Category: Post-consultation

  • The more you look

    The More You Look, the Worse It Gets — ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative

    The More You Look, the Worse It Gets

    Thirty studies of high-speed rail in this corridor, across fifty-six years. One simple pattern runs through all of them.

    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · A plain-language guide to the record · 2026 · Working synthesis
    ⚠ The bottom line, up front

    The people building the railway say it will pay for itself. The one independent study in 2026 that actually checked the math — using the builders’ own cost estimates — found a hole of about $53 billion over fifty years.

    That’s not a fluke. It’s the pattern. For fifty-six years, the case for this railway has looked best in exactly the studies with the most to gain from building it.

    In one minute

    We read thirty major studies of high-speed rail in this corridor, from 1970 to today, and asked every one the same set of questions — with all the dollar figures put on a level footing.

    The verdict almost always matches who paid for the study. Equipment makers, the proponent and paid advocates say build it. Independent governments say wait. And every single study that actually runs the finances finds the same thing: ticket sales can’t cover the cost, so the public pays most of the bill.

    The numbers that look great — low costs, huge ridership, big climate wins — come from the promoters. The numbers that survive an independent look are far more sober. The closer and more independent the analysis, the weaker the case.

    Read the full report
    Corridor Rail Studies, 1970–2026 — A Cross-Decade Analysis
    Thirty studies, thirty-four dimensions, nine findings, with the full evidence tables
    Download PDF
    How we know

    Thirty studies. Same questions. Fifty-six years.

    We didn’t cherry-pick. We took thirty of the major studies of this railway — going right back to a 1970 federal commission — and put the same 34 questions to all of them, so the answers line up side by side across the decades.

    30
    major studies of this railway, read into one matrix
    1970–2026
    34
    questions asked of every single study
    so the answers compare
    56
    years of studies, all priced in today’s dollars
    a level playing field

    The studies come from every side: equipment makers, government task forces, a Crown corporation, universities, Transport Canada, and the builders themselves. That range is the whole point — it lets us tell a real change in the corridor apart from a change in who’s doing the asking.

    What we found

    Nine things every reader should know

    Read across all thirty studies, nine patterns keep showing up. Here they are in plain terms.

    1The answer depends on who paid for the study

    Line up the verdicts and it’s impossible to miss. The build-it studies come from equipment makers, from a Crown corporation that wanted to run the trains, from the proponent, and from paid advocates. Every independent government that looked said wait. Building new is the sponsors’ answer — not what fifty-six years of evidence actually points to.

    2It has never paid for itself. Not once.

    Every study that runs the money lands in the same spot: fares can’t cover the cost, and taxpayers foot most of the bill. VIA’s own 1984 numbers came out negative. In 1995, three governments agreed the public would cover 70–75%. In 2026, an independent model put the public subsidy at about $53 billion over fifty years — and found the railway wouldn’t even break even until year 44. The promise that it’ll fund itself is the single most optimistic claim in the whole record.

    3The closer you look, the more it costs

    Whenever a promoter and an independent body price the same thing, the promoter’s number is lower — and the price climbs as the estimate gets more serious. A 2026 advocacy paper gets the cost down to $63 billion only by assuming rock-bottom construction prices, about a third of our own central estimate of roughly $143 million per kilometre. The cheaper the headline, the thinner the math underneath it.

    4The ridership numbers don’t hold up

    The passenger forecasts are shakier than they look — and academics, an airline, Parliament and Transport Canada have all said so. One 1994 study showed the forecast could swing fivefold just by changing a single modelling choice, on the same data. Transport Canada’s own reviewers called the assumptions “optimistic and aggressive.” And the biggest numbers always belong to the promoters.

    5The freight idea is good — with one catch

    Splitting passengers and freight onto the corridor’s two parallel tracks, and freeing up freight capacity as a bonus, is a genuinely sound idea — it was proposed back in 2002. The catch: at the time, the freight railways said they didn’t need the extra capacity. It’s a strong argument, as long as it’s honest about that condition.

    6Going faster barely helps

    Study after study finds that top speed buys almost no extra riders — one found just an 8% jump going all the way from 300 to 400 km/h, another only about 9% from 200 to 300. So the level-headed studies settle far lower: a 2002 plan judged 240 km/h fast enough, and even the independent 2026 model assumes trains averaging just 200–250 km/h. The “top speed everywhere” designs are the outliers — a moderate railway of roughly 180–240 km/h carries nearly the same riders for far less money, and that’s where the evidence actually sits.

    7We’ve seen this financing risk before

    Having a private partner build and run the railway while the public owns the assets isn’t new — and neither is the warning. Both Parliament (1998) and Transport Canada (2003) flagged the same danger decades ago: deals like this can hand the risk to taxpayers and the reward to investors, with a rosy headline resting on one convenient assumption.

    8The climate math only counts the good half

    For decades, no study counted carbon at all. Now they do — but only the savings from getting people out of cars and planes. The huge emissions from pouring hundreds of kilometres of concrete and steel and clearing land? Left out. Count both sides honestly and this design adds emissions for decades. That’s the difference between a climate win and a climate cost.

    9When the numbers fail, out comes “nation-building”

    There’s a move that shows up again and again: when the dollars-and-cents case comes up short, in come national unity, regional growth, and keeping up with other countries. One 2016 report recommended extending the line even at a benefit-cost ratio of 0.24 — about 24 cents of benefit for every dollar spent. These arguments can be fair. But they do the heaviest lifting exactly where the economics are weakest.

    The gap, side by side

    What the promoters say vs. what independent studies find

    All nine findings come down to one contrast. Same railway, same engineering — but the promoters’ numbers and the independent record split apart at every point that matters, and they split the same way every time.

    What the promoters sayWhat independent studies find
    Build it new. Equipment makers, a Crown corporation that wanted the contract, the proponent, and paid advocates all say go ahead. Wait. Every independent government that studied it held off; the reviews and the airlines said upgrade what’s there instead.
    The verdict:Build  vs  Wait
    It’ll pay for itself. The 2025 prospectus says the trains will turn a profit — the rosiest claim in fifty-six years. Taxpayers pay most of it. From 1984 to 2026, every study that runs the money says fares can’t cover the cost. The 2026 independent model: about $53 billion in public subsidy over fifty years.
    The money:Self-funding  vs  ~$53B public
    As low as $63 billion. A 2026 paper reaches that number by assuming bargain construction prices. More like $80–90 billion. The proponent’s own range tops out at $90 billion; independent build-ups land near $80 billion. Costs rise the closer you look.
    Price tag:~$63B  vs  ~$80–90B
    24 to 56 million riders. The 2025–2026 figures are the highest ever produced for this line. About half that. The only recent independent, survey-based forecast lands near 10 million a year — right in line with fifty years of history.
    Yearly riders:~24–56M  vs  ~10M
    A big climate win. The proponent headlines a 39-megatonne cut — counting only the savings from fewer car and plane trips. A climate cost, for decades. The emissions from building it — concrete, steel, cleared land — are left out entirely. Count both sides and it adds emissions.
    On carbon:Half the ledger  vs  The whole ledger
    Ridership

    Same railway. Forecasts from 6 million to 56 million.

    Put the passenger forecasts next to each other and they span almost tenfold — for one railway line. The high numbers always come from the promoters. The one to trust is the recent independent forecast built on an actual survey of travellers.

    ~10M
    independent, survey-based forecast for 2050
    McGill, 2026
    24–43M
    the proponent’s own forecast
    ALTO prospectus, 2025
    42–56M
    the highest numbers ever produced for this line
    2026 advocacy paper
    Study (year)Who produced itYearly ridersBasis
    Air Canada / CP (1993)Airline / railway5.8 Mthe low end of the record
    Task Force (1991)Governments7.8 Mfull corridor
    Tri-government (1995)Governments10–12 Mfull corridor
    EcoTrain (2011)Governments10–11 Mfull corridor
    Lynx (1998)Private consortium11.1 MQuébec City–Toronto
    SNCF (2010)Equipment makerup to 22.5 Mbest-case scenario
    ALTO prospectus (2025)Proponent24–43 Mfull network
    Advocacy paper (2026)Paid advocacy42–56 Mthe highest ever
    McGill (2026)Independent~10 Msurvey-based, 2050

    The numbers aren’t perfectly apples-to-apples — they cover different routes and years — which is part of the point. The takeaway is simple: the independent, survey-based forecast is about half the proponent’s.

    What it means

    Five takeaways

    The current project sits right at the meeting point of every pattern above. The prospectus is the most upbeat sales pitch in the whole record. The most careful independent 2026 work finds a multi-billion-dollar hole. And the one favourable outside verdict is reached only by pairing the cheapest possible construction cost with the highest ridership ever forecast for the line. Here’s what that adds up to.

    What the record points to

    Building new from scratch is the sponsors’ pick, not the safe reading of history. Fifty-six years of evidence leans toward upgrading what exists — or waiting for a full, honest costing.
    Expect the public to pay most of it. Three governments said 70–75% back in 1995, and every financial study since has landed in the same place.
    A moderate-speed, lower-cost railway fits the evidence better. Extra speed barely adds riders, and costs balloon the closer you look. Both have been true for decades.

    What to insist on

    Get the ridership numbers independently checked before trusting them. A single forecast from the people who want to build it isn’t enough — the best studies in the record always used more than one independent forecaster.
    Make the freight case — but be upfront about the catch. The idea is sound; its real value depends on the freight railways actually wanting the freed-up capacity. Say so plainly.
    The evidence

    All thirty studies, at a glance

    Here’s the whole set, oldest to newest. Read the two right-hand columns together — who did the study, and what they concluded — and Finding 1 jumps out: the “build it” verdicts belong to the sellers and the promoters; the governments that were truly independent said wait.

    YearStudy — who did itIndependent of the builder?Verdict
    1970Intercity Passenger Transport Study — CTCFederalUpgrade
    1984High-Speed Passenger Rail in Canada — VIACrown corpMixed
    1990Review of Previous Studies — TRANSURBConsultantWait
    1990A Pragmatic Approach (SPRINTOR) — ABBEquipment makerUpgrade
    1990The Canadian TGV Project — Bombardier / GEC AlsthomEquipment makerBuild new
    1991Rapid Train Task Force — Ontario / QuébecGovernmentsWait
    1991Competition in Rail Carriage — BerkowitzAcademicBuild new
    1992FAST TRACKS — VIA (advocacy)Crown corpBuild new
    1993HST Market Assessment — Air Canada / CPAirline / railwayUpgrade
    1994Demand-model re-estimate — Gaudry & Le LeyzourAcademicNo verdict
    1995Industrial Strategy (Vol II) — Simpson-GuerinConsultantNo verdict
    1995Routing & Costing Study — SNC-Lavalin / DelcanConsultantNo verdict
    1995Québec–Ontario HSR, Final Report — tri-govGovernmentsWait
    1998The Lynx Proposal — Lynx consortiumPrivate consortiumBuild new
    2002VIAFast — VIA RailCrown corpUpgrade
    2003VIAFast validation — IBI for Transport CanadaGov’t reviewerNo verdict
    2009Infrastructure and the Economy — Martin Prosperity Inst.AcademicBuild new
    2010Socio-Economic Study of HSR — SNCFEquipment makerBuild new
    2011Updated Feasibility (EcoTrain) — tri-governmentGovernmentsWait
    2014Toronto–Kitchener–London HSR — SchabasConsultantBuild new
    2015Future of Passenger Rail — Library of ParliamentParliament / indep.Upgrade
    2016Preliminary Business Case — SDG (Steer)ConsultantBuild new
    2016High Speed Rail in Ontario — Special AdvisorProvincialBuild new
    2021Toronto–Montreal Analysis — Munk SchoolAcademicBuild new
    2022Speed and Frequency — AlstomEquipment makerBuild new
    2025All Aboard — C.D. Howe InstituteAdvocacyBuild new
    2025Fast Forward — ALTO (the proponent)ProponentBuild new
    2026Conceptual Design & Business Case — SchabasAdvocacyBuild new
    2026Corridorwide Survey & Financial Analysis — McGillAcademicNo verdict
    2026Eastern Ontario Route (Hwy 401) — Schabas & AntinucciAdvocacyBuild new

    “Advocacy” means a document written to argue a case — a sales prospectus, a think-tank brief, or paid expert advocacy. “No verdict” means the study analysed the question but didn’t take a build/don’t-build position.

    The independent studies to trust

    Where the sober numbers come from

    The full list is above. If you read just a few, read the independent ones — the counterweight to the sales pitch.

    1.
    Québec–Ontario High Speed Rail Project, Final Report — three governments together, 1995. Concluded the public would cover 70–75% of the cost, and a private-only version couldn’t be financed.
    2.
    VIAFast validation — IBI Group for Transport Canada, 2003. The government’s own reviewers, who flagged “optimistic and aggressive” ridership assumptions.
    3.
    Updated Feasibility Study (EcoTrain) — three governments, 2011. The most recent independent-government study; it said wait.
    4.
    Future of Passenger Rail in Canada — Library of Parliament, 2015. Recommended upgrading service rather than building new.
    5.
    Corridorwide Survey & Financial Analysis — Transportation Research at McGill, 2026. The independent study behind the $53-billion subsidy figure and the ~10-million ridership forecast.
    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative  ·  citizenresearch.ca  ·  2026
    Independent, non-partisan research on the proposed Toronto–Quebec City high-speed rail corridor. A working summary — findings will firm up as more studies are added. All dollar figures in constant 2025 Canadian dollars.

  • Winter, Ice and the Weather Envelope

    ALTO HSR Citizen Research · Technical Brief

    Wind, Ice & the Weather Envelope

    Winter snow is not the only weather that shapes a high-speed railway. The faster a line is built to run, the more it must spend to stay reliable when the weather turns — and the government’s own record shows this question was raised, and left unanswered.

    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Technical Brief · Updated July 2026
    Related pages
    Winter Weather De-Icing & the Karst Economics
    ⚠ On the record: the speed-in-winter question was answered in 2020

    An October 2020 Ministerial Briefing, released under the Access to Information Act, found that the government’s advisers could not identify any high-speed rail system that operates at 300 km/h in −30 °C conditions. The only cold-climate comparator they identified — China’s Harbin–Dalian line — reduces speed from 350 km/h to 250 km/h in winter. The finding was briefed to ministers more than four years before the project was announced. ATIA A-2024-004

    In June 2026, the tabled government answer to a Parliamentary question on winter-weather readiness confirmed that, “at this point in the design process,” Alto has not commissioned a comparative freezing-rain, snow, or ice assessment, nor a full winter-weather cost analysis, and that its freezing-rain reliability targets are “currently in development.” Sessional Paper 8555-451-1191

    Why this brief

    High-speed rail runs successfully in some of the world’s harshest weather — but never for free, and never without operating rules that slow or stop trains when conditions demand it. Every mature operator lives inside a “weather envelope”: the range of conditions in which full-speed service is safe. Crosswinds, tornadoes, freezing rain, and heat all sit at its edges.

    Because wind forces grow with the square of speed, and because cold, ice, and heat mitigation all cost more the faster and longer the line, the decisive question is not whether high-speed rail can run here. It is how fast the line should be designed to run, and whether the weather-hardening that speed requires has been counted. This brief draws on published engineering research, the operating experience of networks in Japan, China, and Europe, and the project’s own record released under the Access to Information Act. It is not an argument against high-speed rail.

    300 km/h
    the speed Alto advertises — “even in winter”
    Alto promotion, Feb 2026
    250 km/h
    winter speed of the only cold-climate HSR comparator identified (Harbin–Dalian)
    Ministerial Briefing, Oct 2020
    2020
    the year the government’s advisers flagged the 300 km/h cold-weather limit — over four years before the project was announced
    Ministerial Briefing, Oct 2020
    Download
    Weather & the Speed Decision (PDF)
    Crosswind, tornado, and freezing-rain reliability analysis, with the documented record
    Download PDF
    On the Record

    The question was examined internally — and never reconciled in public

    This is not only an inference from international experience. Documents released under the Access to Information Act show the federal government examined exactly this question years before the project was announced — and in June 2026 the government confirmed to Parliament that Alto has not yet commissioned either a comparative winter-weather assessment or a full winter-weather cost analysis.

    What is advertisedWhat the record shows
    “300 km/h or more. Even in winter.” Alto’s public promotion assumes consistent 300 km/h running, and the advertised journey times depend on it. The October 2020 Ministerial Briefing found no HSR system was identified that operates at 300 km/h in −30 °C. The only cold-climate comparator, Harbin–Dalian, reduces 350 → 250 km/h in winter.
    Reliability is “designed into every kilometre,” with “heated switches to de-icing systems.” The June 2026 answer confirms that, “at this point in the design process,” Alto has not commissioned a comparative freezing-rain / snow / ice assessment or a full winter-weather cost analysis; reliability targets for freezing-rain conditions are “currently in development.”
    A 300 km/h specification is presented as the project’s baseline. The May 2025 Corporate Plan contains no cold-climate operating standard, and the 2020 finding has never been publicly addressed.

    Two further items on the record bear directly on the speed choice. First, the procurement was structured as a speed comparison: each of the three bidders was required to submit both an enhanced-conventional option (up to 200 km/h) and a high-speed option (300+ km/h). A slower, cheaper design was therefore a live, formally-evaluated alternative — not a hypothetical. Second, the 2011 EcoTrain feasibility study of a Windsor–Quebec City high-speed service concluded that the full Québec City–Windsor corridor would not be financially viable on a standalone commercial basis and would require substantial public funding — though it found the Montréal–Ottawa–Toronto segment could generate net economic benefit. When a corridor’s commercial case is that fragile, avoidable cost — including over-specifying speed and the weather-hardening it demands — matters more, not less.

    Why this matters for speed and cost

    The gap is now a matter of record. The government’s own briefing established that 300 km/h has not been demonstrated in extreme cold, and that the nearest cold-climate line runs slower in winter — yet the advertised journey times assume full speed year-round, and Alto has confirmed it has not commissioned the comparative assessment or full winter-weather cost analysis that would test the assumption. A lower-speed option was on the table and formally costed. That is precisely the speed-and-cost question this brief is about, and it remains open.

    Wind & Crosswind

    The everyday wind risk is overturning — and it scales with speed

    For a high-speed train, the routine wind hazard is not a dramatic storm but a strong steady crosswind catching the train side-on. Aerodynamic side and lift forces rise with the square of the combined train-and-wind speed, so a lighter modern trainset at line speed becomes sensitive to winds that would barely trouble a slower, heavier train. The failure mode that governs design is overturning, not wheel-climb derailment.

    The threshold is closer than it looks

    In one published dynamic simulation, a high-speed vehicle running at 300 km/h overturned when the crosswind reached roughly 24 m/s (about 86 km/h) — a strong gale, but far short of tornado strength. Chinese railway practice treats an overturning coefficient above 0.8 as the danger threshold, and the overturning coefficient in these conditions typically runs about twice the derailment coefficient. Crosswind-induced overturning has been blamed for derailments in China, Japan, Belgium, and Switzerland.

    The speed lever

    Because the force grows with the square of speed, a line designed for 300 km/h is markedly more wind-sensitive than one designed for, say, 250. A higher design speed means the safe crosswind threshold is crossed more often — so a faster line needs more wind fencing, more sensor coverage, and lives with more frequent speed restrictions. Exposure is also geometry: viaducts and high embankments are the danger zones, cuttings and tunnels are sheltered, and running fast across open, elevated country is the most demanding combination of all.

    The mitigation is well proven — anemometer networks feeding automatic speed control, backed by physical wind barriers on exposed stretches. After a December 2005 derailment on the Uetsu Line, Japan’s JR East revised wind-based speed limits system-wide and installed windbreak fences and a strong-wind warning system; porous barriers can cut a train’s crosswind response by around a quarter. China’s Lanzhou–Xinjiang line runs long wind-fenced sections through the Gobi’s windy zones. None of it is free, and the bill rises with the speed being protected.

    Tornadoes

    Rare, extreme, and hard to see coming

    Tornadoes break the crosswind playbook, and it is worth being precise about why: they are managed by avoidance, not by building a train that can survive one. An EF2 tornado carries winds well above 180 km/h and EF3 higher still — far beyond the ~85–100 km/h band where overturning becomes likely. No practical trainset or wind fence keeps a train upright through a direct strike at speed.

    Detection is the hard part

    Fixed anemometer grids are calibrated for the prevailing winds that blow along the line. A tornado is a narrow, fast-moving, erratic feature that a line-side sensor network may never register before a train is in it — the opposite of the seismic case, where Japan’s earthquake system gets seconds of warning and automatically cuts power and brakes. Even a near miss throws trees and debris onto the alignment.

    The corridor sits in Canada’s tornado belt

    Most Ontario tornadoes are concentrated in a narrow corridor from Windsor to Ottawa and into parts of southern Quebec — the geography the proposed line traverses. Tornadoes up to F4 have been documented in the region; the 2018 National Capital outbreak produced a high-end EF3, and Canada records an estimated 230 tornadoes a year. The mainstream response is warning-triggered service suspension — hold the trains — not survivability engineering.

    In proportion, the tornado question is a genuine but low-frequency tail risk managed through hold procedures — the more dramatic hazard, but the smaller line item. Routine crosswind exposure, which shows up as everyday speed restrictions, is the larger and more quantifiable one.

    Freezing Rain

    Freezing rain is an electrical problem as much as a track problem

    Snow can be ploughed and blown clear. Freezing rain cannot — and its most serious target on an electrified line is not the rail but the overhead wire, the single power path for the whole train. Ice on the contact wire degrades the pantograph’s ability to collect current; it can flash over insulators, set the wire into large-amplitude “galloping” oscillations, and cause arcing — in severe cases, disconnection. Freezing rain is a recognised cause of equipment malfunction and delay wherever winters hover near 0 °C — precisely the St. Lawrence Valley profile documented in our Winter Weather analysis.

    The mitigation is real, proven, and continuous — which is another way of saying it is a permanent cost line. France’s SNCF illustrates the toolkit: electric switch heaters, resistive heating circuits that keep catenary above freezing, a fleet of de-icing “scraper” locomotives, and a hydrophobic anti-icing lubricant on the contact wire. China’s purpose-built cold line pairs catenary de-icing with turnout snow-melting and a dedicated snow-and-ice monitoring system. Freezing rain is beaten by equipment plus surveillance plus standing procedures — all carrying capital and maintenance cost that scales with the length of exposed line.

    And a second question: which de-icing method?

    Mitigating ice raises a choice with its own consequences. Alto’s own winter-operations material lists chemical de-icing using “glycol- or saline-based solutions,” while its June 2026 Parliamentary answer instead illustrates winter mitigation with electric methods — ice-breaking equipment and running high current through the catenary to melt ice. Glycol and chloride de-icers carry serious environmental constraints over the Frontenac Arch and Napanee karst, where contaminants can reach the aquifer before any collection point exists.

    As our De-Icing analysis sets out, that pushes the corridor toward electric heating as the primary de-icing technology on sensitive sections — effective, but a permanent energy and cost load. The freezing-rain problem and the environmental problem point at the same answer, and the same bill.

    Heat & Water

    The other ends of the envelope

    Summer heat and rail buckling

    Continuously welded rail expands in extreme heat and can buckle (“sun kink”). Operators manage this with real-time rail-temperature monitoring, heat-related speed-limit orders, and — in some networks — spraying track with water. A corridor with a >70 °C annual temperature swing, like the cold-climate reference lines, must design for both extremes at once.

    Heavy rain and flooding

    Intense rainfall drives washouts, embankment and slope failure, and landslides — which is why high-speed operators monitor rainfall and river levels alongside wind, and impose speed controls or shutdowns when thresholds are crossed.

    What It Costs

    Weather-proof is achievable — the reference projects show the price tag

    The strongest evidence that severe-weather high-speed rail works is also the strongest evidence that it is expensive and route-specific. Two reference cases are instructive.

    China · Harbin–DalianJapan · Shinkansen
    The world’s first alpine high-speed line runs through a −40 °C to +40 °C range. To beat frost heave, 70% of the line was built on viaduct and about 20% of the at-grade track was rebuilt before opening. Final cost ran roughly 25% over budget. It historically dropped to 250 km/h in winter and, even after resolving frost heave, runs a unified 300 km/h year-round — still below its 350 km/h design speed. Snow-related cancellations were cut from a 1976 peak of 635 to essentially zero since 1994 — but only through sprinkler systems, slab track, snow-removal teams, and undercarriage sensors, and delays of 10–20 minutes still occur in snow. A high-speed train has derailed in blizzard conditions (Akita, 2013, no injuries). Reliability is engineered; it is not free.

    The lesson is not that weather makes high-speed rail impossible — it plainly does not. It is that weather resilience is a design choice priced in both dollars and speed: a purpose-built cold line still ran over budget, and still ran slower in winter until the problems were solved. The faster the promised service, the steeper both penalties climb. That is why weather belongs inside the speed-and-cost decision, and why those figures should be visible in a public business case.

    And the cost-risk itself is unquantified

    The un-commissioned winter-weather cost analysis sits inside a capital estimate the government describes as preliminary. Asked in June 2026 for its estimate of the risk of Alto exceeding $90 billion, the government replied that it has no quantitative estimate of that likelihood, or of any overrun amount, because the cited $60–90 billion is “a preliminary, high-level planning range and not a final project budget.” Un-costed weather-hardening therefore sits within a capital range whose own overrun risk has not been quantified.

    Where things stand · July 2026

    The winter-weather accountability ledger

    Measured against what a defensible 300 km/h “even in winter” claim would require:

    Not shown
    A precedent for 300 km/h operation in extreme cold. The government’s own advisers could not identify one in October 2020; the nearest comparator reduces to 250 km/h in winter.
    Not commissioned
    A comparative freezing-rain / snow / ice assessment. Alto states it has not commissioned one “at this point in the design process.”
    Not commissioned
    A full winter-weather cost analysis. Alto states it has not commissioned one; winter costs are to be folded into operating-cost estimates instead.
    Absent
    A cold-climate operating standard. The May 2025 Corporate Plan contains none.
    In development
    Freezing-rain reliability targets. Stated to be still in development.
    On record
    A lower-speed alternative. The procurement required an enhanced-conventional (up to 200 km/h) option alongside the high-speed one — a slower, cheaper design was formally evaluated.

    Questions for the process

    What design speed is being committed to, and how much of the capital cost is weather-hardening for that speed — wind fencing, catenary de-icing, switch and pantograph heating?
    What weather-related speed-restriction and service-suspension frequency sits behind the advertised journey times — would passengers actually see 300 km/h as often as promised?
    Given that a lower-speed option was formally evaluated, has the speed-versus-weather-cost trade-off been quantified and published — and why was the higher speed chosen?
    Since the comparative winter-weather assessment and full cost analysis have not yet been commissioned, when will they be undertaken and published — and will that happen before design speed and cost decisions are locked in?
    Have the severe-weather cost overruns seen on comparable projects (Harbin–Dalian, ~25% over budget) been reflected in contingency and risk provisions?
    Sources

    Primary documents and research

    1.Ministerial Briefing to the responsible Ministers, October 2020 — cold-climate high-speed rail operating limits (“unable to identify an HSR system that operates at 300 km/h in −30 °C”; Harbin–Dalian 350 → 250 km/h in winter). Released under the Access to Information Act, file ATIA A-2024-004 (Canada Infrastructure Bank release, November 2025).
    2.Written reply to a Parliamentary question on the HFR-to-HSR shift and winter-weather readiness, House of Commons Sessional Paper 8555-451-1191 (asked by Scott Reid, Lanark–Frontenac; tabled June 17, 2026). Alto has not commissioned a comparative freezing-rain / snow / ice assessment (n) or a full winter-weather cost analysis (p) “at this point in the design process”; freezing-rain reliability targets “currently in development” (o); enhanced-conventional (up to 200 km/h) vs high-speed (300+ km/h) bid structure (a); 2011 EcoTrain finding (h); $60–90B vs $45–75B Class 5 cost ranges (i, j); no quantitative estimate of the risk of exceeding $90B (k). ourcommons.ca
    3.EcoTrain consortium, Updated Feasibility Study of a High Speed Rail Service in the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor — Final Report (2011) — full corridor not financially viable on a standalone commercial basis, requiring substantial public funding; Montréal–Ottawa–Toronto segment could generate net economic benefit. citizenresearch.ca (PDF)
    4.Zhu, L. et al. “Study on the safety of operating high-speed railway vehicles subjected to crosswinds.” Journal of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE A. jzus.zju.edu.cn
    5.“Effect of the wind speed on aerodynamic behaviours during the acceleration of a high-speed train under crosswinds.” J. Wind Engineering & Industrial Aerodynamics (2023). sciencedirect.com
    6.“Crosswind Stability of High-Speed Train in Unsteady Wind Conditions.” IntechOpen (2025). intechopen.com
    7.“Mitigating crosswind response of a high-speed train passing the end of windbreak walls.” ScienceDirect (2024). sciencedirect.com
    8.JR East. “Measures to Reduce Service Disruptions when Restrictions are in Force due to Strong Winds” (2006), re: 25 Dec 2005 Uetsu Line derailment. jreast.co.jp
    9.Wikipedia. “Tornado Alley” (Windsor–Ottawa corridor; 2018 National Capital outbreak). en.wikipedia.org
    10.Global News. “Ontario is now Canada’s tornado hot spot” (2024). globalnews.ca
    11.Wikipedia. “List of tornadoes by province (Canada)” (~230/year estimated). en.wikipedia.org
    12.“Electrical-thermal conduction and distribution characteristics of the catenary system … electrothermal ice-melting.” Applied Thermal Engineering (2025). sciencedirect.com
    13.“Numerical Simulation … Ice Formation on Electrified Railway Contact Lines.” Infrastructures (MDPI, 2025). mdpi.com
    14.Nilsson, F. et al. “Modelling anti-icing of railway overhead catenary wires by resistive heating.” Int. J. Heat and Mass Transfer (2019) — icing types; SNCF thermal ice-prevention. sciencedirect.com
    15.SNCF Group. “Protecting the network and trains from extreme cold” (switch heaters, catenary heating, de-icing scrapers, anti-icing lubricant). groupe-sncf.com
    16.Wikipedia. “Harbin–Dalian high-speed railway” (frost heave; 70% viaduct; alpine EMUs; 25% over budget). en.wikipedia.org
    17.Global Times. “China’s first high-speed railway built for extreme cold … 1 billion passenger trips” (2025) — turnout heating, unified year-round timetable. globaltimes.cn
    18.Wikipedia. “Shinkansen” (snow sprinklers; Jōetsu slab track; Akita 2013 blizzard derailment; UrEDAS). en.wikipedia.org
    19.Toyo Keizai. “Why Heavy Snow is no Match for the Tokaido Shinkansen” (2016) — cancellations 635 (1976) to ~0 since 1994. toyokeizai.net
    20.“A Rail-Temperature-Prediction Model Based on Machine Learning.” Sensors (2021) — buckling, speed limits, water spraying. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
    21.Alto, “Winter Operations Require Winter Readiness,” altotrain.ca blog (2026) — lists chemical de-icing using “glycol- or saline-based solutions.” altotrain.ca
    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative  ·  citizenresearch.ca  ·  Technical Brief  ·  July 2026
    Independent, non-partisan research on the proposed Toronto–Quebec City high-speed rail corridor.

  • Ready to tender

    Ready to Tender, Not Yet Approved

    Cadence has opened the procurement for the first segment of ALTO — while its own notice says the project is not yet approved.

    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Procurement Brief · Published July 2026 · ALTO consultation closed April 24, 2026
    ⚠ What the document says

    On June 23, 2026, Cadence — the private partner chosen to develop ALTO — published a Preliminary Notice to Market for the Ottawa–Montreal segment, the first part of the line to be built. It sets out the contracts, the delivery models, and a tendering schedule that starts this summer. Cadence PNM

    The same notice states that construction has “no official launch date” and that the entire build-and-operate phase is “subject to the government of Canada’s final confirmation of the investment.” In other words: the machinery to build this is being switched on before the decision to build it — and the money to pay for it — has been confirmed.

    The point in one sentence

    You do not need an access-to-information request to see this one. It is a public document, unredacted, published by the developer itself — and on its own pages it does two things at once: it commits the construction industry to a two-year tendering calendar for the project’s biggest contracts, and it confirms that the project is not yet funded, not yet finally approved, and does not yet have a confirmed start date.

    This is the same sequence this Initiative has documented at every earlier stage: the commitment comes first, the decision that would justify it comes later. What is new is that it is now happening in the open, in the developer’s own words, rather than in a briefing note released years after the fact.

    None of this settles whether high-speed rail should be built. It is a question about order of operations — whether a project should be this far into procurement before the public analysis, the final business case, and the funding decision are in place.

    Read the source
    Cadence Preliminary Notice to Market — Central Segment
    A public document (document no. ALTO-CPDP-00000-PW-080000-500BC10-000001F), issued June 2026 by Projet Cadence Rail s.e.c. Available in French and English.
    Download PDF
    What it is

    A tender calendar, not a green light

    A “Preliminary Notice to Market” is a signal to construction firms: here is the work that is coming, here is roughly when it will be tendered, start putting your teams together. Cadence is careful to say it is not a formal call for bids and not a commitment to buy anything. That caution is worth taking at face value — but it cuts both ways. The document is not a decision to proceed; it is the paperwork that gets the supply chain ready to proceed. And it is being issued now, ahead of the decision that determines whether there is anything to proceed to.

    The notice is explicit about that gap. It says construction is “contemplated to begin in 2029–2030, although no official launch date has been confirmed,” and that the build-and-operate phase — the phase where the line actually gets built — happens only “subject to the government of Canada’s final confirmation of the investment.” Yet the tendering timetable it publishes does not wait for that confirmation. It begins in the summer of 2026.

    Summer
    2026
    first major tender opens (trains), with stations and the Montreal tunnel to follow through 2027
    Cadence PNM, Table 2
    2029–30
    construction “contemplated,” but with no confirmed start date
    Cadence PNM
    Not yet
    federal investment decision — the build phase is “subject to” it
    Cadence PNM

    The order here is the whole story. Under any ordinary reading of how a public project should work, the sequence is: decide whether to build it, confirm the money, then tender the work. This notice runs two of those steps in parallel — the tendering starts while the decision and the money are still described, on the same pages, as outstanding.

    The Two Columns

    What the notice commits to, and what it leaves open

    The clearest way to read the document is to line up what it treats as fixed enough to build a procurement schedule around against what it says is still undecided. Both columns are drawn from the same notice.

    Treated as ready to tenderStill described as undecided
    The contract packages. The notice sets out more than seventeen contract packages (WP1–WP17) — trains, signalling, stations, the Montreal access tunnel, two major bridges, and the track itself — each with a delivery model already assigned.The final route. The “more precise corridor” is still promised for autumn 2026. For the Toronto–Ottawa segment, the notice leaves open the choice between a northern route through the Canadian Shield and a southern route through farmland — unresolved.
    The timetable. A tender calendar running from summer 2026 (trains) through 2027–2028 (tunnel, bridges, civil works), package by package.The start date. Construction has no confirmed launch date; 2029–2030 is described only as “contemplated.”
    The delivery company. A dedicated entity, “InfraCo,” led by CDPQ Infra, is to be the contracting party for all the builders, with a second company, “OpCo,” to run operations.The funding. The entire build-and-operate phase is “subject to the government of Canada’s final confirmation of the investment” — which the notice does not report as having been given.
    The technical spec. Design speed of 320 km/h; full electrification; no level crossings; a twin-bore tunnel roughly 15 km long and 9 m wide under the Riviere des Prairies and Mount Royal into Montreal.The business case. No final business case has been published. The government’s own answer to Parliament in June 2026 was that the cost-benefit, net-present-value, and 30-year subsidy figures are “not finalized.”

    Read together, the two columns describe a project detailed enough to hand contractors a two-year work plan, and unsettled enough that its route, its price, its business case, and its go-ahead are all still open. Those are not usually true of the same project at the same time.

    The Machinery

    What is actually being tendered

    The notice divides the first segment into more than seventeen work packages. Most people following this issue do not need the package numbers — but the shape of the list matters, because it shows how much of the hardest and most expensive work is being brought to market before its design is finished.

    The trains and the systems come first

    The first tender out the door, in summer 2026, is for the rolling stock — roughly 60 trainsets. The signalling and control systems follow in the autumn. These are network-wide contracts: they are written for the first segment but carry options to extend to the rest of the line later.

    The tunnel and bridges are tendered before they are fully designed

    The single most demanding piece — the Montreal access tunnel, a twin-bore ~15 km bore under a river and a mountain into the downtown — is brought to market on an early-involvement basis because its design and ground conditions are not yet settled. Two major bridges (the Riviere des Mille-Iles and the Ottawa River) are in the same position. The riskiest, priciest work is being tendered at the point where the least is known about it.

    The benefit numbers arrive without a source

    The notice repeats headline figures — $24.5 billion a year in GDP, more than 50,000 construction jobs, 5,000 operating jobs — with no study, method, or citation attached to any of them. They are stated as facts in a document whose own government has told Parliament the underlying cost-benefit analysis is not finished.

    Who Runs It

    Who is in the room

    The notice confirms the structure of the group that would build and run the line. This is a matter of public record from the document itself; it is set out here as fact, not as accusation.

    Cadence is a consortium. The notice names CDPQ Infra (the infrastructure arm of Quebec’s public pension fund) as the lead infrastructure and equity member, with Air Canada as an equity member; SYSTRA and AtkinsRealis as the design leads; and Keolis and SNCF Voyageurs as the operations leads. The new delivery company, “InfraCo,” would be led by CDPQ Infra and would sit above and contract with all the individual builders.

    Two features are worth noting plainly, both straight from the document. First, the same consortium that is designing the strategy also sits atop the company that will award and manage the contracts — while the notice’s own rules bar consortium members from bidding on the major contracts and require engineering firms to take part “as subcontractors.” Second, Air Canada — the airline whose routes this train is meant to compete with — is an equity holder in the developer, a position the notice describes by reference to the airline’s experience linking its flights with rail in Europe. Readers can weigh what those arrangements mean; the point here is only that the developer’s own notice puts them on the record.

    The Fine Print

    Three things easy to miss

    The contracts would be in English only

    The notice contemplates publishing the major contracts in English only, with French “courtesy versions” available on request — a notable choice for a federal project running through Quebec and Ontario. It justifies this by pointing to the English-language agreement Cadence signed with Alto.

    You may not talk to the people who run it — except through Cadence

    Firms taking part in the procurement are told they “must refrain from any direct communication” with “Project Stakeholders” — a category the notice defines to include landowners and communities — except as Cadence permits, on pain of disqualification.

    A federal law puts the project largely beyond local jurisdiction

    The notice cites the High-Speed Rail Act, which declares the railway a “work for the general advantage of Canada.” That designation places the project under federal jurisdiction and applies provincial and municipal law only “to the extent that such laws may validly apply” — the mechanism that narrows what municipalities and provinces can require.

    None of these is hidden. They are in the notice, in plain sentences. They are collected here because, together, they describe a procurement that is moving quickly, keeping tight control of who may speak to whom, and operating under a statute that limits local say — all before the funding decision the same document says is still to come.

    Where things stand · July 2026

    Summary ledger

    Reading the notice against the question a citizen would reasonably ask — is this project actually decided? — here is where the document leaves things.

    Under way
    Procurement. Tendering for the first segment’s major contracts begins summer 2026 and runs through 2028.
    Under way
    Delivery structure. InfraCo (led by CDPQ Infra) and OpCo are to be set up as the contracting and operating companies.
    Stated but unsourced
    Benefits. $24.5B annual GDP, 50,000+ construction jobs, 5,000 operating jobs — asserted with no study or method attached.
    Not yet done
    Final route. The precise corridor is promised for autumn 2026; the Toronto–Ottawa north/south choice is left open.
    Not yet done
    Business case. No final business case published; the government told Parliament the cost-benefit, NPV, and subsidy figures are “not finalized.”
    Not yet done
    Start date. Construction has no confirmed launch date; 2029–2030 is only “contemplated.”
    Not yet done
    The go-ahead. The build-and-operate phase is “subject to the government of Canada’s final confirmation of the investment” — not reported as given.

    The top of that list is moving. The bottom of it is not. A procurement this advanced usually means a project this decided — and by the developer’s own account, this one is not. The notice asks the construction market to get ready to build something the government has not yet committed to build, at a price no one has finalized, on a route not yet chosen. The reasonable question for anyone following this is not whether the train is a good idea. It is why the building has started before the deciding.

    Sources

    Primary documents

    1.
    Projet Cadence Rail s.e.c., Preliminary Notice to Market / Avis préalable au marché — Alto Project Central Segment, document no. ALTO-CPDP-00000-PW-080000-500BC10-000001F, dated June 23, 2026 (cover) / June 22, 2026 (milestone table). A public document issued in French and English. All quotations and figures in this brief — the tender schedule (Table 2), the “no official launch date” and “subject to…final confirmation of the investment” language, the WP1–WP17 package structure, the InfraCo/OpCo and consortium structure, the 320 km/h and tunnel specifications, the English-only contract approach, the stakeholder-communication restriction, and the GDP and jobs figures — are drawn from this notice. citizenresearch.ca (PDF)
    2.
    Government of Canada, response to Order Paper Question Q-1191 (Scott Reid, Lanark–Frontenac), House of Commons, tabled June 17, 2026 — source for the statement that the project’s cost-benefit, net-present-value, and 30-year subsidy figures are “not finalized.”
    3.
    ALTO / Cadence, statements that a more precise corridor is to be unveiled in autumn 2026, referenced in the notice’s appendix and in prior public communications.

    This brief summarizes a single public document in plain language. It does not argue that high-speed rail should or should not be built; it examines the order in which this procurement is proceeding relative to the decisions that would authorize it. A fuller treatment of the notice appears in the Initiative’s Accountability Record.

    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative  ·  citizenresearch.ca  ·  Procurement Brief  ·  July 2026
    Independent, non-partisan research on the proposed Toronto–Quebec City high-speed rail corridor.

  • Nanos research analysis July 2

    Polling note · ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative

    Public priority for ALTO: split nationally, divided by geography

    A June 2026 Nanos survey for CTV News finds Canadians evenly divided on whether building the Toronto–Québec City high-speed line should be a federal priority — with real support confined to the corridor it would serve, and firm resistance in the West.

    Nanos Research asked 1,051 Canadians, between June 26 and 28, 2026, to rate on a 0-to-10 scale how much of a priority it is for the Government of Canada to build the ALTO high-speed rail project. The question told respondents the line would be Canada’s first high-speed railway and that the estimated cost is between $60 and $90 billion, drawing on both public and private investment. The margin of error is ±3.0 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

    How much of a priority is building ALTO? Public priority for the Toronto–Québec City high-speed rail line, on a 0–10 scale A. National distribution, all 0–10 responses 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 22.9 0 3.8 1 5.7 2 5.3 3 4.1 4 8.2 5 7.6 6 13.2 7 7.9 8 6 9 11.3 10 “Not at all” “Very high” ◂ Low priority (0–3): 38% Neutral (4–6): 20% High priority (7–10): 38% ▸ Twice as many place it at 0 (23%) as at 10 (11%); median 5, mean 4.8. Balanced bands, but the intensity sits at the bottom. B. Regional lean — low vs. high priority (neutral and unsure omitted) lower ← priority → higher Quebec 33% 48% ▲ mean 5.4 Ontario 35% 43% mean 5.2 Atlantic 33% 38% mean 4.8 Canada 38% 38% mean 4.8 (national) British Columbia 41% 31% mean 4.1 Prairies 50% ▲ 21% ▼ mean 3.4 ▲ / ▼ significantly above / below the national result. Corridor provinces lean positive; the West leans negative. Source: Nanos Research for CTV News (“Power Play”), n=1,051 Canadians, June 26–28, 2026; margin of error ±3.0 pp, 19/20. Full report and data tables: nanos.co. Chart: ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · citizenresearch.ca

    A national tie — with the intensity at the bottom

    On the collapsed scale the country divides almost exactly in half: 38% rate building ALTO a high priority (7–10) and 38% a low priority (0–3), with 20% neutral and 4% unsure. The mean is 4.8, just below the scale’s midpoint. But the full distribution is not symmetric. The single most common answer is “0 — not at all a priority,” chosen by 23% — roughly twice the 11% who pick “10 — very high priority.” The high side is more spread across 7 through 10; the low side is anchored at the floor. Where the poll registers deprioritization, it tends to be firm.

    Support concentrated in the corridor

    Priority tracks geography closely. In Quebec, 48% call it a high priority — significantly above the national figure — and Ontario is similar at 43%; both corridor provinces sit above the midpoint on the mean. Outside the corridor the pattern reverses: in the Prairies a majority (50%) rate it a low priority and only 21% a high one, the sole region where “not a priority” is an outright majority; British Columbia leans the same way (41% low, 31% high). Atlantic Canada sits close to the national average. Statistically, the defensible reading is that the corridor provinces lean positive and the West leans negative — individual provinces within each bloc are not clearly distinguishable from one another.

    Other differences

    Men are more favourable than women (mean 5.0 versus 4.6; 42% high priority versus 35%), a gap that holds up under direct testing. Age, by contrast, is essentially flat — younger and older Canadians rate the project about the same.

    How to read it

    Two cautions. First, the question measures priority, not approval: it asks where ALTO ranks against everything else the federal government could spend on, so a respondent can favour high-speed rail in principle and still place it low against competing demands. Second, the question anchored respondents to the project’s own cost estimate of $60–90 billion; survey responses are sensitive to the figures a question supplies, and this is the lower end of the plausible range. Regional subgroups also carry wider margins of error (roughly ±5 to ±10 points) than the national result, so fine distinctions within a region should be read with care.

    Data source. Nanos Research for CTV News, “Power Play” June omnibus. RDD dual-frame hybrid telephone and online survey of 1,051 Canadians aged 18+, June 26–28, 2026; margin of error ±3.0 percentage points, 19/20; weighted by age and gender (2021 Census) and geographically stratified.
     •  Full report (PDF): https://nanos.co/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/2026-3086-CTV-June-PowerPlay-Report.pdf
     •  Detailed data tables (Excel): https://nanosresearch.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/NanosSharedProjects/IQBHe5k3wYL4RaW7ViFAsbIiATFRJyps7gut2JBtXmC1lvY?e=EVZ84C
     •  Methodology & more polling: nanos.co
    Figures in this note and chart are drawn from the published data tables for question 2026-3086; the 0–10 distribution, subgroup breakdowns, and significance testing are as released.
    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative  ·  Independent & non-partisan  ·  citizenresearch.ca  ·  This note summarizes third-party polling; it is descriptive and does not represent an endorsement or a voting-intention finding.

  • Freight and the Vanishing train

    The Freight Dividend and the Vanishing Train

    Alto’s own freight report builds its economic case on removing passenger trains from the shared Toronto–Montreal corridor — the same line VIA Rail runs through Eastern Ontario.

    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Research Brief · June 2026
    ⚠ Companion to “VIA Rail on the Kingston Subdivision”

    In April 2026 we set out how Alto would foreseeably erode intercity passenger service on the Kingston Subdivision. Alto’s own June 2026 freight report now supplies the missing piece from the proponent’s side: a business case in which that erosion is not a risk to be managed but a source of value to be captured. Read the April brief →

    The finding in brief

    In June 2026 Alto published a report, High-Speed Rail and Freight Capacity (CPCS in association with HDR), whose central benefit is the capacity freed by lowering the number of passenger trains on the shared CN corridor between Toronto and Montreal — the Kingston Subdivision that carries VIA Rail through Oshawa, Cobourg, Belleville, Kingston, Brockville and Cornwall.

    The benefit grows as passenger service shrinks. In the report’s own words it “would be shared between passenger and freight, depending on the level of passenger rail services that may be maintained on the CN corridor.” The party positioned to decide how much survives is Alto’s own development partner, the Cadence consortium — also slated to operate the corridor’s existing passenger trains. The risk falls squarely on VIA Rail.

    The report is right about one thing: separating passenger and freight traffic relieves both. But Alto achieves that separation by removing the passengers. A dedicated passenger spine along the same corridor achieves the same separation while keeping the lakeshore served — the constructive alternative set out below.

    ↓ Download the full brief (PDF)

    The Freight Report

    What the report claims

    The report’s stated purpose is to show how Alto could “generate economic and strategic benefits for freight rail by lowering passenger traffic on the shared corridor.” It documents that the Toronto–Montreal segment runs on CN-owned track with a passenger-to-freight mix close to 50-50, and that passenger trains — because of higher speeds and precise scheduling — consume more track capacity than freight trains.

    From this it assembles a set of claimed freight benefits: deferred or avoided capital investment in the CN corridor; headroom to “protect for” 55 per cent higher freight volumes over 30 years; induced freight demand and mode shift; new rail-adjacent industrial development; and roughly $90 million a year in avoided societal costs from shifting one daily intermodal train off Highway 401. Every one of these flows from the same source: fewer passenger trains on the shared line.

    The Mechanism

    The benefit is the removal of passenger trains

    The report is explicit that the enabling condition is fewer passenger trains, and it ties the size of the avoided-investment benefit directly to how much passenger service is cut: the benefit “would be shared between passenger and freight, depending on the level of passenger rail services that may be maintained on the CN corridor.” Read plainly, the fewer passenger paths retained on the Kingston Subdivision, the larger the freight benefit Alto can claim.

    The report then treats the retreat of passenger rail as an inducement to development, suggesting that reducing the volume of passenger trains may signal to industry that rail-adjacent parcels have become more desirable. Yet the same report opens with a disclaimer that its introduction is “not assumed to result in the discontinuation of local passenger rail services.” These two positions cannot both hold at full strength: the benefit is defined as the capacity released by removing passenger trains, while the disclaimer promises they will not be removed. The gap is bridged only by soft language — and by recasting intercity trains as “local offerings” that feed the high-speed line.

    Who Benefits, and How

    Who gains from fewer VIA trains

    Freight does gain — that much is the report’s central claim: CN, the freight railway, avoids the spending it would otherwise need to expand its own line. But CN does not decide how much VIA service survives, and it is not the only party that gains. The consortium positioned to make that decision, Cadence, runs no freight and earns nothing from it — its stake is in Alto. So the pressure to thin VIA’s service comes not from freight alone, but from four further interests the report’s framing keeps in the background.

    Alto’s ridership depends on it

    Cadence is paid to fill Alto, whose business case rests on very high ridership: a target of 24 million passengers a year by 2055 — roughly eight times the three million or so the corridor carries today. The only independent modelling of the route (University of Toronto’s Munk School) projects about 9 to 10 million, and a reference-class adjustment for the ~65 per cent overstatement typical of rail forecasts lands near 8 million. As a single concessionaire with no open-access competition, Cadence has every reason to price for yield, not volume — making a cheaper conventional train on the same corridor competition to be minimized, not preserved.

    It makes the case for building Alto look better

    The report’s headline “avoided investment” benefit is explicitly larger the more passenger service is cut, inflating the benefit-cost ratio used to justify the project — the very project that gives the consortium’s contract its reason to exist.

    It lowers the subsidy the government pays

    VIA Rail’s Toronto–Montreal corridor service ran an operating shortfall of about $117 million in 2025 — roughly $50 of public subsidy per passenger, at a corridor cost-recovery ratio near two-thirds (VIA Rail, 2025 Annual Report). Shrinking that service, or folding it into the Alto concession, reduces what the federal funder pays; the party deciding the corridor’s future is also the party writing that cheque.

    It sheds the cost of using CN’s track

    Passenger trains on the Kingston Subdivision run on CN-owned track under access and cost-sharing arrangements — including, as the report notes, payments to CN to maintain track at passenger speeds. Moving intercity trains onto Alto’s dedicated line sheds those payments.

    The gains flow to Cadence, to CN, and to the federal treasury. VIA Rail — and the passengers between Toronto and Montreal — bear the loss.

    The Consequence

    The risk to VIA Rail

    What Alto describes is two passenger railways on one corridor. A dedicated high-speed line, built and operated by Cadence, would carry the fast intercity market. What remains on the Kingston Subdivision — the trains that serve Oshawa through Cornwall — is left as a residual “local” service, running between freight trains on CN-owned track, with no committed frequency and no protected floor.

    Under the project’s public-private structure, even that residual service is not assured to remain with VIA Rail: the existing corridor passenger operations, designated the “Local Services” in the procurement, are slated to pass to the same Cadence consortium as feeders to the high-speed line. And this is not a distant hypothetical. VIA Rail’s corridor on-time performance has already collapsed — from 72 per cent to 30 per cent inside a single year — as passenger trains are squeezed on infrastructure the operator does not own.

    The National Dimension

    The risk reaches the whole network

    The danger does not stop at the lakeshore. The Quebec City–Windsor corridor is not merely VIA Rail’s busiest route — it is the financial engine of the entire national network. More than 90 per cent of VIA’s passengers, and about 80 per cent of its revenue, come from this one corridor (VIA Rail, 2025 Annual Report). That revenue is what helps sustain the long-distance and regional trains connecting the rest of the country — Vancouver and Prince Rupert, the Prairies, Churchill, and the Maritimes.

    Hand the corridor’s ridership and revenue to a private consortium, and VIA is left, in the words of the federal NDP transport critic Taylor Bachrach, with “the crumbs” — a fraction of the revenue it uses to operate rail across Canada. Alto’s own answer is that corridor services will “eventually” be “integrated with Alto services into a single network”; asked what the loss of that revenue would mean for VIA, the proponent did not say. The choice being made on the busiest corridor, in other words, quietly decides the future of passenger trains in places thousands of kilometres away. CBC News reported the warning.

    A Constructive Alternative

    A straighter, quieter line

    The freight report identifies a real prize: separating passenger and freight traffic on the Toronto–Montreal corridor relieves the mixed-traffic conflict that degrades both. The question is how that separation is achieved. Alto achieves it by removing the passengers — routing a 300 km/h greenfield line inland through Peterborough and Ottawa, past the lakeshore communities entirely, and leaving VIA’s corridor service to wither.

    There is a straighter, quieter way to reach the same result. Build a dedicated, lower-speed passenger spine along the existing Toronto–Montreal transportation corridor — the lakeshore route the CN Kingston Subdivision and Highway 401 already follow. Give passengers their own tracks, engineered for reliable service at conventional-to-higher-performance speeds (up to about 200 km/h), and the passenger–freight conflict is resolved the same way — by separation — but without deleting the service the corridor’s communities depend on. The strong Toronto–Montreal market runs fast and reliably on the direct line; Ottawa and Quebec City are reached on upgraded existing track; and Kingston, Cobourg, Belleville, Brockville and Cornwall stay on the intercity network rather than being bypassed. The routing and demand-density case for this spine is set out in our companion brief, A Straighter Line. And because the spine stays in public hands, the fare revenue from the country’s busiest corridor keeps flowing to VIA rather than to a private concession — sustaining, rather than starving, the national network it helps fund.

    Alto as plannedA dedicated passenger spine
    A 300 km/h greenfield line detouring inland via Peterborough and Ottawa, roughly 900 km of all-new track.A direct passenger line along the existing lakeshore corridor, far less new build, largely alongside the rail line and Highway 401 already there.
    Cobourg, Belleville, Kingston, Brockville and Cornwall are bypassed entirely.The lakeshore communities stay on the intercity network, served on the way through.
    Today’s VIA corridor service is demoted to a residual “Local Service,” slated to the private concession, with no protected floor.The corridor service is the spine — upgraded, reliable, and kept in the public interest.
    Freight relief is delivered by removing passenger trains from the shared line.Freight relief is delivered by giving passengers their own dedicated line within the existing corridor.
    Operated by a single private consortium pricing for premium yield, with a $60–90 billion cost baseline.Operated in the public interest at affordable conventional fares, at a fraction of the greenfield cost.
    Corridor fare revenue flows to the private concession, weakening the cross-subsidy that helps fund VIA’s national network.Corridor revenue stays in the public system, where it can keep supporting long-distance and regional service across Canada.
    In plain language

    The freight report is right that passengers and freight should not have to fight over the same tracks. But there are two ways to end that fight: take the passengers away, or give them their own line. Alto takes them away — and prices the loss as a benefit.

    The alternative keeps the trains and separates the traffic: a dedicated passenger spine down the existing Toronto–Montreal corridor, reliable and affordable, serving the lakeshore towns Alto would leave behind. It delivers the genuine freight dividend the report identifies — without the vanishing train.

    Sources

    Primary sources

    1
    High-Speed Rail and Freight Capacity: Potential Freight Benefits of Alto (June 2026). Prepared for Alto by CPCS in association with HDR. Cited pages: 5, 6, 8, 11, 18, 19. Read the report.
    2
    VIA Rail on the Kingston Subdivision: Service Erosion, Funding Collapse, and the National Rail Risk from ALTO HSR (April 2026). ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative. Read the brief.
    3
    VIA Rail Canada, 2025 Annual Report — Toronto–Montreal corridor operating shortfall of roughly $117 million, per-passenger subsidy of about $50, and corridor cost recovery near two-thirds.
    4
    On the ridership targets: this Initiative’s ridership analysis, setting Alto’s stated 24 million (2055) and 43 million (2084) figures against the corridor’s current ridership of roughly three million; the University of Toronto Munk School (Global Economic Policy Lab) independent projection of about 9 to 10 million; and the reference-class forecasting literature (Flyvbjerg) finding rail ridership overstated by an average of 65 per cent.
    5
    On the operating model and the transfer of corridor “Local Services” to the private consortium: Government of Canada, “Canada is getting high-speed rail” (news release, 19 February 2025); Transport Action Canada, “Cadence wins $3.9B High-Speed Rail development contract” (2025).
    6
    On the national-network risk: A. Kurjata, “NDP warns privatizing high-speed rail from Toronto to Quebec could kill passenger trains in rest of Canada,” CBC News (19 February 2025) — corridor revenue as roughly 80 per cent of VIA’s total; MP Taylor Bachrach’s warning on cross-subsidy of national service.
    7
    A Straighter Line (June 2026). ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative — routing and reference-class demand-density analysis for the dedicated passenger spine.
    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · citizenresearch.ca · Research Brief · June 2026
    Independent, non-partisan research on the proposed Toronto–Quebec City high-speed rail corridor.

  • Sign first, see later

    Sign First, See Later

    A confidentiality precondition runs through ALTO’s field studies and corridor maps — for municipalities and for Indigenous rightsholders alike.

    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Research Brief · Published June 2026
    The finding in brief

    Two of ALTO’s own June 2026 reports, read together, reveal a pattern. To let ALTO’s crews onto its land for field studies, the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry would first have had to sign a non-disclosure agreement; they declined. And to see the early corridor maps for their own territories, Indigenous communities were asked to sign a collaboration or confidentiality agreement first.

    In both cases the information came with the same condition attached: silence. This is a question of public trust, not of whether the trains are a good idea.

    “The most basic question — where might the line go? — was answered only after a confidentiality agreement was signed.”
    — the pattern across ALTO’s own June 2026 reports
    The Evidence

    What the documents show

    The pattern is set out not in commentary but in ALTO’s own records and a municipal council package — the same condition appearing in two separate processes, applied to two different kinds of party.

    The municipal case The rightsholder case
    Set out in the United Counties of SDG’s June 15, 2026 council package. ALTO sought a Permission to Enter agreement for environmental field study and geotechnical work — boreholes, test pits, and tree clearing — on county-owned parcels, with the Counties required to sign a non-disclosure agreement as a condition of access. Council declined the request. Set out in ALTO’s Indigenous Consultation What We Heard Report. Initial corridor maps, prepared in November 2025, were shared only with communities that had signed a collaboration agreement or a non-disclosure agreement. For the others, ALTO worked to secure non-disclosure agreements to share maps as early as possible (p. 14). A community could not see the corridor maps for its own territory until it accepted a confidentiality undertaking. View ALTO’s report

    A confidentiality clause is ordinary between two private companies. It is a different matter when the other party is a public body, or an Indigenous community being consulted about its rights.

    The Municipal Case

    What was actually requested

    ALTO sought a “Permission to Enter” (PTE) agreement covering two kinds of work. The first is environmental field study — wetland and habitat assessment, wildlife and bird surveys, and the collection of noise, vibration, hydrology, soil and archaeological data, described as largely non-invasive. The second is geotechnical investigation: boreholes, test pits and other ground disturbance to characterise what lies beneath the surface. The County’s own report notes that this second category would require clearing trees to bring in heavy equipment, with the land to be “restored” afterward.

    The agreement also runs in favour of the private developer consortium, Cadence, not only the Crown corporation — so a landowner’s signature binds them to both. And it requires the landowner to keep the arrangement confidential.

    The request and its supporting materials are on the public record in the United Counties’ June 15, 2026 council package: the CAO Key Information Report, the ALTO presentation of May 5, 2026, and the Map of Impacted SDG Properties.

    “It tells you nothing about the route”

    ALTO’s presentation states, more than once, that a Permission to Enter does not indicate the final alignment and is not proof that a property sits on the route. Yet the same council package includes a map that identifies specific “Subject Lands,” and the geotechnical work is targeted at named parcels. You do not drill boreholes everywhere; you drill where you expect to build.

    On the public record

    In March 2026 the Mayor of North Glengarry said the alignment had shifted from the existing rail line through town to the township’s “far northeast corner” — the area, next to Highway 417, where the identified study parcels sit. The claim that the studies reveal nothing about the route, and the targeted footprint of the work, do not sit easily together.

    “A municipality holds and shares information on behalf of its residents. A non-disclosure agreement is the one condition it cannot quietly accept.”
    — the transparency question the request puts to a public body
    The Analysis

    A pattern, not an exception

    A municipality holds and shares information on behalf of its residents; an Indigenous community is being consulted toward its free, prior and informed consent. In both settings, the value of the process depends on people being able to know — and to discuss — what is proposed for their land. A precondition of silence cuts against that.

    What makes this a pattern rather than a one-off is that the same condition appears in two separate processes, applied to two different kinds of party, documented in the same set of reports. It is part of how the project is being run.

    Why confidentiality changes the calculus

    A public body that signs a non-disclosure agreement narrows what it can tell residents about studies on public land, and narrows what is reachable under freedom-of-information law. A rightsholder asked to sign before seeing a map is asked to accept a constraint before it has the information needed to weigh the project. Informed consent and an informed public both depend on having the information first.

    Consent and Transparency

    The tension the precondition creates

    ALTO states that it consults Indigenous communities with the aim of securing their free, prior and informed consent. Consent is harder to call fully informed when the information is released only after a confidentiality agreement, and harder to call fully free when seeing the map requires signing first. None of this is to say that any community objected to the agreements — the report does not say so, and this brief does not speak for any community. The observation is narrower, and is about ALTO’s process: the condition it attaches to its own information.

    For municipalities, the duty runs the other way — toward openness. Ontario’s freedom-of-information regime exists precisely so residents can learn what public bodies know. An access agreement that forecloses disclosure sits in tension with that duty, which is part of why the United Counties declined.

    The Decision

    What the municipalities decided

    The refusals were not isolated. The body that owns the land said no; the host township and a regional caucus were already on record against the project; and a neighbouring county refused the very same non-disclosure agreement.

    United Counties of SDG — the landowner

    The Counties, which own the land, voted down the access request (By-Law No. 5538). Councillors pointed to the impact on agriculture and were wary that granting access would itself be read as support for the project.

    North Glengarry — the host township

    The township where the parcels sit had already endorsed the regional resolution opposing the project in its current form, and its mayor and council have continued to speak against it.

    Prescott-Russell — the neighbour

    On May 27, 2026 the neighbouring United Counties of Prescott and Russell unanimously refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement and declined access for surveys, with the warden framing it as a stand for transparency and local autonomy. Council minutes

    Eastern Ontario Wardens’ Caucus

    The regional caucus opposes the project in its current form — the resolution North Glengarry endorsed in April 2026.

    What To Watch

    What happens next

    The field studies are active and, by ALTO’s own account, will continue through 2026 and beyond. The southern route now under study — through Kingston and the Frontenac Arch — will not reach public consultation until 2027. Access to the ground, and the agreements that come with it, can arrive well before the public conversation does.

    The next test is a willing host. Kingston has asked for a station and wants its staff to work directly with ALTO. A municipality that wants the outcome may accept terms a reluctant one refused. Whether the confidentiality precondition travels south, and whether it has already been signed anywhere, can be tested directly: through freedom-of-information requests to the municipalities along the route.

    Anticipated Objection

    “Isn’t this just opposition to high-speed rail dressed up as a complaint about process?”

    No. The concern is the terms on offer, not the existence of a railway. The refusing councils have not asked for no rail; they have asked that the project coordinate with existing passenger service and existing corridors, and that decisions be made in the open. The question is not whether ALTO may protect commercially sensitive information — firms do that routinely.

    It is whether the public’s information about a public project, on public land and on the territories of rightsholders, should be available only to those who first agree not to share it. Better passenger rail and an open process are not in conflict.

    The bottom line

    The question is not whether ALTO may protect commercially sensitive information — firms do that routinely. It is whether the public’s information about a public project, on public land and on the territories of rightsholders, should be available only to those who first agree not to share it.

    A reasonable standard would be simple: the corridor maps, field-study scopes, and access terms that affect a community should be available to that community without a confidentiality precondition. Better passenger rail and an open process are not in conflict.

    Read the full brief offline or share it.

    Download the brief (PDF)

    Sources

    Primary documents and statements

    1.

    ALTO, Indigenous Consultation What We Heard Report (June 2026), incl. p. 14 — initial corridor maps shared only with communities that had signed a collaboration or non-disclosure agreement; ALTO describes the agreements as a means of sharing maps as early as possible. altotrain.ca
    2.

    ALTO, Public Consultation What We Heard Report (June 2026).
    3.

    United Counties of SDG council package, June 15, 2026 — CAO Key Information Report; ALTO presentation, May 5, 2026; Map of Impacted SDG Properties; and By-Law No. 5538.
    4.

    The SDG access vote and councillor statements as reported by the Morrisburg Leader, June 18, 2026.
    5.

    North Glengarry’s April 13, 2026 endorsement of the regional (EOWC) resolution, and its mayor’s continued public opposition — The Review, April 16, 2026, and Cornwall Seaway News.
    6.

    United Counties of Prescott and Russell, Regular Council Meeting, May 27, 2026 — council declined to sign a non-disclosure agreement and refused access for surveys. Meeting agendas and minutes
    7.

    Transport Canada announcement, Kingston, June 22, 2026.
    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative  ·  citizenresearch.ca  ·  Research Brief  ·  June 2026
    Independent, non-partisan research on the proposed Toronto–Quebec City high-speed rail corridor.

  • A straighter line

    A Straighter Line

    Three ways to connect the same cities — and what the government’s own yardstick says about each.

    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Research Brief · June 2026
    ⚠ Companion to “Sixth in North America”

    The 2020 ministerial briefing released under A-2022-005 contains two yardsticks the federal government chose for itself: slide 2.5, a checklist of where high-speed rail works best, and slide 2.6, a benchmark table of selected HSR systems. This brief runs ALTO’s eight proposed stations through both — then tests two other ways of connecting the same anchor cities. Read the companion brief →

    The finding in brief

    On the government’s own benchmark, ALTO as planned is the longest corridor and the least demand-dense of any system in the briefing — about 14,600 people per kilometre of new track, below every benchmarked line that reports a population.

    Straightening the Toronto–Montreal spine helps only a little. The real lever is dropping the two stations that sit on no existing line, and reaching Ottawa and Quebec City on upgraded track rather than new build. Do that and the new build falls to a 540 km High Performance Passenger Rail (HPPR) spine — about 40 per cent less new track than ALTO — while demand density on new build climbs by roughly two-thirds, to mid-pack above Spain, without losing a single anchor city.

    The Yardsticks

    Two tests, chosen by the government

    Slide 2.5 lists what makes high-speed rail work: large metropolitan populations, strong local transit, an optimal corridor length between economic centres, and dense city pairs.

    Ministerial briefing slide 2.5, Success Factors: Where HSR Works Best, listing strong transit connections, optimal corridor length, and city-pair criteria including metropolitan population, GDP, density and collaborating economic sectors
    Slide 2.5, “Success Factors: Where HSR Works Best.” Page 154 of the Canada Infrastructure Bank release, A-2022-005 (disclosed in part; marked DRAFT) — the federal checklist of where high-speed rail succeeds.

    Slide 2.6 then benchmarks selected systems on capital cost, length, and the combined population they serve. Together the two let us score any route on the government’s own criteria — not ours.

    Ministerial briefing slide 2.6, Selected HSR Systems: Key Metrics, a table of capital cost, cost per track-kilometre, population served, GDP and total length for seven HSR systems including France, Spain, the UK, Japan, Taiwan, California and Texas
    Slide 2.6, “Selected HSR Systems: Key Metrics,” from the same release (A-2022-005, disclosed in part; marked DRAFT) — the benchmark systems against which the corridor is measured below.

    Run ALTO’s eight stations through slide 2.5 and they sort cleanly into three tiers:

    Anchors — pass outright

    Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec City: large metros with real or near-real rapid transit, at HSR-friendly distances. These are the cities the corridor exists to connect.

    Good intermediate — earns its place

    Kingston: small, but it sits on the direct Toronto–Montreal path, so it adds riders without adding distance. The methodology rewards exactly this.

    Weak — cost without a base

    Peterborough and Trois-Rivières are small and sit on no existing passenger line; reaching either means building all-new track. Laval is redundant — it is inside the Montréal CMA.

    The Ladder

    Three ways to connect the same anchors

    Hold the four anchor cities constant and change only how they are linked. Option ① is ALTO as planned. Options ② and ③ are the High Performance Rail (HPR) alternative: a new-build HPPR spine — the High Performance Passenger Rail line — on the direct Toronto–Montreal lakeshore, plus upgraded existing track for the secondary connections. ② keeps all eight stations, reaching Ottawa on the existing line and the small cities by new spur; ③ keeps Kingston on the spine, reaches Ottawa and Quebec City on upgraded existing lines, and drops the two off-corridor cities.

    Metric① ALTO as planned② Direct HPPR spine + spurs (keep all 8)③ Direct HPPR spine + Ottawa link (drop 2)
    Stations886
    Toronto–Montreal routing~650 km (detour via Peterborough/Ottawa)~540 km direct lakeshore (HPPR spine)~540 km direct lakeshore (HPPR spine)
    Ottawa connectionon the new mainlineupgraded existing (Smiths Falls–Brockville)upgraded existing (Smiths Falls–Brockville)
    Montreal–Quebec City legnew build (north shore, via Trois-Rivières)new build (north shore, via Trois-Rivières)upgraded existing (south-shore VIA line)
    New-build track~910 km~850 km~540 km
    Upgraded existing track—~80 km~350 km
    People served~13.3 M~13.3 M~13.0 M
    Demand density, new-build track~14,600 / km~15,600 / km~24,100 / km
    Position on the slide 2.6 benchmarklastbelow Spainmid-pack (above Spain)
    Off-corridor cities needing new trackPeterborough, Trois-RivièresPeterborough, Trois-Rivièresnone

    The Montreal–Quebec City leg is the pivot between ② and ③: ② builds it as new north-shore track to keep Trois-Rivières on the line, while ③ drops Trois-Rivières and serves Quebec City on the existing south-shore line, upgraded — about 260 km of the gap in new build between the two. In both ② and ③ the Ottawa connection is upgraded existing track (VIA’s Smiths Falls–Brockville line), not new build. Distances are approximate planning-level estimates; full workings with live formulas are in the reference-class workbook.

    What the Numbers Say

    Reading the ladder

    ① ALTO is the longest, least-dense option

    At roughly 14,600 people per kilometre of new track, ALTO sits below every system on slide 2.6 that reports a population — the most track for the least demand per kilometre.

    ② Straightening the spine helps only a little

    Keep all eight cities but run Toronto–Montreal direct on the HPPR spine and reach Ottawa on the existing line: new build falls to ~850 km (from ALTO’s ~910) and density edges up to ~15,600 per kilometre. Better — but still near the bottom of the benchmark, because it keeps building new track for Peterborough and the north-shore line to Trois-Rivières. The off-corridor cities, not the spine, are what hold it down.

    ③ Dropping the two off-corridor cities is the lever

    Removing Peterborough and Trois-Rivières — and reaching Ottawa and Quebec City on upgraded existing track — cuts new build to just the 540 km HPPR spine, about 40 per cent less than ALTO, while losing fewer than 0.3 million people. Most of the saving is the Quebec leg: with Trois-Rivières gone, Montreal–Quebec reverts from ~260 km of new north-shore track to the existing south-shore line, upgraded. Demand density on new build climbs from ~14,600 to ~24,100 per kilometre — from worst on the benchmark to mid-pack, above Spain. The route gets stronger by building less, because the dropped legs were costing more length than they were adding demand.

    The Kingston Test

    Same city, opposite effect

    Kingston is the cleanest illustration, because every option serves it. On the direct line it sits on the shortest Toronto–Montreal path, so it adds riders at almost no added distance — density goes up. On ALTO, reaching the same city means a southern dogleg off the northern route — the same population bought with extra kilometres, so density goes down. One stop, two outcomes, set entirely by the alignment rather than the city. Keeping Kingston while dropping Peterborough is precisely the discrimination the federal criteria imply: reward the intermediate that sits on the path, decline the one that pulls the line off it.

    In plain language

    The problem was never which cities to serve. It is the line drawn to reach them. Run the strong Toronto–Montreal market on the direct lakeshore route, branch to Ottawa, serve Quebec City on the line that already exists, and keep Kingston where it naturally sits — and the corridor moves from worst on the government’s own benchmark to the middle of the pack, on far less new track.

    The two stations that drag it down, Peterborough and Trois-Rivières, are the two that sit on no existing line and would each need new track built to reach them. Serving them may be a worthy regional goal — but it should be argued and costed as that, openly, not folded into a national corridor whose headline case rests on Toronto–Montreal.

    Method

    How this was scored

    “People served” is the combined metropolitan population of the named cities — a scale proxy, not modelled ridership, and the same crude basis slide 2.6 uses. Demand density is people per kilometre of new-build track. The alternative configurations are High Performance Rail (HPR): a new-build HPPR spine on the direct Toronto–Montreal lakeshore, plus upgraded existing lines for the Ottawa connection (VIA’s Smiths Falls–Brockville route) and, in ③, the Montreal–Quebec leg. ALTO and both alternatives are high-performance (≤200 km/h), not the 300 km/h HSR of the slide 2.6 benchmark systems, so the density comparison is conservative. Distances are approximate planning-level estimates and should be checked against ALTO’s published alignment before any figure is cited. Populations are 2021 StatCan census-metropolitan-area figures; slide 2.6 is on a 2016 basis. Trois-Rivières has had no passenger rail since 1990 and is not on VIA’s south-shore Montréal–Québec line, so serving it requires all-new track. Full workings, with live formulas, are in the reference-class workbook.

    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · citizenresearch.ca · Research Brief · June 2026
    Independent, non-partisan research on the proposed Toronto–Quebec City high-speed rail corridor.

  • Sixth in NA

    Sixth in North America

    What the ranking actually measures — and the route it does not describe.

    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Research Brief · Published June 2026
    ⚠ Source: Disclosed under the Access to Information Act

    The slide below is page 206 of a 294-page record released by the Canada Infrastructure Bank under access request A-2022-005 — a request for all studies, analyses, and reports related to the federal government’s high-frequency and high-speed rail file, disclosed in part. The briefing deck it belongs to is stamped “Privileged and Confidential — Do Not Share and/or Copy,” and its own footer marks it “DRAFT.” Adjacent pages were withheld under the Act’s economic-interest and advice exemptions (s. 18 and s. 21). The deck, as disclosed, is posted in full here: Ministerial Briefing — HFR and HSR (PDF).

    The marking is part of the point: this is a draft analysis the department preferred not be seen, and it is the evidence being used to vouch for the corridor.

    Briefing slide: Success Factors, Where HSR Works Best, ranking North American city pairs by high-speed rail demand
    Section 4.2, “Success Factors: Where HSR Works Best.” Page 206 of the Canada Infrastructure Bank release, A-2022-005 (disclosed in part; marked DRAFT). The three highlighted bars are Toronto–Montreal, Toronto–Ottawa, and Montreal–Quebec City.
    The finding in brief

    The slide ranks Toronto–Montreal sixth among North American city pairs for high-speed rail demand. The ranking is real. What it measures is the market between two endpoint metros — not the route now being built.

    The number describes the direct Toronto–Montreal corridor. The alignment taking shape runs Toronto–Peterborough–Kingston–Ottawa–Montreal — a longer, meandering route. On the very methodology the slide cites, every one of those detours lowers the score rather than raising it. And the segment actually proceeding first, Ottawa–Montreal, does not appear on the chart at all.

    The Methodology

    What the ranking measures

    The “sixth in North America” figure comes from America 2050’s screen of tens of thousands of city pairs, a methodology published in full by the Regional Plan Association. It scores the market between two endpoint metros: downtown employment, population density, transit reach, and the existing air and road travel between them. On those inputs Toronto–Montreal scores well. The endpoints are large, dense, and already heavily travelled.

    Two features of that method decide everything that follows, and both are explicit in the source.

    It is calculated per mile. Adding distance without adding a major generator pulls a corridor’s score down, not up. The screen normalizes precisely so that longer routes cannot coast on length.

    Intermediate stations only help when they are themselves large. The report is clear that longer corridors out-rank shorter ones only when the cities in between are medium or large generators. Otherwise the additional miles are a penalty. The top-ranked corridor on the chart, New York–Washington, scores as it does because the dense intermediate cities of Philadelphia and Baltimore sit directly on the shortest path between the endpoints.

    The Route

    The corridor on the chart is not the corridor being built

    The favourable score belongs to the direct Toronto–Montreal market — the existing lakeshore line, the shortest path, with a dense string of intermediate communities along it. The alignment now taking shape is the opposite of that. From Toronto it runs north to Peterborough; then — assuming the Kingston stop and southern routing the federal government added to its consideration in June 2026 come to pass — it doubles back south to Kingston, climbs north again to Ottawa, and drops south once more to Montreal. The result is a corridor that zigzags between its cities rather than running directly between its endpoints.

    Map of the projected Toronto to Quebec City corridor showing the route meandering north and south between cities rather than following a direct line
    The projected Toronto–Quebec City corridor. Rather than following the direct lakeshore line, the alignment meanders — north to Peterborough, south to Kingston, north to Ottawa, south to Montreal, and on toward Quebec City.
    The direct corridor (what the bar scores)The alignment being built
    Toronto–Montreal, direct. The existing Lake Ontario lakeshore line, on the order of 540 km — the shortest path between the two endpoints. Toronto–Peterborough–Kingston–Ottawa–Montreal. Roughly 610 km via Ottawa — about 13 per cent longer for the identical endpoints, and longer still with a Kingston dogleg. (This path assumes the Kingston stop and southern routing added to federal consideration in June 2026 proceed.)
    Dense intermediate string. Oshawa, Cobourg, Belleville, Kingston — population and employment added steadily along the path. Sparse flanks, weak axis. Peterborough is small and the stretches on either side of it are thinly populated; reaching Ottawa means importing the Toronto–Ottawa axis the same chart ranks near the bottom.
    Highest possible per-mile score for these two endpoints. A lower per-mile score: more kilometres, less density per kilometre, and a low-scoring leg folded in.

    There is a particular irony in Kingston. It is the natural intermediate city on the direct corridor — precisely the stop that would have helped the Toronto–Montreal score. The chosen alignment runs north to bypass it. Now it is being considered for re-inclusion, bolted back onto a route designed to avoid it.

    On the Method’s Own Terms

    What each detour does to the score

    Re-run the published methodology on the alignment actually on the table, and the per-mile score falls below the sixth-place bar. Each of the route’s defining choices works against it:

    Length is a straight penalty

    Per-mile normalization spreads the same Toronto and Montreal endpoint demand over more kilometres. A longer, more circuitous route scores lower for the identical endpoints — that is what the normalization is designed to do.

    Peterborough adds miles faster than density

    Intermediate stops only lift the score if they add population and employment per kilometre faster than the corridor’s average. Peterborough is too small, and the stretches on either side are sparse, so it adds length faster than it adds riders — a net penalty.

    A Kingston dogleg is more of the same

    Re-adding the one city the alignment was routed to avoid means a southern detour off the northern line: a modest generator bought with extra kilometres — again, length outpacing density.

    Reaching Ottawa imports a weak leg

    Ottawa is the one genuine generator among the added stops. But reaching it is the Toronto–Ottawa axis the same chart already ranks near the bottom of its field. The detour swaps the strong direct Toronto–Montreal axis for a leg the deck itself scores as weak.

    Sequencing

    What is actually being built first

    There is a further mismatch between the headline number and the build. The first segment to proceed is not Toronto–Montreal at all — it is Ottawa–Montreal, confirmed in December 2025 as the opening phase, with construction targeted for 2029. Ottawa–Montreal does not appear anywhere on the chart.

    And by the government’s own account, it was chosen first not for demand but for buildability: a relatively short and straight portion of the overall route, since high-speed trains do not handle curves well — the same logic that led California to build its first section across the flat Central Valley, avoiding tunnelling and urban construction. A constructability rationale, not a ridership one.

    The corridor that scores sixth, Toronto–Montreal, is only realized once the full line is complete — including the Toronto–Ottawa leg that sits near the bottom of this very chart — work not expected to finish until the 2040s. So the headline ranking and the actual build diverge twice over: the number describes a market the first segment does not deliver, assembled from legs the chart scores unevenly, with the strongest part of the case deferred to last.

    In plain language

    Strip away the methodology and the point is simple. The federal government’s own briefing says high-speed rail makes the most sense between Toronto and Montreal — two large cities with heavy travel between them. It says nothing in favour of the winding route now being built.

    That route keeps collecting stops the demand evidence does not support: north to Peterborough, a proposed southern dogleg to Kingston, and Trois-Rivières on the Quebec leg. Each one adds distance and cost while the case for the line still rests on the direct Toronto–Montreal market. When stations are added that do not earn their place on the numbers, the usual explanation is political — spreading the visible benefits of a marquee project across as many communities as possible to assemble support for it.

    This is one of the central problems with the project, and it is a familiar one. Bent Flyvbjerg’s research on megaprojects — the body of work behind this Initiative’s reference-class approach — finds that large infrastructure projects routinely run over budget and under-deliver because their scope and routing are shaped by political bargaining and the need to sell the project, rather than by the demand evidence. A corridor designed around who gets a station rather than where the riders are is precisely the pattern that research warns about.

    In Summary

    What the slide does and does not say

    The “sixth in North America” finding endorses a Toronto–Montreal market. It says nothing in favour of the Peterborough-routed, Kingston-doglegged, Ottawa-and-Montreal-served alignment. On the methodology’s own terms, those inclusions are exactly the choices it would mark down.

    A strong endpoint market is a real asset. It is not the same thing as a strong route — and a briefing that uses the first to vouch for the second is measuring the wrong thing. That the slide is marked “DRAFT,” and that adjacent pages were withheld under the Act’s economic-interest and advice exemptions, only sharpens the question: this is the analysis on the record, and on its own terms it does not say what it is being used to say.

    A note on method. The deck describes its result as a “sample calculation.” The disclosed page does not show how the path was drawn or scored. The standard America 2050 methodology and the headline result both point to the direct corridor as the basis for the sixth-place figure; if the underlying calculation is obtained, the path it used is the detail to confirm.

    Anticipated Objection

    “Doesn’t the line serve all those city pairs — Toronto–Ottawa, Ottawa–Montreal, Montreal–Quebec — not just Toronto–Montreal? Combine them and the project makes sense.”

    It is true that a corridor serves a whole matrix of city pairs, not only its endpoints. But that observation concedes the point rather than answering it. The “sixth in North America” figure is the score for the direct Toronto–Montreal pair. The moment the case leans on Toronto–Ottawa, Ottawa–Quebec, and Toronto–Quebec, it is no longer resting on that figure — and those are precisely the legs the same chart rates weakest: Toronto–Ottawa sits second from the bottom, Montreal–Quebec City is last, and Ottawa–Quebec, Toronto–Quebec, and Ottawa–Montreal do not appear on it at all.

    Two things make “combine the figures” fail on the slide’s own terms. The bars are demand-strength rankings — built from population, GDP, density, and corridor length — not passenger counts that can be summed; a sixth-place pair plus a near-last pair does not add up to a stronger corridor. And because the screen normalizes per mile, stringing the one strong pair onto a longer, detouring alignment spreads the same demand across more track-kilometres, which lowers the score rather than raising it.

    The logic in fact argues for the line this brief describes. If the goal is to capture Toronto–Montreal and the markets in between, the alignment that does it best is the direct lakeshore corridor — it serves the sixth-place pair at full strength and threads a dense string of real intermediate cities (Oshawa, Cobourg, Belleville, Kingston) on the way. Adding up the pairs does not rescue the meandering route; it makes the case for the direct one.

    Sources

    Primary documents and statements

    1.
    Canada Infrastructure Bank, completed access-to-information release A-2022-005 (disclosed in part), “Success Factors: Where HSR Works Best,” draft briefing slide, page 206. Released under the Access to Information Act; deck marked “Privileged and Confidential — Do Not Share and/or Copy” and “DRAFT.” View the disclosed deck (PDF)
    2.
    America 2050 / Regional Plan Association, High-Speed Rail in America, January 2011 — the published methodology scoring rail corridors by ridership demand on a per-mile basis.
    3.
    America 2050, Where High-Speed Rail Works Best — the precursor study of city pairs that the briefing slide reproduces.
    4.
    Transport Canada / Alto, “Full speed ahead: Ottawa–Montreal chosen as starting point for Alto High-Speed Rail,” December 12, 2025. canada.ca · altotrain.ca
    5.
    “First segment of Canadian high-speed rail to be built between Montreal, Ottawa,” Trains, December 12, 2025 — carries the Minister of Transport’s rationale for selecting the segment as a short, straight portion of the route. trains.com
    6.
    “Ottawa-Montreal chosen as 1st segment of promised high-speed rail line,” CBC News, December 12, 2025 — remaining segments (Quebec City–Montreal and Ottawa–Toronto) to begin at a later, unspecified date. CBC News
    7.
    Federal government statement, June 22, 2026, indicating an additional stop at Kingston would be considered for the corridor.
    8.
    Bent Flyvbjerg, Nils Bruzelius & Werner Rothengatter, Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition (Cambridge University Press, 2003); Flyvbjerg, “Survival of the Unfittest: Why the Worst Infrastructure Gets Built — and What We Can Do About It,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy 25, no. 3 (2009): 344–367; and Flyvbjerg, “Design by Deception: The Politics of Megaproject Approval,” Harvard Design Magazine no. 22 (2005) — on strategic misrepresentation, perverse incentives, and the political shaping of megaproject scope and routing.
    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative  ·  citizenresearch.ca  ·  Research Brief  ·  June 2026
    Independent, non-partisan research on the proposed Toronto–Quebec City high-speed rail corridor.

  • By their own standard

    Research Brief · Methodology

    By Their Own Standard

    Build Canada’s case for high-speed rail, measured against the megaproject method the memo itself invokes.

    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Methodology Brief · Published June 2026 · ALTO consultation closed April 24, 2026
    ⚠ The Document Under Review

    Build Canada’s February 24, 2025 memo, Let’s Show the World How Canada Builds, was published one week after the federal high-speed rail announcement. It endorses high-speed rail in the Toronto–Quebec City corridor and names ALTO directly, while contesting only how the project is delivered — not whether the demand exists or whether the benefit–cost case closes. This brief takes the memo’s argument on its own terms, and holds it to the analytical standard the memo itself sets. Build Canada · original memo

    Critical Finding

    The memo reaches for exactly the right tools. It quotes Bent Flyvbjerg, the leading scholar of megaproject cost overruns; it calls for reference-class benchmarking against comparable lines; it demands contingency discipline; and it warns that without these, ALTO becomes another HS2 or California High-Speed Rail. On the diagnosis, the Initiative agrees.

    The memo then abandons each principle at the moment it matters. It caps contingency at the level that, on its own logic, guarantees overrun. It imports foreign unit costs from a reference class that is not comparable. And it promises true high-speed rail at a unit cost that, in Canadian conditions, only high-performance rail can plausibly reach. Applied honestly, the memo’s own method points away from its conclusion.

    The evidence produced since the announcement confirms the diagnosis the memo made and refutes the targets it set. The corridor is still being fundamentally re-routed in the project’s second year; the friction the memo proposed to legislate away has surfaced exactly where the method predicts. The case for caution on ALTO does not require rejecting Build Canada’s framework. It requires applying it.

    The Argument’s Shape

    What the memo contests, and what it does not

    The memo’s argument has a particular structure. It accepts ALTO’s entire benefit case without examination — 40 per cent of the economy, 18 million people connected, up to $35 billion a year in added GDP, travel times halved — and contests only whether the project can be built cheaply and quickly. Every one of those headline figures is the proponent’s own number, repeated approvingly. The memo never asks whether the ridership exists to fill the trains, or whether the benefits exceed the costs.

    It asks one question: can Canada build it the way France, Spain, and Japan did? To answer, it reaches for the right instruments — Flyvbjerg’s work on megaproject overruns, reference-class benchmarking, contingency discipline, and the cautionary record of HS2 and California. That choice of tools is what makes the memo worth engaging seriously, and what makes its conclusion fail. The same tools, applied with honest inputs, do not support the case the memo builds on them.

    Held To Its Own Standard

    Three flaws, by the memo’s own method

    On three load-bearing claims, the memo prescribes the opposite of what the method it cites requires. The left column states the memo’s own prescription; the right column applies the memo’s own standard to it.

    What the memo prescribesHeld to its own standard
    1. Cap contingency, including inflation, at 10 per cent. Presented as following global best practice, alongside meticulous benchmarking against French and Japanese lines.Reference-class forecasting — the very method the memo invokes — requires a larger uplift the less design is complete, because the unknowns are still unpriced. The memo itself concedes Canadian projects sit at 1–10 per cent design maturity. At that maturity, the honest uplift is routinely 40 per cent or more; a 10 per cent cap is defensible only near design completion. The prescription specifies the precise conditions under which budgets break, and calls it discipline.
    Verdict:Self-contradictory
    2. $25–40M per km; a corridor for under $50B; payback within two years. Drawn from the cost record of France, Spain, and Japan.A reference class works only if the cases are comparable, and these are not. The cited figures come from older lines, on flatter and cheaper terrain, in earlier cost eras, with no adjustment for what this corridor crosses: the granite of the Canadian Shield, the Frontenac Arch, the wetland and karst of eastern Ontario, and dense urban approaches at both ends. Importing an unadjusted foreign unit cost is exactly the non-analogous-reference-class error Flyvbjerg’s method exists to catch — committed in the section that cites him. The Initiative’s complexity-adjusted estimate runs several times higher, with a central benefit–cost ratio far below the break-even the memo treats as obvious.
    Verdict:Wrong reference class
    3. True high-speed rail at that same unit cost. Dedicated track, full electrification, grade separation, 300 km/h — delivered for $25–40M per km.In Canadian conditions, $25–40M per km is not a high-speed-rail figure at all. It is roughly the cost of a high-performance rail upgrade — incremental improvement of existing alignments, the option the memo dismisses in a single line. The memo promises high-speed performance at high-performance-rail prices. The headline product and the headline number belong to two different projects; you cannot buy the performance of one at the price of the other.
    Verdict:HSR promise, HPR price
    $25–40M
    per km — the memo’s claimed unit cost, from France / Spain / Japan
    Build Canada memo
    ≈ $143B
    reference-class capital for the corridor delivered as high-speed rail
    CRI reference-class analysis
    ≈ 0.06
    central benefit–cost ratio — against the memo’s implied two-year payback
    CRI NPV / BCR matrix

    “Payback in two years” implies a project that returns many times its capital. The reference-class evidence points to one that returns a small fraction of it. The gap between the memo’s number and the comparable record is not a rounding difference; it is the entire argument.

    What Has Happened Since

    The diagnosis confirmed, the targets refuted

    More than a year on, events have tested the memo’s promises against reality. They vindicate its diagnosis of Canadian megaproject failure and dismantle the targets it set against that diagnosis.

    A corridor still being re-routed in year two

    The memo set a target of a high-value section carrying passengers within five years, on standardized, locked-in designs, at 10 per cent contingency. Yet the corridor is still being fundamentally re-aligned — a southern-corridor study, a conditional new station at Kingston, an alignment still unchosen between north and south. That is direct evidence of the planning immaturity the memo flagged on its first page — and it makes the memo’s own targets incoherent. You cannot run trains in five years on frozen designs while you are still deciding where the line goes.

    Friction exactly where the method predicts

    The memo’s prescriptions — sever environmental review from planning, legislate automatic approvals, reduce municipalities to suggesting where infrastructure is placed rather than whether — were aimed at the precise constraints this corridor turns out to be full of: two UNESCO designations, species at risk, organized community opposition, and rural-character concerns that public consultation surfaced in volume. The Initiative’s Community Friction Index has risen from 43 to 54 since consultation began and is projected to climb further. The memo’s answer to friction is not to resolve it but to override it — and on this corridor, that is neither lawful nor likely.

    The memo’s own number makes the HPR case

    The memo dismisses improving existing rail as insufficient, insisting dedicated high-speed track is the only way. But its own affordability figure, $25–40M per km, is a high-performance-rail number — and the consultation recorded clear public appetite for improving VIA service first and preserving existing Kingston and eastern-Ontario connections. Strip the rhetoric and the memo makes the affordability case for the alternative it rejects.

    Conclusion

    The antidote that recreates the disease

    The memo casts ALTO as Canada’s escape from the HS2 and California failures. Trace its logic, though, and the resemblance runs the other way. “We will build it cheaply and quickly like France and Japan — just cap the contingency and clear the obstacles” is not the cure for optimism bias. It is the textbook expression of it, almost word for word how California began.

    The memo’s real service is that it concedes the entire framework. Flyvbjerg, reference classes, contingency discipline, planning maturity: take those tools, feed them honest inputs, and the conclusion does not survive. The case for caution on ALTO does not require rejecting Build Canada’s method — it requires applying it. Done honestly, it points not toward a sprint to high-speed rail at imported prices, but toward a high-performance upgrade of the corridor Canadians actually use, at a cost the country can defend.

    Where The Method Lands

    Summary ledger

    The memo measured against the standard it sets for itself:

    Sound
    Diagnosis — planning-maturity gap. Correctly identifies that Canadian projects enter procurement at 1–10% design versus 30–70% abroad.
    Sound
    Delivery authority. Rightly prefers a strong, technically competent public authority over dependence on a consultant consortium.
    Sound
    Reference-class benchmarking. Rightly names it as the antidote to optimism bias.
    Violated
    10% contingency cap prescribed at 1–10% design maturity — manufactures the overrun the memo warns against.
    Violated
    $25–40M/km imported from non-comparable lines without adjustment for terrain, era, or urban approaches.
    Violated
    HSR promised at HPR price. The headline product and the headline cost belong to two different projects.
    Violated
    Override of environmental review and municipal consent — aimed squarely at the corridor’s real, documented constraints.
    Refuted by events
    Five-year passenger target on frozen designs — incompatible with a corridor still being re-routed in the project’s second year.

    The memo is at its strongest where it agrees with the Initiative — on method. It is at its weakest where it abandons that method to reach a predetermined answer. Applied honestly, Build Canada’s own framework makes the case for high-performance-rail realism, not for a high-speed sprint at imported prices.

    Sources

    Primary documents and references

    1.
    Build Canada, “Let’s Show the World How Canada Builds” (memo), February 24, 2025 — the document under review. buildcanada.com/memos/how-canada-builds
    2.
    Alto, Public Consultation Report, June 22, 2026 — corridor framing, southern-corridor and Kingston-station feedback, community and environmental concerns.
    3.
    Bent Flyvbjerg, “What You Should Know About Megaprojects and Why: An Overview,” Project Management Journal (2014) — the megaproject-overrun research the memo cites.
    4.
    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative — reference-class forecasting, Engineering Complexity Index regression, and de-biased cost analysis for the Toronto–Quebec City corridor.
    5.
    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative — NPV / benefit–cost matrix and Community Friction Index (post-consultation update).
    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative  ·  citizenresearch.ca  ·  Methodology Brief  ·  June 2026
    Independent, non-partisan research on the proposed Toronto–Quebec City high-speed rail corridor.

  • Not off the hook

    CRI community brief · June 2026

    Not Off the Hook

    In Alto’s own words: why a Kingston station makes the southern corridor more uncertain for the communities around it, not less.

    Alto HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Independent & non-partisan

    The short version

    The June 22 announcement can feel like a finish line for the communities between Ottawa, Kingston and Peterborough. It is closer to a starting gun. Alto’s CEO has said the company is now “concentrating on the southern corridor,” that the corridor there is still wide, and that the alignment will be drawn “in the next few months.” A station in Kingston does not spare the townships the line must cross to reach it, instead, it commits the line to crossing them.

    Three reasons people think the fight is over and why each is wrong

    After a feel-good announcement, it is natural to assume the danger has passed. Here are the three readings going around the corridor, and why each one misreads what was actually said.

    What it feels like
    What is actually true
    “The route moved to Kingston, so my area is safe.”
    A station is a destination, not a route. The tracks still have to travel the whole Ottawa–Kingston–Peterborough band to get there. A Kingston stop does not lift the line off the surrounding townships; it commits the line to passing through them.
    “A decision was made.”
    It was not. The Minister directed Alto to study a southern option, hedged “subject to technical feasibility and project requirements.” The alignment for this segment is not chosen until the 2027 consultation, with the impact assessment to follow.
    “If I’m not right on the 401, I’m fine.”
    Alto’s CEO said the line will not follow the 401 the whole way, and that the Ottawa-to-near-Kingston stretch is “probably too curvy.” That means the inland, off-highway countryside is exactly where the route is still open.

    What the CEO actually said

    In an interview the day of the announcement, Alto’s president and CEO described a search area that is widening, not closing. He said the northern route along the Highway 7 corridor has not been scrapped, it is “not off the table”. However, the likelihood of going back north is “less and less obvious,” because the company is now “concentrating on the southern corridor.”

    He described the corridor between Ottawa, Kingston and Peterborough as still “fairly wide,” and said the job over the next few months is to determine how to get from Ottawa to Kingston with the “alignment of least impact” by following existing infrastructure where possible and trying to limit impact on the agricultural sector. He added that the line likely would not follow Highway 401 entirely, and that the Ottawa-to-near-Kingston stretch is too curvy to use the highway as a corridor there.

    Read together, those statements describe the southern band as the primary search area, still wide, and actively being drawn right now. That is the opposite of a settled outcome according to Alto’s CEO.

    A wider search area, not a narrower one

    “Wide corridor” is Alto’s own phrase, and a wide corridor means nothing inside it is fixed. The band still runs from Ottawa to Peterborough by way of Kingston, and the communities inside it — among them Stone Mills, Greater Napanee, Tyendinaga, Rideau Lakes, Tay Valley and South Frontenac — are not on the edge of this decision. They are inside the active study area. Adding Kingston as a destination does not shrink that band; it gives the line a reason to run through the middle of it.

    “Least impact” is a promise, not a plan

    The reassuring language — “least impact,” “follow existing infrastructure,” “limit impact on agriculture” — is worth reading carefully. None of it is defined, none of it is published, and none of it is a commitment any community can hold Alto to yet. “Least impact” still means an impact, on someone, somewhere; and the decision to avoid the 401 where it is too curvy means the alternative runs through open farmland and rural settlement. A goal stated in an interview is not a protection written into a route.

    It is also the moment to keep the alternative on the table. Many residents told the consultation they would rather see existing rail service improved first (we call it High Performance Rail) before a new line is carved through the countryside. That option does not disappear because a station was named; it is exactly the question a wide-open corridor should still be asking.

    The clock, and why now is the moment

    The decision that affects you has not happened. Here is when it does.

    This fall (2026)
    Alto narrows the Central segment (Ottawa–Montréal) corridor and runs another round of public consultation.
    2027
    Consultation on the western segment (Toronto–Ottawa) — which contains the Peterborough–Ottawa southern option and the Kingston question — the segment that decides the route through these communities.
    ~January 2027
    The federal impact assessment is expected to begin and run about two years, with its own input opportunities.

    The alignment is on the drawing board over the next few months. The relief that follows a feel-good announcement is exactly what empties the room while the line is being drawn. The communities that stay organized and on the record are the ones whose concerns will define what “least impact” ends up meaning.

    What keeps your community on the map

    • Stay organized across township lines. The corridor crosses many municipalities; the case is strongest when those communities speak together rather than each assuming the line will land on someone else.
    • Document your property now. Photographs, surveys, drainage, wells and septic, farm operations and field connectivity. A clear record is your strongest tool the moment a route is proposed nearby.
    • Put your council and your MP on record. Municipal resolutions and parliamentary questions can demand the alignment criteria and the evidence. Keep your community’s position documented before the route is drawn.
    • Ask to see the rules. “Least impact” should come with published criteria and weightings. Ask for them. A standard you cannot read is a standard no one can be held to.
    • Mark the dates. Fall 2026 (Central), 2027 (your segment), and the impact assessment. Those are the rooms where the route is decided: be in them.

    A station for Kingston is not a reprieve for the corridor. The line still has to get there. Alto has said it has not decided how.

    Download the full brief (PDF)

    Sources

    1. Elliot Ferguson, “Alto CEO says there are options to add Kingston to rail project,” Kingston Whig-Standard, June 22, 2026.
    2. Transport Canada, news release on the What We Heard report and Kingston as a potential stop, June 22, 2026. canada.ca
    3. Alto, Public Consultation — What We Heard Report, Corridor Study Area (134 pp), June 2026. altotrain.ca

    Quoted phrases are the words of Alto’s president and CEO as reported in the Kingston Whig-Standard interview of June 22, 2026. The Alto HSR Citizen Research Initiative is an independent, non-partisan research project examining the proposed corridor through Eastern Ontario.