Transport committee  Before coming here today, I had the pleasure of re-reading the many volumes of the study. I can tell you that they contain a lot of very good material, even though it of course needs to be updated. I think that the study would be useful.

Transport committee  Yes, that is the fundamental point on which the design of any system must be based. But I do not claim that the Lynx Consortium went as far as our Spanish friends did with their study. It was simply an update of the tripartite study in which several companies came together to see how they could create such a system.

Transport committee  We have to be able to bring together the levels of service; for example, the frequency of trains, the length of trips, the operating costs and the ticket prices, in order to achieve a balance and to create an economically viable project.

Transport committee  They have had very good results.

Transport committee  I mentioned that the situation has evolved since the Lynx Project or the tripartite study. There has been an evolution in the States. The viability of the project can only be enhanced by having some strategic interconnection points with the American network.

Transport committee  It was 240 kilometres per hour.

Transport committee  Yes.

Transport committee  It's a significant part of the cost. One of the reasons you want to electrify is to get the performance that will give you the good trip times and attract the ridership. Any technology that's not electrified ends up being significantly heavier. There's more weight involved. Weight is the enemy of speed.

Transport committee  When we updated the tripartite study back in 1998, we were talking about starting the first year of operation carrying 11 million passengers a year, and reaching 16.4 million passengers by the twentieth year, which was expected to be 2028. I'm also looking for the corresponding greenhouse gas reductions.

Transport committee  Yes, you're doing a study right now.

Transport committee  Updating a study.

Transport committee  That dates me. I worked on that personally, but—

Transport committee  During the Lynx study, we updated the ridership studies that had been conducted by what was then called the tripartite study, which had been conducted by the federal, Quebec, and Ontario governments. We got some very knowledgeable people to come in from SYSTRA, from the SNCF, the consulting arm of the French national railroads.

Transport committee  Correct, because you have competing modes that will give you a shorter trip time. Even with the price of automobile fuel going up, you're not necessarily going to increase ridership. If you go to higher speeds, you shorten your trip times. It's not absolute speed that's essential.

Transport committee  It will create a mode shift, yes.