Quebec City - Windsor Corridor
Intoduction
I recently watched a video by the transit blogger Reece Martin on YouTube about the Quebec City - Windsor Corridor and thought about the implications of different rail services in the region. As the transit and train enthiusiast that I am, I opened different map tools like Apple Maps, Google Maps and OpenStreetMap to get a overview of what relevant cities and sites there are. In this post I want to outline a few thoughts and ideas on the topic as a discussion starter for the improvement of rail infrastructure in Canada and North America.
Corridor
First I thought the corridor has to be very basic with only a few mayor cities between Quebec and Windsor. So the corridor would include Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Windsor. But when I looked at maps, London and Kingston seemed important as well and then I found this map of VIA Rail on Wikipedia:
Two things I found quite confusing:
First, the spread of "Major" and "Minor" stations, where the ends of the corridor had mainly cities marked with major stations but in the center spread more conservatively.
And Second, the five major cities I mentioned before had terminus stations. Does that mean that you would have to tranfer twice on your way from Windsor to Quebec?
Rail Infrastructure
The rail infrastructure should be built for high speed electrified operations with dedicated high speed lines and bypass stations for a mixed service pattern, which I'll get into later.
As for what to built first? I would say you pick either Toronto to Ottawa or Toronto to Montreal for a first phase, including a station at Kingston. With tests on this line starting, you can built the second phase to the pair you didn't choose for phase one. The third phase would expand the high speed line south to Windsor with a station in London. And the forth phase would complete the corridor north to Quebec with an additional line between Ottawa and Montreal.
Stations
In total this corridor for high speed trains now consists of seven stations. The stations in London and Kingston should have bypass tracks to allow for express services. All these stations that accomodate high speed intercity trains should integrate into the regional networks of each city.
Worth additional consideration are airport stations, for people traveling into the corridor from or to international destinations.
Trains
The high speed lines on the corridor should accomodate modern high speed electical multiple units like in Japan, China, France or Germany. Because the stations would need improved tracks and platforms a platform height for level boarding and no steps inside the trains should be the goal. Further the corridor should embrace modern signaling and train control systems to improve scheduling and possibly achieve full automation of the trains.
Service Levels
With these dedicated high speed lines, you already have a limited amount of stations, so I would run multiple kinds of services on the line, that are inspired by the Tokyo style Local - Express - Limited Express system.
First you have the standard trains that run the whole corridor and stop at every station: Windsor - London - Toronto - Kingston - Ottawa - Montreal - Quebec
Second you have Express trains that skip smaller stations, in this case London and Kingston: Windsor - Toronto - Ottawa - Montreal - Quebec
Third would be Limited Express trains, these can even skip parts of the corridor and will be used to tighten the schedule to better fit seasonal demand. These could include connections like: Toronto - Montreal - Quebec or Windson - Toronto - Ottawa or Ottawa - Montreal - Quebec.
Other
There are a lot of aspects I didn't consider in a view of only high speed lines, for exapmple regional or local lines that cover more of the mentioned VIA network. I want to publish additional articles regarding details of the corridor and dive deeper into certain topics.