Transport committee  High-frequency rail is going to be competitive with the automobile. High-speed trains are going to be competitive with the airplane. It depends on what your final objective is. I have a certain vision. I believe Air Canada would abandon most flights served by high-speed trains.

Transport committee  I agree. Any improvement is going to be an improvement. That has to be clear and transparent. We have to look at tourism and its impact, and, of course, trains are a major impact on tourism, we know, because it's a question of accessibility. When we look at traffic around the wo

Transport committee  Well, I think the same model that I propose for Montreal could potentially be a partnership built between GO Transit or Metrolinx with Via Rail in extending a few of their trains to Belleville, for example, or something like that. The reality is that going by Peterborough.... I m

Transport committee  Well, it could be as simple as, for example, expanding a few trains or something like that. There are strategies that are there. The network is there. If Via Rail is disappearing on the CN main tracks and whatever, we're going to be liberating capacity. We also have to see this

Transport committee  I think there are certain segments where we can get into high gear as soon as contracts are signed, and get them operational, including Ottawa-Montreal. It's a line I use. It's Via Rail-owned, with almost no expropriations needed to get it done. It's a short distance. We can do t

Transport committee  The Montreal-Quebec trip is definitely an example of what can cause problems. Those who are familiar with the area know that trains from Quebec City have to go all the way to Dorval and turn around before coming back to the downtown area; trains cannot easily access the downtown

Transport committee  Yes. I would say that the American government has been a better partner than the Canadian government, in that Amtrak comes into Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, and Via Rail is lacking in terms of co-operation compared to our American friends to the south.

Transport committee  I think your timelines are a bit optimistic. Realistically, once the federal government has been convinced to start building high-frequency rail, for instance, we can expect it will be at least 50 years before they want to build high-speed rail, in my opinion. Personally, I thin

Transport committee  It's fundamental. If we look at train systems that are successes around the world, there are those that have worked with cities and communities to build high-density destinations around train stations. As long as we build train stations that are far from where people live, that a

Transport committee  Yes. However, I would not go toward the siding approach. It's more about getting four-track stations. The idea that we see in most successful European and Asian systems is that you do the scheduling so that at a local stop, the train is able to stop locally and the high-speed tra

Transport committee  It's fundamental. If we want to diminish the dependency of Canadians on the automobile, we have to give them a viable option. That viable option comes by having a system that takes them from everywhere to everywhere. As long as we are not able to provide a viable alternative to t

Transport committee  You're asking a multi-faceted question. It's actually also a fascinating question, if you want to do a little word play on it. We have to understand here that high-frequency rail is not going to significantly increase ticket prices if we compare it to other services around the

Transport committee  It is complementary. However, with the current ridership level, it is hard to sustain that complementary service, basically because almost the totality of the ridership between Montreal and Quebec City will go automatically on the higher-speed and higher-frequency service. They'r

Transport committee  That's a very interesting question. Every time we proceed with a route change, it has a significant impact on communities that feel abandoned and communities that are now energized by having a new service. I have long been a proponent of a bigger picture. If we take the segment

Transport committee  Hello and thank you for this opportunity to speak to you about such an important topic. The railway is an important part of the myth of how the modern nation of Canada was built. As you know, with the British North America Act, Canada is the country whose founding documents talk