The Prime Minister, Mark Carney, announced that, for the first time in four decades, VIA Rail passenger cars will be built in Canada. The federal government is investing more than $4.7 billion for VIA Rail to acquire and maintain 313 new passenger rail cars from Alstom Canada.
The amount of money planned for that could probably cover twinning a much larger amount of existing track, with less environmental impact.
Why just twin the line and still have something designed in the 1800’s. Canadians are so damn cheap to do anything properly.
Twinning is a more cost-effective way to have passenger rail separated from freight, and it could make rail travel more practical for a larger part of the country than just that one corridor the high speed rail plan covers. A new route over new land is so much worse for the environment.
Sure, but if you want actual high-speed passenger rail, the track needs to be straight and level.
The current freight tracks are as level as possible, but to achieve that, they follow the terrain, leading to some very twisty lines that require lower speeds.
Simply twinning those won’t get near as much of an improvement for passenger rail as is needed.
It would be dumb to put in new lines and not make them high speed. We are so far behind the rest of the world it’s shocking. Not sure if you travel the world at all, but when you see what is available in other countries, you realize how embarrassing our country is in that regard. It would not be worth it to just put in more low speed rail lines, kinda pointless IMHO.