Tag: fare premium

  • Nina’s commute

    Nina’s Commute

    ALTO’s economic report introduces a semi-retired nurse from Peterborough to show what high-speed rail changes. The corridor’s own ridership and fare data says otherwise.

    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Corridor Communities Brief · Published August 2026
    ⚠ The scenario under examination

    On page 17 of Canada’s Moment, under the heading “What changes for Canadians,” ALTO introduces Nina — a semi-retired nurse living in Peterborough, invited to help train nursing students in Toronto. The report describes it as “an opportunity she would have declined in the past” because of the burden and unpredictability of commuting. With ALTO, it says, “that constraint is reduced” — letting her travel into the city twice a week without significant disruption to her routine, supplement her income, and pass on her expertise.

    It is a well-drawn illustration and the kind of person it describes certainly exists. This brief tests whether the journey it describes actually works, using the only published numbers available for that journey.

    Critical Finding

    On the only published assumption about ALTO’s service span — departures from 6 am — the first train of the day leaves Peterborough roughly 35 minutes too late to get Nina to a clinical placement. Nursing students take handover on the ward at 06:45. To be there, she needs to leave Peterborough around 05:25. She drives, exactly as she does today, which is the constraint the vignette says ALTO removes.

    On cost, the corridor’s own survey data puts willingness to pay for a Peterborough–Toronto trip at C$31 — the lowest value of any city pair on the entire route. Applying the published fare rule, two return trips a week comes to roughly $149–$178 weekly, or somewhere between a quarter and a half of what a part-time clinical teaching post pays after tax. ALTO itself discloses no fare anywhere in its 83 pages.

    And Nina is already inside the forecast she is meant to justify. The same research programme projects 269 daily boardings from Peterborough in every direction combined — about one fifth of a single 1,300-seat departure.

    The document under examination
    Canada’s Moment: The Economic Opportunity of High-Speed Rail
    ALTO, August 2026 — 83 pages. The Nina vignette appears at page 17.
    Read ALTO’s report
    The Market

    How many people make Nina’s trip?

    The most-cited independent study of corridor demand — High-Speed Rail in Canada, from Transportation Research at McGill — publishes a station-by-station table of projected daily boardings. It is the only public breakdown of its kind.

    The Peterborough row reads: 181 people a day to Toronto, 36 to Ottawa, 27 to Montréal, 9 to Trois-Rivières, 16 to Québec City. Total: 269 daily boardings — every direction, every trip purpose, everyone.

    269
    projected daily boardings at Peterborough, all destinations combined
    McGill, Prospective Daily Boarding table
    C$31
    willingness to pay, Peterborough to Toronto — the lowest of any pair on the corridor
    McGill, Willingness to Pay table
    35 min
    how much too late the first train is for a 7 am clinical start
    Initiative calculation, see below

    For scale: an ALTO departure of two coupled eight-car trainsets seats 1,300 people. Peterborough’s entire daily outbound demand is about one fifth of a single departure.

    Peterborough council was told the corridor would carry up to 72 trains a day. That is a corridor figure, not a Peterborough figure — and McGill’s own service design runs an express Toronto–Montréal train that does not stop at Peterborough at all. But even if a third of those 72 trains stopped, 269 boardings spread across 24 stopping trains works out to about eleven people per train.

    Three things should be said about this number before it is used. It is survey-derived stated preference, not observed demand — people saying what they think they would do. It is McGill’s projection, not ALTO’s: ALTO forecasts roughly 2.7 times McGill’s corridor total, and scaling Peterborough proportionally would give around 480 a day to Toronto rather than 181. And the source table contains a visible oddity — 886 people arriving in Peterborough from Toronto against 181 leaving for it, a fivefold asymmetry that is almost certainly a survey artefact rather than a real pattern. None of that changes the order of magnitude, and none of it is what breaks the scenario.

    The Timetable

    Clinical teaching starts at seven in the morning

    This is the part of the scenario that cannot be rescued, and it has nothing to do with money.

    Nursing students on a day-shift clinical placement take handover on the ward at 07:00. They are expected there at about 06:45. An instructor supervising them arrives before that. This is not a detail of one hospital’s policy — it is how bedside clinical education works, because it follows the shift.

    ALTO has published no timetable at all. The only public assumption about its service span is in the McGill financial analysis, which models departures between 6 am and 9 pm. Work backwards from a 06:45 ward start on that assumption:

    What the job requiresWhat the service offers
    06:45 — on the ward for handover
    06:15 — leave Union Station by transit
    06:10 — train arrives Toronto
    05:25 — train must leave Peterborough     		06:00 — earliest assumed departure

    On a 6 am train she reaches Union around 06:50 and a downtown hospital around 07:15 — a quarter of an hour after her students have taken handover without her.
    The first train of the day Leaves 35 minutes too late

    To teach a morning clinical placement, Nina drives — leaving Peterborough around five, exactly as she would today. The constraint the vignette says ALTO removes is the one thing ALTO doesn’t touch.

    One honest qualification. If Nina were teaching classroom or simulation-lab sessions rather than bedside clinical supervision, later start times are possible and this objection weakens considerably. The report describes a nurse with decades of experience in clinical practice, invited to help train the next generation — which in nursing education means supervision on a unit, at shift change.

    The Fare

    What the trip costs, and what the job pays

    ALTO discloses no fare, no average ticket price, and no revenue per passenger anywhere in Canada’s Moment. The only published basis for estimating one is McGill’s: a willingness-to-pay survey, with the financial analysis setting the standard fare at 1.2 times willingness to pay.

    For Peterborough–Toronto, willingness to pay is C$31 — the lowest single value in the entire matrix, lower than every other city pair on the corridor. Applying the published rule:

    Nina’s faresNina’s pay
    Round trip: $74–$89
    Two return trips a week: $149–$178
    A 26-week teaching year: $3,870–$4,620

    Before parking at the station, driving to it, or two TTC fares a day.     		An eight-hour clinical day at Ontario rates: $280–$440 gross
    Two days a week: $560–$880 gross

    Pay figures are from salary aggregators and are indicative only.
    Fare as a share of take-home pay Roughly one quarter to one half

    The vignette describes someone taking a part-time post to supplement her income. On the corridor’s own published fare basis, getting to the job would consume between a quarter and a half of what the job pays. For the person described, that is the difference between an offer worth accepting and one that isn’t.

    And it isn’t cheaper than driving

    Driving
    Fuel alone, 280 km round trip: about $36. Fuel plus wear at roughly 25¢/km: about $70. Hospital-district parking: $15–$25. All in: $50–$95.
    ALTO
    Fare $74–$89, plus station parking and two TTC fares. All in: $85–$110.

    The train costs more than the car for this journey, arrives too late for the shift, and still requires the car to reach the station.

    The Journey

    Door to door, the saving is ten to thirty minutes

    The corridor headline — journey times cut in half — is calculated on long city pairs, where the train’s cruising speed dominates the trip. Peterborough to Toronto is about 140 kilometres. On a leg that short, getting to and from the stations dominates instead.

    Driving todayWith ALTO
    Peterborough to a downtown Toronto hospital, door to door:

    1 hour 45 minutes to 2 hours 30, depending on the 401.     		Drive to station 15–25 min · park, walk, wait 15–20 min · train 40–50 min · Union to hospital 20–30 min

    1 hour 30 minutes to 2 hours 05
    Door-to-door saving About 10 to 30 minutes each way

    Real, but not a transformation — and it disappears entirely if she has to drive anyway to make a seven o’clock start.

    Station siting makes it worse rather than better. ALTO’s own materials point to a site outside Peterborough’s built-up area, and the McGill survey found that Peterborough respondents themselves prefer a car-accessible station away from downtown, near a highway or park-and-ride. Wherever it lands, Nina keeps the car. (Siting is unresolved; a downtown station would improve these timings.)

    The Pricing

    Revenue management points straight at her

    ALTO’s published FAQ states that the project plans to use revenue management — as most airlines and high-speed operators do — to match fares with demand and available seats, with the objective of maximising seat occupancy.

    Yield management prices Nina highest

    Airline-style pricing charges the most for peak, predictable, inflexible travel. Nina travels at peak, on fixed days, to a timetable set by a teaching term she cannot move. She is not the traveller who gets the cheap seat — she is the traveller the cheap seat is withheld from.

    Her city pair is the least valuable on the corridor

    An operator facing a $31 willingness to pay on a short leg and $110 on Toronto–Québec City has an obvious commercial answer, and it is not more Peterborough stops. The scenario depends on a pricing decision that runs against the operator’s stated pricing strategy.

    The Circle

    Nina is already inside the forecast she is meant to justify

    The vignette is offered as an illustration of what high-speed rail makes possible — a benefit the project would create. But the 181 figure comes from asking Peterborough residents how often they would use high-speed rail if it existed.

    The model has already counted the Ninas. There are 181 of them a day, in every trip purpose combined: commuters, visitors, shoppers, students, patients, people going to appointments, people going to the airport, tourists. The illustration does not add to the forecast. It is a description of one person inside it.

    That matters for how the vignette should be read. It is not evidence of demand. It is a portrait of a member of a demand estimate that the same body of research puts at a fifth of one trainload.

    In Fairness

    What this brief is not saying

    The vignette isn’t dishonest

    People like Nina existA faster, more reliable connection would genuinely help some of them. The objection is to the weight a single illustration is asked to carry in an economic case.
    A Peterborough station may be justified on other groundsRegional equity, development around the station, network structure. This brief addresses only whether this scenario demonstrates what it is offered to demonstrate.
    The report is candid elsewhereIts ridership figures are labelled “up to,” and its own tables are headed “upper estimate.” The vignette is where those qualifiers stop applying.

    And the limits of what we can show

    The fares are McGill’s, not ALTO’sALTO has published no fare. If its eventual fare is lower, the affordability arithmetic changes — and nobody can check, because the number does not exist.
    The 6 am service span is an assumptionIt is McGill’s modelling assumption, not an ALTO commitment. ALTO has published no timetable, so the clock test uses the only published assumption available.
    The pay range is indicativeOntario clinical instructor rates here come from salary aggregators and should be replaced with a collective-agreement figure.
    What Would Settle It

    Four questions

    1. What time does the first train leave Peterborough?

    Any service beginning at 6 am cannot deliver anyone to a seven o’clock shift change anywhere in Toronto. Hospitals, factories and construction sites all start before the corridor does.

    2. How many of the 72 daily trains stop at Peterborough?

    The figure given to Peterborough council was a corridor total. The station’s actual frequency has never been published.

    3. What is the fare?

    The scenario’s plausibility rests entirely on a number that appears nowhere in the 83 pages that contain the scenario.

    4. Was this scenario tested against the ridership model, or written independently of it?

    The corridor’s own survey data puts Nina’s entire market — Peterborough to Toronto, all purposes — at 181 people a day.

    Sources

    Primary documents

    1.
    ALTO, Canada’s Moment: The Economic Opportunity of High-Speed Rail, August 2026, 83 pp. The Nina vignette appears at p. 17 under “What changes for Canadians.” Ridership and route described in the executive summary; benefit tables at pp. 60 and 72. altotrain.ca (PDF)
    2.
    Zhang, B., Negm, H., & El-Geneidy, A. (2026). High-Speed Rail in Canada: Insights from a corridorwide survey and a financial analysis. Transportation Research at McGill, McGill University. Daily boardings at section I.3; willingness to pay at section I.4; fare rule, service span and fleet assumptions at section II. tram.mcgill.ca (PDF)
    3.
    ALTO, “Frequently Asked Questions,” altotrain.ca — statement of intent to use revenue management to match fares with demand and available seats. altotrain.ca
    4.
    Deny Sullivan, “High Speed Rail: Ridership forecasting,” 30 April 2026 — secondary commentary that first drew attention to the Peterborough rows and the directional asymmetry in the McGill boarding table. Substack
    5.
    Peterborough City Council resolution coverage, kawarthaNOW, 24 March 2026 — source of the “up to 72 trains per day” figure presented to council. kawarthanow.com
    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative  ·  citizenresearch.ca  ·  Corridor Communities Brief  ·  August 2026
    Independent, non-partisan research on the proposed Toronto–Quebec City high-speed rail corridor.

  • Would an Alto stop help kingston

    Would an ALTO Stop Help Kingston?

    Kingston has one of the busiest stations on the network. The question that matters is not whether it gets a stop, but whether a stop would leave more people riding the train, or fewer.

    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Policy Brief · July 2026
    ⚠ What has been said, and what has not been published

    On 22 July 2026 ALTO’s chief executive, Martin Imbleau, told CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning that Kingston will probably get a station, and that most ALTO trains would pass through without stopping.1 Neither the timetable nor the location of the station has been published.

    Those two missing facts are exactly the ones that decide the outcome. This brief therefore tests the range: today’s railway, a faster conventional railway using the existing station, and ALTO with a station either inside the city or a twenty‑seven‑minute drive north of it, at normal fares and at fares 25 per cent higher. Every number that goes into the model is listed, so any of them can be argued with.

    The short answer

    Of the options tested, only one leaves Kingston with more rail trips than it has today: a faster conventional railway serving the existing station, at about 12 per cent more. The best ALTO case — a station inside the city, at normal fares — roughly matches today. Every other ALTO case comes out below today’s service, by 8 to 17 per cent.

    The reason is simple. Speed is only one part of what makes a train trip worth taking. ALTO’s faster run to Toronto is worth about 10 per cent more trips on its own. But cutting the number of daily stops from eighteen to eight gives that back. Charging 25 per cent more gives it back again. Moving the station twenty‑seven minutes north of the city costs another 6 to 8 points on top.

    Running more trains cannot rescue it by itself. Even at eighteen stops a day, matching what Kingston has now, an out‑of‑town station at a premium fare still comes out around 9 per cent below today. And about 8 per cent of Kingston’s trips — Belleville, Brockville, Cobourg, Napanee, Oshawa — have no ALTO equivalent at any frequency, because high‑speed trains do not stop at those places.

    Download
    Kingston’s ALTO Ridership Analysis — Full Brief (PDF)
    Full method, all parameters, sensitivity ranges and break‑even tables
    Download PDF
    The Comparison

    Six versions of Kingston’s railway

    The table below is the whole brief in one place. The first row is what Kingston has today. The second is a faster conventional railway from the same station. The last four are ALTO, differing only in where the station sits and what the ticket costs.

    +12%
    faster conventional railway, existing station, same number of trains, normal fares
    the only option that grows ridership
    0%
    best ALTO case: station in town, normal fares, eight stops a day
    matches today, does not beat it
    −17%
    ALTO station 27 minutes north, eight stops a day, fares 25% higher
    central case for an out‑of‑town station

    Table 1 · Headline comparison

    OptionTo TorontoStops a dayFare premiumAnnual tripsChange
    Today’s service135 min18none450,000—
    Faster conventional railway, existing station95 min18none502,000+12%
    ALTO, station in town80 min8none449,0000%
    ALTO, station in town80 min8+25%403,000−10%
    ALTO, 27 min north80 min8none416,000−8%
    ALTO, 27 min north80 min8+25%376,000−17%

    All four ALTO rows assume eight stops a day and that today’s conventional service is withdrawn. They differ only in where the station is and what the ticket costs. No fare structure for intermediate stations has been published, so both possibilities are shown rather than assumed. The faster conventional railway is the 240 km/h new‑build line proposed under the High Performance Rail framework, serving the existing station.

    Starting Point

    Why Kingston already rides the train

    Kingston’s place among the busiest stations on the network gets cited as the reason it should have a high‑speed stop. But what produces that ridership decides whether a different kind of station would reproduce it. Four things do most of the work, and a high‑speed alignment north of the city removes two of them.

    It gets two sets of trains, not one

    Kingston sits halfway along the Toronto–Montréal mainline, and the Toronto–Ottawa trains use the same track as far as Brockville. So Kingston collects two timetables instead of one, and ends up with a level of service beaten only by the three biggest cities on the corridor. Frequency matters to ridership on its own, quite apart from speed: in intercity rail, a 10 per cent increase in service typically brings 4 to 7 per cent more trips.

    The station serves a region, not a city

    Napanee, Gananoque, Amherstview and the western Thousand Islands have no intercity rail of their own, so people drive to Kingston to catch the train. Ridership credited to a city of 132,485 is actually generated by an area several times larger; the Kingston census metropolitan area is 172,546.6

    The population is unusually inclined to take the train

    Some thirty‑nine thousand post‑secondary students study in a city of 132,485: Queen’s enrols 32,585, St. Lawrence College about 4,000 full‑time equivalents at its Kingston campus, and the Royal Military College of Canada 2,418.5 That is about twenty‑nine students for every hundred residents — against roughly twenty‑three in Sherbrooke and twenty‑one in Guelph, the two Canadian cities most often set beside Kingston on this measure.7 Many come from the Toronto and Ottawa regions and travel without a car. Kingston also has a large retired population, for whom avoiding the highway is the point of the trip, and an unusually high share of hospital, university, military and public‑sector jobs where travel is expensed and defaults to rail.

    But that ridership is hard to charge a premium for

    This travel is not spread evenly. It piles up at term boundaries, Thursday and Sunday afternoons, reading weeks and holidays, and it creates a matching flow of families travelling to Kingston. These are the travellers most sensitive to how often trains run and how far the station is from where they are going, and the least able to just drive instead. They are also the least profitable: peaked, price‑sensitive, and largely outside the weekday business hours a high‑speed operation’s revenue depends on.

    Two things worth being clear about

    The ridership figure itself is not published. Kingston’s standing as one of the busiest stations rests on statements by the operator and the Minister, not on released station‑level data. That is the first item on the list of things that should be published, at the end of this brief.

    Existing demand is not the same as new demand. Busy today proves Kingston already travels by train. It does not prove that a different station would generate additional trips. Only new trips add ridership to the corridor.

    There is also no flight from Kingston to Toronto. Elsewhere, high‑speed rail wins its premium passengers off aircraft. In Kingston those passengers are already on the train, so there is nobody to convert. Extra trips can only come out of cars, or be created from nothing.

    Both of the things that built Kingston’s ridership — frequent trains, and a station within the city, roughly ten minutes from the core and the university — are the two things a high‑speed alignment north of the city takes away. That is what the model is built to test.

    Method

    How the numbers were worked out

    Every trip is priced in minutes. Add up the time on the train, the time getting to and from the station at each end, the waiting created by having fewer trains, and the fare converted into minutes using what an hour is worth to that kind of traveller. Time spent driving to a station or standing on a platform counts for more than time sitting on a moving train, because people dislike it more. Journeys that involve changing trains carry an allowance for the change. That matters for one market in particular: ALTO reaches Montréal from Kingston by way of Ottawa, so some of those journeys involve a change, where a direct lakeshore railway does not.

    That total is the real cost of the trip. If it goes up, fewer people travel. If it goes down, more do. The response used here is roughly one for one: make the total 10 per cent better and you get about 10 per cent more trips.

    Travellers are split into four destinations and four types, each divided by whether they have a car available: thirty‑two groups, each worked out separately and then added up. That matters because a student without a car and an expensed public‑sector traveller react to a distant station in completely different ways.

    Table 2 · Everything the model assumes

    InputValue used
    Trips today450,000 a year through the station (tested from 400,000 to 550,000)
    Where people goToronto 58%, Ottawa 22%, Montréal 12%, other corridor stations 8%
    Who travelsStudents 30%, seniors and leisure 25%, public sector 20%, other 25%
    Share without a carStudents 85%, seniors and leisure 50%, public sector 15%, other 20%
    Worth of an hour$14, $20, $48 and $24 respectively, in the same order
    Time on the trainToday 135 / 120 / 160 min; ALTO 80 / 45 / 105 min (Toronto / Ottawa / Montréal)
    Getting to the stationExisting station 10 min by car, 20 by transit; ALTO 27 by car, 35 by shuttle
    How that time is weighted1.5 times if a car is available, 2.0 times if not
    WaitingHalf the gap between trains, weighted at 0.5, across a fifteen‑hour day
    ALTO fare premium25% in the central case; 0% and 40% also tested
    Sensitivity of demandOne for one in the central case (tested from 0.8 to 1.2)

    Far‑end access time is held identical in every scenario, which is a conservative choice: it gives ALTO the benefit of the doubt at the Toronto and Ottawa ends.

    Two possible futures for today’s trains

    Every service level is tested twice, because the answer depends less on ALTO than on what happens to the service Kingston already has.

    Replacement

    ALTO becomes Kingston’s rail service to Toronto, Ottawa and Montréal, and conventional service is withdrawn or cut below a useful level. Trips to Belleville, Brockville, Cobourg, Napanee and Oshawa lose their train altogether.

    Both together

    Today’s service keeps running at present frequency and ALTO is added on top. Travellers pick whichever is cheaper in total, and only the improvement over the better of the two creates new trips.

    What is assumed rather than known

    Four inputs are estimates, not published data: the number of trips today, where those trips go, ALTO’s journey times (the alignment for this stretch has not been published), and where the station would be. All four appear on the list at the end of this brief. The model also applies a constant response to a very large change in trip cost, which is at the outer edge of where this method behaves well. The direction of the results is solid. The exact sizes are indicative.

    Result One

    Where the speed gain goes

    Start with today’s service and change one thing at a time. This is the clearest way to see why a faster train can still end up with fewer passengers.

    Table 3 · One change at a time

    StepAnnual tripsChangeEffect of this step
    Today’s service, as it runs450,000——
    Cut the Toronto run to 80 minutes, change nothing else496,000+10%+10 pts
    Cut stops from 18 a day to 8449,0000%−10 pts
    Add a 25 per cent fare premium403,000−10%−10 pts
    Move the station 27 minutes north376,000−17%−6 pts

    The second row is the entire value of high‑speed running time at Kingston: about 10 per cent. Each of the three things that come with it takes back as much or more. This calculation already leaves out trips to other corridor stations, which a high‑speed line cannot serve at any frequency.

    Result Two

    More trains cannot fix it on its own

    Suppose the number of stops is the thing that gets negotiated. Hold the station twenty‑seven minutes north and the fare 25 per cent higher, and vary how often ALTO calls.

    Table 4 · ALTO at a station 27 minutes north

    Stops a dayAnnual tripsChangeRangeIf today’s trains stay
    6359,000−20%−17% to −24%0%
    8376,000−17%−13% to −21%0%
    10387,000−14%−10% to −18%+0.2%
    18408,000−9%−4% to −14%+1.6%
    12 (six each way)394,000−12%−9% to −17%+0.5%
    16 (eight each way)404,000−10%−6% to −15%+1.3%
    20 (ten each way)411,000−9%−3% to −14%+1.9%

    The range covers the whole plausible span of the model’s assumptions, at a 25 per cent fare premium. The bottom three rows read six, eight and ten as stops each way, which is the most generous reading available. It improves the result without changing the sign. The last column is the “both together” case, where today’s service survives: ALTO then adds almost nothing, because travellers only switch when it is genuinely better for them.

    The fare premium matters more than the timetable

    Table 5 · What moves the answer

    Stops a dayNormal faresFares +25%Fares +40%Station 25 min outStation 45 min out
    6−12%−20%−24%−17%−23%
    8−8%−17%−21%−13%−20%
    10−5%−14%−19%−10%−17%

    The last two columns hold the fare premium at 25 per cent and vary the drive from the station to downtown; the central case is 27 minutes. Notice that going from normal fares to a 25 per cent premium costs more than doubling the distance to the station.

    How many trains would it actually take?

    The more useful question is what it would take for an out‑of‑town ALTO station to be no worse for Kingston than the service it already has. At normal fares the answer is nine stops a day for everyone. At a 25 per cent premium, the answer falls apart.

    Table 6 · Daily stops needed just to match today, Toronto trips

    Who is travellingAt normal faresAt a 25% premium
    Public sector and institutional (expensed)913
    Other business and leisure927
    Seniors, leisure, visiting family948
    Students and young adults9no number works

    Forty‑eight stops a day is a train every twenty minutes all day. For students, no frequency at all makes up for a distant station plus a premium ticket, because their time is worth less than the fare increase costs them.

    One case runs the other way and should be said plainly: expensed public‑sector travel between Kingston and Ottawa is better off under ALTO in every scenario tested, because today’s service on that pair is slow and indirect. It is a real gain, and it is a small share of the total.

    Under the friendliest assumptions available — normal fares, a station twenty‑five minutes out, today’s trains kept running alongside, ten stops a day — the best figure the model will produce for an out‑of‑town Kingston station is about +8 per cent. Getting there means giving up the premium pricing the revenue case depends on everywhere else.

    Result Three

    What if you just made today’s trains faster?

    Now reverse the test. Keep the existing station, keep eighteen stops a day, keep normal fares, and change nothing but speed on the existing route.

    Table 7 · Speed alone, from the existing station

    Toronto journey timeTime savedAnnual tripsChange
    135 min, as it runs today—450,000—
    118 min, reliable 160 to 177 km/h13%471,000+4.6%
    95 min, a 240 km/h conventional railway30%502,000+11.6%
    80 min, upper bound for this station41%525,000+16.6%

    The last row applies high‑speed running time to the existing station. It is there to separate speed from station location, frequency and fare, not as a proposal.

    The comparison that matters

    Eighty minutes to Toronto from the existing station, eighteen stops a day, normal fares: about +17 per cent. The same eighty minutes from a station twenty‑seven minutes out of town, eight stops a day, fares 25 per cent higher: about −17 per cent.

    The time on the train is identical. The two outcomes are thirty‑four points apart, and every one of those points is station location, frequency and fare.

    Speed gives diminishing returns

    Roughly speaking, every 1 per cent cut in journey time buys about 0.4 per cent more trips. A 30 per cent time saving buys about 12 per cent more passengers. For most of Kingston’s travellers, time on the train is a minority of what the trip really costs them — fare, getting to the station and waiting make up the rest, and speed does nothing about any of those. The gain concentrates where an hour is worth most: on a 95‑minute conventional railway, public‑sector travel grows about 17 per cent, business and leisure 13, seniors and leisure 12, students 10.

    A conservative figure, and a warning

    These figures are cautious. The response to journey time implied here is weaker than the rail literature usually finds, because the fare term in the calculation dampens it. Using a more standard figure, the same 30 per cent time saving would give about +22 per cent rather than +12. Table 7 should be read as a floor, with the 95‑minute case plausibly worth anywhere from +10 to +25 per cent. The comparisons earlier in the brief are unaffected, because they compare like with like.

    The warning is that fares erode the gain fast in either direction. Raising tickets 10 per cent to help pay for an upgrade cuts the benefit from about +12 per cent to about +7 — two‑fifths of the speed gain eaten by a 10 per cent fare rise. That is the same mechanism that sinks the high‑speed cases, working here on the alternative. It is an argument for funding an upgrade from capital rather than from the farebox.

    What It Means

    A stop is not the same as service

    Three things set whether Kingston gains or loses, and speed is not one of them: how far the station is from where people are actually going, what the ticket costs, and whether today’s trains survive. Frequency cannot rescue the result on its own. At eighteen stops a day, matching today, an out‑of‑town station at a premium fare still comes out around 9 per cent down.

    A public debate about whether Kingston gets a station, and how many trains stop there, is a debate about the wrong variables.

    The two things ALTO has said do not fit together

    A station justified by strong ridership, but served by a minority of trains, has its timetable set by the express service rather than by the demand used to justify it. Table 6 shows why that is not a workable compromise: the frequency needed to make the station work at a premium fare is far above what an express pattern tolerates. The usual international answer is two tiers, express and semi‑fast, which needs somewhere for fast trains to overtake at the intermediate station. Whether the cost estimate includes that overtaking capacity is a question with two possible answers, and both are informative.

    A conventional railway does better here

    A new conventional railway built for 240 km/h, running typically at 200, serves Kingston without moving the station, without the fare premium high‑speed operation needs, and without cutting the number of trains that stop. It captures a smaller share of the theoretical time saving and a larger share of the ridership. That is the trade the tables above quantify.

    What Would Change the Answer

    Three commitments, and four documents

    None of this is a prediction that a Kingston station must fail. The results turn on assumptions, and those assumptions are all things the project could settle.

    Would help
    A station much closer to the core, or a frequent connection to it that is committed and timed to the trains rather than hoped for.
    Would help most
    Normal fares on Kingston journeys. Table 6 shows this is the single decisive variable. A premium fare is what makes the arithmetic unrecoverable for students, seniors and leisure travellers.
    Would help
    A binding commitment that service on the existing line is maintained, which turns the replacement case into the both‑together case, plus a published timetable, so frequency becomes a fact instead of an assumption.

    Four things that should be published

    Before any of these figures are treated as more than an order of magnitude, four inputs should be replaced with real data:

    Not published
    Station‑level boardings and destinations. This alone would settle both the number of trips today and where they go. A matter for the operator.
    Not published
    The calling pattern assumed for the Toronto–Ottawa segment — how many trains actually stop, and where.
    Not published
    The fare structure for intermediate stations. On the evidence above, this matters more than anything else on the list.
    Not published
    The station location, with the assumed travel time from it to downtown Kingston.

    The first sits with the operator. The other three sit with the project and its joint project office, whose report and business case remain unpublished.

    The finding that matters

    It is not that a Kingston station would fail. It is that the service Kingston already has is the benchmark the project has never been asked to beat — and on the assumptions set out here, it does not beat it.

    How to read the numbers on this page

    Every number here other than the two quoted statements is output from our own model, built on the parameters listed in the full brief. Those parameters are assumptions, not measurements, and the four listed above as needing publication are the ones that move the result. The model is set out so that any parameter can be replaced and the arithmetic re-run: the direction of the findings holds across the ranges tested, the exact magnitudes are indicative.

    Where ALTO has not published something — a timetable, a station location, a fare — we say so rather than inferring it, and we make no claim about why it has not been published.

    Sources
    1.
    CBC News, “Kingston probably getting high-speed rail stop, says Alto CEO,” 22 July 2026 — interview with Martin Imbleau on CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning. He says Kingston will probably receive a station, citing ridership, and that most ALTO trains would pass through without stopping, along with Laval and Trois-Rivières, to preserve express service between the larger cities. cbc.ca
    2.
    City of Kingston, Council Meeting Minutes 2026-06, 17 February 2026, Resolution 2026-73, carried as amended 9–2 — support for a southern route contingent on Highway 401 corridor development and on a stop being added in Kingston, as close to the urban core as possible. Examined in the companion brief Which Trains Stop in Kingston?
    3.
    Elasticity ranges: intercity frequency elasticities of +0.4 to +0.7 and journey-time elasticities of −0.6 to −0.9 are the conventional ranges in the rail demand literature, used here as reference values rather than as findings of this brief. The generalised-cost elasticity of −1.0 central, banded −0.8 to −1.2, is our own choice and is tested across that band throughout.
    4.
    Current journey times are as timetabled by VIA Rail. ALTO journey times are our assumption, since no alignment has been published for the Toronto–Ottawa segment.
    5.
    Queen’s University, 2025–26 Enrolment Report, as at 1 November 2025 — 28,561 full-time students, plus 1,704 part-time undergraduate, 1,389 part-time graduate and 931 online undergraduate, giving 32,585 in total. St. Lawrence College reports about 4,000 full-time equivalents at its Kingston campus. Royal Military College of Canada: 1,209 full-time and 587 part-time undergraduate, 276 full-time and 346 part-time graduate students, giving 2,418 in total. RMC’s part-time and graduate enrolment includes serving officers studying at a distance, so it is counted here on the same all-enrolment basis as Queen’s rather than as a resident population; on full-time enrolment alone the city total is about 38,000, and the ratio is about twenty-nine per hundred either way. macleans.ca queensu.ca (PDF)
    6.
    Statistics Canada, 2021 Census of Population — City of Kingston (census subdivision) 132,485; Kingston census metropolitan area 172,546, comprising the City of Kingston, South Frontenac, Frontenac Islands and Loyalist Township. statcan.gc.ca
    7.
    Comparators, on the same all-institutions basis where the data allow. Sherbrooke: about 40,000 students across eight institutions in a city of 172,950, roughly twenty-three per hundred residents. Guelph: 29,617 full-time equivalents at the University of Guelph in a city of 143,740, roughly twenty-one per hundred — a figure that excludes the Conestoga College campus and is therefore a floor. ocul.on.ca
    Download Full Brief
    Kingston’s ALTO Ridership Analysis (PDF)
    Full method, all thirty‑two market segments, sensitivity bands and break‑even calculations
    Download PDF
    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative  ·  citizenresearch.ca  ·  Policy Brief  ·  July 2026
    Independent, non‑partisan research on the proposed Toronto–Quebec City high‑speed rail corridor.