Tag: station siting

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 requires	What 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 fares	Nina’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 today	With 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

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)

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)

ALTO, “Frequently Asked Questions,” altotrain.ca — statement of intent to use revenue management to match fares with demand and available seats. altotrain.ca

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

Peterborough City Council resolution coverage, kawarthaNOW, 24 March 2026 — source of the “up to 72 trains per day” figure presented to council. kawarthanow.com

August 22, 2026

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

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

Option	To Toronto	Stops a day	Fare premium	Annual trips	Change
Today’s service	135 min	18	none	450,000	—
Faster conventional railway, existing station	95 min	18	none	502,000	+12%
ALTO, station in town	80 min	8	none	449,000	0%
ALTO, station in town	80 min	8	+25%	403,000	−10%
ALTO, 27 min north	80 min	8	none	416,000	−8%
ALTO, 27 min north	80 min	8	+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

Input	Value used
Trips today	450,000 a year through the station (tested from 400,000 to 550,000)
Where people go	Toronto 58%, Ottawa 22%, Montréal 12%, other corridor stations 8%
Who travels	Students 30%, seniors and leisure 25%, public sector 20%, other 25%
Share without a car	Students 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 train	Today 135 / 120 / 160 min; ALTO 80 / 45 / 105 min (Toronto / Ottawa / Montréal)
Getting to the station	Existing station 10 min by car, 20 by transit; ALTO 27 by car, 35 by shuttle
How that time is weighted	1.5 times if a car is available, 2.0 times if not
Waiting	Half the gap between trains, weighted at 0.5, across a fifteen‑hour day
ALTO fare premium	25% in the central case; 0% and 40% also tested
Sensitivity of demand	One 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

Step	Annual trips	Change	Effect of this step
Today’s service, as it runs	450,000	—	—
Cut the Toronto run to 80 minutes, change nothing else	496,000	+10%	+10 pts
Cut stops from 18 a day to 8	449,000	0%	−10 pts
Add a 25 per cent fare premium	403,000	−10%	−10 pts
Move the station 27 minutes north	376,000	−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 day	Annual trips	Change	Range	If today’s trains stay
6	359,000	−20%	−17% to −24%	0%
8	376,000	−17%	−13% to −21%	0%
10	387,000	−14%	−10% to −18%	+0.2%
18	408,000	−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 day	Normal fares	Fares +25%	Fares +40%	Station 25 min out	Station 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 travelling	At normal fares	At a 25% premium
Public sector and institutional (expensed)	9	13
Other business and leisure	9	27
Seniors, leisure, visiting family	9	48
Students and young adults	9	no 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 time	Time saved	Annual trips	Change
135 min, as it runs today	—	450,000	—
118 min, reliable 160 to 177 km/h	13%	471,000	+4.6%
95 min, a 240 km/h conventional railway	30%	502,000	+11.6%
80 min, upper bound for this station	41%	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

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

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?

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.

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.

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)

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

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

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Kingston’s ALTO Ridership Analysis (PDF)

Full method, all thirty‑two market segments, sensitivity bands and break‑even calculations

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July 26, 2026

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

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 on	What 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

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

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

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

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

Kingstonist, “South Frontenac says no to high-speed rail line through township,” February 2026. kingstonist.com

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

Transport Action Canada, “VIA Rail launches Montréal–Toronto express trains but cuts service to lakeshore cities,” September 2025. transportaction.ca

CBC News, “Via Montreal–Toronto pilot that skipped eastern Ontario postponed,” 29 September 2025. cbc.ca

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)

July 23, 2026

A friendly witness

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Research Brief

A Friendly Witness

How a supportive submission to ALTO lists the things the project cannot deliver.

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Research Brief · Published July 2026 · On Trajectoire Québec’s memoir to ALTO, 24 April 2026

Critical Finding

Trajectoire Québec’s memoir endorses high-speed rail. But its nine recommendations describe downtown stations, affordable fares, more intermediate stops, preserved conventional service, and seamless local integration — the specification of a high-frequency conventional railway, not of a 300 km/h greenfield line. Measured against ALTO’s actual design, the memoir substantively meets none of its own recommendations, leaves one open (passenger experience), and runs into structural conflict, adverse economics, or the project’s own premise on the rest. The friendliest submission on the consultation file reads as a list of the project’s gaps.

Two of the adverse assessments depend on ALTO’s unpublished plans — whether airport stations appear, and how central the endpoint stations finally sit — and could improve. The others follow from physics and economics: the severance and peripheral siting a grade-separated 250+ km/h alignment entails, and the cost and ridership figures in the Initiative’s reference-class work.

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A Friendly Witness — Full Brief (PDF)

Recommendation-by-recommendation assessment of Trajectoire Québec’s memoir against ALTO’s actual design

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The Endorsement

An endorsement built on a poll, not a case

Trajectoire was an early backer of VIA Rail’s high-frequency proposal (the TGF). Its memoir now supports high-speed rail — but conditionally, “dans la mesure où” the project delivers accessibility, integration, and equity. The memoir’s own narrative traces the shift from high-frequency to high-speed not to a technical or economic case but to a 2024 opinion poll it cites — 92 per cent preferring high-speed over high-frequency — and to the stated preferences of local mayors. What the organization asks for did not change when its endorsement did. It wanted a frequent, reliable, affordable, well-connected interurban railway before the pivot, and it wants one still. The recommendations describe that railway; the endorsement sits on top of it.

recommendations in Trajectoire’s memoir

memoir summary of recommendations

~0.07

ALTO benefit–cost ratio, central estimate

Initiative reference-class analysis

43 → 54

community friction, before → after the consultation

Initiative friction index

Recommendation by Recommendation

Nine recommendations, measured against the design

The memoir’s own summary lists nine recommendations. Set against the design ALTO is advancing and the Initiative’s research record, each resolves into a verdict.

Trajectoire’s Recommendation	What ALTO’s Design Delivers
1. Downtown stations, universally accessible, integrated with local and interurban networks. Central stations sit inside existing transit networks, enabling efficient connections and reducing car dependence to reach the train.	A grade-separated alignment engineered for 250+ km/h — the speed all three RFP bidders independently proposed — cannot be threaded into dense downtowns at a cost the project will bear, which pushes stations toward the periphery. Trajectoire’s own examples — the pull of the downtown Palais station over Sainte-Foy, the car-inducing effect of Ottawa’s out-of-centre station — are the pattern ALTO’s design tends toward, not away from.
Assessment:Structural conflict
2. Urban integration with no impassable barriers for pedestrians and cyclists. The network should knit into the urban fabric without severing pedestrian and cycle routes or forcing long detours.	High-speed track must be fully grade-separated and fenced along its length. That severance is the impassable barrier the recommendation asks the project to avoid — a condition of running trains at that speed, not an incidental feature. The Initiative’s forward friction measure captures the gap: a high-performance spine scores roughly 29 against ALTO’s ~65.
Assessment:Structural conflict
3. Affordable and accessible to all. A publicly funded project should serve the whole population, with fares that keep the train competitive with the car for youth, families, and seniors.	Central cost near $143 million per kilometre, a benefit–cost ratio around 0.07, and low ridership (~0.29 trips per capita) in the Initiative’s reference-class work create structural pressure toward premium, cost-recovery fares — the opposite of the equity pricing the recommendation requires.
Assessment:Contrary to the economics
4. Tight cost control; private participation if needed; no crowding-out of urban transit. The project must not consume the federal funding that urban transit networks depend on.	The same economics point to fiscal displacement — the exact crowding-out the recommendation fears. Nothing in the record indicates the tight cost control it asks for.
Assessment:Contrary to the economics
5. Stations at Montréal-Trudeau (YUL) and Québec / Jean-Lesage (YQB) airports. Direct airport connections would capture regional and international travellers and spare them a transfer.	As far as ALTO’s public plan shows, airport stations are not included. This verdict depends on plans ALTO has not fully published and could change.
Assessment:Not in the plan
6. Amend ALTO’s mandate to provide more intermediate stations. More stops would broaden ridership and build social acceptance along the corridor.	Every intermediate stop erodes the journey-time advantage that is the sole justification for a 300 km/h greenfield line over higher-frequency upgrades. The recommendation therefore asks the government to partially unwind the project’s premise. Trajectoire half-concedes this, proposing passing loops so express trains can overtake local ones.
Assessment:Against the premise
7. Preserve and improve conventional interurban service on the existing network. The corridor service Trajectoire once championed under the high-frequency banner must not be degraded.	A separate greenfield line does nothing, on its own, to preserve or improve VIA’s conventional service. The Initiative has documented a benchmark substitution in ALTO’s costing material, where the high-frequency baseline is replaced by an undifferentiated “Conventional Rail.” The dual-asset move that would satisfy this — a new spine that also frees the legacy network — is the HPR framework’s, and ALTO does not offer it.
Assessment:Unaddressed
8. European / Asian-standard passenger experience, distinct from air travel. Simple ticketing, clear information, easy baggage, no airport-style check-in.	An operational choice made late in delivery. The record gives no signal either way; it is fair to call this undetermined.
Assessment:Open
9. Secure social acceptability through rigorous, proactive consultation. Acceptability must be built through genuine, early, influential consultation.	Community friction, on the Initiative’s index, rose from 43 to 54 after the consultation round — the process increased opposition rather than building acceptability. Measured against that movement, a supportive organization’s polite call for better consultation is a finding that the consultation so far has failed its own test.
Assessment:Failing

The Pattern

A supportive submission describes a different train

Set the recommendations beside one another and a single shape emerges.

The recommendations describe high-frequency rail

Downtown access, more stops, affordable fares, network integration, preserved conventional service — item by item, this is the value proposition of high-frequency conventional rail, the case the Initiative advances under the HPR framework, restated by an organization convinced it is endorsing something else.

Even the friendly witness describes the gaps

The friendliest submission on the consultation record describes the project by what it lacks. That matters precisely because the witness is favourable: the gap between what ALTO is and what its supporters want is not a partisan artifact. It is visible even to those cheering the train on.

Structural, not merely contingent

Two adverse verdicts — airport stations and endpoint centrality — depend on ALTO’s unpublished plans and could improve. The rest follow from the design itself: the severance and peripheral siting a grade-separated 250+ km/h alignment entails, and the cost and ridership economics in the Initiative’s reference-class work. Those move only with the choice of technology.

Where Things Stand · July 2026

Summary ledger

In summary, against the recommendations in the memoir:

Open

Passenger experience (Rec 8): undetermined — an operational choice made late in delivery.

Not met

Downtown, accessible, integrated stations (Rec 1): structural conflict with a grade-separated high-speed alignment.

Not met

Urban integration without severance (Rec 2): the fenced, grade-separated corridor is itself the barrier.

Not met

Affordable fares for all (Rec 3): the economics push toward premium, cost-recovery pricing.

Not met

Cost control; no crowding-out of urban transit (Rec 4): the economics point to fiscal displacement.

Not met

Airport stations at YUL and YQB (Rec 5): not in the public plan — contingent on ALTO’s plans.

Not met

More intermediate stations (Rec 6): against the express premise of a 300 km/h line.

Not met

Preserve / improve conventional service (Rec 7): a separate greenfield line does not deliver it; the dual-asset HPR move is absent.

Not met

Social acceptability via consultation (Rec 9): friction rose 43 → 54 after the consultation round.

Trajectoire Québec supports the train. Its recommendations, read against ALTO’s actual design, are not — in the main — met by the project as scoped. The organization is not asking for tweaks to a design it accepts; it is describing, recommendation by recommendation, a high-frequency railway that the high-speed greenfield line was never built to be.

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A Friendly Witness (PDF)

Recommendation-by-recommendation analysis for decision-makers, MPs, and constituents tracking the consultation record

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Source

The submission assessed

Trajectoire Québec, Train à grande vitesse entre Québec et Toronto : une occasion à saisir pour améliorer les transports interurbains au Québec. Memoir presented to ALTO, 24 April 2026. trajectoire.quebec

Assessment draws on the Initiative’s research record — the reference-class cost and ridership models, the community friction index, and Privy Council Office briefing note A-2025-00015, which confirms that all three RFP bidders independently proposed 250+ km/h greenfield alignments.

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Note de recherche

Un témoin bienveillant

Comment un mémoire favorable à ALTO énumère ce que le projet ne peut offrir.

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Note de recherche · Publié en juillet 2026 · À propos du mémoire de Trajectoire Québec à ALTO, le 24 avril 2026

Constat essentiel

Le mémoire de Trajectoire Québec appuie le train à grande vitesse. Mais ses neuf recommandations décrivent des gares en centre-ville, des tarifs abordables, davantage de gares intermédiaires, le maintien du service conventionnel et une intégration locale fluide — le cahier des charges d’un train à grande fréquence conventionnel, non d’une ligne neuve à 300 km/h. Mesuré à la conception réelle d’ALTO, le mémoire ne satisfait substantiellement aucune de ses propres recommandations, en laisse une ouverte (l’expérience client) et se heurte, pour le reste, à un conflit structurel, à une économie défavorable ou à la prémisse même du projet. Le mémoire le plus bienveillant du dossier se lit comme une liste des lacunes du projet.

Deux des constats défavorables dépendent des plans non publiés d’ALTO — la présence de gares aéroportuaires et le degré de centralité des gares terminales — et pourraient s’améliorer. Les autres découlent de la physique et de l’économie : la coupure et l’implantation périphérique qu’entraîne un tracé dénivelé à 250 km/h et plus, ainsi que les chiffres de coûts et d’achalandage établis par les travaux de l’Initiative sur classe de référence.

Télécharger

Un témoin bienveillant — note complète (PDF)

Évaluation, recommandation par recommandation, du mémoire de Trajectoire Québec au regard de la conception réelle d’ALTO

Télécharger le PDF

L’appui

Un appui fondé sur un sondage, non sur un argumentaire

Trajectoire a été l’un des premiers appuis de la proposition de train à grande fréquence de VIA Rail (le TGF). Son mémoire soutient désormais le train à grande vitesse — mais de façon conditionnelle, « dans la mesure où » le projet assure accessibilité, intégration et équité. Le récit même du mémoire attribue le passage de la grande fréquence à la grande vitesse non pas à un argumentaire technique ou économique, mais à un sondage de 2024 qu’il cite — 92 % préférant la grande vitesse à la grande fréquence — et aux préférences exprimées par des maires. Ce que l’organisme réclame n’a pas changé lorsque son appui, lui, a changé : un train interurbain fréquent, fiable, abordable et bien connecté. Les recommandations décrivent ce train; l’appui repose par-dessus.

recommandations dans le mémoire de Trajectoire

sommaire des recommandations

~0,07

ratio avantages-coûts d’ALTO, estimation centrale

analyse sur classe de référence de l’Initiative

43 → 54

friction communautaire, avant → après la consultation

indice de friction de l’Initiative

Recommandation par recommandation

Neuf recommandations, mesurées à la conception

Le sommaire du mémoire énumère lui-même neuf recommandations. Mises en regard de la conception qu’ALTO fait avancer et des travaux de l’Initiative, chacune se résout en un constat.

La recommandation de Trajectoire	Ce que la conception d’ALTO livre
1. Gares en centre-ville, universellement accessibles, intégrées aux réseaux locaux et interurbains. Les gares centrales s’inscrivent dans les réseaux de transport existants, facilitant les correspondances et réduisant la dépendance à l’auto pour accéder au train.	Un tracé dénivelé conçu pour 250 km/h et plus — la vitesse que les trois soumissionnaires ont proposée de façon indépendante — ne peut être inséré dans des centres-villes denses à un coût que le projet acceptera d’assumer, ce qui repousse les gares vers la périphérie. Les exemples mêmes de Trajectoire — l’attrait de la gare du Palais plutôt que de Sainte-Foy, l’effet incitatif à l’automobile de la gare excentrée d’Ottawa — sont le motif vers lequel la conception d’ALTO tend, et non dont elle s’éloigne.
Constat :Conflit structurel
2. Intégration urbaine sans barrières infranchissables pour piétons et cyclistes. Le réseau doit s’intégrer au tissu urbain sans couper les cheminements piétons et cyclables ni imposer de longs détours.	Une voie à grande vitesse doit être intégralement dénivelée et clôturée sur toute sa longueur. Cette coupure est la barrière infranchissable que la recommandation demande d’éviter — une condition de la vitesse, non un détail. La mesure de friction prospective de l’Initiative résume l’écart : une dorsale à haute performance obtient environ 29, contre environ 65 pour ALTO.
Constat :Conflit structurel
3. Abordable et accessible à toutes et tous. Un projet financé par des fonds publics doit servir toute la population, avec des tarifs qui gardent le train compétitif face à l’auto pour les jeunes, les familles et les aînés.	Un coût central près de 143 millions de dollars le kilomètre, un ratio avantages-coûts d’environ 0,07 et un achalandage faible (~0,29 déplacement par habitant) dans les travaux de l’Initiative créent une pression structurelle vers des tarifs élevés, de recouvrement des coûts — l’inverse de la tarification équitable qu’exige la recommandation.
Constat :Contredit par l’économie
4. Contrôle serré des coûts; participation privée au besoin; pas d’éviction du transport urbain. Le projet ne doit pas absorber le financement fédéral dont dépendent les réseaux de transport urbain.	La même économie pointe vers une éviction budgétaire — précisément le risque que redoute la recommandation. Rien au dossier n’indique le contrôle serré des coûts qu’elle réclame.
Constat :Contredit par l’économie
5. Gares aux aéroports de Montréal-Trudeau (YUL) et de Québec / Jean-Lesage (YQB). Des correspondances aéroportuaires directes capteraient les voyageurs régionaux et internationaux en leur épargnant un transfert.	À ce que montre le plan public d’ALTO, les gares aéroportuaires ne figurent pas. Ce constat dépend de plans qu’ALTO n’a pas entièrement publiés et pourrait changer.
Constat :Absent du projet
6. Modifier le mandat d’ALTO pour prévoir plus de gares intermédiaires. Plus d’arrêts élargiraient l’achalandage et bâtiraient l’acceptabilité le long du corridor.	Chaque arrêt intermédiaire érode l’avantage de temps de parcours, seule justification d’une ligne neuve à 300 km/h plutôt que d’améliorations à plus haute fréquence. La recommandation demande donc au gouvernement de défaire en partie la prémisse du projet. Trajectoire le concède à demi, en proposant des voies d’évitement pour que les express dépassent les trains locaux.
Constat :Contraire à la prémisse
7. Préserver et améliorer le service interurbain conventionnel sur le réseau existant. Le service du corridor existant — celui que Trajectoire a autrefois défendu sous la bannière de la grande fréquence — ne doit pas être dégradé.	Une ligne neuve et distincte ne fait rien, à elle seule, pour préserver ou améliorer le service conventionnel de VIA. L’Initiative a documenté une substitution de référentiel dans les documents de coûts d’ALTO, où le scénario à grande fréquence est remplacé par un « rail conventionnel » indifférencié. L’approche à double actif qui satisferait cette recommandation — une dorsale neuve qui libère aussi le réseau patrimonial — relève du cadre HPR, et ALTO ne l’offre pas.
Constat :Non traité
8. Expérience client aux standards européens et asiatiques, distincte de l’avion. Billetterie simple, information claire, bagages faciles, sans enregistrement de type aéroportuaire.	Un choix opérationnel arrêté tard dans la réalisation. Le dossier n’offre aucun signal dans un sens ou dans l’autre; il est juste de le dire indéterminé.
Constat :Indéterminé
9. Assurer l’acceptabilité sociale par des consultations rigoureuses et proactives. L’acceptabilité se bâtit par une consultation réelle, précoce et capable d’influer sur le projet.	La friction communautaire, selon l’indice de l’Initiative, est passée de 43 à 54 après le cycle de consultation — le processus a accru l’opposition au lieu de bâtir l’acceptabilité. Mesuré à ce mouvement, l’appel poli d’un organisme favorable à de meilleures consultations est le constat que la consultation a jusqu’ici échoué à son propre test.
Constat :En échec

Le motif

Un mémoire favorable décrit un autre train

Placez les recommandations les unes à côté des autres et une seule forme se dégage.

Les recommandations décrivent un train à grande fréquence

Accès au centre-ville, plus de gares, tarifs abordables, intégration aux réseaux, maintien du service conventionnel — point par point, c’est la proposition de valeur du train à grande fréquence conventionnel, la thèse que l’Initiative défend sous le cadre HPR, reformulée par un organisme convaincu d’appuyer autre chose.

Même le témoin bienveillant décrit les lacunes

Le mémoire le plus bienveillant du dossier décrit le projet par ce qui lui manque. Cela compte précisément parce que le témoin est favorable : l’écart entre ce qu’ALTO est et ce que ses partisans souhaitent n’est pas un artefact partisan. Il est visible même pour ceux qui encouragent le train.

Structurel, non simplement contingent

Deux constats défavorables — gares aéroportuaires et centralité des terminus — dépendent des plans non publiés d’ALTO et pourraient s’améliorer. Les autres découlent de la conception elle-même : la coupure et l’implantation périphérique qu’entraîne un tracé dénivelé à 250 km/h et plus, ainsi que l’économie des coûts et de l’achalandage des travaux de l’Initiative. Ceux-là ne bougent qu’avec le choix technologique.

Où en sommes-nous · juillet 2026

Bilan récapitulatif

En résumé, au regard des recommandations du mémoire :

Indéterminé

Expérience client (rec. 8) : indéterminée — choix opérationnel arrêté tard.

Non satisfait

Gares centrales, accessibles, intégrées (rec. 1) : conflit structurel avec un tracé dénivelé à grande vitesse.

Non satisfait

Intégration urbaine sans coupure (rec. 2) : le corridor clôturé et dénivelé est lui-même la barrière.

Non satisfait

Tarifs abordables pour tous (rec. 3) : l’économie pousse vers une tarification de recouvrement.

Non satisfait

Contrôle des coûts; pas d’éviction du transport urbain (rec. 4) : l’économie pointe vers l’éviction budgétaire.

Non satisfait

Gares aéroportuaires à YUL et YQB (rec. 5) : absentes du plan public — tributaire des plans d’ALTO.

Non satisfait

Plus de gares intermédiaires (rec. 6) : contraire à la prémisse express d’une ligne à 300 km/h.

Non satisfait

Préserver / améliorer le service conventionnel (rec. 7) : une ligne neuve distincte ne le livre pas; le geste à double actif du cadre HPR est absent.

Non satisfait

Acceptabilité sociale par la consultation (rec. 9) : la friction est passée de 43 à 54 après la consultation.

Trajectoire Québec appuie le train. Ses recommandations, lues au regard de la conception réelle d’ALTO, ne sont pas — pour l’essentiel — satisfaites par le projet tel que défini. L’organisme ne demande pas des retouches à une conception qu’il accepte; il décrit, recommandation par recommandation, un train à grande fréquence que la ligne neuve à grande vitesse n’a jamais été conçue pour être.

Télécharger la note complète

Un témoin bienveillant (PDF)

Analyse, recommandation par recommandation, pour les décideurs, les députés et les citoyens qui suivent le dossier

Télécharger le PDF

Source

Le mémoire évalué

Trajectoire Québec, Train à grande vitesse entre Québec et Toronto : une occasion à saisir pour améliorer les transports interurbains au Québec. Mémoire présenté à ALTO, 24 avril 2026. trajectoire.quebec

L’évaluation s’appuie sur les travaux de l’Initiative — les modèles de coûts et d’achalandage sur classe de référence, l’indice de friction communautaire, et la note d’information A-2025-00015 du Bureau du Conseil privé, qui confirme que les trois soumissionnaires ont proposé de façon indépendante des tracés neufs à 250 km/h et plus.

July 11, 2026

Urban concerns

Three hours, downtown to downtown?

It sounds wonderful — a fast train at French or Japanese speeds, the airport hassle gone. The plan being sold isn’t that plan.

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Urban Reader’s Brief · Published May 2026 · ALTO consultation closed April 24, 2026

⚠ What ALTO Is Selling, And What Has Actually Been Promised

ALTO is marketed as a three-hour, downtown-to-downtown high-speed train between Toronto and Montréal, equivalent to French TGV or Japanese Shinkansen service. The federal government has approved a $3.9 billion design phase, with construction projected at $60–90 billion over twelve to fourteen years and operating speeds of up to 300 km/h. Wikipedia ALTO consultation

What is not in the marketing: the “three hours” is train-in-motion time only; none of the three terminus cities has a contractually committed downtown station; ALTO has not published a single projected fare; and the corridor is being graded for the entire 1,000 km through Class 1 and 2 agricultural land that took millennia to form.

Critical Finding

ALTO has obvious urban appeal: civilised, fast, no airport, no security line. The case against it is not ideological and is not rural nostalgia. It is structural. With realistic station locations, door-to-door times grow by 60–90 minutes — Toronto–Montréal becomes essentially identical to flying, and Toronto–Québec City becomes slower. ALTO’s own internal Benefit-Cost Ratio is approximately 0.4, well below the viability threshold of 1.0. The CEO has publicly committed that the service will operate without government subsidy, which is mathematically incompatible with fares comparable to subsidised European or Japanese services.

The alternative is High Performance Rail on existing alignments — dedicated passenger track at 200 km/h alongside the 401 highway or on the CN Kingston Subdivision. Under $10 billion. Operational in five to seven years. Real downtown stations preserved. Serves all eleven existing corridor communities rather than bypassing them. The federal government has never produced a public evaluation of this option.

Download One-Pager

Three Hours, Downtown to Downtown? — Urban Reader’s Brief (PDF)

Single-page summary for distribution to MPs, municipal councils, and constituents in Toronto, Ottawa, Montréal, and Québec City

Download PDF

The Time

The “three hours” is the train, not your trip

0 of 3

terminus cities with a contractually committed downtown station

Toronto, Montréal, Québec City

10+ km

Mount Royal tunnel required for direct Montréal Gare Centrale access

McGill engineering analysis

60–90 min

added door-to-door time once realistic station locations and the Montréal reversal are accounted for

CRI analysis

ALTO’s published travel times — the “three hours” from Toronto to Montréal, the “under two hours” from Toronto to Ottawa — are train-in-motion only. They exclude getting to the station, through it, and from the terminus to your actual destination. The marketed times assume true downtown stations at every end. None has been contractually committed.

In April 2026, ALTO CEO Martin Imbleau publicly conceded that Toronto’s first station will be a suburb — the downtown station, if it is built at all, would come in a later phase. Even the eventual “downtown” candidate, East Harbour, sits approximately 3 km east of Union Station. Montréal’s downtown station depends on a 10+ km tunnel under Mount Royal at over a billion dollars per kilometre (McGill engineering estimate); the P3 partner has every incentive to shorten or omit the tunnel. Québec City favours suburban Sainte-Foy. Globe and Mail

Toronto–Montréal at realistic times

With a suburban Toronto first stop, the unavoidable Montréal reversal at Gare Centrale (the existing terminus configuration), and surface transit at both ends, door-to-door times grow by 60 to 90 minutes. Toronto–Montréal becomes essentially identical to flying, point to point. Toronto–Québec City becomes 45 minutes slower than flying. The civilised, no-airport advantage is the marketing’s strongest emotional claim — and the part that least survives realistic stations.

The Geography

We’re not France or Japan. The geography isn’t comparable.

1,000+ km

ALTO corridor length, three meaningful destinations

Toronto, Montréal, Québec City

465 km

TGV Paris–Lyon, the canonical HSR success

SNCF Voyageurs

515 km

Tokaido Shinkansen, four metro areas of 5M+ each

JR Central

The TGV connects Paris and Lyon — two of Europe’s largest cities — in 465 km. The Tokaido Shinkansen connects four metropolitan areas of five million people or more in 515 km. These are short, dense corridors with multiple major hubs. They are the cases where high-speed rail demonstrably outperforms air and conventional rail in both ridership and economics.

The ALTO corridor is 1,000 kilometres or more between only three destinations with meaningful ridership demand. The intermediate stops — Peterborough, Laval, Trois-Rivières — are too small to sustain frequent HSR service in their own right. Ontario’s own 2016 high-speed rail business case, prepared for the more densely populated Toronto–Windsor corridor, found explicitly that “speeds of up to 300 km/h do not deliver a significant increase in benefits” over 250 km/h. The geography of southern Ontario and Quebec does not deliver the conditions that make HSR work elsewhere.

The federal government’s own number

ALTO’s internal Benefit-Cost Ratio is approximately 0.4. The viability threshold for federal infrastructure investment is 1.0. A BCR below 1.0 means the project’s costs exceed its measurable benefits, even on the project’s own assumptions. The federal government has not publicly disputed the figure. It has proceeded with the project regardless.

The Price

ALTO won’t tell you what a ticket will cost. Here’s why.

government operating subsidy committed by ALTO

Imbleau, public statements

$200–400

typical Acela fare in Canadian dollars on the New York–Washington corridor

Amtrak published fares

$275+

typical Eurostar London–Paris fare in Canadian dollars

Eurostar published fares

Four years into procurement, ALTO has not published a single projected fare. Its public FAQ says fares “cannot be set” until the route is finalised. At the same time, the CEO has publicly committed that the service will operate without any government subsidy. These two positions are mathematically incompatible with low fares. A $60–90 billion design-build-finance-operate-maintain project — private profit, debt service, and operating costs all recovered from the farebox — must price like one. ALTO FAQ

International benchmarks are the closest available proxies. In Canadian dollars: Amtrak’s Acela on the Northeast Corridor typically prices between $200 and $400 one-way; Eurostar between London and Paris starts around $275 and rises sharply at peak times. Both services are operated on networks that receive substantial state support. ALTO is committing to the opposite: full-cost recovery from passengers. CRI analysis indicates ALTO fares are likely to run higher than these benchmarks rather than lower — most international HSR is state-subsidised; ALTO has committed not to be.

The civilised, affordable train is not what is being built

ALTO’s own published FAQ concedes the answer most plainly: “VIA Rail may remain the more economical option for travellers with time but tighter budgets.” The civilised, affordable, no-airport train urban Canadians imagine is a French- or Japanese-style public service operating under social-rate fare regulation. ALTO, as procured, is the opposite financial structure: a privately operated profit centre with no fare ceiling, expected to recover its full $60–90 billion capital cost from passengers.

The Land

The farmland we lose doesn’t come back. Your grocery bill does.

~5%

share of Canada’s total land base classified as Class 1 or 2 agricultural soil

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

60 m

width of the fenced, level-crossing-free ALTO right-of-way

ALTO published specifications

1,000+ km

of new greenfield corridor through the St. Lawrence Lowlands

Network total length

The proposed greenfield corridor crosses some of Canada’s most productive agricultural land — Class 1 and 2 soils in Eastern Ontario and the St. Lawrence Lowlands that took millennia to form. Canada has only about 5% of its land base in this top agricultural category. Once expropriated and graded for a 300 km/h alignment — fenced, unscalable three-metre security walls, no level crossings, severed fields, viaducts — it is no longer farmland. The loss is permanent and irreversible.

ALTO’s chief executive has publicly estimated that the Ottawa–Montréal first segment alone will cross approximately 1,700 properties, including roughly 500 farms. The Toronto and Québec segments have not yet been quantified in equivalent terms, but the agricultural footprint of the full 1,000 km network is necessarily substantially larger. CBC News

This is not a sentimental rural concern

The food on grocery shelves and farmers’ market stalls along this corridor comes from this land. Less farmland nearby means higher prices and a longer, more fragile import chain — at the exact moment trade with the United States has become unreliable. The four major Canadian farm associations — OFA, UPA, CFA, and BFO — have unanimously called for a halt to the project to allow for independent agricultural impact assessment before route selection. The federal government has declined to do so.

The Alternative

High Performance Rail on existing corridors

There is a credible alternative that delivers the substantive benefits ALTO is meant to provide — faster trains, more frequent service, real downtown access, intercity rail competitive with driving and flying — without the cost, the timeline, or the irreversible disruption. High Performance Rail: new dedicated passenger track at 200 km/h, alongside the 401 highway or on the existing CN Kingston Subdivision, integrated with VIA Rail’s existing fleet and stations. The federal government has commissioned twenty-eight studies into ALTO’s 300 km/h vision. None into this.

	ALTO HSR (Planned)	HPR Alternative
Top speed	300 km/h dedicated	200 km/h dedicated
Toronto–Montréal, train only	~3h projected	~3.5h projected
Toronto–Montréal, door-to-door	~4h (suburban Toronto stop)	~4h (existing downtown stations)
Capital cost	$60–90 billion (working assumption)	Under $10 billion (CRI estimate)
Years to operation	12–14 years (full network)	5–7 years
Infrastructure	New 1,000 km greenfield corridor	Existing 401 and CN Kingston Sub alignments
Downtown stations	None contractually committed	Preserved at all existing VIA terminals
Corridor communities served	7-station network; bypasses major existing VIA stops including Belleville, Kingston, Brockville, Cornwall	All eleven existing corridor communities preserved
Rolling stock	New procurement	VIA’s already-purchased Siemens Venture fleet
VIA national network	Corridor cross-subsidy diverted to private operator	National network revenue preserved

Premier Doug Ford has stated his preference for the 401 alignment over the ALTO greenfield route. The Eastern Ontario Wardens’ Caucus, representing 103 municipalities along the corridor, has supported it. The Coalition for Better Rail and the four major Canadian farm associations have all called for an independent comparative evaluation before construction commitments are made. The federal government has not produced one.

The integrated-network case

HPR is not a single project; it is a network upgrade. Existing VIA-owned segments (the Alexandria Subdivision between Ottawa and Coteau Junction; the Brockville and Smiths Falls subdivisions on the Toronto–Ottawa route) already deliver corridor-best reliability. Targeted new construction along the 401 and on the CN Kingston Subdivision addresses the remaining bottlenecks. The result is faster, more reliable service on every existing corridor route — not a single greenfield HSR line bypassing the network that exists.

Take Action

Three questions for the Minister of Transport

Construction is scheduled to begin in 2029–30. The window in which the federal government can be compelled to produce, and publish, a credible comparative evaluation of HSR against HPR is the period before that date. Three questions, the kind that must be answered or visibly declined, are sufficient to make the case for that evaluation politically unavoidable.

Release the comparative analysis between 200, 250, and 300 km/h options that preceded the rebrand from VIA HFR to ALTO. The decision to commit to 300 km/h dedicated HSR was not transparently justified against alternatives.
Publish a public evaluation of dedicated passenger track along the 401 and the CN Kingston Subdivision before construction commitments are made — time, cost, disruption, and timeline side by side, with methodology disclosed.
Refer ALTO to the Parliamentary Budget Officer for independent review of fiscal, ridership, and station-location assumptions before construction commitments are made.

Email Minister of Transport Steven MacKinnon TC.MinisterofTransport-MinistredesTransports.TC@tc.gc.ca

Also write to your Member of Parliament. The decision to refer the project to the Parliamentary Budget Officer for independent review can be initiated through any MP. Urban-riding MPs, in particular, have an interest in establishing whether the procurement that has been authorised will deliver the service their constituents have been told to expect.

Download One-Pager

Three Hours, Downtown to Downtown? — Urban Reader’s Brief (PDF)

Single-page printable version for distribution

Download PDF

Sources

Primary documents and statements

Alto Project, “Shaping the Canada of tomorrow with high-speed rail” consultation site — project scope, timeline, $60–90 billion cost range, 300 km/h speed, “reduce travel times by half” framing, FAQ on fares. altotrain.ca

Alto (high-speed rail), Wikipedia — project history, $3.9 billion design phase, Cadence consortium, 12–14 year timeline, intermediate station list. en.wikipedia.org

Bill Curry, “Ottawa train station isn’t ideal location for high-speed rail terminal, Transport Minister says,” The Globe and Mail, May 1, 2026 — carries the Imbleau / MacKinnon concession on station locations. theglobeandmail.com

Benjamin Shingler, “Ottawa-Montreal chosen as 1st segment of promised high-speed rail line,” CBC News, December 12, 2025 — project costing context, MacKinnon and Imbleau statements. cbc.ca

Mathieu Berger, “Montreal–Ottawa high-speed rail line could cross 1,700 properties, Alto predicts,” CBC News / Radio-Canada, May 5, 2026 — the 1,700 properties / 500 farms figure for the Ottawa–Montréal first segment. cbc.ca

Ontario Ministry of Transportation, High Speed Rail Business Case Toronto–Windsor (2016) — on the 250 vs 300 km/h marginal benefit analysis. Referenced in subsequent federal procurement documentation.

VIA Rail Canada — published schedules, fleet composition (Siemens Venture procurement), and corridor track ownership disclosed in annual reporting. viarail.ca

Ontario Federation of Agriculture and l’Union des producteurs agricoles, joint press release, February 27, 2026; Canadian Federation of Agriculture AGM resolution, February 25, 2026; Beef Farmers of Ontario statement, March 3, 2026 — the four-association call for project halt and independent agricultural impact assessment. ofa.on.ca

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative — supporting research notes on door-to-door travel time analysis, the High Performance Rail alternative framework, and the Benefit-Cost Ratio assessment are available at citizenresearch.ca. citizenresearch.ca

May 14, 2026