Heard not counted

CRI analysis · June 2026

Heard, Not Counted

Alto’s What We Heard report is precise about how many people it reached and silent about what they said. That silence is not an omission — it is the design.

Alto HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Independent & non-partisan

What Alto counts, exactly

324,026 unique online visits

24,142 questionnaires completed

19,903 map pins dropped

14,503 media mentions

What Alto leaves uncounted

— how many raised each theme

— concerns by category

— any sentiment split

— which issues mattered most

The same report, two standards of precision: six significant figures for the inputs, no number at all for the outputs.

The argument

The report is accountability-shaped but accountability-proof. It maximizes the visible evidence that consultation happened while removing every element that would let anyone test what it produced — so that hearing is decoupled from consequence.

1

The smoking gun: asymmetric precision

The clearest evidence isn’t interpretive — it’s on the page. Alto reports its inputs to six significant figures and its outputs with no number at all (see the ledger above).

The qualitative colouring is asymmetric in the same breath. In adjacent sentences of the executive summary, support gets intensifiers and active voice — nation-building “viewed positively, alongside strong enthusiasm,” supporters who “expressed a desire” to move forward. Opposition gets neutral process-verbs and passive voice — land-acquisition opposition “was voiced,” concerns “raised… on many occasions.” Both are unquantified; one is painted warm and active, the other cool and passive. That asymmetry, in a single paragraph, is the legitimation machine in miniature.

2

A report that cannot be wrong

The report says its themes were produced by “Artificial intelligence tools… semantic clustering, multi-label classification,” which also “were used to support report writing.” Add the absence of magnitude, the absence of attribution, and the instruction that the themes “are not presented in a specific order and they are all significant” — and the report becomes structurally unfalsifiable.

There is no figure to check against the inputs, no ranking to dispute, no claim that could be shown false. “All significant” is not a finding; it is a flattening — it pre-emptively denies that overwhelming, concentrated opposition would look any different from a scatter of mild concerns. A report that cannot be wrong is not a record. It is a position statement wearing a record’s clothes.

3

The frame was set before the room opened

The corridor that was consulted on was drawn first — from technical and financial criteria (“the straightest possible route,” “minimizing construction costs”) and the three 2025 RFP submissions — and then presented for feedback. The exercise is explicitly “corridor refinement”: consultation on the width of a band already drawn from cost-minimization, not on whether or where. The seven “project outcomes” are stated as fixed premises the consultation serves, never as propositions it could test.

The consultation’s frame excludes the project’s own justification. A participant could object to a curve; they could not put on the record that the stated outcomes might be better met by upgrading existing lines — the question the public itself kept raising as “improve VIA first.” The frame did the foreclosing; the consultation only refined inside it.

4

Consent invoked, consent disclaimed

Both reports invoke “Free, Prior, and Informed Consent” — and the word doing the work is consent. Yet the report never claims consent was obtained; it says Alto consults “with the aim of securing” it, then states flatly the process “is not a rights determination process.” It wears the standard as a credential while disclaiming the thing the standard names.

Its own numbers undercut the credential: of 40 Indigenous communities contacted, 29 held meetings and 12 made further submissions — a thinning base for a report it calls “validated.” And corridor maps were shared only with communities that had signed a collaboration or non-disclosure agreement. Consultation conducted under NDA is a contradiction in terms for a public, rights-bearing process: you could only see what you were consulted on by signing away the ability to discuss it.

5

Responsiveness, staged

The report — which documents Kingston-area demand — was released the same day, at Queen’s University, alongside the Minister’s direction to study a southern route through Kingston. The sequence manufactures a narrative of listening and responding. But the response is a direction to study, hedged twice (“potential,” “subject to technical feasibility”), and the real consultation on that segment is pushed to 2027. The report stages responsiveness in the present while deferring the substance past the next news cycle.

6

What this argument does not claim

A sharper critique is also a more honest one. Naming what Alto can rebut makes the rest land harder.

Not that Alto ignored concerns. It didn’t — the southern-corridor section names farmland, the Frontenac Arch, karst and groundwater specifically. The defensible claim is narrower and deadlier: Alto records concerns in a form that cannot be acted on or audited.
Not that the comment counts are bad faith. The public-facing range (“nearly 20,000” vs “nearly 45,000”) is two framings and partly an artifact of windowing and de-duplication. The fair point is rhetorical: Alto’s own site reaches for the smaller number.
Not that using AI is the flaw. The flaw is that the taxonomy is undisclosed and the outputs unquantified. The target is the opacity, not the method.
Not that this was a representative poll. Neither report claims it was. The platform measures the intensity of the concerned — which is exactly why the absence of any sentiment or geographic breakdown is the tell.

The line that holds

Alto published a 134-page account of a consultation that is precise about how many people it reached and silent about what they said — and that silence is the product, not an omission.

Download the full brief (PDF)

Sources

Alto, Public Consultation — What We Heard Report, Corridor Study Area (134 pp), June 2026.
Alto, Indigenous Consultation — What We Heard Report, Corridor Study Area (24 pp), June 2026.
Transport Canada, news release on the What We Heard report and Kingston as a potential stop, June 22, 2026. canada.ca

Quoted phrases are taken directly from the reports named above. The Alto HSR Citizen Research Initiative is an independent, non-partisan research project examining the proposed high-speed rail corridor through Eastern Ontario. This analysis addresses how the consultation was reported; it takes no position here for or against the project itself.

June 22, 2026

Tourism Study

Benefits for Stations, Costs for the Corridor

ALTO has published its own tourism study. It studies only the seven station cities — and counts none of the costs.

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Tourism Brief · Published June 2026 · ALTO consultation closed April 24, 2026

⚠ New Release: ALTO Commissions a Tourism Study

In June 2026 ALTO released “Tourism in the Alto Corridor: Current Conditions and Potential Impacts,” prepared for ALTO by the consultancy CPCS in association with HDR. It is the first time the project has placed a tourism analysis on the public record. The report’s headline is that ALTO “could contribute an additional $1 billion to GDP annually, and support 11,500 more jobs under a medium coordination scenario.”

The report carries the standard commissioned-work disclaimer — the opinions “are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Alto” — and is dated June 2026, after the April 24 consultation deadline had already closed. It is a gross-benefit study of the seven station cities. It does not measure a single cost.

Critical Finding

ALTO’s own consultant has now confirmed, in writing, the distinction this initiative has argued from the start: tourism benefits accrue to stations, not to the tracks between them. The report studies only the six Census Metropolitan Areas that contain the seven proposed stations — Toronto, Peterborough, Ottawa-Gatineau, Montreal, Trois-Rivières, and Québec City. The rural landscapes the corridor would traverse without stopping — Frontenac, Leeds & Grenville, the entire RTO 9 region — are outside the study’s frame entirely.

The report is a benefits-only document. It contains no construction-phase impacts, no tourism losses, and no accounting for visitors who shift away from non-station regions toward station hubs — even though the report itself concedes that smaller places that fail to differentiate “will limit gains — or even risk losing activity to larger centres.” The study answers one question: how much tourism might the seven stops gain? It never asks the second: what does the corridor cost the regions it passes through?

The much-quoted “$1 billion / 11,500 jobs” is the medium scenario, not the central case. The low scenario is +$177 million and roughly 2,000 jobs. Even the medium figure is contingent on dedicated tourism policy, last-mile connections, and destination readiness across the corridor — none of which ALTO controls or funds. The report concedes the foundational caveat in its own words: “HSR alone is rarely sufficient to generate sustained tourism development.”

Download

Benefits for Stations, Costs for the Corridor — Full Brief (PDF)

A point-by-point reading of ALTO’s tourism study against the cost side it omits, with the evidence from this initiative’s earlier tourism research

Download PDF

What the Study Is

A commissioned, benefits-only study of the seven stops

“Tourism in the Alto Corridor” combines three things: a baseline profile of tourism in the six station CMAs; a review of international case studies on high-speed rail and tourism; and three illustrative scenarios that vary the level of tourism-policy coordination from low to high. Its baseline finding is that tourism in those CMAs already generates over $31 billion in visitor spending, contributes about $33.7 billion to GDP, and supports more than 377,000 jobs, with Toronto and Montreal accounting for the largest shares.

The forward-looking finding — the one ALTO’s communications will lead with — is that additional tourism spending under the project could add to GDP and jobs. But the three scenarios produce very different numbers, and the report is explicit that they are “illustrative and should not be interpreted as forecasts.”

+$177M

added GDP / ~2,000 jobs — low coordination scenario

CPCS for ALTO, p.23

+$1.0B

added GDP / 11,500 jobs — medium coordination scenario (the headline)

CPCS for ALTO, p.23

+$3.9B

added GDP / 43,000 jobs — high coordination scenario

CPCS for ALTO, p.23

The single most important sentence in the document appears on page 7: the destinations “most likely to be affected by a high-speed rail service are the urban areas where stations are located.” That premise defines the study’s entire scope. Everything that follows is built on the six station CMAs. The communities between them — the ones with no station — are not modelled, not measured, and not mentioned in the results.

What ALTO’s Consultant Concedes

The report admits the bypass risk in its own words

This initiative has argued throughout the consultation that high-speed rail creates a station/no-station divide: stations create tourism, tracks do not. ALTO’s commissioned study does not contradict that argument. In several places, it states it.

What the report says	What it means for the corridor regions
“The travel and tourism destinations most likely to be affected by a high-speed rail service are the urban areas where stations are located.” (p.7) The study is then built only on the six station CMAs.	The regions the southern corridor would cross without a station — Frontenac, Leeds & Grenville, Lennox & Addington, the RTO 9 region — are outside the analytical frame. The study cannot show a benefit for them because it never looks at them.
Smaller municipalities that fail to differentiate and coordinate “will limit gains — or even risk losing activity to larger centres.” (p.18)	This is the bypass / agglomeration effect, conceded. The report frames it as a risk that supportive policy might manage. For a region with tracks and no station, it is the predictable default, not a managed exception.
“HSR alone is rarely sufficient to generate sustained tourism development; realized impacts depend on coordinated local strategies.” (p.18)	Even the modelled gains require destination marketing, event programming, accommodation, and last-mile connections that ALTO neither funds nor controls. Absent that coordination, the report’s own logic points to the low scenario or below.
International tourist numbers see “limited to no change” (p.22 note); nearly all modelled gains are in-corridor domestic visitors making shorter trips.	The projected uplift is largely Ontario and Quebec residents travelling more within their own provinces — a reshuffling of where Canadians already spend, not clearly net-new national tourism. The report never tests whether this is displacement.

Read together, these are not stray caveats. They are the analytical spine of the report. ALTO’s consultant has confirmed the station/no-station distinction, conceded that non-station places can lose activity, and acknowledged that the benefits depend on conditions outside ALTO’s gift.

The Cost Side

Everything the study does not count

A tourism impact assessment that names a benefit but no cost is a half-ledger. The report’s title promises “potential impacts”; what it delivers is potential gains at the seven stops. The costs documented in this initiative’s earlier research — and in submissions from affected regions — appear nowhere in it.

Cost the corridor imposes	How ALTO’s tourism study treats it
Construction-phase disruption. Eight to ten years of blasting, dust, night lighting, truck traffic, road closures, and trail severance through tourism-dependent rural areas — documented in this initiative’s RTO 9 submission and the snowmobile-trail brief.	Absent. The scenarios model an operating railway “if Alto were in service today.” The decade of construction that precedes any operating benefit is not in the analysis at all.
Treatment:Not counted
Trail and active-tourism loss. The Cataraqui Trail (a 104 km segment of the Trans-Canada Trail) and the organized snowmobile network of OFSC Districts 1, 2 and 6 — an estimated $220–270 million in direct expenditure and $450–540 million in total annual activity — run through the corridor.	Absent. The study’s tourism universe is the six metropolitan CMAs. Rural rail-trail and winter-tourism economies are not in its scope, so their potential loss does not register against the modelled urban gains.
Treatment:Not counted
The at-risk regional economy. RTO 9 recorded $1.8 billion in tourism spending in the first nine months of 2024; the Rideau Heritage Route sustains roughly $695 million in GDP and 8,744 jobs. Both sit in the southern corridor’s path.	Absent. Neither figure appears. The regions that generate them are not among the six CMAs studied, so the report’s GDP and jobs gains are not netted against any of this exposure.
Treatment:Not counted
VIA Rail displacement — regional and national. MP Scott Reid has confirmed in writing that either corridor option is likely to reduce VIA ridership and trigger service cuts through Kingston, Brockville, and other southeastern Ontario towns — the low-carbon access mode visitors use to reach these destinations without a car. The risk is also national: then–NDP transport critic Taylor Bachrach (Skeena–Bulkley Valley) warned that VIA earns more than 80% of its revenue and carries more than 90% of its passengers on the Quebec City–Windsor corridor, and that handing that corridor to a private operator would leave VIA with “a fraction of the revenue” it uses to cross-subsidize long-distance rural routes across the Prairies, the West, and the Maritimes.	Absent. The report does not consider the loss of existing rail access to non-station communities, even as it counts new rail access as a benefit to station communities. Nor does it weigh the wider risk to the national VIA network that the corridor’s revenue currently helps sustain.
Treatment:Not counted
Visitors drawn away from non-station regions. The bypass effect the report concedes on page 18 — activity migrating to larger centres with stations.	Conceded but not quantified. The report names the risk and then models only the upside at the stations that would gain. The corresponding loss elsewhere is acknowledged in prose and excluded from the numbers.
Treatment:Acknowledged, not measured

How Robust Are the Numbers?

Assumption-driven scenarios, not forecasts

Even taken on its own terms, the report’s headline number is softer than it will sound in a press release. Five features of the method are worth keeping in view.

The headline is the middle scenario, not a central estimate

The “$1 billion / 11,500 jobs” figure is the medium coordination scenario. It requires dedicated tourism policy in every city, improved last-mile connections, and rising convention and event activity. The report’s own framing makes clear these are conditions to be met, not outcomes of the railway itself.

The gains are scenario assumptions, not a Canadian model

The arrival, length-of-stay, and spending percentages in Appendix B are judgmental selections from the international literature, applied to Canadian baseline data. They are not derived from a Canadian demand model or validated against Canadian outturns. The outputs are functions of the chosen inputs.

No reference-class or outturn discipline

The tourism uplift is bracketed by three policy scenarios chosen to span a positive range. There is no reference-class comparison to what comparable HSR projects actually delivered — the same optimism-friendly structure this initiative has critiqued in ALTO’s ridership and cost work.

Shorter stays can reduce spending even as arrivals rise

The report concedes that average length of stay falls in some cities even in the medium scenario, as shorter-staying in-corridor visitors displace longer-staying international ones, and that accommodation spending can drop even when arrival counts go up.

The report’s own “structural differences” section undercuts transfer

Page 19 lists the reasons the European evidence may not transfer to Canada: dispersed attractions, lower base tourism, car-dominant travel (85–98% of corridor visitors drive today; train is about 6% to Toronto and ~2% elsewhere), and an immature rail network. It concludes “early impacts may take longer to be realized.”

The Marketing Contradiction

The study quietly undercuts ALTO’s own food-tourism ad

ALTO has been running a Facebook campaign inviting travellers to “embark on a culinary adventure from Toronto to Quebec City,” with the tagline that “Canadian food tourism is getting a whole lot easier — and faster.” The implication is broad, corridor-wide benefit.

ALTO’s own commissioned study says something narrower. Benefits concentrate at stations. Non-station areas may lose activity. The food-tourism landscapes of Eastern Ontario — the farms, trails, and agri-tourism the ad’s imagery evokes — sit in a corridor the train would pass through without stopping. The campaign and page 18 of the report cannot both be the whole story. We covered the food-tourism ad when it first appeared; the new study now sits in tension with it.

Where Things Stand · June 2026

Summary ledger

Measuring ALTO’s tourism study against what an honest tourism assessment of the corridor would have to show:

Confirmed

Benefits accrue to stations, not tracks. ALTO’s consultant builds the entire study on the six station CMAs and states that station cities are the destinations most likely to be affected (p.7).

Confirmed

Non-station places can lose activity. The report concedes the bypass / agglomeration risk in its own words (p.18).

Confirmed

HSR alone is not sufficient. Benefits depend on policy coordination, last-mile connections, and destination readiness that ALTO does not fund (p.18).

Soft

The headline figure is the medium scenario, not a central estimate; the low scenario is roughly one-sixth of it. The numbers are scenario assumptions, explicitly “not forecasts.”

Soft

Gains are largely in-corridor domestic, with international numbers showing little change — raising an unanswered displacement question.

Omitted

Construction-phase disruption (8–10 years): not in the analysis.

Omitted

Trail and winter-tourism loss (Cataraqui Trail; OFSC Districts 1/2/6, $450–540M total activity): not in scope.

Omitted

At-risk regional economy (RTO 9 $1.8B; Rideau Heritage Route $695M GDP / 8,744 jobs): not netted against modelled gains.

Omitted

VIA Rail displacement: loss of existing rail access to non-station communities not considered — nor the national risk to VIA, which earns 80%+ of its revenue on this corridor.

Omitted

Bypass losses: conceded in prose (p.18) but excluded from the numbers.

ALTO has now produced its own tourism study, and it confirms three things this initiative has argued throughout. Tourism benefits accrue to stations, not to tracks. The rural corridor regions are not in the study. And the report contains no cost side at all. ALTO’s consultant has, in effect, validated the station/no-station distinction while declining to measure the half of the ledger that falls on Eastern Ontario. A benefits-only study of the seven stops is not a tourism impact assessment of the corridor.

Download Full Brief

Benefits for Stations, Costs for the Corridor (PDF)

Complete reading of ALTO’s tourism study for decision-makers, RTO 9, MTCG, MPs, and constituents tracking the tourism file

Download PDF

Sources

Primary documents

1.

CPCS, in association with HDR, for ALTO. Tourism in the Alto Corridor: Current Conditions and Potential Impacts. June 2026. (Scenario results, pp.21–24; policy-coordination conclusions, p.18; study scope, p.7; structural differences, p.19; baseline, p.5.)

2.

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative. The Tourism Economy at Risk. citizenresearch.ca/tourism-economy

3.

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative. Snowmobile Trails and High-Speed Rail. citizenresearch.ca/snowmobile-trails

4.

Submission to RTO 9 — ALTO High-Speed Rail Southern Corridor: Tourism & Economic Impacts for Southeastern Ontario. February 2026. (RTO 9 regional tourism spending, Jan–Sep 2024.)

5.

OFSC 2022–2023 Economic Impact Study (Harry Cummings & Associates, using the Ontario Ministry of Tourism TREIM model); district-level apportionment for Districts 1, 2 and 6.

6.

MP Scott Reid, correspondence to constituents (2026), re: VIA Rail displacement risk from HSR corridor selection.

7.

CBC News, “NDP warns privatizing high-speed rail from Toronto to Quebec could kill passenger trains in rest of Canada,” February 19, 2025 — carries MP Taylor Bachrach’s warning and VIA’s corridor revenue and passenger shares. cbc.ca

8.

ALTO, “Embark on a culinary adventure from Toronto to Quebec City” — Facebook advertisement, February 2026 (alto-hsr.ca).

June 11, 2026

What Alto told Parliament

ALTO HSR · Budget Disclosure · June 2026

What ALTO Told Parliament

For the first time, ALTO has had to list its contractors by name. The picture is of a head office — not a railway.

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Source: Written Question Q-1087, House of Commons (Sessional Paper 8555-451-1087, tabled June 5, 2026)

In plain terms

A Member of Parliament asked the federal government, in writing, five basic questions about ALTO: how much public money it has received, what its budget is, how it is organized, how many people it employs, and every contract it has signed worth more than $10,000. The government’s written answer was tabled in the House of Commons on June 5, 2026.

The answer is the most detailed look yet at where ALTO’s money has gone — and the first time its contracts have been disclosed by vendor. What it shows: after more than three years and roughly a quarter-billion dollars, the money has gone into building an organization — staff, software, advisers, and communications — and almost none of it into building a railway.

⬇ Download this brief as a PDFWhat_ALTO_Told_Parliament.pdf

How this came to light

What a written question is — and what this one asked

In Canada’s Parliament, any MP can put a question to the government in writing. The government is then required to research it and table a formal written answer, which becomes part of the public record. It is one of the main tools MPs have for getting specific facts out of departments and Crown corporations that do not otherwise publish them.

This question — numbered Q-1087 — was asked on April 20, 2026 by Michael Barrett, the MP for Leeds–Grenville–Thousand Islands–Rideau Lakes, and answered on June 5, 2026 on behalf of the Minister of Transport. It asked ALTO five things:

Total funding: how much money ALTO has received from the government since it was created.
Operating budget: ALTO’s yearly budget, broken down by type of spending.
Structure: how the corporation is organized.
Employees: how many people it employs, broken down by position.
Contracts: every contract over $10,000 — with the date, amount, vendor, what was bought, and the start and end dates.

The full question and the government’s answer are on the House of Commons website (link at the foot of this page).

The Answer

Four numbers that tell the story

$266M

Received from the government since ALTO was created in November 2022 (precisely $265,976,355)

~11%

Share of that money that appears as listed contracts (~$29.5M of ~200 contracts). The rest is mostly salaries and smaller spending

216

Employees — of whom 67 (about a third) are directors or above, and only 7 are managers

1

Engineering contract among nearly 200 — the rest is software, advisers, recruitment, and communications

The first figure is the eye-catching one, but it needs care: receiving $266 million is not the same as wasting it. Most of that money pays the people who work at ALTO and covers spending too small to be listed. The point is what it is being spent on — and the contract list answers that plainly.

Where the Contracts Go

Software, advisers, and communications — not track

ALTO listed close to 200 contracts over $10,000. Grouped by what they paid for, the pattern is clear. (The groupings below are ours; the figures are ALTO’s.)

What the contract paid for	Share	In plain terms
Software & IT systems	25%	Software licences and one large $4.09M IT system build — the single biggest contract
Strategic & management advice	23%	Outside consultants advising the corporation on how to run itself and the project
Individual consultants	13%	Named and self-employed contractors
Data & mapping	7%	Land-registry data and GIS mapping — growing sharply in 2025–26
Communications, branding & polling	6%	PR firms, design agencies, video, and opinion surveys
Executive recruitment	6%	Headhunting firms hired to build out the senior team
Indigenous engagement	4%	Consultation and advisory work
Engineering	2.5%	A single engineering consulting contract

There are no contracts for civil works, track, signalling, or trains — the things a railway is made of.

The most expensive single thing ALTO has bought is not a piece of railway. It is a computer system.

What It Adds Up To

An organization, not yet a railway

The numbers describe a head office that is still hiring, buying software, and shaping its public image. For 216 people there are 23 executives — a CEO, 9 chiefs, and 13 vice-presidents — but only 7 managers. ALTO has spent far more telling its story and standing itself up than on the engineering a railway actually requires.

This is the same pattern our earlier analysis found inside ALTO’s own corporate plan, where communications staff outnumbered environmental scientists 18 to 1. Q-1087 now confirms that pattern with named contracts. After more than three years and a quarter-billion dollars, ALTO is a fully-staffed, executive-heavy organization — and the railway it exists to plan is still entirely on paper.

A Companion Disclosure

What ALTO paid itself in bonuses

A second written question — Q-1058, asked by Andrew Scheer and answered on June 1, 2026 — required every federal Crown corporation to report the bonuses it paid. ALTO’s answer is striking for an organization that has yet to lay a metre of track.

$2.76M

Paid in bonuses, for a short-term incentive covering roughly the first half of 2025

100%

Of ALTO staff — every executive and every non-executive employee — received a bonus

~30×

ALTO’s bonus pool compared with VIA Rail’s in the same disclosure

$1M+

Potential annual compensation for ALTO’s chief executive

ALTO reported paying $2,758,967.68 in bonuses to 134 people: all 18 of its executives and all 116 of its below-executive staff. The executives shared about $1.23 million (an average near $68,000 each); everyone else shared about $1.53 million (an average near $13,000 each). The payment covers January 1 to July 16, 2025, which ALTO describes as its most recent short-term incentive payment.

The same parliamentary return lets us set ALTO beside the railway it is meant to complement.

Crown corporation	Bonuses paid	Recipients	Trains running?
ALTO	$2,758,968	134 — 100% of staff	None — still in planning
VIA Rail Canada	$95,500	10	National network, ~3,500 staff

VIA Rail’s bonus program reaches only a small group of managers; ALTO’s reaches its entire staff. ALTO, which runs no trains, paid out roughly thirty times what the operating national railway did.

The pattern starts at the top. According to ALTO’s own business plan summary, reported in May 2025, chief executive Martin Imbleau’s base salary falls between roughly $562,000 and $661,000, with an incentive worth up to 65% of that base — a potential total above $1 million a year. ALTO’s six other top executives have base salaries of $170,000 to $330,000, with bonuses of up to 40%.

ALTO’s chief executive can earn more than $1 million a year. The head of VIA Rail, who runs an actual national railway with some 3,500 employees, earns about $575,000.

One Figure to Read Carefully

The operating budget is almost certainly missing three zeros

The answer reports ALTO’s 2026–27 operating budget as $710,158 — $549,754 for operating costs and $160,404 for capital. Read at face value, that is impossible: salaries alone for 216 employees run into the tens of millions of dollars a year.

What almost certainly happened

Government financial statements are routinely presented “in thousands of dollars.” Read that way, $710,158 becomes about $710 million — which closely matches the roughly $695 million that ALTO’s own corporate plan projects for 2026–27. The likeliest explanation is simply that the answer dropped the “in thousands” notation. The substance is the more important point: ALTO’s operating budget for a single pre-construction year, before any track is laid, is on the order of $700 million.

The fuller picture

Q-1087 confirms, with named contracts, what ALTO’s own planning documents already implied. Our budget analysis sets out the full $3.9-billion pre-construction spending plan, the workforce breakdown, and the cost-estimate accuracy problem behind it.

Sources

Written Question Q-1087, House of Commons of Canada — Sessional Paper 8555-451-1087, tabled June 5, 2026 (asked by Michael Barrett, MP; answered on behalf of the Minister of Transport). Funding received, workforce by position, and all contracts over $10,000. ourcommons.ca/written-questions/45-1/q-1087

Written Question Q-1058, House of Commons of Canada — Sessional Paper 8555-451-1058, tabled June 1, 2026 (asked by Andrew Scheer, MP). Bonuses awarded at Crown corporations, 2025–26, including the ALTO and VIA Rail figures used above. ourcommons.ca/written-questions/45-1/q-1058

Executive compensation ranges: ALTO (VIA TGF) business plan summary, as reported by Le Journal de Québec, May 26, 2025 — base-salary and incentive ranges for the chief executive and senior executives, and the VIA Rail chief-executive comparison.

June 6, 2026

Modal shift HSR car

Citizen Research Initiative · Modal Shift Analysis · Note 2

Modal Shift Between Rail and Car on the ALTO Corridor

The car competes with rail at every distance, costs are weighed on fuel rather than full economics, and a full car of four tilts the comparison decisively toward driving. Why North American road–rail substitution is structurally harder — and how much of it ALTO’s speed actually buys.

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Modal Shift Note 2 · Published May 2026

⚠ What This Note Examines

This note applies the evidence on rail–car substitution to the two principal corridor pairs — Toronto–Ottawa and Toronto–Montréal — in the North American context, comparing current VIA Rail, a High Performance Rail (HPR) alternative at 200 km/h, and ALTO at 300+ km/h.

The road–rail comparison differs structurally from the rail–air analysis in Note 1: the car carries no fixed access penalty, perceived driving cost is dominated by fuel rather than full lifecycle cost, group travel decisively favours the car, and modal choice is more responsive to price than to time.

Summary

The right competitive variable is not absolute rail time but the ratio τ of rail time to car drive time: τ = 0.5 means rail takes half as long as driving, τ = 1.0 means equal time. Because car drive time scales with distance, the same τ implies the same competitive geometry on any route length.

The corridor’s road-substitutable demand is far larger than its air-substitutable demand — highway flow on the 401 between Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa and Montréal is several times the corridor’s annual air person-trips. Three structural features make North-American competition harder than European comparators: the 401/A20 is toll-free end-to-end, there is no congestion charging anywhere in Canada, and per-person car cost divides among occupants while rail charges per ticket. A family of four faces a per-person rail-to-car price ratio four times higher than a solo traveller.

Under canonical conditions — solo traveller, current Canadian gas prices, near-parity pricing — on a North-American–calibrated curve anchored on VIA’s ~13% rail share, the model predicts ALTO captures about 51% of the rail+car market on Toronto–Ottawa and 41% on Toronto–Montréal; HPR captures about 33% on both. European-equivalent upper bounds — readings that would apply only if North American transport policy shifted toward European fuel taxes, tolls and station-area land use — are 67% and 58% for ALTO and around 50% for HPR.

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Modal Shift Note 2 — Road–Rail Research Note (PDF)

The full 26-page note with all eleven figures, the European and North-American calibrations, the group-size and gas-price levers, the reliability analysis, and the methodology and sources

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1 · Travel Time

The competitive zone for road

The literature on rail–car substitution differs sharply from the rail–air literature. The car carries no fixed time penalty equivalent to airport access, security and downtown-airport transit; parked at origin and arriving at destination, it has near-zero access cost on both ends, and its line-haul time degrades only slightly across the 100–1,000 km range. The result is that car competes against rail at every distance — including short-haul corridors where rail would dominate the air comparison.

The right measure is therefore not absolute rail journey time but the ratio of rail time to car time. Defining τ = (rail time) ÷ (car drive time at 100 km/h) gives a distance-invariant measure of rail’s advantage: τ = 0.5 means rail takes half as long as driving; τ = 1.0 means equal time; τ > 1.0 means rail is slower. A 3-hour rail journey on a 540 km route (τ = 0.56) is competitively equivalent to a 1.5-hour journey on a 270 km route. This is the key structural difference from the rail-vs-air analysis, where rail’s fixed advantage at the access stage means absolute time is what matters.

Road-rail modal-shift S-curve plotting rail share of the rail+car market against the time ratio tau, European calibration — **Figure 1.** Modal-shift S-curve for rail–car substitution, plotting rail’s predicted share of the combined rail+car market against the time ratio τ = (rail journey time) ÷ (car drive time at 100 km/h). Logistic curve fitted with inflection at τ = 0.65 (rail captures 50% at price parity when ~35% faster than driving). Three zones: rail decisively faster (τ < 0.5); the competitive zone (0.5 < τ < 1.0); and rail slower than driving (τ > 1.0). Calibrated against the TGV Paris–Lyon pre/post comparison.

The European calibration in Figure 1 represents what rail can achieve under conditions that favour modal shift — high fuel taxes, congestion charging, dense feeder transit, central stations, and a cultural baseline of rail use. North American conditions are systematically less favourable, and the same τ produces lower rail shares.

North-American-calibrated S-curve anchored on current VIA Rail's 13% rail share, with the European curve shown for comparison — **Figure 1b.** North-American–calibrated S-curve, anchored on current VIA Rail service (~13% rail share of the rail+car market at τ ≈ 1.0). The faded grey dashed curve is the European calibration from Figure 1. Inflection shifts left from τ = 0.65 to τ = 0.46: under North American conditions, rail must be ~54% faster than driving — rather than 35% — to capture half the market at parity. Equivalent to a constant utility penalty α ≈ 0.67 reflecting toll-free highways, low fuel taxes, free parking, dispersed land use, weak feeder transit, and a cultural autonomy preference.

Read together, Figures 1 and 1b bracket the realistic range. The European curve represents what is achievable in principle if rail-favourable conditions were created; the NA curve gives what is achievable under prevailing structural conditions. The remainder of this note uses the NA calibration, with European-equivalent figures quoted alongside where the comparison is informative. The gap between them is policy-relevant: roughly 10 to 15 percentage points of modal share depend not on which infrastructure is built but on whether the broader transport-policy environment supports modal shift.

Empirical anchors and the North American context

The Paris–Lyon TGV cut journey time from ~4 hours to under 2 and lifted rail’s share against road from ~30% to ~67% — a 37-point shift. Madrid–Barcelona AVE and Tokyo–Osaka Shinkansen deliver comparable shares against parallel highways. But all operate under conditions the corridor does not share. North America carries none of these reinforcements: the 401/A20 is toll-free end-to-end, Canadian fuel taxes are roughly one-third of European levels, there is no congestion charging in any Canadian city, and land use at both ends is car-oriented. The cross-elasticity literature confirms rail and car barely substitute — a 10% rise in fuel prices produces only a 1 to 4% rise in transit ridership.

Rail’s competitive position against the car turns on the time ratio τ, not absolute journey time. The North American absence of tolls, congestion charges, and high fuel taxes means realised modal share will likely sit substantially below the European-anchored model’s predictions.

2 · Price

Elasticity, group size, and perceived cost

The road–rail price comparison differs from rail–air in three ways: the elasticity of substitution is higher, the per-person ratio depends decisively on group size, and the cost of driving travellers actually weigh is the perceived cost (mostly fuel), not the full economic cost. The same logit form applies, but with a larger price coefficient (γ = 1.5 against 1.0 for rail–air), reflecting own-price elasticities of −1.0 to −1.6 for leisure demand against −0.4 to −0.7 for business.

European price family

Figure 2a shows the curve family at six price ratios under the European calibration. The wide range (0.5 to 8.0) reflects that group travel can drive the per-person ratio well above 5 even at parity-pricing intentions, since car cost divides among occupants while rail fare does not.

North American price family

Figure 2b applies the same six ratios under the NA calibration (τ₀ = 0.46). Each curve sits 15 to 20 points below its European counterpart at every τ. This family drives the corridor predictions in the rest of the note.

Family of road-rail S-curves at six rail-to-car price ratios, European calibration — **Figure 2a.** Family of road–rail S-curves at six rail-to-car-per-person price ratios (r = rail fare ÷ car cost per person), European calibration. The middle navy curve at r = 1.0 is price parity. The family spans 0.5 to 8.0, reflecting that group travel can push the per-person ratio well above 5.

Family of road-rail S-curves at six price ratios, North American calibration — **Figure 2b.** The same six ratios under the North American calibration (τ₀ = 0.46). Each curve sits 15 to 20 points below its European counterpart. This family is used throughout the rest of the note.

Perceived versus full cost of driving

Drivers compare rail fare against the perceived cost of driving, not the full economic cost. On Toronto–Montréal, one-way fuel for a typical car (9.4 L/100 km at ~$1.65/L) is about $84; the full economic cost — depreciation, insurance, maintenance — is more than three times that, around $300. But fixed costs are not perceived at the moment of choice; the car is owned regardless. A VIA Economy fare of ~$80 against perceived car cost of $84 produces a price ratio near 1.0 for a solo traveller. Against full cost the same fare would imply a ratio of 0.27 — and would predict a far larger rail share than the corridor actually carries, the empirical tell that perceived cost is the right input.

The group-size effect

Cars carry one to four passengers at a single fuel cost; rail charges per ticket. The per-person rail-to-car ratio is therefore ~1.0 for a solo traveller, 1.9 for a couple, 2.9 for three, and 3.8 for a full car of four. Family travel and any leisure trip with two or more travellers structurally favours the car — a multiplier with no analogue in the rail–air comparison. At parity pricing, ALTO’s Toronto–Ottawa share drops from ~51% solo to ~12% for a family of four; on Toronto–Montréal from 41% to 8%.

Gas price as a modal-shift lever

Because perceived car cost is dominated by fuel, the price ratio is sensitive to gas prices in a way the air comparison is not. A swing from $1.30 to $2.00/L — well within historic range — moves the solo Toronto–Montréal ratio from 1.21 to 0.79. Carbon pricing and fuel-tax policy are levers on rail modal share that operate as strongly as line-haul speed, at much lower capital cost.

Group-size effects can suppress predicted rail share by 75 to 90 per cent; gas-price swings can move it by 10 to 20 percentage points. These dimensions matter as much as infrastructure choice.

3 · Travel Time on the Corridor

Where the corridor sits on the curve

The same two principal pairs carry the bulk of rail-substitutable demand, but the absolute road flow is very large. The 401 between Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa and Montréal carries tens of millions of person-trips a year — several times the corridor’s air person-trips. Even a small percentage shift represents a meaningful absolute volume.

**Table 1.** Approximate annual person-trip volumes (both directions) by mode on each principal pair, and resulting current modal shares. Order-of-magnitude estimates (±25% air/rail, ±30% car). Bus volumes excluded for clarity.
City pair	Air	Rail (VIA)	Car	Rail share of rail+air	Rail share of rail+car
Toronto–Montréal	~1.9 M	~800 K	~6 M	~30%	~13%
Toronto–Ottawa	~0.9 M	~800 K	~4.5 M	~47%	~14%
Ottawa–Montréal	~0.45 M	~525 K	~4 M	~54%	~12%

Three observations follow. The road-substitutable market dwarfs the air-substitutable market on every pair — car volumes are three to ten times rail+air combined. Current rail-vs-air shares are already meaningful (~30% on Toronto–Montréal, ~half on the shorter pairs), but rail-vs-car shares sit in the 12 to 14% range across all three. And the structural similarity of road–rail shares despite very different distances confirms the τ-normalisation: current VIA service produces τ values close to 1.0 on every pair.

**Table 2.** Approximate segment-level travel times for car (driving on 401/A20, no congestion) alongside rail under three scenarios. *Toronto–Montréal under current VIA runs 5 h 13 min on the 538 km direct routing; the parallel car drive is ~5 h 30 min.
City pair	Distance	Car (401)	VIA current	HPR (200 km/h)	ALTO (300+ km/h)
Toronto–Ottawa	~450 km	~4 h 30 min	~4 h 30 min	~2 h 55 min	~2 h
Toronto–Montréal	~540 km	~5 h 30 min	5 h 13 min*	~3 h 38 min	~3 h
Ottawa–Montréal	~190 km	~2 h	~1 h 55 min	~1 h 30 min	~1 h

Modal-shift progression for Toronto-Montreal under VIA, HPR and ALTO at solo, near-parity pricing on the NA-calibrated curve — **Figure 3.** Modal-shift progression for Toronto–Montréal under the three rail scenarios, plotted on the North-American–calibrated S-curve at solo traveller and near-parity pricing. Predicted rail share of the rail+car market rises from ~15% under VIA, to 32% under HPR, to 41% under ALTO — a total gain of ~27 points, of which 17 points (about two-thirds) are captured by the HPR step alone.

**Table 3.** Predicted rail share of the combined rail+car market on each principal pair under each scenario (NA calibration, near-parity, solo, current gas, current VIA-equivalent fares). The VIA shares match the Table 1 anchors, validating the calibration. HPR/ALTO values are order-of-magnitude estimates.
City pair	VIA current	HPR (200 km/h)	ALTO (300+ km/h)
Toronto–Ottawa	~13%	~34%	~51%
Toronto–Montréal	~15%	~32%	~41%

These are the time-only readings under the most favourable price configuration. Real corridor traffic is a mix of solo, couple and family travel, with fares that may rise above current VIA levels if HPR or ALTO recover more capital from passengers. Section 4 produces a more realistic envelope.

4 · Price and Group Size on the Corridor

Where the corridor sits on the price axis

Figure 3 plotted the scenarios at price parity — the most favourable assumption for rail. But HPR and ALTO carry higher capital and operating costs than VIA’s shared-track service, and any realistic operating model recovers part of that from passengers. International HSR and the Brightline comparator place premium fares 30 to 80% above conventional rail. This analysis takes a moderate set: HPR at ~20% premium (r = 1.2), ALTO at ~50% premium (r = 1.5).

Modal-shift progression for Toronto-Montreal with realistic fare premiums applied: VIA r=1.0, HPR r=1.2, ALTO r=1.5 — **Figure 4.** Toronto–Montréal under realistic scenario-specific fare premiums — VIA at r = 1.0, HPR at ~20% premium (r = 1.2), ALTO at ~50% premium (r = 1.5). Predicted shares: VIA 15%, HPR 26%, ALTO 28%. The total VIA → ALTO gain collapses from +27 points at parity to **+13 points**, with the HPR step doing essentially all the work (+12 pts) and the ALTO step adding only +1 to +2.

Three observations follow. First, ALTO’s modal-share advantage over HPR — already modest at parity (+9 points on Toronto–Montréal) — essentially disappears once realistic fare premiums are applied, the two converging to within a point of each other. Second, this is robust: sensitivity at ALTO premiums between 30 and 80% produces ALTO shares between 30 and 24%, all within a few points of the HPR 26% reading. Third, the HPR step from current VIA to a dedicated 200 km/h corridor at VIA-equivalent fares captures essentially all of the realistically achievable road–rail modal shift; ALTO’s 300+ km/h capability is real but largely cancelled by the fare premium needed to fund it.

Modal share as a function of per-person rail-to-car price ratio for each scenario on both Toronto pairs — **Figure 5.** Modal share as a function of per-person rail-to-car price ratio, travel time held fixed. Reference operating points combine the solo/current-gas baseline with the realistic premiums: VIA at r = 2.4, HPR at r = 2.8, ALTO at r = 3.6. Predicted shares: VIA ~4% on both pairs; HPR ~10% (Toronto–Ottawa) and ~9% (Toronto–Montréal); ALTO ~13% and ~9%. Share falls steeply as the ratio rises, reflecting the higher price coefficient.

Modal share as a function of group size from 1 to 4 passengers per car for each scenario — **Figure 6.** Modal share against group size (1 to 4 passengers per car), each scenario scaling linearly from its base ratio. Toronto–Ottawa solo shares of 4% (VIA), 10% (HPR), 13% (ALTO) fall to ~1% across all three for a family of four; Toronto–Montréal similarly. The HPR and ALTO lines converge rapidly — **a couple essentially eliminates the ALTO advantage.**

The rail-substitutable portion of corridor road traffic is concentrated on solo travellers paying single-person fares against per-person fuel costs. A second passenger halves rail share again; a car of three or four cannot be captured at any travel time or defensible fare. This narrows the realistic market to a small fraction of total road flow — predominantly business, single-traveller leisure, and downtown-to-downtown trips.

Modal share as a function of gas price from $1.00 to $2.50 per litre for each scenario — **Figure 7.** Modal share against gas price ($/L) at solo travel, anchored at the current ~$1.65/L (VIA r = 2.4, HPR r = 2.8, ALTO r = 3.6). A swing from $1.00 to $2.50 roughly triples rail share for each scenario, but absolute levels remain modest. HPR and ALTO converge almost exactly on Toronto–Montréal at all gas prices — fare premiums largely cancel ALTO’s speed advantage.

Two policy implications follow. The corridor’s modal-shift outcomes are not solely a function of which infrastructure is chosen — they also depend on fuel pricing, carbon pricing and the broader transport-policy environment. And the comparative performance of HPR and ALTO is roughly stable across the gas-price range, so the scenario comparison is robust to fuel-price assumptions even if the absolute levels are not.

5 · Reliability

On-time performance and reliability

Reliability operates as an effective time penalty whenever on-time performance (OTP) drops below a threshold travellers can rely on. Unreliable service makes travellers take an earlier departure than schedule alone requires, inflating their effective journey time by the buffer they carry. The model adds a utility term δ·(OTP_ref − OTP), with δ = 2.0 (the Wardman midpoint) and OTP_ref = 0.85 (VIA’s 2023 reported figure).

Rail share of the rail+car market as on-time performance varies from 95% down to 50% for both Toronto pairs — **Figure 8.** Rail share of the rail+car market for VIA Toronto–Ottawa and Toronto–Montréal as OTP varies from a 95% dedicated-track target down to a 50% stress-test floor. Reference points: dedicated-track target (95%), current VIA (85%), VIA’s 2021 figure (~67%, during heavy freight conflict), and a 50% stress test. As OTP erodes from 95 to 50%, Toronto–Ottawa share roughly halves (15.4% to 6.9%); Toronto–Montréal falls 17.2% to 7.8%.

Three points follow. OTP is a meaningful but not dominant lever — its dynamic range across the observed band is about ±5 points, comparable to a $0.50/L fuel swing or a solo-to-couple shift. OTP and price are partial substitutes: a 10-point OTP improvement is worth roughly a 14% fare cut, which is why Brightline advertises 92% OTP precisely to support a fare premium. And crucially, the OTP gain inheres in the dedicated-track step, not the speed step — both HPR and ALTO eliminate the freight-train conflicts on shared CN track that cause VIA’s reliability problems, so OTP is not a differentiator between them.

OTP erosion from 95 to 50 per cent halves VIA’s predicted rail share. The reliability gap between shared-track service and a dedicated alternative is real, but it is captured equally by HPR and ALTO — the speed step adds nothing to reliability.

6 · Where the Returns Sit

Where the modal-shift returns sit on the curve

Because the curve is logistic, the value of additional time savings depends on where a route starts. On Toronto–Ottawa under the NA calibration, moving from VIA (τ = 1.00, ~13%) to HPR (τ = 0.65, ~34%) approaches the inflection and delivers the largest single increment; the move to ALTO (τ = 0.44, ~51%) adds another as the curve crosses its inflection. On Toronto–Montréal, the moves go from VIA at ~15% to HPR at ~32% to ALTO at ~41%.

Decomposition of road-rail modal-shift gain by investment step: VIA to HPR versus HPR to ALTO on each pair — **Figure 9.** Decomposition of road–rail modal-shift gain by investment step (solo, near-parity, NA calibration). Gold bars show the gain from VIA to HPR; terracotta bars the additional gain from HPR to ALTO. The HPR step adds 21 points on Toronto–Ottawa and 17 on Toronto–Montréal; the ALTO step adds 17 and 9. Under the European calibration the comparable figures would be 27/23 (HPR) and 17/10 (ALTO).

17–21

Percentage points captured by the VIA → HPR step (NA, near-parity)

9–17

Additional points from HPR → ALTO — shrinking under realistic premiums

$2.5–8B

Incremental capital cost per percentage point of ALTO-only road–rail shift

The cost-effectiveness comparison is more challenging for ALTO than for HPR. ALTO’s $60–90 billion envelope is an incremental investment of $40–70 billion above the HPR option. Spread across the additional 9 to 17 points ALTO captures over HPR at canonical NA conditions, that works out to roughly $2.5 billion to $8 billion per percentage point — with the important caveat that road–rail shift, in absolute trip volumes, represents a much larger total person-trip diversion than the air–rail equivalent.

The corridor’s road traffic is several times its air traffic, and even an NA-realistic 30 to 50 per cent rail share of rail+car represents a larger absolute volume than full capture of the rail+air market.

7 · Implications

What this means for the corridor decision

Six conclusions follow from putting the road–rail evidence alongside the air–rail analysis.

Structurally different from rail-vs-air

The car competes at all distances; the competitive zone is narrower (1.5 to 3 hours); perceived cost is dominated by fuel; group travel tilts decisively toward driving; cross-elasticities are remarkably low; and structural North American conditions all suppress rail’s position relative to European comparators.

The road prize is bigger

Despite the headwinds, road-substitutable demand is far larger in absolute terms than air-substitutable demand. Even modest rail shares translate to large absolute diversions — between 1.4 and 3 million additional rail trips a year on the principal pairs. The road prize is bigger; it is just structurally harder to capture.

Policy levers rival infrastructure

Group size and fuel pricing are levers as substantial as the HPR/ALTO choice. Family travel suppresses rail share by ~75%; sustained higher fuel prices lift it by 15 to 30 points. Carbon pricing, fuel tax, congestion charging and parking pricing operate at much lower capital cost.

Reliability is a dedicated-track gain

OTP is substantial but bounded, and the gap between shared-track and dedicated service is captured by the move from VIA to either HPR or ALTO. The OTP step is inherent in the dedicated-track decision, not the speed decision.

Sixth, this is the regime in which the High Performance Rail framework is most defensible on modal-shift grounds. The HPR step from VIA’s shared-track service to a dedicated, electrified 200 km/h corridor at VIA-style fares captures the majority of the road–rail opportunity on both pairs — adding 21 points on Toronto–Ottawa and 17 on Toronto–Montréal. ALTO’s additional speed adds 9 to 17 points at solo, near-parity conditions, but those points cost $40–70 billion above HPR, and under realistic group-mix and price assumptions the incremental advantage shrinks further.

Taken together with the parallel rail–air analysis, the corridor decision turns on whether the right framework is being used. Modal-shift performance is multi-dimensional — time, price, group size, fuel cost, traveller type, structural context — and the headline time-only advantage that motivates ALTO’s case shrinks substantially once these dimensions are admitted. The High Performance Rail framework delivers the bulk of the corridor’s achievable modal-shift outcomes — on both the air market and the road market — at roughly a quarter of ALTO’s capital cost.

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Modal Shift Note 2 — Road–Rail Research Note (PDF)

Reference document with the full methodology, both calibrations, sensitivity analysis, and the complete source list

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Methodology

Modelling approach

The S-curve is a standard logistic of the form S(τ) = 1 / (1 + exp(K·(τ − τ₀))), where S(τ) is rail’s share of the combined rail+car market as a function of the time ratio τ = (rail time) ÷ (car drive time at 100 km/h). The τ-normalisation is a meaningful departure from the absolute-time framing of the rail–air analysis: because the car comparator scales with distance, τ gives a distance-invariant measure of rail’s competitive position. Parameters are K = 3.5 and τ₀ = 0.65 (European). The price family adds a utility term: S(τ, r) = 1 / (1 + exp(K·(τ − τ₀) + γ·ln r)), with γ = 1.5 — larger than the rail–air γ = 1.0, reflecting higher own-price elasticities for car-vs-rail substitution. For group travel, r_effective = r_solo × n.

Two calibrations are presented. The European calibration (τ₀ = 0.65) is fitted to the TGV Paris–Lyon pre/post comparison. The North American calibration (τ₀ = 0.46) is anchored on current VIA’s ~13% rail share at τ ≈ 1.0; the two differ only in τ₀, the shift equivalent to a constant penalty α ≈ 0.67. The parameters are illustrative rather than predictive; sensitivity at K between 2.5 and 4.5, τ₀ between 0.40 and 0.75, and γ between 1.2 and 1.8 produces the same qualitative conclusions. An important caveat: the binary-logit model captures time-and-price geometry but not the structural North American factors — free parking, dispersed land use, weak feeder transit, family-travel norms, cultural autonomy preference — that suppress rail share. Model predictions should be read as upper bounds; realised share is likely 30 to 50% below them. Brightline Miami–Orlando, the closest North American analogue, is in extended ramp-up with bond ratings downgraded to CCC+, indirect confirmation that achievable shares emerge slowly here.

Sources

Principal sources

1.

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative (2026). HPR Strategy, Chapter 4 — High Performance Passenger Rail (Express journey times). citizenresearch.ca

2.

VIA Rail Canada Annual Report 2023; published timetables, station-pair travel times and Economy fare ranges; ridership via Statista (2024) — Montréal–Ottawa–Toronto triangle at 2.1 million passengers.

3.

Cirium aviation analytics (2025), via Simple Flying — Toronto Pearson top destinations by capacity; ~930,000 one-way Toronto–Montréal seats on YYZ–YUL alone.

4.

Quebec City–Windsor Corridor reference data — ~108 flights per workday within the Toronto–Ottawa–Montréal triangle.

5.

Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (2019, 2024). Highway 401 Annual Average Daily Traffic counts; Toronto-area AADT exceeds 450,000 vehicles/day.

6.

Statistics Canada Tables 23-10-0253-01 (Air passenger traffic) and 51-204-X (Air Passenger Origin and Destination, Domestic).

7.

Currie, G. & Phung, J. (2007). Transit Ridership, Auto Gas Prices, and World Events. Transportation Research Record, 1992. — and Lago, A.M., Mayworm, P.D. & McEnroe, J.M. (1992). Ridership Response to Changes in Transit Services. Transportation Research Record, 818.

8.

Wardman, M. (2014). Price Elasticities of Surface Travel Demand: A Meta-analysis of UK Evidence. Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, 48.

9.

Mineta Transportation Institute (2017). Modal Shift and High-Speed Rail. P. Haas. — and Moeckel, R. et al. (2013). Mode Choice Modeling for Long-Distance Travel (nested logit, TSRC).

10.

Federal Highway Administration (2015). Analysis of Automobile Travel Demand Elasticities With Respect To Travel Cost. — and Litman, T. (VTPI). Transportation Elasticities. vtpi.org

11.

International Transport Forum (2019). Roundtable 176: What is the Value of Saving Travel Time? OECD/ITF.

12.

Brightline Florida (2024–2026). Monthly Revenue and Ridership Reports; KBRA bond rating actions. — and Geotab (2025). Travel Time vs. Toll Costs: Toronto’s 407 and 401.

13.

Ben-Akiva, M. & Lerman, S. (1985). Discrete Choice Analysis. MIT Press. — and Train, K. (2009). Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press.

14.

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative companion notes: Note 1 — Modal shift between high-speed rail and air, and the Modal Shift & Ridership synthesis brief that sets this note alongside Notes 1, 3 and 4.

May 22, 2026

Modal shift HSR air

Citizen Research Initiative · Modal Shift Analysis · Note 1

Modal Shift Between High-Speed Rail and Air on the ALTO Corridor

When does rail substitute for air — and how much of that substitution does ALTO’s 300+ km/h capability actually buy, once the price of the ticket is admitted into the analysis?

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Modal Shift Note 1 · Published May 2026

⚠ What This Note Examines

This note applies the international evidence on rail–air substitution to the two corridor pairs that account for the bulk of air-substitutable demand — Toronto–Ottawa and Toronto–Montréal — and compares three scenarios on both travel time and price: current VIA Rail service, a High Performance Rail (HPR) alternative at 200 km/h, and ALTO at 300+ km/h.

The headline question is not whether modal shift happens — the evidence is clear that it does — but where the modal-shift returns sit on the curve, and whether ALTO’s incremental speed is a cost-effective way to capture them.

Summary

The international literature converges on a logistic S-curve: rail captures the majority of the combined rail+air market on city pairs with station-to-station times of two to four hours, and rail’s share collapses rapidly above five hours. Both principal Toronto pairs fall inside that competitive zone under any modern dedicated-track scenario.

The majority of the achievable modal shift on each pair is captured by moving from VIA’s current shared-track service to a dedicated, electrified HPR corridor at conventional 200 km/h speeds. ALTO’s additional 300+ km/h capability captures a further 19 to 20 percentage points at price parity — a real but residual gain.

Once price enters the analysis, the picture shifts. Under canonical price assumptions — VIA at r ≈ 0.5, HPR at r ≈ 0.7, ALTO at r ≈ 1.0 — ALTO’s apparent 19–20-point time-only advantage shrinks to 11–13 points on the principal Toronto pairs. The cost-per-point of that incremental modal shift is several billion dollars; the cost-per-point of the larger HPR step that precedes it is much lower.

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Modal Shift Note 1 — Air–Rail Research Note (PDF)

The full 16-page note with all seven figures, the segment-level travel-time and price analysis, and the methodology and sources

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1 · Travel Time

The competitive zone

The empirical literature on rail–air substitution converges on a consistent set of travel-time thresholds. Studies in Europe, China and Japan identify a competitive break-even of roughly 400 to 600 km (about 2 to 3 hours door-to-door) for short-haul routes, beyond which aviation begins to regain a time advantage. Medium-distance corridors of 600 to 1,100 km show the greatest demand elasticity. Long-haul segments above 1,400 km show minimal substitution — typically below 10 per cent.

The mechanism is the door-to-door time calculation. Below roughly 700 km, the overhead of reaching the airport, checking in, clearing security, boarding, taxiing and reaching the destination city centre adds enough that total air journey time matches or exceeds high-speed rail. Above this distance, air’s faster line-haul speed begins to dominate, and rail’s share falls steeply once journeys exceed about 4.5 hours.

This relationship is conventionally modelled as a logistic S-curve. The shape is characteristic: under two hours rail captures essentially the entire air market; between three and four hours rail typically captures 60 to 80 per cent; between four and five hours rail’s share collapses; above five hours rail captures only a residual share. Frequency, station centrality, fare structure and reliability shift the curve up or down by several points but do not change its overall shape.

Modal-shift S-curve: rail share of the combined rail+air market against station-to-station rail journey time, with short-haul, competitive and long-haul zones marked — **Figure 1.** Modal-shift S-curve showing rail’s share of the combined rail+air market as a function of station-to-station rail journey time. Logistic curve fitted with inflection at 3.5 hours and steepness parameter k = 1.3. A short-haul band below 2 hours where rail dominates; a competitive zone between 2 and 4 hours where infrastructure investment can decisively shift modal share; and a long-haul band above 4 hours where rail’s share collapses. All major HSR services in the competitive zone achieve rail shares of 70 to 85 per cent on the rail-vs-air pair.

Empirical anchors

Three European routes anchor the baseline. On Paris–Lyon, the TGV cut travel time from almost four hours to about two; rail’s share of the rail+air market rose from 40 to 72 per cent, while air collapsed from 31 to 7 per cent. On Madrid–Seville (471 km, completed 1992), rail share rose from 16 to 52 per cent of all modes. The Madrid–Barcelona AVE — at 621 km and 2 h 30 min the cleanest modern parallel to ALTO’s longer pairs — now carries roughly 75 per cent of travellers on the rail-vs-air pair.

Asian comparators reach further. The 2019 World Bank review found Chinese 350 km/h services remain competitive with air up to about 1,200 km. Beijing–Shanghai (1,318 km, 4 h 18 min) is the canonical case where high frequency and operating speed maintain rail dominance at distances that would normally favour air; Tokyo–Osaka (552 km, 2 h 22 min) is another textbook 80+ per cent rail-dominant pair.

Rail wins decisively under three hours, competes strongly at three to four hours, and degrades rapidly after that — with high frequency and central-station access being decisive variables alongside line-haul time.

2 · Price

The elasticity factor

The S-curve in Figure 1 holds prices implicitly at parity. Real modal choice is two-dimensional: passengers weigh both time and price, and the relative price of rail to air shifts the entire curve up or down. A logit choice model with a price-utility term captures this directly — each doubling of the rail-to-air price ratio shifts the curve’s inflection point earlier by an amount that depends on the price coefficient.

Family of modal-shift S-curves at six rail-to-air price ratios from r=0.4 to r=2.0 — **Figure 2.** Family of modal-shift S-curves at six rail-to-air price ratios (r = rail price ÷ air price). The middle navy curve is the r = 1.0 parity case from Figure 1. Curves above it show rail priced below air — the whole curve lifts; curves below show rail priced above air, and a corresponding loss of share. The shift is symmetric in log-price.

How to read the chart

The simplest use of Figure 2 is as a lookup. Pick a travel time, pick the curve matching the route’s price ratio, and read off the predicted share. A 3-hour journey at parity (r = 1.0) sits at roughly 60 per cent; the same journey at half the air fare (r = 0.5) sits closer to 75 per cent; at 1.5× the air fare (r = 1.5) it drops to around 45 per cent. A faster service at a higher price can deliver lower share than a slower service at a lower price — the family shows how the two effects combine.

Price sensitivity differs by traveller

Business travellers show much lower price sensitivity than leisure travellers — elasticities of roughly −0.4 to −0.7 for business against −1.0 to −1.6 for leisure. Each curve is really a weighted average of a flatter business curve and a steeper leisure one.

Air’s connecting-flight advantage

Air retains a structural edge the simple model misses: the connecting-flight network. Travellers continuing to long-haul destinations face mode-switching friction at the hub. The modal-share envelope should be read as a ceiling for the rail-substitutable portion of the market, not the air market as a whole.

On the empirical side, the high-share international routes combine competitive times with rail fares well below air: Madrid–Barcelona AVE Básico fares of €40–70 against air fares of €100–200 put the price ratio in the 0.4–0.6 band. Tokyo–Osaka is the contrasting case — prices roughly comparable (0.7–0.9), but central-station access and reliability sustain rail dominance without a price advantage.

Modal share depends on time, price, traveller type, and itinerary structure. The family of S-curves captures the first two; the third and fourth shift the realistic envelope further.

3 · Travel Time on the Corridor

Where the corridor sits on the curve

The corridor is not a single market. It is a sequence of overlapping city pairs whose distances place each segment in a different position on the curve. The bulk of air-substitutable demand is concentrated in two pairs: Toronto–Ottawa and Toronto–Montréal. The Toronto–Montréal air market alone runs 900,000+ annual seats. ALTO’s published target times — about 2 hours Toronto–Ottawa and just over 3 hours Toronto–Montréal — both fall inside the zone where international comparators capture 70 to 90 per cent of the rail+air market.

VIA’s existing Corridor service sits well outside that zone. Toronto–Montréal averages 5 h 13 min over 538 km; Toronto–Ottawa runs 4 to 4.5 hours. Trains are limited to 160 km/h on track shared with CN freight — the principal cause of both slow line-haul speed and poor reliability (on-time performance around 67 per cent as of 2021). Yet the Corridor is VIA’s commercial backbone, contributing 81 per cent of revenue and 95 per cent of ridership.

**Table 1.** Indicative travel times for the principal corridor city pairs under each scenario. HPR values are Express journey times published in the CRI HPR Strategy (a dedicated, electrified 401-corridor mainline at 200 km/h); ALTO values are the published targets for the 300+ km/h network. *Toronto–Montréal under current VIA service runs 5 h 13 min on the 538 km direct routing.
City pair	Distance	VIA current	HPR (200 km/h)	ALTO (300+ km/h)
Toronto–Ottawa	~450 km	~4 h 30 min	~2 h 55 min	~2 h
Toronto–Montréal	~540 km	5 h 13 min*	~3 h 38 min	~3 h
Ottawa–Montréal	~190 km	~1 h 55 min	~1 h 30 min	~1 h

Plotted onto the S-curve, these times produce three pictures. Each panel highlights the two principal Toronto pairs under one scenario; the contrast between panels traces the modal-shift trajectory at price parity as corridor infrastructure improves.

Current VIA Rail service plotted on the S-curve: Toronto-Ottawa at 21% and Toronto-Montreal at 10% — **Figure 3a.** Current VIA Rail service. Both principal Toronto pairs sit well below the inflection point: Toronto–Ottawa at ~4 h 30 min captures around 21% of the rail+air market, and Toronto–Montréal at 5 h 13 min around 10%. The corridor’s air-substitutable demand is structurally outside the competitive zone.

High Performance Rail at 200 km/h on the S-curve: Toronto-Ottawa at 68% and Toronto-Montreal at 46% — **Figure 3b.** High Performance Rail at 200 km/h on a dedicated, electrified 401-corridor mainline (CRI HPR Strategy Express times). Toronto–Ottawa moves to ~68% rail share at price parity; Toronto–Montréal to ~46% — across the inflection but still in the steeper portion of the curve.

ALTO at 300+ km/h on the S-curve: Toronto-Ottawa at 88% and Toronto-Montreal at 66% — **Figure 3c.** ALTO at 300+ km/h on a dedicated 1,000 km HSR network (published targets). Toronto–Ottawa moves onto the upper plateau at ~88% rail share at price parity; Toronto–Montréal to ~66% — still on the steeper portion, where additional time savings continue to produce meaningful gains.

**Table 2.** Predicted rail share of the combined rail+air market on each principal pair under each scenario, derived from the logistic curve in Figure 1 with prices held at parity. Order-of-magnitude estimates; actual shares would also depend on fare structure, frequency, reliability, station accessibility, and traveller mix.
City pair	VIA current	HPR (200 km/h)	ALTO (300+ km/h)
Toronto–Ottawa	~21%	~68%	~88%
Toronto–Montréal	~10%	~46%	~66%

These are the time-only readings — what each scenario would deliver if its fares matched air. In practice, fares depend on capital structure, and the three scenarios sit at quite different points on the price axis.

4 · Price on the Corridor

Where the corridor sits on the price axis

Current VIA Toronto–Montréal Economy fares of $80–120 against Air Canada fares of $200–400 put VIA at a price ratio of roughly 0.5 — the same band as Madrid–Barcelona. The structural fare advantage is already in place; the binding constraint on current rail share is travel time, not price.

Whether each new-build scenario preserves a fare advantage depends on capital-cost recovery. The CRI HPR Strategy estimates corridor capital in the order of $19 million/km — roughly $19–25 billion for the full Windsor–Montréal programme — producing annual debt service of $1.0–1.3 billion. Under the standard public-infrastructure subsidy model, HPR fares could plausibly sit at a modest premium over current VIA, placing HPR at r ≈ 0.7. ALTO’s $60–90 billion envelope produces debt service three to four times higher; under a fare cap holding the ratio at parity, ALTO settles at r ≈ 1.0, with subsidy absorbing the capital-cost gap.

For the corridor’s three scenarios, plausible operating price ratios are: VIA at r ≈ 0.5 (current subsidised rail), HPR at r ≈ 0.7 (modest premium, partial capital recovery), ALTO at r ≈ 1.0 (parity with air, subsidy absorbing the larger debt-service gap).

Modal share as a function of rail-to-air price ratio for each scenario on Toronto-Ottawa and Toronto-Montreal — **Figure 4.** Modal share as a function of rail-to-air price ratio, with each scenario’s travel time held fixed at its published value. Markers indicate the canonical operating ratio: VIA at r = 0.5, HPR at r = 0.7, ALTO at r = 1.0. The vertical separation between lines shows how much share is driven by infrastructure; the slope of each line shows how price-sensitive that scenario is at its operating point.

At their canonical ratios, the Toronto–Montréal scenarios deliver 18 per cent (VIA), 55 per cent (HPR) and 66 per cent (ALTO). ALTO retains an 11-point advantage over HPR — markedly smaller than the 20-point gap the price-parity readings imply, because ALTO’s higher capital cost drags its price ratio up the curve while HPR keeps a price advantage. On Toronto–Ottawa, both new-build scenarios sit high on the curve where price effects are smaller: ALTO ~88%, HPR ~75% — a 13-point gap. If HPR were held at the current VIA ratio (r ≈ 0.5), the gaps would close to 3 and 7 points respectively.

The HPR pricing lever, with ALTO held at parity

Fixing ALTO at parity and varying HPR’s fare relative to it puts the pricing decision directly in front of the reader.

HPR and ALTO modal share as a function of the HPR-to-ALTO fare ratio, ALTO held at parity — **Figure 5.** HPR and ALTO modal share as a function of the HPR-to-ALTO fare ratio, ALTO fixed at parity (r = 1.0). ALTO’s share appears as a flat reference; HPR’s varies along the gold curve. Markers show the canonical HPR/ALTO = 0.7 operating point.

ALTO minus HPR modal-share differential as a function of the HPR-to-ALTO fare ratio — **Figure 6.** ALTO − HPR modal-share differential. The gap rises from ~7 points (Toronto–Ottawa) and 3 points (Toronto–Montréal) at HPR/ALTO = 0.5, to 19–20 points at parity. The diamond marks the canonical 0.7 point: 12 points on Toronto–Ottawa, 11 on Toronto–Montréal.

The two figures make explicit what the canonical readings imply: ALTO’s modal-shift advantage is highly contingent on HPR’s pricing model. Hold HPR fares near current VIA levels and the gap is 3 to 7 points; let them drift to 70 per cent of ALTO’s and the gap is 11 to 13; let them converge entirely and the full 19–20-point time-only advantage returns. The corridor decision is as much a question about HPR’s intended subsidy structure as about the choice of infrastructure — a question in the operator’s hands, not the engineer’s.

5 · Where the Returns Sit

Where the modal-shift returns sit on the curve

Because the curve is logistic — flat at the top, steep in the middle, flat at the bottom — the value of additional time savings depends critically on where a route starts. On Toronto–Montréal, moving from VIA’s 5 h 13 min to HPR’s 3 h 38 min crosses much of the steep middle and delivers a large gain; the further move to ALTO’s 3-hour service stays in the steeper portion and adds a meaningful increment. On Toronto–Ottawa, HPR’s 2 h 55 min already places the route high on the curve, so ALTO’s 2-hour service produces smaller share gains.

Decomposition of modal-shift gain by investment step: VIA to HPR versus HPR to ALTO on each principal pair — **Figure 7.** Decomposition of modal-shift gain by investment step. Gold bars show the percentage-point gain from VIA to HPR; terracotta bars show the additional gain from HPR to ALTO. At price parity, the HPR step delivers 36–47 points across the two pairs; the additional ALTO step delivers 19–20 points.

On Toronto–Ottawa, the VIA-to-HPR move captures an estimated 47 points of modal shift; the further HPR-to-ALTO move adds 19. On Toronto–Montréal, HPR captures 36 and ALTO adds 20. The HPR step delivers the majority of the achievable shift on both pairs (roughly 65 to 70 per cent of the total), but the residual ALTO increment is real at price parity.

36–47

Percentage points captured by the VIA → HPR step (at parity)

19–20

Additional points from HPR → ALTO at parity — 11–13 once priced

$3–6B

Incremental capital cost per percentage point of ALTO-only modal shift

HPR delivers the majority of the achievable modal shift on both Toronto pairs at price parity. ALTO’s additional speed adds 19 to 20 percentage points — a residual that shrinks to 11 to 13 once the canonical price assumptions are applied.

The cost-effectiveness comparison sharpens this. ALTO’s $60–90 billion envelope is an incremental investment of $40–70 billion above the HPR option. Spread across the 11 to 13 incremental points ALTO captures over HPR under realistic pricing, that works out to roughly $3 billion to $6 billion per percentage point — several times worse than the HPR step that precedes it.

6 · Implications

What this means for the corridor decision

Four conclusions follow from putting the international literature, segment-level travel times, and the price dimension alongside one another.

The opportunity is real and concentrated

The corridor’s modal-shift potential is well-supported by international evidence and concentrated in two pairs — Toronto–Ottawa and Toronto–Montréal. Modelling the corridor as a single 1,000 km market obscures this. The real question is segment-level time and price, not headline line-haul speed.

HPR does the larger part of the work

On time alone, HPR’s Express times place both principal pairs into the upper portion of the curve. ALTO captures a real 19–20-point incremental gain — but residual relative to the larger HPR step, and several times more expensive per point of shift purchased.

Price reduces ALTO’s advantage

Under canonical ratios, ALTO’s advantage narrows from 20 points at parity to 11 points on Toronto–Montréal and 13 on Toronto–Ottawa. If HPR ran at the current VIA ratio, the gap would close further still — to 3 and 7 points.

This is the HPR regime

This is precisely where the literature finds frequency, reliability, station-centrality and price to matter more than headline speed. Capturing the bulk of the opportunity does not require operating at the global frontier of high-speed technology.

The corridor is a textbook case of why high-speed-rail claims need to be unbundled. The modal-shift opportunity is genuine. The majority of it is captured by conventional high-performance speeds on a dedicated, electrified, reliable corridor priced competitively against air. ALTO’s additional 300+ km/h capability buys a real but reduced gain once realistic pricing is admitted — between 11 and 13 percentage points on the principal Toronto pairs, at an incremental capital cost of $40–70 billion. Whether the corridor decision turns on the right framework — segment-level, two-dimensional analysis of time and price — is what determines whether the public investment achieves the modal-shift outcome it is intended to produce.

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Modal Shift Note 1 — Air–Rail Research Note (PDF)

Reference document with the full methodology, sensitivity analysis, and the complete source list

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Methodology

Modelling approach

The S-curve is a standard logistic of the form S(t) = 1 / (1 + exp(k·(t − t₀))), where S(t) is rail’s share of the combined rail+air market as a function of station-to-station journey time t. The parameters are k = 1.3 and t₀ = 3.5 hours, calibrated by visual fit to the international comparator data. The family of curves adds a price-utility term: S(t, r) = 1 / (1 + exp(k·(t − t₀) + γ·ln r)), where r is the rail-to-air price ratio and γ = 1.0 the price coefficient.

This binary-logit specification is the simplest defensible form of the time–price modal-choice model used routinely in transport demand work. More elaborate discrete-choice models add regressors for frequency, station access, reliability and demographics, but tend to confirm the same S-shaped relationship and the same direction of the price effect. The parameters here should be treated as illustrative rather than predictive; sensitivity analysis at k between 1.0 and 1.6, t₀ between 3.0 and 4.0 hours, and γ between 0.6 and 1.4 produces the same qualitative conclusions about HPR’s performance and ALTO’s price-driven degradation of the time advantage.

Sources

Principal sources

1.

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative (2026). HPR Strategy, Chapter 4 — High Performance Passenger Rail (Express journey times). citizenresearch.ca

2.

International Council on Clean Transportation (2022). The bullet train to lower-carbon travel.

3.

Mineta Transportation Institute (2017). Modal Shift and High-Speed Rail: A Review of the Current Literature. P. Haas.

4.

World Bank Group (2019). China’s High-Speed Rail Development.

5.

Bergantino, A. & Madio, L. (2020). Intermodal competition and substitution: HSR versus air transport. Research in Transportation Economics, 79.

6.

AECOM (2011). High-Speed Rail Overseas Experience Report. C. Nash.

7.

Sun, X. et al. (2024). A review on research regarding HSR interactions with air transport. Transport Policy, 157.

8.

Wardman, M. (2014). Price Elasticities of Surface Travel Demand: A Meta-analysis of UK Evidence. Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, 48.

9.

Ben-Akiva, M. & Lerman, S. (1985). Discrete Choice Analysis: Theory and Application to Travel Demand. MIT Press. — and Train, K. (2009). Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press.

10.

Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC), annual rail market reports for Spain; VIA Rail Canada Annual Report 2023 and published timetables, travel times and Economy fare ranges; Alto Inc. published travel-time targets and corridor descriptions (February 2025 announcement).

11.

Energies (2025). Emission Reductions in the Aviation Sector: A Systematic Review of the Sustainability Impacts of Modal Shifts.

12.

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative companion material: the Modal Shift & Ridership synthesis brief, which sets this note alongside Notes 2–4 (rail–car substitution, the ridership envelope, and the operating-subsidy frontier).

May 22, 2026

Transport Action Canada

The Voice ALTO Has Already Heard From

Transport Action Canada and Transport Action Ontario — the country’s principal pro-rail civil-society voice — have made detailed substantive recommendations about ALTO. What they asked for. What the record shows ALTO has so far addressed. What their voice contributes that nothing else in the public record does.

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Stakeholder Brief · Published May 2026

⚠ Documents Under Analysis

On March 16, 2026, Transport Action Canada and Transport Action Ontario submitted an 18-recommendation written response to ALTO at the close of the January–March 2026 consultation period. The organizations also published an open letter setting out what they believe the substantive questions about the project are, and what credible alternatives have been studied previously.

They are explicitly pro-rail. They are not opposed to high-speed rail in principle. Their concerns are technical, financial, and service-continuity concerns, and they are asking for the same documents and analyses that Parliament’s own Transport Committee asked for in September 2024 — and that have not been produced.

Critical Finding

The questions about ALTO’s cost, ridership, document release, and VIA-service impact are not coming only from project-affected landowners, from anti-rail critics, or from research initiatives. They are coming from the country’s principal pro-rail civil-society voice, in March 2026, on the public record, having formally engaged with ALTO through ALTO’s own consultation process.

The brief sets out what Transport Action asked for, what the record shows ALTO has addressed, and what credible alternatives they have publicly identified.

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The Voice ALTO Has Already Heard From — Full Brief (PDF)

What Transport Action Canada and Transport Action Ontario asked of ALTO, what ALTO has addressed, and what their voice contributes to the public record

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The Witness

Who Transport Action is

Transport Action Canada describes itself as “Canada’s citizen advocacy organization for public transportation,” with members who have “discussed and debated the subject over the past five decades, including of course High Speed Rail and possible alternatives.” It and its provincial affiliates — including Transport Action Ontario, jointly authoring the consultation letter analysed here — are the principal national civil-society voice on Canadian intercity rail policy.

Their position on ALTO is unambiguous. The open letter opens by welcoming “serious discussion of all options to improve passenger rail.” The consultation letter opens by describing the organizations as “a knowledgeable, passenger-focussed NGO that is very supportive of intercity passenger rail.” They explicitly recognize the underlying problem ALTO is intended to address — that VIA Rail’s constrained access to CN’s Kingston Subdivision “has long been recognized as untenable, which prompted the development and launch of VIA’s High Frequency Rail proposal in 2015.”

They acknowledge the limits of incremental improvement: “just improving the CN route in isolation while continuing to operate alongside freight would not come close to the quintupling of capacity and slashing of travel times possible with some kind of dedicated track.” They are, in plain terms, an organization that wants more passenger rail in Canada and is substantively critical of how this particular HSR project is being delivered.

What They Asked For

The March 2026 consultation response

Transport Action’s March 16, 2026 letter to ALTO’s Government and Stakeholder Relations office contains eighteen specific recommendations across seven sections. The four recommendations that most directly overlap with the existing CRI evidence base are set out below.

Recommendation 1

On the business case and cost

What Transport Action asked

“There is considerable skepticism from the public and stakeholders about the business case for HSR… It is urgent that a detailed Business Case be completed as soon as possible, including preferred corridor, capital cost, detailed ridership, fares, revenue and methods of calculation.”

Mapped onto the parliamentary record

This is, in substance, the same request as Recommendation 4 of TRAN Report 18 (September 2024), which asked the Minister to require an HFR-versus-HSR cost analysis within six months. As CRI’s brief The Report That Vanished documents, that analysis was never produced. Transport Action is asking, eighteen months later, for the same kind of cost-and-business-case work.

Recommendation 2

On ridership transparency

What Transport Action asked

“No details are provided on the ridership model, population assumptions, network assumptions, demand per segment, fares, cost of gasoline etc. Although the ridership assumption may be reasonable when lifted from European ridership, there is skepticism that this would be replicated in central Canada, due to lower fuel prices, absence of road tolls etc.”

Mapped onto the parliamentary record

This maps directly onto Claim 3 in Reading the Answer — the government’s 43-million-by-2084 ridership figure in Q-923. Transport Action specifically raises the central-Canadian fuel-price and road-toll conditions that distinguish the corridor from the European benchmarks, and quantifies the Ontario provincial subsidy to personal car use at $2.5 billion per year as a “politically tilted playing field” that any credible ridership model must account for.

Recommendation 3

On document release

What Transport Action asked

“We urge you to release a full unredacted version of the JPO report, plus any other reports that were in the ‘data room’ made available to the three bidders. At this time, with the tender process completed, there should be nothing in these reports that is business-confidential.”

Mapped onto the parliamentary record

This is — almost word for word — the same request as Recommendation 6 of TRAN Report 18. Transport Action makes an additional point that the procurement-completion rationale for non-disclosure no longer applies: with the bidder data-room phase concluded, there is no remaining commercial confidentiality argument. The reports have still not been released.

Recommendation 6

On the future of VIA service

What Transport Action asked

“Recent media reports from Kingston regarding possible diminution of current VIA Rail services when ALTO is operational must be heeded… It is important that ALTO and VIA Rail jointly issue a statement promptly about plans for services at these cities. Otherwise, local elected officials and residents will continue to impede ALTO’s progress.”

Mapped onto the parliamentary record

This maps directly onto Recommendations 8 and 10 of TRAN Report 18 — the VIA-impact analysis and the no-service-reduction commitment, both unanswered since September 2024. The Senate TRCM raised the same concern in February 2026. The question has now been asked across two parliamentary chambers and one substantial stakeholder consultation submission; it has not been substantively answered.

Transport Action’s remaining fourteen recommendations cover downtown and shoulder station design, affordable fares, intercommunity bus access for towns currently outside the rail network, emergency-management cooperation with rural fire and EMS, wildlife crossings, sufficient road and trail bridges, recognition of Ontario’s 1834 Drainage Act, First Nations contingency planning for archaeological discovery, sensitive-agricultural-use mapping (sugar bushes, vineyards, certified organic land), and compensation frameworks for intensive agricultural operations that would need to be relocated. Several bear directly on issues documented in CRI’s Five Hundred Farms brief.

Three Alternatives They Identified

What pro-rail technical analysis says is possible

A question CRI has not previously had answered by a technically literate pro-rail body: were credible alternatives to ALTO actually studied, and what did the studies show? Transport Action’s open letter identifies three.

01

Targeted CN-route improvements

“Further investments to improve passenger and freight fluidity, like the third track between Belleville and Napanee and station improvements… would make a big difference to reliability at modest cost.”

Transport Action concedes this alone is insufficient to deliver the “quintupling of capacity and slashing of travel times” possible with a dedicated track — but lays out a complementary package of known modest cost.

02

The freight grand bargain

“Moves most CN freight over to the CPKC route through Perth… The existing CN route could then be upgraded to support more passenger services at up to 170 km/h, with travel times of around 4 hours between Toronto and Montreal or Ottawa.”

This is the High Performance Rail framework substantially as CRI has documented it, here independently advocated by Transport Action as a technically credible option.

03

HFR on the original Havelock alignment

“A dedicated track that takes a more direct route between Toronto and Ottawa, with the advantage of reconnecting Peterborough to the railway network, was VIA Rail’s preferred option, while also preserving service on the existing route through Kingston.”

This is the project the Joint Project Office was funded in 2017 to study, the project the Transport Committee studied in 2023–24, and the project the federal government redesignated in late 2024.

Why earlier HSR-along-the-lakeshore studies did not proceed

Of independent technical interest is Transport Action’s observation about why HSR following the Lake Ontario lakeshore has been studied multiple times without proceeding:

“

High Speed Rail following a lakeshore from Toronto through Kingston has also been studied before, more than once, by both the federal and provincial governments, without proceeding. For safety reasons, and to achieve 7 km+ minimum radii for higher speeds, such a dedicated track could not be placed too close to the existing alignment nor right alongside Highway 401. It would thus require significant expropriation, and the number of homes and businesses close to CN’s tracks and the 401 has only grown since the last such study in 2011. The chances are that communities like Port Hope and Trenton would be bypassed entirely, and route from Kingston to Ottawa would also then also go through the same sensitive Frontenac Arch region and many of the communities expressing most concern about Alto’s southern study corridor.

Transport Action Canada, open letter on ALTO HSR route options in eastern Ontario. read the letter

This is the route-geometry argument set out by a pro-rail body with the technical standing to make it — the same observation about HSR’s 7-km curve-radius requirement that CRI’s engineering research has documented, here presented as a published critique by an established advocacy organization.

What Their Voice Contributes

A fifth source category, otherwise absent

The Citizen Research Initiative’s briefs to date have drawn on four categories of source. Each has its own evidentiary weight; each has its own limitations. Transport Action contributes a fifth that has been substantively absent until now.

Parliamentary record

Order Paper questions, Transport Committee reports, Senate committee testimony, the High-Speed Rail Network Act. Authoritative but procedurally bounded.

Academic studies

The McGill Transportation Research and Munk School Global Economic Policy Lab analyses. Methodologically rigorous but bounded by funding and study scope.

Journalism

The Canadian Press and Globe and Mail reporting; CBC News; Globe coverage of the NFU response. Documentary but episodic.

Affected stakeholders

OFA, UPA, CFA, BFO, NFU. Authentic to affected communities but advocating for their members’ specific interests.

Pro-rail advocacy

Transport Action Canada and Transport Action Ontario. A credible, technically literate, pro-rail civil-society voice with no opposition to the project in principle, no economic interest in its outcome, and a fifty-year record of engagement with Canadian intercity passenger rail policy.

This matters in two specific ways. First, it forecloses the response that the questions about ALTO’s cost, ridership, document release, and VIA-service impact are coming only from project-affected landowners or from anti-rail critics. They are coming from the country’s principal pro-rail civil-society voice, on the public record, having formally engaged with ALTO through ALTO’s own consultation process. Second, it puts the alternatives that have been considered — including the HPR framework the Initiative has been documenting — into the technical vocabulary of an organization that has the standing to describe them.

Recommendations That Remain Live

What still has not been produced

As of May 2026, the public record shows that:

The cost analysis Transport Action’s March 2026 letter asked for — and that TRAN Report 18 Recommendation 4 had asked for in September 2024 — has not been produced. The $60–90 billion AACE Class 5 figure in Q-923 stands without it.

The Joint Project Office report Transport Action’s March 2026 letter asked to be released — and that TRAN Report 18 Recommendation 6 had asked to be released in September 2024 — has not been released. Transport Action’s additional point that the procurement-completion rationale for non-disclosure no longer applies has not been addressed.

The VIA-impact analysis Transport Action’s March 2026 letter asked for, that the Senate TRCM raised concerns about in February 2026, and that TRAN Report 18 Recommendations 8 and 10 had asked for in September 2024, has not been produced. ALTO’s published material continues to refer to “optimization” of existing VIA services without a binding commitment.

The ridership-model assumptions Transport Action’s March 2026 letter asked be made public have not been published. The government’s 43-million-by-2084 figure in Q-923 stands without disclosed methodology behind it.

None of these are partisan demands. None of them is hostile to the project. All of them are recommendations from an established pro-rail advocacy organization, made through ALTO’s own consultation process, asking the same things that Parliament’s own committee was asking. Their continued non-fulfilment is procedural, not substantive — and procedurally, as The Report That Vanished sets out in detail, the questions remain available to be revived by parliamentary or stakeholder action.

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The Voice ALTO Has Already Heard From (PDF)

Reference document for federal decision-makers, parliamentarians, journalists, and constituents tracking the file

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Sources

Primary documents and references

1.

Transport Action Canada and Transport Action Ontario, Comments arising from ALTO HSR Stakeholder Roundtable and Public Consultation Sessions (letter to Peter Paz, Government and Stakeholder Relations, ALTO), March 16, 2026. Signed by Terry Johnson (President, Transport Action Canada) and Peter Miasek (President, Transport Action Ontario). ontario.transportaction.ca

2.

Transport Action Canada, Why did the government chose Alto? (open letter on ALTO HSR route options in eastern Ontario), 2026. ontario.transportaction.ca

3.

House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, Issues and Opportunities: High Frequency Rail in the Toronto to Quebec City Corridor. 18th Report, 44th Parliament, 1st Session. Tabled September 2024. ourcommons.ca

4.

Order Paper Question Q-923, 45th Parliament, 1st session. Asked by Philip Lawrence (MP for Northumberland–Clarke), March 5, 2026; answered April 22, 2026.

5.

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative companion briefs: Reading the Answer (May 2026); Reading the Footnote (May 2026); The Report That Vanished (May 2026); What We Know About ALTO’s Reporting and Accountability (May 2026); Five Hundred Farms (May 2026).

May 17, 2026

Ottawa-montreal

ALTO is starting where rail already works

The Ottawa–Montréal segment is ALTO’s first construction phase — and the corridor’s weakest case for high-speed rail.

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Ottawa–Montréal Case Study · Published May 2026 · ALTO consultation closed April 24, 2026

⚠ ALTO Has Chosen Its Easiest Case

ALTO has confirmed that the Ottawa–Montréal segment will be the first phase of construction, with work to begin in 2029–30. ALTO CEO Martin Imbleau publicly describes the segment as “shorter and technically simpler”; Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon called it “relatively short, flat and straight”; ALTO’s own consultation materials describe it as a “learning segment” — a test case to refine before scaling to the rest of the corridor. CBC News ALTO consultation

The case ALTO is starting with is the strongest case for HSR that the project can publicly make. If the case fails on this segment, it fails on the corridor.

Critical Finding

The Ottawa–Montréal segment is ALTO’s strongest case for high-speed rail. It is also the corridor’s weakest case for it. VIA Rail owns the bulk of this 185-km line — the 110-km Alexandria Subdivision from Ottawa east to Coteau Junction, Québec — and on this VIA-owned segment, on-time performance runs at approximately 90%, well above any other corridor route. The freight-conflict problem that ALTO exists to solve is confined to the ~65-km CN-owned approach into Montréal from Coteau Junction.

ALTO’s CEO has publicly refused to estimate the segment cost. The project will require crossing approximately 1,700 properties, including roughly 500 farms, in a 60-metre right-of-way through Eastern Ontario and western Québec farmland, with construction taking 8–10 years — to save approximately 25–30 minutes of travel time. The alternative — upgrading the existing line to High Performance Rail — would deliver nearly the same time savings at a fraction of the cost, decades sooner, without greenfield expropriation. The federal government has never produced a public comparison.

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ALTO Is Starting Where Rail Already Works — Ottawa–Montréal Case Study (PDF)

Single-page summary for distribution to MPs, municipal councils, and constituents along the Ottawa–Montréal corridor

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The Choice

ALTO picked Ottawa–Montréal because it’s the easiest. They said so.

In December 2025, the federal government announced that the Ottawa–Montréal segment would be the first construction phase of the ALTO project. The rationale offered, publicly and consistently, has been that this segment is the most straightforward to deliver. ALTO CEO Martin Imbleau has described it as “shorter and technically simpler” than the rest of the corridor. Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon called it “relatively short, flat and straight.” ALTO’s own consultation materials describe Ottawa–Montréal as a “learning segment” that will be used to refine delivery methods before scaling to the Toronto and Québec City segments. CBC News Railway-News

This framing is not incidental. The Toronto and Québec segments are technically harder, politically harder, and considerably more expensive. The Toronto segment must enter a constrained urban transportation system; the Mount Royal tunnel approach to Montréal on the Québec end carries McGill engineering estimates exceeding $1 billion per kilometre. ALTO is leading with Ottawa–Montréal because it is the demonstration most likely to succeed, and because demonstrating success here is the political precondition for proceeding with the rest. The whole project’s institutional credibility now rests on a segment ALTO itself has framed as its strongest case for HSR.

The test-case logic, stated by ALTO itself

Imbleau told the US High Speed Rail Conference that the Ottawa–Montréal segment is “a learning segment to refine delivery methods before scaling to the full network.” By starting here, the project “can validate assumptions and manage scope responsibly before expanding east and west.” The strongest case ALTO can make for high-speed rail is the case on this segment. If validation fails here, the rest of the corridor cannot inherit a successful demonstration.

What Already Works

The Ottawa–Montréal train is the corridor’s most reliable service

2h 4min

current VIA Ottawa–Montréal travel time over 185 km

VIA Rail published schedule

~90%

on-time performance on the VIA-owned segment

VIA spokesperson, via CBC News

34+

scheduled departures per week between the two cities

VIA Rail published schedule

VIA Rail Ottawa–Montréal currently runs 34 or more scheduled departures per week over 185 km, with an average travel time of 2 hours 4 minutes. The route’s defining characteristic is not its speed; it is its reliability. Unlike most of the Québec City–Windsor corridor, where VIA passenger trains share track with CN-owned freight operations, VIA Rail owns the bulk of this line — specifically the 110-km Alexandria Subdivision running from Ottawa east to Coteau Junction in Québec. CPTDB Wiki VIA Rail

VIA Rail confirmed to CBC News that on-time performance on this VIA-owned segment runs at approximately 90% — significantly better than any other corridor route. By comparison, VIA’s national on-time performance has hovered between 65% and 75% over recent years, with the gap explained almost entirely by passenger trains being held in sidings while CN freight passes through. Where VIA controls the dispatch, the trains run on schedule. CBC News

The reliability problem is a freight-conflict problem

ALTO repeatedly cites VIA’s poor on-time performance as the justification for HSR investment. That problem is real on most of the corridor: across VIA’s national network, 97% of the track it operates on is owned by other companies, mostly CN. But the poor reliability is concentrated on the freight-shared segments. On the segment ALTO is starting with, the problem is already substantially solved — not by ALTO, but by VIA’s existing ownership of the line.

Solving What Problem?

The freight conflict ALTO exists to solve barely exists here

ALTO’s entire rationale — what justifies the $60–90 billion estimated price tag for a dedicated passenger-only high-speed line — is that VIA passenger trains share CN-owned freight track across most of the Québec City–Windsor corridor and get pushed aside whenever freight passes. Building a new dedicated passenger-only line is presented as the solution. ALTO consultation

On Ottawa–Montréal, the problem is already mostly solved. The 110-km Alexandria Subdivision from Ottawa to Coteau Junction is owned and dispatched by VIA Rail. Passenger trains on this segment have priority because VIA controls the line. The 90% on-time performance reflects exactly that. The freight conflict that does exist on this route is confined to a relatively short stretch — the approximately 65-km CN-owned approach into Montréal from Coteau Junction, where VIA trains pick up CN’s Kingston Subdivision into Central Station. CPTDB Wiki

The proportionality problem this creates for ALTO’s case is significant. If the freight-conflict problem on Ottawa–Montréal is confined to roughly 65 km of CN-owned approach to Montréal, the corresponding intervention is a 65-km fix, not a 185-km greenfield replacement. The targeted alternatives — track-sharing reform, capacity upgrades, dedicated passenger right-of-way on the CN section, or a publicly negotiated priority agreement with CN — have not been publicly evaluated against the cost and disruption of the ALTO HSR plan on this segment.

Starting where the problem isn’t

ALTO is starting construction by replacing the segment of the corridor where reliability is already strongest, and where the freight-conflict problem ALTO claims to solve is structurally smallest. That is not a demonstration of HSR’s necessity. It is a demonstration of where institutional and engineering risk is lowest — precisely the segment where the case for HSR specifically is weakest on the merits.

The Cost

ALTO refuses to put a number on this segment

~1,700

properties to be acquired on the Ottawa–Montréal segment

Imbleau, May 2026

~500

farms within the planned 60-metre right-of-way

Imbleau, May 2026

25–30

minutes of travel time saved over current VIA service

ALTO projection vs. VIA schedule

Asked directly at the December 2025 announcement to estimate the cost of building HSR on the Ottawa–Montréal segment, ALTO CEO Martin Imbleau refused. “It would be difficult to have an estimate,” he told reporters. He added that it would be “kind of absurd to have an independent budget” for a portion of the corridor. Eight months later, no segment-specific cost figure has been published. The project’s overall $60–90 billion estimate is, in Imbleau’s own May 2026 characterisation, a working assumption rather than a cost estimate; reliable estimates are expected only in 2027 or 2028, after engineering follows alignment selection. CBC News

What ALTO has confirmed about the segment is what it would take to build it. The line will cross approximately 1,700 properties, including roughly 500 farms (about 40% of the total acquisitions), in a 60-metre fenced right-of-way through Eastern Ontario and western Québec farmland. Construction will take 8–10 years, with no passenger service on the segment until the late 2030s. The travel-time saving, as currently projected: approximately 25–30 minutes, taking the Ottawa–Montréal journey from 2h 4min to roughly 1h 35min. CBC News

The price ALTO has named, even without a cost figure

Twenty-five minutes saved on a route that already arrives on time approximately 90% of the time. For an undisclosed cost. Crossing 500 farms, in the segment ALTO itself has chosen as its strongest case for high-speed rail. The federal commitment is not to a price; it is to a process — corridor narrowing in autumn 2026, formal letters to property owners before that corridor is publicly disclosed, acquisition beginning in late 2026 or early 2027, ahead of any segment-specific cost estimate the public can scrutinise.

The Alternative

High Performance Rail on the existing line

There is an alternative that addresses the corridor’s actual problem — reliability where freight conflict exists — without replacing what already works. High Performance Rail (HPR) on the existing Ottawa–Montréal line means upgrading the VIA-owned track to dedicated passenger speeds of approximately 200 km/h, with targeted intervention on the CN-owned Montréal approach to address the reliability bottleneck where it actually lives. Operational time on the upgraded line would be approximately 1 hour 40 minutes — within minutes of ALTO’s projected 1h 35min on a brand-new HSR alignment, and roughly 25 minutes faster than today.

	ALTO HSR (planned)	HPR on existing line
Travel time Ottawa–Montréal	~1h 35min projected	~1h 40min projected
Travel time saved vs. current VIA (2h 4min)	~25–30 minutes	~20–25 minutes
Operational by	Late 2030s (construction 2029–30, then 8–10 years)	3–5 years from project start
Capital cost	Undisclosed; project total $60–90B	A fraction of ALTO’s segment cost
Properties affected	~1,700, including ~500 farms	Minimal — existing right-of-way
Right-of-way	New 60-metre fenced corridor	Existing VIA-owned alignment
Downtown stations	Mount Royal tunnel required for Central; Ottawa station status “not ideal”	Ottawa rail station and Montréal Gare Centrale preserved
Rolling stock	New procurement	VIA’s already-purchased Siemens Venture fleet
National network impact	Cross-subsidy from corridor revenue diverted to private operator	VIA’s national network preserved

The federal government has never produced a public comparison of HSR against HPR on this segment. The procurement process has moved from concept directly to dedicated-corridor HSR design without an intermediate evaluation of whether the existing line, upgraded, would deliver most of the benefit at a small fraction of the cost. This is not a question of opposing modernisation. It is a question of what modernisation is being procured, against what alternatives, and at whose recommendation.

The integrated-network case

HPR on Ottawa–Montréal would be one piece of an integrated rail network upgrade: dedicated passenger track on the existing Toronto–Montréal CN Kingston Subdivision, upgrades to existing alignments where they already work, targeted new construction where genuinely needed. The result is faster trains on every existing corridor route, not a single greenfield HSR line bypassing the network that exists. The federal government has commissioned twenty-eight studies into the 300 km/h vision. None into this.

Take Action

Three questions for the Minister of Transport

Construction on the Ottawa–Montréal segment is currently scheduled to begin in 2029–30, with corridor narrowing in autumn 2026 and acquisitions beginning shortly after. The window to compel the government to produce, and publish, an independent comparison of HSR against the HPR alternative on this segment is narrow. Three questions, the kind that must be answered or visibly declined, are sufficient to make the case for that comparison politically unavoidable.

Publish a cost estimate for the Ottawa–Montréal segment specifically, before construction begins in 2029–30. ALTO’s continued refusal to do so on a publicly funded project of this scale is not justifiable.
Publish a public comparative analysis of HSR versus HPR on the existing Ottawa–Montréal line — time, cost, disruption, and timeline side by side, with the methodology disclosed.
Refer ALTO to the Parliamentary Budget Officer for independent review of the fiscal, ridership, and station-location assumptions underpinning the project 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 — Ottawa-area, Eastern Ontario, and western Québec MPs in particular have constituencies that will bear the operational consequences of the choices made now. The decision to refer the project to the PBO for independent review can be initiated through any MP.

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ALTO Is Starting Where Rail Already Works — Ottawa–Montréal Case Study (PDF)

Single-page printable version for distribution

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Sources

Primary documents and statements

1.

Benjamin Shingler, “Ottawa-Montreal chosen as 1st segment of promised high-speed rail line,” CBC News, December 12, 2025 — carries Imbleau’s refusal to estimate the Ottawa–Montréal segment cost. cbc.ca

2.

CBC News live story, December 12, 2025 — carries the “kind of absurd to have an independent budget” Imbleau quote on segment-specific costing. cbc.ca

3.

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

4.

“Via Rail’s performance has gone from bad to worse,” CBC News, November 7, 2024 — carries VIA spokesperson’s confirmation that on-time performance is approximately 90% on the small section of track VIA owns between Ottawa and Montréal. cbc.ca

5.

CPTDB Wiki, VIA Rail Montreal–Quebec line — documents the Alexandria Subdivision (Coteau Junction, QC to Ottawa, ON) as VIA-owned. cptdb.ca

6.

Via Rail, Wikipedia — on-time performance, track ownership, and corridor service data. The 97% figure for VIA operating on track owned by other companies is from VIA’s most recent reporting. en.wikipedia.org

7.

VIA Rail, Montréal–Ottawa route information — 185 km distance, 2h 4min average travel time, 34+ scheduled weekly departures. viarail.ca

8.

Alto Project, “Shaping the Canada of tomorrow with high-speed rail” consultation site — Ottawa–Montréal as “shorter and technically simpler route,” first construction phase, 8–10 year build per phase. altotrain.ca

9.

“Alto Provides Update on Canada’s High-Speed Rail Programme,” Railway-News, May 2026 — the “learning segment” framing and Imbleau’s USHSR Conference remarks. railway-news.com

10.

“A Generational Move: Alto CEO Martin Imbleau,” ReNew Canada, May/June 2026 — Imbleau’s Empire Club address and the timeline for construction. renewcanada.net

May 14, 2026

Two targets

Two Targets

Ridership figures in ALTO’s 2025-26 Corporate Plan and current public materials, side by side.

ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Ridership Brief · Published May 6, 2026 · Public consultation closed April 24, 2026

In current ALTO materials

ALTO’s Corporate Plan Summary 2025-2026 to 2029-30 — the formal accountability document submitted to the Minister of Transport for Treasury Board approval, signed by the Chief Financial Officer in January 2025 — cites a Project Outcome of at least 17 million annual passenger trips by 2059, defined to include “both Alto Passenger Rail Services and Local Services.”

ALTO’s consultation website, as of May 6, 2026, continues to host a CEO opinion piece projecting 24 million passengers annually by 2055, “fully consistent with international outcomes.” A Globe and Mail editorial citing the same source extended this to 43 million by the 2080s. altotrain.ca

Summary

Two ridership figures currently appear in ALTO documents. The figure listed as Project Outcome #1 in the Corporate Plan submitted for Treasury Board approval is 17 million by 2059, defined to include both Alto Passenger Rail Services and the continuation of VIA Rail’s conventional Local Services. The figure in current public-facing materials is 24 million by 2055, rising to 43 million by 2084, presented in reference to Alto.

The 17 million figure is the same target set in the 2023 Request for Qualifications, when the project was specified as 177 km/h High Frequency Rail at an estimated capital cost of $27.7 billion. It carries forward into the current Corporate Plan, which describes the project as 300 km/h high-speed rail at a Class 4 capital cost estimate of $60–90 billion. The Corporate Plan does not record a formal revision of the figure when the specification changed.

This brief sets out what each document says, when each figure was published, and what other publicly available evidence indicates about ridership at the corridor scale. It does not draw conclusions about which figure is the operative one. The purpose is to make the documentary record visible.

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Two Targets — Full Brief (PDF)

Documentary record of ALTO ridership figures across 2021–2026 publications

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The Setting

Why ridership figures matter for accountability

A megaproject’s ridership projection anchors several other figures: the revenue model, the benefit-cost ratio, the modal-shift carbon argument, and the agglomeration economic case. When a ridership projection moves, related figures move with it.

For ALTO, two ridership figures are currently visible in the public record. They appear in different documents, communicated to different audiences. This brief sets the two figures alongside each other, with the document trail and the available comparator evidence, and identifies the questions that would resolve which figure is the operative one.

The brief is not an assessment of either figure on the merits. It is an assemblage of what has been published, in chronological order, with the structural definitions of each figure made explicit. Readers are invited to draw their own conclusions.

A note on dating the Corporate Plan

The Corporate Plan Summary 2025-26 to 2029-30 carries a CFO attestation dated January 7, 2025. Several elements of its content, however, post-date that signature: it describes the February 2025 HSR announcement and Cadence selection, the March 2025 PDA execution, Stage 1 of Co-Development as having “occurred from April 2025 to July 2025,” and workforce figures “as of May 2025.” Appendix 12’s chronology ends with August 2025. The document was therefore finalised in approximately mid-2025, with the CFO attestation date preserved as the formal accountability anchor. References in this brief to the Corporate Plan should be read with that timing in mind.

Side by Side

The two figures, in their own words

Both figures appear in current ALTO materials. Both are being communicated to different audiences in May 2026.

Public Materials · May 6, 2026	Corporate Plan to Treasury Board · 2025-26
24 million by 2055, rising to 43 million by 2084 From the Imbleau opinion piece originally published in the Toronto Star and La Presse on April 17, 2026, reposted on the consultation site as of May 6, 2026: “Alto’s projected 24 million passengers annually by 2055 is fully consistent with international outcomes, based on the modelling used worldwide.” The Globe and Mail editorial citing the same source extended this to “43 million by the 2080s, up from three million today.” This figure is referenced in connection with the project’s benefit-cost claims, the 1.1% GDP uplift estimate, and the 50,000-job projection.	At least 17 million by 2059 From the Corporate Plan Summary 2025-26 to 2029-30, Project Outcome #1, signed by the CFO January 7, 2025: “Significantly Increase Intercity Rail Passengers to at least 17 million by 2059 through both the new passenger rail services (NPRS Services) and Local Services through increased annual seat capacity.” The same figure appears in Appendix 9 (Long-term Outcomes) as: “up from 4.8 million in 2019, including both Alto Passenger Rail Services and Local Services.” This is the figure listed as a Project Outcome in the document submitted for Treasury Board approval.

Public Materials · May 6, 2026

Corporate Plan to Treasury Board · 2025-26

24 million by 2055, rising to 43 million by 2084

From the Imbleau opinion piece originally published in the Toronto Star and La Presse on April 17, 2026, reposted on the consultation site as of May 6, 2026:

“Alto’s projected 24 million passengers annually by 2055 is fully consistent with international outcomes, based on the modelling used worldwide.”

The Globe and Mail editorial citing the same source extended this to “43 million by the 2080s, up from three million today.”

This figure is referenced in connection with the project’s benefit-cost claims, the 1.1% GDP uplift estimate, and the 50,000-job projection.

At least 17 million by 2059

From the Corporate Plan Summary 2025-26 to 2029-30, Project Outcome #1, signed by the CFO January 7, 2025:

“Significantly Increase Intercity Rail Passengers to at least 17 million by 2059 through both the new passenger rail services (NPRS Services) and Local Services through increased annual seat capacity.”

The same figure appears in Appendix 9 (Long-term Outcomes) as: “up from 4.8 million in 2019, including both Alto Passenger Rail Services and Local Services.”

This is the figure listed as a Project Outcome in the document submitted for Treasury Board approval.

Three observations about the two figures, drawn from the documents themselves:

The 17 million figure includes Local Services

The Corporate Plan target counts “Alto Passenger Rail Services and Local Services” together. Local Services is the planning term, defined in the Corporate Plan’s glossary, for VIA Rail’s continuing conventional service in the Quebec City–Windsor corridor. The 24 million public figure, as presented, is referenced in connection with Alto. The two figures therefore measure across different scopes.

The 17 million figure carries forward unchanged from the 2023 RFQ

17 million by 2059 was the Project Outcome attached to the 2023 Request for Qualifications, when the project was specified as 177 km/h High Frequency Rail at an estimated capital cost of $27.7 billion. The same figure, with the same target year, appears in the Corporate Plan that describes the project as 300 km/h high-speed rail at a Class 4 cost estimate of $60–90 billion. Project Outcomes are formally established in procurement documents and are not trivially revised; the Corporate Plan does not record a revision to this figure on either the specification change or the cost-envelope change.

The two figures use different baseline years

The Corporate Plan cites a 4.8 million baseline from 2019 (pre-COVID). The Imbleau opinion piece cites “three million today.” VIA Rail’s 2024 Annual Report records 4.19 million corridor passengers, of which 3.34 million on Corridor East. The growth multiplier from each baseline to its corresponding target therefore differs.

Document Trail

When each figure was published

The chronology below sets out the principal ALTO ridership figures in the public record, in order of publication.

Date	Document	Headline ridership figure
December 2021	JPO Business Case Update v.002 VIA / CIB internal (released via ATI, November 2025)	405M cumulative30-year cumulative trips 2030–2059 for HFR Electric scenario, an average of approximately 13.5 million per year. BCR ~ 0.4. NPV −$21.1 billion.
February 2023	Request for Qualifications (HFR) PSPC, 126 pp.	17M by 2059The Project Outcome attached to the 177 km/h HFR specification at an approximate $27.7B capital cost. Zero operating subsidy was a parallel commitment.
February 2025	HSR announcement Government of Canada	Specification changeProject rebranded from 177 km/h HFR to 300 km/h HSR. Cadence selected as Private Developer Partner. $3.9B Co-Development Phase funding announced.
March 2025	Fast Forward: Shaping Canada’s Future ALTO public document	24M by 2055 43M by 2084Stated baseline of “3 million today.” Used in subsequent ALTO public materials and consultation graphics; cited in the Globe and Mail editorial.
CFO signature Jan 7, 2025 (finalised mid-2025)	Corporate Plan Summary 2025-26 to 2029-30 Treasury Board submission	17M by 2059Listed as Project Outcome #1. Defined to include “both Alto Passenger Rail Services and Local Services.” 4.8M (2019) baseline. CFO attestation dated January 7, 2025; document content references events through summer 2025.
April 17, 2026	Imbleau opinion piece Toronto Star · La Presse · ALTO website	24M by 2055Published one week before the consultation deadline. Described as “fully consistent with international outcomes, based on the modelling used worldwide.” Reposted on ALTO’s consultation site, where it remains as of May 6, 2026.

The chronology has a feature worth surfacing on its own. The 24 million and 43 million figures first appear in the Fast Forward document of March 2025. The Corporate Plan, finalised in approximately mid-2025, references only the 17 million figure as a Project Outcome and does not mention, footnote, or otherwise acknowledge the higher Fast Forward figures. The April 2026 Imbleau opinion piece reverts to the 24 million figure for public-facing communications.

In other words: since at least March 2025, the two figures have been running on parallel tracks. The lower figure has appeared in formal accountability documents (the Corporate Plan submitted for Treasury Board approval). The higher figure has appeared in public-facing communications (the Fast Forward document, the consultation website, the CEO’s opinion pieces, and external commentary citing them). Neither document has reconciled the two, and neither has stated which is the operative ridership target.

Adjacent Disclosure

The cost figure, in the same period

The Imbleau opinion piece of April 17, 2026 contains the following statement on the project’s capital cost:

“In order to finalize project cost, we need to know what is being built and where. We must choose the best alignment through consultation. Then comes detailed engineering for bridges, tunnels and the design; a 320 km/h train requires millimeter level precision.”

The publicly cited Class 4 capital cost estimate is $60–90 billion. The Co-Development Phase funding of $3.9 billion has been approved and is being expended over fiscal years 2024-25 to 2029-30 per the Corporate Plan. The CEO’s statement above appears in the same publication on the same day as the 24 million ridership figure cited earlier in this brief.

This brief makes no inference about the relationship between the cost statement and the ridership figures. They are presented here together because they appear in the same document and are part of the documentary record currently available to the public.

Comparator Evidence

Other publicly available ridership analyses for the corridor

For context, three additional sources of corridor ridership analysis are part of the public record. Each uses a different methodology and a different scope.

Munk School Global Economic Policy Lab (Toronto–Montréal segment only)

The University of Toronto’s Global Economic Policy Lab published an analysis projecting 9.44 million annual passengers by year 20 and 10.45 million by year 30 on the Toronto–Montréal segment, which the GEPL identified as generating 57% of total corridor ridership. Scaled to the full corridor on the GEPL’s own segment-share assumption, this implies approximately 16–17 million by year 20. This is the only independent academic modelling exercise for the corridor that has been published with a disclosed methodology.

JPO Business Case Update v.002 (December 2021, ATI release)

The Joint Project Office Business Case Update released through Access to Information by the Canada Infrastructure Bank in November 2025 projects 405 million cumulative trips over 30 years (2030–2059) for the HFR Electric scenario, an average of approximately 13.5 million per year. The same document records a benefit-cost ratio of approximately 0.4 and a 30-year NPV of −$21.1 billion against a $27.7B capital cost baseline.

VIA Rail Annual Report 2024 (current corridor baseline)

The most recent published actual corridor ridership figure is 4,191,080 passengers in 2024, of which 3,336,057 on Corridor East (Quebec City–Toronto). The Montréal–Ottawa–Toronto segment alone carried 2,314,024 passengers. These figures were achieved with on-time performance averaging 51% for the year.

No reconciliation between the ALTO 17 million Corporate Plan figure, the ALTO 24 million public figure, and these comparator analyses has been published.

From the Documentary Record

Five things visible in the public record

Without drawing inferences about motive or intent, five observations can be made directly from the documents reviewed for this brief.

1. The two figures have been running on parallel tracks since March 2025

The 24 million figure was introduced in the Fast Forward document of March 2025. The Corporate Plan was finalised in approximately mid-2025; it references only the 17 million figure as a Project Outcome and does not mention or footnote the Fast Forward figures. Both figures remain in active circulation in May 2026: the 17 million figure in the Corporate Plan, the 24 million figure in the consultation website and the CEO’s April 2026 opinion piece.

2. The two figures have different scopes

The 17 million figure is defined as “Alto Passenger Rail Services and Local Services” combined. The 24 million figure, as presented in the Imbleau opinion piece, references Alto. The Corporate Plan does not break the 17 million figure into Alto-component and Local-Services-component shares.

3. The 17 million figure was set under the previous specification

17 million by 2059 was the Project Outcome attached to the 2023 RFQ for the 177 km/h HFR specification at $27.7B. The same figure carries forward into the Corporate Plan that describes the project as 300 km/h HSR at $60–90B, without a recorded revision to the target.

4. The capital cost is also presented as a working figure

The CEO has publicly stated that “in order to finalize project cost, we need to know what is being built and where.” The Class 4 estimate of $60–90 billion is, on this account, a working figure pending corridor selection and detailed engineering. The Co-Development Phase funding of $3.9 billion has been approved and is being expended.

5. Independent ridership review remains unpublished

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has not published a review of either the cost or the ridership figures. The only independent academic modelling exercise for the corridor with a disclosed methodology, the Munk School GEPL analysis, projects approximately 16–17 million for the full corridor by year 20 of operation.

Where things stand · May 6, 2026

Disclosure ledger

The following items are, or are not, currently in the public record.

Disclosed

Corporate Plan ridership figure: 17 million by 2059, including Alto Passenger Rail Services and Local Services. Corporate Plan Summary 2025-26 to 2029-30, Project Outcome #1.

Disclosed

Public-facing ridership figure: 24 million by 2055, rising to 43 million by 2084. Fast Forward (March 2025); Imbleau opinion piece (April 2026); ALTO consultation website (current).

Partial

Definition of the 17M target. Disclosed in Appendix 9 of the Corporate Plan as including Local Services, but not surfaced in summary communications about the figure.

Not disclosed

Demand modelling methodology for either the 17 million or the 24 million figure. No model documentation, elasticity assumptions, modal-shift coefficients, or sensitivity analysis has been published for either figure.

Not disclosed

Reconciliation between the two figures. No public ALTO statement explaining the relationship between the Corporate Plan figure and the public-marketing figure, or stating which is intended to be the operative ridership target.

Not disclosed

The Alto-only share of the 17M target. The Corporate Plan does not break the 17 million into the share attributable to high-speed services and the share attributable to Local Services.

Not disclosed

Updated benefit-cost ratio for the current 300 km/h HSR specification at $60–90 billion capital cost against the 17M ridership target. The last published BCR (~0.4) was calculated against the $27.7B HFR specification.

Not disclosed

Door-to-door journey time projection from representative origin points, accounting for the now-likely suburban Toronto station and Tremblay Ottawa terminus. The 24M figure is presumed to assume downtown-to-downtown service that is no longer the operating reality.

Not disclosed

Independent demand audit results from the Parliamentary Budget Officer or comparable independent body, against either the 17M or the 24M figure.

Download Full Brief

Two Targets (PDF)

Documentary record of ALTO ridership figures, with comparator analyses

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Questions for the Minister and the PBO

Six questions that would resolve the disclosure gaps

The following questions, addressed to the Minister of Transport and to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, would surface the items currently undisclosed.

Question 1 “Which is ALTO’s operative ridership target: the 17 million by 2059 figure in the Corporate Plan submitted for Treasury Board approval, or the 24 million by 2055 figure in the Corporation’s consultation materials and the CEO’s opinion pieces?”

Question 2 “Will ALTO publish a breakdown of the 17 million Project Outcome figure into the share attributable to Alto Passenger Rail Services and the share attributable to Local Services?”

Question 3 “Will ALTO publish the demand modelling methodology, elasticity assumptions, modal-shift coefficients, and sensitivity ranges underpinning both the 17 million and the 24 million figures?”

Question 4 “What is the updated benefit-cost ratio for the current 300 km/h high-speed rail specification at the Class 4 capital cost estimate of $60–90 billion, calculated against the 17 million Treasury Board ridership target?”

Question 5 “Has the Parliamentary Budget Officer been asked to review the ridership and cost figures underpinning ALTO’s benefit-cost case, and if so, what is the expected timeline for publication of that review?”

Question 6 “Given the Corporation’s acknowledgment that ‘in order to finalize project cost, we need to know what is being built and where,’ what is the formal status of the $60–90 billion capital cost figure relative to the $3.9 billion in Co-Development Phase funding already committed?”

Sources

Primary documents

1.

VIA HFR–VIA TGF Inc. (Alto), “Corporate Plan Summary 2025-2026 to 2029-30,” submitted to the Minister of Transport for Treasury Board approval, signed by the Chief Financial Officer January 7, 2025. Project Outcome #1 (Executive Summary, Appendix 2, Appendix 9, Appendix 13).

2.

Martin Imbleau, “High-speed rail is not a leap of faith: Why it matters for Canada’s growth,” opinion piece published Toronto Star and La Presse, April 17, 2026; reposted on ALTO consultation website. altotrain.ca (retrieved May 6, 2026)

3.

ALTO, “Fast Forward: Shaping Canada’s Future with a High-Speed Rail Network,” explanatory document, March 2025.

4.

Public Services and Procurement Canada, “Request for Qualifications — High Frequency Rail Project (RFQ No. T8128-210188/C),” February 17, 2023. Project Outcomes including 17M ridership by 2059 and zero operating subsidy. 126 pages.

5.

VIA Rail Canada / Canada Infrastructure Bank, “JPO Business Case Update v.002,” December 2021. Released through Access to Information by CIB, November 2025. Source for 405M cumulative trips, BCR ~0.4, and 30-year NPV of −$21.1B for HFR Electric option.

6.

VIA Rail Canada, “Annual Report 2024,” published 2025. 2024 actual corridor ridership: 4,191,080 passengers; Corridor East subtotal: 3,336,057; Montréal–Ottawa–Toronto segment: 2,314,024.

7.

The Globe and Mail, editorial referencing ALTO ridership projections: “projected ridership numbers – 24 million trips annually, in the 2050s, rising to 43 million by the 2080s, up from three million today.”

8.

Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto, Global Economic Policy Lab analysis of Toronto–Montréal HSR ridership: 9.44 million by year 20; 10.45 million by year 30 on Toronto–Montréal segment (57% of corridor).

May 6, 2026

Tag: VIA rail

The smoking gun: asymmetric precision

A report that cannot be wrong

The frame was set before the room opened

Consent invoked, consent disclaimed

Responsiveness, staged

What this argument does not claim

Sources

Benefits for Stations, Costs for the Corridor

A commissioned, benefits-only study of the seven stops

The report admits the bypass risk in its own words

Everything the study does not count

Assumption-driven scenarios, not forecasts

The headline is the middle scenario, not a central estimate

The gains are scenario assumptions, not a Canadian model

No reference-class or outturn discipline

Shorter stays can reduce spending even as arrivals rise

The report’s own “structural differences” section undercuts transfer

The study quietly undercuts ALTO’s own food-tourism ad

Our earlier tourism research

Summary ledger

Primary documents

What ALTO Told Parliament

What a written question is — and what this one asked

Four numbers that tell the story

Software, advisers, and communications — not track

An organization, not yet a railway

What ALTO paid itself in bonuses

The operating budget is almost certainly missing three zeros

What almost certainly happened

The fuller picture

Modal Shift Between Rail and Car on the ALTO Corridor

The competitive zone for road

Empirical anchors and the North American context

Elasticity, group size, and perceived cost

European price family

North American price family

Perceived versus full cost of driving

The group-size effect

Gas price as a modal-shift lever

Where the corridor sits on the curve

Where the corridor sits on the price axis

On-time performance and reliability

Where the modal-shift returns sit on the curve

What this means for the corridor decision

Structurally different from rail-vs-air

The road prize is bigger

Policy levers rival infrastructure

Reliability is a dedicated-track gain

Modelling approach

Principal sources

Modal Shift Between High-Speed Rail and Air on the ALTO Corridor

The competitive zone

Empirical anchors

The elasticity factor

How to read the chart

Price sensitivity differs by traveller

Air’s connecting-flight advantage

Where the corridor sits on the curve

Where the corridor sits on the price axis

The HPR pricing lever, with ALTO held at parity

Where the modal-shift returns sit on the curve

What this means for the corridor decision

The opportunity is real and concentrated

HPR does the larger part of the work

Price reduces ALTO’s advantage

This is the HPR regime

Modelling approach

Principal sources

The Voice ALTO Has Already Heard From

Who Transport Action is

The March 2026 consultation response

What pro-rail technical analysis says is possible

Targeted CN-route improvements

The freight grand bargain

HFR on the original Havelock alignment

Why earlier HSR-along-the-lakeshore studies did not proceed

A fifth source category, otherwise absent

What still has not been produced

Primary documents and references