Tag: Kingston Subdivision

  • Where you put a railway

    Coalition for Better Rail · ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · The HPR Research Report

    Where you put a railway decides almost everything else

    Build beside a highway that already exists, or cut a new line through open country. That single choice sets the carbon, the habitat damage, the disruption during construction and the opposition — and it sets the cost too.

    Chapter 5 · The HPR Research Report · September 2026

    −15 Mt

    Carbon removed over fifty years by the brownfield route, on our model

    +15 Mt

    Carbon added over the same period by the greenfield route

    29 v 65

    Community friction scores, brownfield against greenfield

    The environmental case for a railway is usually made with one number: the carbon saved by taking people out of cars and planes. That number matters, and we deal with it first. But the bigger environmental fact about a railway is decided before a single train runs — by where the line is put.

    A route that follows an existing transport corridor inherits ground that has already been cleared, drained, fenced and cut through. A route driven across open country creates a new line of disturbance where there was none. The same choice governs the human side: whether a project takes its land from beside a highway people already live next to, or from farms and communities that never expected a railway.

    This page covers the four consequences that follow from that one decision. On each of them the two routes differ not by a margin but in kind.

    1. Carbon: the two routes have opposite signs

    Over fifty years the brownfield route is a net removal of carbon. The greenfield route, measured the same way, is a net emitter. Not smaller — opposite.

    Three things drive that. Construction carbon is the one-off emission of building the line. Building at grade beside an existing highway needs no tunnelling through the Canadian Shield, no deep cuts, and no treatment of the unstable marine clay south of Ottawa. Our estimate is 4.9 Mt for the brownfield line against 14.9 Mt for the greenfield one — roughly three times more.

    Running the trains turns out to be almost a rounding error either way. On Ontario’s grid, electric traction at 200 km/h emits about 6 grams of carbon per passenger-kilometre.

    Freight is what decides it. A passenger line built beside the existing freight railway frees capacity on that railway. Every long-haul truck that moves off Highway 401 onto rail saves about a quarter of a tonne of carbon on a typical haul. At 3,000 trucks a day — about eight freight trains — that is roughly 13.5 Mt over fifty years. The greenfield route has no freight function, so it cannot claim any of it.

    Fifty-year carbon balance — our estimate, central case
    What countsBrownfield (electric)Greenfield
    Building it+4.9 Mt+14.9 Mt
    Running the trains+1.3 Mt+5.4 Mt
    Roads closed by fencing—+1.7 Mt
    Trucks moved to rail−13.5 Mtnone
    Passengers out of cars−7.9 Mt−7 Mt
    Net over 50 years−15.2 Mt+15 Mt

    Both columns are Initiative estimates, not published figures. A dash means the project structurally has no such term. The two routes differ in length — roughly 485 km against roughly 1,000 km — which is itself part of the comparison, because the longer line is the heavier one to build.

    Why the freight credit matters so much

    The carbon saved by taking a passenger out of a car shrinks every year as more cars become electric. By the 2050s it is close to nothing. The carbon saved by taking a truck off the road and putting the load on a train does not shrink the same way, because trucks stay diesel far longer — and it grows as the electricity grid gets cleaner.

    So the brownfield route’s carbon case rests on something that strengthens with time. The greenfield route’s rests on something that weakens.

    That shows up most clearly in how long each takes to pay back its construction carbon. The brownfield line breaks even in 12 to 18 years and stays in credit after that, and the timing barely changes with passenger numbers because freight carries it. The greenfield line depends entirely on passengers: about 22 years at the ridership its reference class suggests, 39 years at a more central figure, and at low ridership it does not break even within fifty years at all.

    2. Habitat: a new barrier in the wrong place

    A railway is a barrier to animals. Where you put the barrier decides whether it cuts through habitat that is still whole, or adds one more strand to ground that is already crossed by a highway and a freight line.

    The greenfield alignment runs through or beside three of eastern Ontario’s most sensitive landscapes.

    The Frontenac Arch

    A billion-year-old granite ridge linking the Canadian Shield to the Adirondacks, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 2002, and the narrowest point on the wildlife corridor running from Algonquin to the Adirondacks. It holds Blanding’s turtle, the grey ratsnake, the eastern whip-poor-will and somewhere between half and two thirds of Canada’s cerulean warblers, along with fisher, black bear, moose and eastern wolf.

    Because it is already the tightest pinch-point in a continental corridor, a new barrier laid across it does disproportionate harm. It does not just disturb habitat; it narrows the last gap animals still move through.

    The Napanee Limestone Plain

    Alvar — flat limestone pavement with almost no soil, flooded in spring and parched in summer. It exists in only two places on Earth, the Great Lakes basin and the Baltic, and about 85 per cent of North America’s alvar is in Ontario. It supports part of Ontario’s remaining eastern loggerhead shrike population, a bird now down to a handful of nesting pairs province-wide.

    A brownfield route is not ecologically free. Its right-of-way still crosses natural land. The point is comparative: it adds a strand where a barrier already exists, rather than opening a fresh one through the ground that the biosphere designation exists to protect.

    We say that plainly because it matters. The corridor audit in Chapter 4 finds the brownfield spine still crosses about 41 per cent natural cover. It is not a route through nothing. It is a route through ground that a four-lane highway and a Class I freight main already run down.

    3. Construction: where the trucks go

    A 479-kilometre construction site has to be fed. The brownfield spine needs roughly 9.8 million tonnes of fill, ballast, track and concrete — about 20,400 tonnes for every kilometre built. Delivered entirely by road, that is around 390,000 loaded truck trips, running on the same Highway 401 the railway is being built beside, during the decade that highway is itself being widened.

    Britain has already run this experiment. HS2 moved more than 10 million tonnes of material by rail, and the reason it did is the instructive part: it was not a carbon measure. Local councils refused the lorry routes the project had planned. Moving material by train was how the works stayed consented.

    The honest size of the carbon saving

    Moving 60 to 80 per cent of the material by rail instead of road would avoid somewhere between 0.05 and 0.08 Mt of carbon. That is one to two per cent of the line’s construction emissions. It is a real saving and a small one, and the carbon case on this page does not rest on it.

    What it changes is something else: whether people along the route can live with the construction. That is the variable that decides whether a corridor gets built at all.

    And this is not a strategy a project can simply decide to adopt. It is a property of where the line is. A route beside an existing freight railway has yards at Belleville, Kingston, Brockville, Cornwall and Coteau available as railheads, and on the Ottawa legs runs on publicly owned track. A greenfield route through the Frontenac Arch has no railway to deliver to. Materials arrive by road on haul roads built for the purpose, and excavated rock leaves the same way, through the same rural communities.

    4. Communities: friction is priced into the cost

    We score this two ways. The Latent Friction Index measures the structural friction a route will generate, before any opposition has appeared. The Community Friction Index measures opposition that has actually materialised. On the forward measure the brownfield spine scores about 29 and the greenfield corridor about 65. On the realised measure the greenfield project has already reached 54, and is rising.

    This is not only a political point. In our reference-class cost model, community friction is a statistically significant predictor of cost escalation — it carries most of the explanatory power in what a kilometre actually costs to build, across the international sample. The friction a new corridor generates gets priced into the bill.

    A low-friction route is not just quieter. It is cheaper, and those are the same fact seen from two sides.

    The difference comes down to where the land is taken from. Both routes need new land; a railway cannot be laid inside a live highway. But land taken beside an existing highway and freight line is already fragmented, already severed, and already next to infrastructure. Land taken across open country is none of those things, and the people it is taken from had no prior relationship with the project.

    One thing that cuts the other way

    The margin beside Highway 401 that makes the brownfield route cheap is being consumed — by interchange development, logistics parks moving east, subdivisions at growth centres and utility lock-in. Chapter 4 puts the cost of waiting until the corridor fills in at around $20 billion, which would roughly halve the route’s benefit-cost ratio and erase the advantage that is the reason to prefer it.

    The brownfield option is the low-friction one, but only while the window is open.

    5. What the corridor could give back

    Everything above treats the corridor as something done to the land it crosses. There is a reciprocal question worth asking.

    Against the intuition that Ontario’s sun improves as you go south and west, the province’s strongest solar yields are in the east. Kingston records about 1,194 kilowatt-hours per installed kilowatt per year and Ottawa about 1,140, against roughly 1,096 for Toronto and 1,084 for London. The railway is proposed through the sunniest ground in southern Ontario — and developers noticed first. Four ten-megawatt solar farms stand within a few kilometres of the 401 around Ingleside alone — Rutley, Cornwall, David Brown and South Stormont, built between 2012 and 2015 — and at Edwardsburgh Cardinal a partnership including the Algonquins of Pikwàkanagàn First Nation is building the largest battery storage system in Canada.

    This matters for a reason that has nothing to do with electricity. A right-of-way takes a strip of land and pays for it once. A generation lease pays on the land that remains, every year, for decades. The awkward leftover parcels created by a railway are poor ground for crops and perfectly good ground for solar panels. The Rutley farm gives a sense of the scale: ten megawatts across about ninety acres.

    Being clear about the numbers

    The contracts that built the existing solar farms paid up to 44.3 cents a kilowatt-hour and are closed to new entrants. At today’s rates a ten-megawatt facility earns closer to a million dollars a year than the five to seven million those contracts paid. The existing arrays are a poor guide to what a new one is worth.

    A million a year through a lease and a tax roll is still a different thing from a single expropriation cheque.

    The limits deserve stating as plainly as the opportunity. Solar output peaks in summer and stops at night, while a railway’s demand is flat and year-round — so this is a commercial and community proposition, not a way to power trains. Provincial policy restricts ground-mount solar on prime farmland. Connection capacity governs what can actually be built. None of that is a reason to leave it unexamined; it is a reason to examine it while the route is still being decided, rather than after the land has been taken and the relationships have set.

    How to read the numbers on this page

    Figures attributed to a named source — Alto, HS2, the C.D. Howe Institute, Metrolinx, Environment and Climate Change Canada, the Treasury Board, Natural Resources Canada, UNESCO, or a named developer — are quoted from the full chapter’s source lists and can be checked there.

    Everything else is output from our own models: both columns of the carbon table, the freight credit, the breakeven years, the friction scores, the land-cover audit, the materials tonnage and the delay-escalation estimate. These are estimates built on stated assumptions, not measurements. The assumptions are set out in the full report so that any of them can be replaced and the arithmetic re-run.

    Where Alto has not published a figure, we say so rather than inferring one, and we make no claim about why any figure has not been published.

    Read the full chapter

    Chapter 5 — Environmental and Community Impact (PDF)

    Nineteen pages. The full lifecycle carbon account with its discount-rate sensitivity, the traction comparison including bi-mode trainsets, the species and habitat assessments, the materials-by-rail analysis against HS2 outturn, the friction indices, the corridor solar assessment, and the complete source lists for each section.

    Sources and notes

    1Discount rates: Metrolinx Business Case Manual Volume 2 (3.5 per cent); Environment and Climate Change Canada, social cost of greenhouse gas emissions (2 per cent near-term Ramsey rate); Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, Canadian Cost-Benefit Analysis Guide: Regulatory Proposals (8 per cent); US Office of Management and Budget Circular A-4, revised November 2023, in which the 7 per cent capital rate was withdrawn.
    2C.D. Howe Institute, All Aboard: The Benefits of Faster, More Frequent Passenger Trains between Ontario and Québec (D. Jones and T. Fariha), February 2025 — 3.5 per cent social discount rate over a 60-year appraisal, and the only published benefit analysis of this corridor.
    3Habitat: UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme, Frontenac Arch Biosphere Reserve; Birds Canada, cerulean warbler profile; COSEWIC and Environment and Climate Change Canada recovery strategies; Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas Canada, Napanee Limestone Plain (ON152); Wildlife Preservation Canada, eastern loggerhead shrike. Initiative assessments of the Frontenac Arch (A. Hyett) and the Napanee Limestone Plain (S. Moore and K. Hennige), March 2026.
    4Materials by rail: HS2 Ltd, Materials by Rail, HS2 Learning Legacy, and HS2 media releases 2020–2023; Crossrail Excavated Materials Story; Railway Association of Canada on rail fuel efficiency.
    5Solar: Natural Resources Canada photovoltaic potential data; Canada Energy Regulator market snapshot; Firelight Infrastructure Partners, Saturn Power and Clearlight Energy project data; The Energy Mix on the Skyview 2 storage project at Edwardsburgh Cardinal.
    Coalition for Better Rail  ·  ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative  ·  beyondalto.ca  ·  citizenresearch.ca  ·  The HPR Research Report · Chapter 5 Independent, non-partisan research on Canada’s proposed Toronto–Québec City high-speed rail corridor. This page is a plain-language summary of Chapter 5; the full chapter sets out the models, the tables and the complete source lists. Nothing on this page is a statement about the motives or conduct of any person or organisation. It is a comparison of two route choices and of what follows from each.

  • Where the line goes

    Coalition for Better Rail · ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · The HPR Research Report

    Where the line goes, and what it costs

    Pick the route first and the speed follows. Pick the speed first and the route picks itself — expensively.

    Chapter 4 · The HPR Research Report

    Every rail project has one decision that cannot be undone. Not the trains, not the timetable, not whether the line runs on diesel or electricity — all of those can be changed later. The route is the one that is fixed for a century. This chapter is about that decision: where an HPR line would run, why, and what it would cost.

    It also explains the single choice that separates the two proposals. ALTO decided on 300 km/h and then had to find ground straight enough to carry it. HPR starts from what the corridor already offers and lets the speed come out of that. The result is a railway that costs roughly a third as much per kilometre — and arrives about twenty-five minutes later.

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    Chapter 4: Route Alignment and Capital Cost (PDF)
    The full chapter, with the cost model, maps and sourcing
    Download PDF
    4.1 · The Window

    Is the corridor still available?

    Speed decides how straight a railway has to be, and the relationship is steep. A curve for 200 km/h needs a radius of about 1,900 metres. At 240 km/h it is about 2,700. At 300 km/h it is about 4,250 — nearer 7,000 for a comfortable ride. Anywhere in the 177–240 km/h band, those curves are gentle enough to follow a route that has already been cut through the landscape, easing the bends here and there. At 300 km/h the curves run for kilometres, and no amount of easing fits them alongside Highway 401 or the existing rail corridor. The line has to strike out across open country. That is physics, not preference.

    This is why the project’s own history matters. What became ALTO went into the procurement as VIA High Frequency Rail — a plan the government itself described as running at up to 200 km/h on dedicated track along mostly existing rights-of-way. The 300 km/h target that emerged is what closed the existing corridor off.

    The window is closing, but not mainly because of the highway

    The Highway 401 widening is the visible threat, but it is only the leading edge. What really closes the corridor is ordinary growth: commercial development at the interchanges, then logistics parks moving east from the GTA, then housing, then the utility corridors — hydro, gas, fibre, water — that lock in behind them.

    None of it reverses. A logistics park is not removed; a subdivision is not un-built; a utility corridor is not moved cheaply. Each step is fast and cheap to build and slow and expensive to undo. By late in the century the corridor that is open today is set solid, and a surface railway through it is no longer possible — only an elevated or tunnelled one, at a cost approaching ALTO’s.

    We put a number on what that closure would cost: roughly $42.6 billion, in a range of about $28 to $55 billion. It has three parts — farmland on the margin re-valued as developed land when it finally has to be bought ($2.6B); the jump from an at-grade build on open ground to elevated and tunnelled construction through built-up areas ($19.3B); and the value of the benefits lost during the decades of delay ($20.7B). The headline is that the cost of missing the window is about the same order as the cost of building the railway — and it is incurred by waiting, not by building.

    4.2 · The Route

    Take the speed the ground gives you

    Inside the Toronto–Ottawa–Montréal triangle the route has two parts. A spine of roughly 479 kilometres from Pickering Junction to Dorval, built and upgraded as a dedicated passenger route. And the Ottawa legs, about 200 kilometres of upgrades on track the public passenger operator already owns.

    In each stretch the line follows whichever existing corridor runs straighter — Highway 401 or the existing rail corridor — sitting beside it rather than on it, separated from road traffic throughout. The two run roughly parallel for most of the way, so the ground the railway follows is already a transport corridor rather than open farmland. No major tunnels, and only a limited number of viaducts.

    The reversal at the heart of the chapter

    ALTO fixes the speed and lets it dictate the route — which is exactly how the corridor came to be closed off. HPR does it the other way round: it takes the highest speed each stretch of corridor already offers, up to a 240 km/h ceiling, and never buys speed the ground does not give away free.

    Where the ground is generous, the trains go fast

    The dead-straight run along the St. Lawrence from Brockville to Cornwall, the riverside stretch to Coteau, the inland 401 across the Napanee plain — all support 240 km/h with routine curve easing alone.

    Where it isn’t, they go slower

    Through the Frontenac Arch, where the line follows the least-bad path the 1850s builders found through the Shield, and on the tight approaches through Durham and into Montréal, trains simply run slower. Buying speed there would mean buying tunnels, viaducts and a new right-of-way.

    One consequence matters for the costing: the whole spine is priced at the 200 km/h standard — conventional structures, curves near 1,900 metres. The stretches that can run faster are a bonus in service, not an extra cost to build. The cost model never pays for speed the corridor gives away.

    4.3–4.6 · The Cost

    What it would cost, and what we commit against

    The spine is priced two ways, and the difference between them is the discipline this whole report is built on.

    FigureWhat it means
    $19.0 billion
    as specified — about $40M per km    		What the 479 km diesel spine costs if everything goes to plan, grade separations included.
    $26.1 billion
    de-biased — about $54M per km    		What comparable projects have actually cost when things didn’t go to plan. This is the figure to commit against — not because this project is expected to overrun, but because comparable ones reliably have.
    +$3.1 billion
    electrification    		A separately priced option that can be deferred, rather than a fixed requirement. The line opens on diesel and electrifies when demand warrants.

    Adjusting for the record is not pessimism. The as-specified figure is what the corridor costs if everything goes right; the adjusted figure is what similar projects have actually cost when it didn’t. Committing against the second is the discipline ALTO never applied to itself.

    Why deferring electrification matters more than it sounds

    Eastern Ontario’s electricity system is already under active capacity assessment — the system operator is testing whether the existing grid can meet ordinary demand growth over the next two decades before any railway load is added. A 300 km/h electric line is a heavy new customer on exactly that system, and its electric design makes that load mandatory and up front.

    A diesel-first railway opens on the traction it carries with it. Electrification — lighter in any case at 200 km/h — follows once the grid has headroom and the ridership justifies it. The railway’s opening is not tied to the grid’s expansion timetable.

    Cold climate cuts the same way. Leda clay, karst and freeze–thaw are real hazards, and the international record shows what they can do: China’s Harbin–Dalian line ran about 25% over budget and carried a multi-year frost-heave speed restriction. But that is a 300 km/h record. At 200 km/h the tolerances are far more forgiving, and frost heave that would force a speed restriction on a high-speed line is a maintenance item on a slower one. The lower design speed buys a smaller penalty.

    4.7 · The Comparison

    Three and a half times the price per kilometre

    The chapter’s figures resolve into a single comparison. Measured the same way, the HPR spine costs about $40 million per kilometre. ALTO costs about $142 million per kilometre. Two railways, the same corridor, the same cities — one priced at roughly three and a half times the other for every kilometre of route.

    The gap splits roughly one-third engineering, two-thirds friction. About 35% is engineering complexity: a 300 km/h line across open country with its tunnels, viaducts and fresh cut through difficult ground, against a 200 km/h build that needs no major spine tunnels. The other 65% is corridor friction: the consultation, land-tenure and political burden of a new corridor, against a route that asks far less of the land and the people it crosses. The gap is not the product of one assumption. It is about a third from how the line is engineered and two-thirds from where it is put.

    RailwayCost per kilometre
    TGV Paris–Lyon~$26M — flat, low-friction early French high-speed line
    Tokaido Shinkansen~$35M — dense, high-utilisation Japanese line
    HPR spine~$40M — among the most efficiently delivered railways in the international record
    ALTO~$142M — above the international range
    4.8 · Journey Time

    What the speed difference actually buys

    Speeds are only interesting for what they add up to. Toronto Union to Montréal’s Gare Centrale, on an express stopping once at Kingston, works out at a little over three and a half hours.

    ServiceToronto–Montréal journey time
    VIA Rail today~5h00 — scheduled service on shared freight track
    VIA HFR base case, 177 km/h3h59–4h19 — the only journey time ever actually simulated for this corridor
    HPR express, Kingston stop~3h32 — estimated from segment speeds and corridor geometry
    ALTO, 300 km/h3h07 — ALTO’s published figure, a spreadsheet estimate rather than a simulation

    One caution and one conclusion. The caution is that our figure is an estimate of the same kind as ALTO’s — distance divided by speed, with allowances. Neither has been simulated, and we say so.

    The conclusion is that the honest gap between the two railways is about twenty-five minutes, and about nineteen against a non-stop run. ALTO buys that quarter of an hour at roughly three and a half times the capital cost per kilometre.

    Toronto–Ottawa works out at about 2h55 — the spine as far as Brockville, then the upgraded Ottawa leg — against roughly four and a quarter hours today. And the towns along the route gain proportionally more than the endpoints do, because they start from a slower and less frequent service: Cobourg in under an hour, Belleville in about 1h20, on a regional train calling at every station.

    4.9 · The Long View

    What the corridor is in 2125

    A rail corridor is not a project. It is an asset that lasts a century, and the decision taken now is the corridor the region lives with long after today’s arguments about cost and timetable are forgotten. The right test of a route is not only what it costs to build this decade, but what kind of corridor it leaves to the people who inherit it.

    That is why the questions in this chapter matter most. They are the irreversible ones. The trains, the traction and the timetable can all be changed later. The route cannot.

    Chapters 5 through 8 take these figures forward — into the environmental and community comparison, the ridership modelling, the operating economics, and the full cost-benefit and financial analysis.

    Coalition for Better Rail  ·  ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative  ·  citizenresearch.ca  ·  The HPR Research Report · Chapter 4
    Independent, non-partisan research on Canada’s proposed Toronto–Québec 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.

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

  • Which trains stop in kingston

    Which Trains Stop in Kingston?

    A probable station, an unpublished route, and the conditions Kingston City Council actually set.

    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Policy Brief · Published July 2026
    ⚠ New Statement: ALTO CEO on a Kingston Stop

    On 22 July 2026, ALTO chief executive Martin Imbleau told CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning that Kingston will probably receive a station, citing demand — It’s doable, the ridership is very strong — because Kingston is a large community. In the same interview he said that most ALTO trains would pass through Kingston without stopping, along with Laval and Trois-Rivières, in order to preserve express service between the larger cities. CBC News

    No alignment has been published for the segment that would carry the station. ALTO has said the Montréal–Ottawa route goes to public feedback this autumn, with the Toronto–Ottawa segment — the one containing Kingston — to follow.

    Critical Finding

    The two statements cannot both carry the weight assigned to them. If Kingston’s demand justifies building a station, it justifies serving it; if the timetable cannot absorb the stop, something other than the ridership case is driving the decision. But the more consequential question is not whether Kingston receives a platform. It is how many useful trains Kingston has the day the line opens, counting both operators — and on that question the announcement is silent.

    Kingston City Council’s support is not unconditional and never was. Resolution 2026-73, adopted 17 February 2026 by a vote of 9–2, makes support for a southern route contingent upon development along the Highway 401 corridor around the South Frontenac and Kingston region and on a new stop being added in Kingston. It further asks that the route and stop sit as close to the urban core as possible, and resolves that if there is no station in Kingston, council formally opposes the southern route. Of these, the 22 July statement addresses one, provisionally. The 401 contingency and the urban-core request are not addressed at all.

    Meanwhile the service Kingston already has is exposed from the other direction. Transport Canada’s 2025–26 estimates record funding to support the planning and eventual transfer of VIA Rail’s Québec City–Windsor corridor operations to the private partner. More than 80 per cent of VIA Rail’s revenue comes from that corridor. A station served by a minority of ALTO trains, combined with a thinned conventional service on the existing line, can leave Kingston with fewer useful daily trains than it has today.

    The Arithmetic

    What an intermediate stop costs at 300 km/h

    A station call on a high-speed line is expensive in a way that is easy to underestimate. The train must decelerate from line speed, dwell at the platform, and accelerate back to line speed. On comparable systems the round-trip cost of a single intermediate stop is on the order of four to six minutes, before any allowance for the slower alignment geometry often required to reach a city-centre location.

    That penalty falls on every through passenger, on every train that stops. Because the project’s commercial proposition is journey time between the anchor cities, the timetable resolves the conflict in the predictable direction: the stop is retained, and most services are routed past it. This is what the chief executive described on 22 July, and it is a rational operating decision given the design speed.

    What it does not resolve is the capital exposure. The station, its platforms and approach works, and whatever alignment concession is required to bring the corridor within reach of Kingston are paid for in full, irrespective of how many trains call. A station served by a minority of services carries close to the full cost of one served by all of them while delivering a fraction of the utility. The frequency a passenger actually experiences — not the presence of a platform — determines whether a station changes travel behaviour.

    This is not an argument that Kingston should be excluded. It is an argument that a stop and a useful service are different commitments, and that only the first has been signalled.

    The Municipal Record

    What Kingston City Council actually resolved

    9–2
    council vote adopting Resolution 2026-73, as amended
    17 February 2026, meeting 2026-06
    33
    weekly Kingston stops the deferred VIA express pilot would have removed
    September 2025 proposal
    2029
    end of the development phase, after which the federal government decides whether to proceed
    ALTO briefing to council, February 2026

    In March 2025, on a motion from the mayor, Kingston City Council voted unanimously to withdraw its support for ALTO. The stated grievance was the change from VIA Rail’s earlier High Frequency Rail proposal, under which Kingston was to have been a regional hub.

    On 17 February 2026, council reversed that position. Senior ALTO representatives briefed council that evening, immediately before the vote. Eight delegations spoke to the motion — among them Queen’s University, Kingston Health Sciences Centre, the Downtown Kingston Business Improvement Area, Kingston Accommodation Partners and the Corridor Train Alliance; the minutes record none opposed. A motion to defer consideration to the March meeting was lost 3–8. Resolution 2026-73 then carried as amended, 9–2, with Councillors Glenn and McLaren opposed.

    The adopted text is more specific than the public discussion of it has generally been. Its four operative clauses:

    Clause 1 — the request

    Calls on the federal Minister of Transport to enhance ALTO’s mandate to include the addition of a Kingston stop on the proposed ALTO High-Speed Rail Southern Route between Peterborough and Ottawa.

    Clause 2 — the contingency

    Expresses support for a southern route contingent upon development along the Highway 401 corridor around the South Frontenac and Kingston region, and provided there is a new stop added that is in Kingston.

    Clause 3 — the location request

    Requests that the southern route and planned stop be located as close to the urban core of the city as possible.

    Clause 4 — the trigger

    Resolves that if there is no station in Kingston, council formally opposes the creation of the ALTO southern route as one that would bypass Kingston and offer no benefit to the city or Eastern Ontario.

    Clauses 1 and 2 do not describe the same corridor. The first asks the Minister to add a stop to the proposed southern route — the alignment already on the table, which despite its name still passes north of the city, and on which a station would sit roughly 25 to 30 minutes by road from downtown Kingston. The second makes support conditional on a Highway 401 alignment. The 401 contingency entered by amendment (carried 8–3); a second amendment (10–1) softened clause 2’s endorsement of the existing route, and left clause 1 as drafted.

    The word “southern” has caused some confusion locally. It describes a route that is southern relative to the Havelock alignment through Peterborough — not one that approaches the lakeshore or the existing rail corridor through Kingston. The practical question for the city is therefore not downtown versus not-downtown. It is whether a Kingston station would be co-located with the existing VIA Rail station, inside the city and inside the existing network, or built new on the far side of it.

    That is the inconsistency the two dissenting councillors identified on the night. Their objection was that language open to interpretation would be interpreted by others, and that Kingston risked breaking faith with South Frontenac Township — whose own council had days earlier opposed the line through the township and backed a route through Kingston instead.

    “The details do still matter.”Councillor Conny Glenn, on the February motion — reported in The Kingston Whig-Standard, 18 February 2026

    Five months later, ALTO can satisfy clause 1 without satisfying clause 2. A probable stop on the existing proposed southern alignment answers the request while leaving the contingency untouched — and nothing said on 22 July distinguishes between them.

    What Resolution 2026-73 conditions support onWhat the 22 July statement provides
    A new stop in Kingston (clauses 1, 2 and 4). Absent one, council formally opposes the southern route. A station described as probable, three years ahead of the federal decision on whether the project proceeds at all.
    Status Signalled, not committed
    Development along the Highway 401 corridor around the South Frontenac and Kingston region (clause 2) — the express contingency on which support rests. Not addressed. The Toronto–Ottawa segment is third in ALTO’s publication queue and has not been released for feedback.
    Status Not addressed
    Route and stop as close to the urban core as possible (clause 3). Not addressed. On the currently proposed southern alignment, which passes north of the city, a station would sit some 25 to 30 minutes by road from downtown and outside the existing rail network.
    Status Not addressed
    Service levels. Not addressed in the resolution, though its recitals rest on Kingston’s established rail demand and on a stop enabling meaningful shifts from passenger vehicles. Most trains would pass through without stopping. No daily calling frequency has been stated.
    Status Unstated on both sides

    The resolution was circulated to the Prime Minister, the Minister of Transport, ALTO’s chief executive, area MPs and MPPs, the Mayor of South Frontenac, and the Eastern Ontario Mayors’ and Wardens’ Caucuses. Its conditions are on the record with every party who would need to honour them.

    The Other Half of the Equation

    A new station is a gain only if the service Kingston has survives

    Transport Canada’s 2025–26 estimates record funding to VIA Rail to support the planning and eventual transfer of its Québec City–Windsor corridor passenger services to the private partner. That transfer is stated federal intent, not conjecture. More than 80 per cent of VIA Rail’s revenue and more than 90 per cent of its passengers are in that corridor.

    The consequence for Kingston follows directly from ALTO’s own numbers. The project’s ridership forecast depends substantially on diverting existing corridor rail passengers — travellers who, by definition, stop buying VIA tickets. The economics of the Kingston Subdivision would then rest on intermediate-point traffic alone, having lost the end-to-end market that carries them. Either frequencies fall, or subsidy rises, or both. This is an observation about the project’s arithmetic, not an accusation about anyone’s intentions.

    The commercial logic has already been demonstrated once

    In September 2025, VIA Rail announced a pilot running four daily trains non-stop between Montréal and Toronto, bypassing intermediate Eastern Ontario communities. For Kingston it would have removed 33 weekly stops and the first five morning departures, leaving an 11 a.m. first eastbound train and making same-day travel impractical. Kingston, Belleville and Napanee councils passed motions opposing it. It was postponed on operational constraints with CN — not withdrawn — and VIA stated it would continue pursuing direct Montréal–Toronto service.

    The same reasoning, ten months later, from the other operator

    What ALTO’s chief executive described on 22 July is the same commercial logic, applied to the same city, by operators whose corridor business is slated to converge under the transfer. Kingston’s downside case is not speculative. It was tabled ten months ago, quantified, and shelved rather than abandoned.

    The arithmetic Kingston should be doing is net

    A platform served by a minority of ALTO services, combined with a thinned conventional service on the existing line, can leave the city with fewer useful trains than it has today — while being announced as a gain. No party is presently negotiating the second half of that equation, and Resolution 2026-73 does not address it.

    The View From a Supporter of the Project

    A long-standing advocate for high-speed rail reaches the same conclusions

    On 15 July 2026, Transport Action Canada wrote to the Minister of Transport about the Kingston alignment; the letter was published by the organisation’s Ontario division on 22 July — the same day as the chief executive’s remarks. Transport Action Canada describes a decades-long record of advocating for high-speed rail in this corridor and welcomed the federal commitment to build it. Its letter is not an objection to the project. It is a warning about how this station is being contemplated, and its lead condition is that any ALTO stop in Kingston be co-located with the existing VIA Rail station.

    Access time cancels the time saving

    Transport Action Canada’s position is that any Kingston station must be co-located with, and fully integrated into, the existing VIA Rail network. Sited instead on ALTO’s currently proposed southern alignment — which they put at approximately 25 to 30 minutes by road from downtown Kingston — it would, in their assessment, likely fail to generate the anticipated ridership and modal shift, because the time spent reaching the station negates the journey-time advantage the line exists to deliver.

    The net effect on both operators

    The same letter states that such a station would divert passengers from VIA Rail, reducing ridership on existing services and increasing VIA Rail’s operating subsidy requirements — what the organisation calls a lose-lose scenario for both services. This is the net-frequency problem set out above, reached independently by an organisation that wants the project delivered.

    Existing corridors before new right-of-way

    The letter closes on the alignment question directly: of the two existing rights-of-way between Montréal and Toronto, one remains largely suitable for high-speed operation while the other could accommodate redirected freight if track capacity were restored. Every opportunity to use existing corridors, it argues, should be explored before undertaking the cost and disruption of an entirely new right-of-way. The letter also notes that the economic rationale and business case for the selected project — including the long-promised Joint Project Office report — have still not been published.

    Read alongside Resolution 2026-73, the letter sharpens what Kingston should be asking for. Council’s condition was a station; the more exacting question is which station — one that joins the network the city already uses, or one that starts a second, thinner network beside it.

    The Design Question Underneath

    “We cannot stop in all the communities” is a choice, not a constraint

    Asked about a possible stop at Smiths Falls, ALTO’s chief executive said VIA Rail remains an option for smaller communities, and that the project cannot serve every community if it is to remain fast and economical.

    The first half of that answer describes a two-tier corridor whose lower tier has no identified funder, no committed frequency, and no infrastructure pathway. The communities on that lower tier — Oshawa, Cobourg, Port Hope, Trenton Junction, Belleville, Napanee, Kingston, Gananoque, Brockville, Cornwall, Dorval — have, with one exception, no viable airport. For most, conventional rail is the only intercity connection to healthcare, post-secondary institutions and economic centres.

    The second half is presented as a constraint of physics. It is better understood as a consequence of a design choice. The number of communities a corridor can serve is a function of its design speed: the higher the speed, the more costly each stop becomes in schedule terms, and the fewer stops the business case will tolerate. A 300 km/h line is committed to skipping intermediate cities. A 200 km/h line is not.

    That is the case for High Performance Passenger Rail as an alternative approach — a lower design speed permitting intermediate communities to be served on the fast network itself, rather than skipped and then handed back to a legacy service whose future funding no one has described. It produces a slower headline journey time between Toronto and Montréal, and a materially better network for the roughly one million people living between them.

    Implications for autumn 2026

    What could still be settled before the Toronto–Ottawa route is published

    ALTO has stated that the Montréal–Ottawa alignment goes to public feedback this autumn, with the Toronto–Ottawa segment to follow. Kingston’s window to convert a signalled station into a specified one closes when that segment is published, not when it is built. The outstanding items divide into two categories.

    Within ALTO’s authority to answer now

    Whether the 401 contingency is being met Council’s support rests on development along the Highway 401 corridor around the South Frontenac and Kingston region. Confirming whether the segment under study satisfies that condition is a disclosure, not a study.
    Station location, co-location and access time Where the station would sit, whether it would be co-located with and integrated into the existing VIA Rail station, and the door-to-door journey time from downtown Kingston.
    Daily calling pattern at opening How many services call in each direction, and what commitment exists that the pattern survives timetable optimisation after opening.
    Station capital cost and its treatment The cost of the station and its approach works, and how it is carried in the business case.

    Requires a federal decision

    Conventional service after the corridor transfer What service operates on the existing Kingston Subdivision once corridor operations transfer, at what frequency, funded by whom, and under what protection. This sits with Parliament and the Minister, not with ALTO.
    Net frequency guarantee A commitment that a new station is additive to, not substitutive for, existing service — the demand advanced against the September 2025 express pilot, which applies unchanged to the pattern now described for ALTO.
    Whether the project proceeds at all The development phase runs to 2029, after which ALTO reports to the federal government and the decision to continue is taken. Every commitment discussed above is made in advance of that decision.
    Where things stand · July 2026

    Summary ledger

    Measured against the conditions Kingston City Council itself set:

    Signalled
    A new stop in Kingston. Described as probable by ALTO’s chief executive on 22 July 2026. No decision has been confirmed, and the mayor has said as much.
    Not addressed
    The Highway 401 contingency. Council’s support is expressly conditional on development along the 401 corridor around the South Frontenac and Kingston region. Nothing said on 22 July speaks to alignment.
    Not addressed
    Proximity to the urban core, and co-location. Whether a Kingston station would join the existing VIA Rail station and network, or be built new outside the city on an alignment passing north of it, determines its catchment, its access time and its ridership. The statement does not distinguish them.
    Contradicted
    Service frequency. The ridership justification and the express-running plan point in opposite directions. No daily calling pattern has been stated.
    Not addressed
    Conventional service after the corridor transfer. Frequency, funder and protection all unstated, on a line whose revenue base ALTO’s own forecast is designed to divert.
    Not addressed
    Net useful services. Whether Kingston has more usable daily trains after opening than before, counting both operators, is the only measure that answers the question residents are actually asking.
    Deferred
    The project decision itself. The development phase runs to 2029; the federal government decides afterwards whether to proceed.

    None of these questions presumes the project fails. Each asks only that the analysis behind the statement be disclosed — and, in the case of the 401 contingency, that a condition Kingston placed on its own support be answered before the Toronto–Ottawa alignment is fixed. Until then, what has been announced is an intention, not a service.

    Sources

    Primary documents and statements

    1.
    CBC News, “Kingston probably getting high-speed rail stop, says Alto CEO,” 22 July 2026 — interview with Martin Imbleau, CBC Radio Ottawa Morning. cbc.ca
    2.
    City of Kingston, Council Meeting Minutes 2026-06, 17 February 2026 — Resolution Number 2026-73, “Support for Alto High Speed Rail Southern Route, as Amended,” carried as amended 9–2; amendment votes 8–3 and 10–1; deferral motion lost 3–8; ALTO briefing and delegations recorded. cityofkingston.ca
    3.
    Elliot Ferguson, “Kingston city council supports a southern high-speed rail route,” The Kingston Whig-Standard, 18 February 2026 — contemporaneous report of the council debate and the dissenting councillors’ objections. thewhig.com
    4.
    Christena Lawrie, “Council votes to withdraw support for federal high speed rail project,” CFRC / Local Journalism Initiative, 13 March 2025 — unanimous withdrawal of support, and the regional hub commitment under the earlier High Frequency Rail proposal. cfrc.ca
    5.
    Kingstonist, “South Frontenac says no to high-speed rail line through township,” February 2026. kingstonist.com
    6.
    Transport Canada (2025–26). Supplementary Estimates: High-Speed Rail Initiative — funding to VIA Rail supporting the planning and eventual transfer of Québec City–Windsor corridor services to the private partner. tc.canada.ca
    7.
    Transport Action Canada, “VIA Rail launches Montréal–Toronto express trains but cuts service to lakeshore cities,” September 2025. transportaction.ca
    8.
    CBC News, “Via Montreal–Toronto pilot that skipped eastern Ontario postponed,” 29 September 2025. cbc.ca
    9.
    Kingstonist, “Pilot Pains: VIA Rail insists Kingston will remain among ‘best served’ cities in country,” 31 October 2025 — Belleville and Napanee council motions. kingstonist.com
    11.
    Tariq Khan, President, Transport Action Canada — letter to the Honourable Steven MacKinnon, Minister of Transport, “Re: Alto Kingston Alignment,” 15 July 2026. Published by Transport Action Ontario as “General Support for Alto Kingston Alignment, but Concerns Exist,” 22 July 2026. ontario.transportaction.ca   letter (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.

  • 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.