Richard, I’m afraid I don’t quite understand the scope of this study. It seems that the first priority for high-speed rail should be Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal — just like Eurostar, high-speed rail has the potential to capture much of the travel between these cities. (On a typical weekday, Air Canada and WestJet fly a total of 4,300 seats each way between Toronto and Montreal, and a bunch more to Ottawa. The carbon footprint of that can’t be pretty.)

But would the point of high speed rail links between Toronto and places like Waterloo and Orillia be to serve commuters living in one city but working in the other, or to facilitate occasional day-trips (for either business meetings or pleasure)? Absolutely, there are businesses in Waterloo and Toronto that should collaborate with each other, and an easy way to visit each other would aid that. But as for daily Waterloo-Toronto daily commuters, that seems like a case of greenbelt-leaping sprawl that should be discouraged. There’s plenty of room for intensification in Markham, Vaughan, Pickering, and Brampton, and even within the city of Toronto’s old suburbs. It’s great the report specifies energy-efficient trains, but of course the simplest way to be more energy efficient is to travel shorter distances.

Perhaps I’ve misunderstood and the system would be priced and scheduled in such a way that it wouldn’t appeal to commuters. But the references to mobility hubs and reduced highway congestion certainly sound like a plan for commuters — a bit like Metrolinx’s proposals, stretched across a wider area and sped up. And I just don’t see how setting up a system for people to live 150 km from where they work is a wise infrastructure investment.

Good luck, though. There seems to be huge resistance against public transportation (or even private mass transit).

I see huge advantages to buses (flexible, responsive, etc.) I see the potential to invest in “clean” buses. I see the many examples of loss-piling rail services that offer poor service and fail to meet the public transit needs of the citizenry (driving them, so to speak, to use POVs).

I can see why light rail is aesthetically appealing: the idea is certainly sexier than buses. And I understand that in theory these rail systems should be more efficient because they would operate on their own tracks. But that hasn’t been the case in history, and the only thing that has held back buses has been controls on private bus company routes. Where there has been private bus competition, e.g., New York-Boston-DC, there are $15 tickets.

Also, I’d note, that if you wanted to free buses from any traffic problems you might have, well just use that money you would have spent on creating the light rail system’s tracks, and/or use congestion pricing! It’s not that hard!

So, with my monologue complete, I ask again: Where for art thou bus champions?