 billion greenfield corridor through karst limestone, Leda clay, and the UNESCO Frontenac Arch as straightforwardly achievable — applies a double standard. And a third option has never been evaluated at all.

The HFR plan’s documented obstacles — trackage rights with CN and CP, routing into Montreal’s Central Station — are genuine. However, engineering and negotiating challenges exist on any path. The Paris TGV faced station-access challenges that were resolved through tunnelling and terminal construction. Describing alternatives as “fantasy” before they have been studied is not an evidence-based position.

More importantly, there is a third option that has never received a formal public evaluation: dedicated passenger-only track alongside existing corridors — the Highway 401 or the CN Kingston Subdivision — using High Performance Rail at 200 km/h. Ontario’s own 2016 study found that 300 km/h service “does not deliver a significant increase in benefits” over 200–250 km/h. If that finding holds, the additional cost and disruption required to achieve 300 km/h needs specific justification that has not been provided.

A 200 km/h dedicated corridor alongside existing corridors would:

• Avoid taking new agricultural land or severing farm operations
• Avoid the karst, Leda clay, and species-at-risk risks present on both proposed ALTO routes
• Serve existing communities rather than bypassing them
• Be buildable at significantly lower per-kilometre cost
• Allow freight displacement from the 401 as a co-benefit, reducing truck traffic

Premier Ford has publicly stated he wants HSR along the Highway 401 corridor. The Eastern Ontario Wardens’ Caucus, representing 113 municipalities, supports routes along existing infrastructure. Neither position has resulted in a published federal evaluation of that option.