Toronto–Quebec City high-speed rail: Canada’s plan to speed approvals

Toronto–Quebec City high-speed rail is gaining momentum as Canada looks for a smoother path to deliver a roughly 600-mile high-speed line, building on the federal Transport Canada overview of the Toronto–Québec City high-speed rail initiative.

Transport Minister Steven Mackinnon said this week that work is expected to begin on the first 125-mile segment—Montreal to Ottawa—in 2029, with trains planned for top speeds of at least 186 mph.

This is reported by the railway transport news portal Railway Supply.

Toronto–Quebec City high-speed rail and the bid to cut red tape

The governing Liberal Party has a bill under review in Parliament that aims to accelerate planning, design, and engineering. At the center of it is a push to exempt the project from review by the Canadian Transportation Agency—supporters say that would reduce or eliminate steps that often stall major infrastructure.

Don’t miss…Colombia rail revival programme moves into feasibility stage

If the project is pre-approved, Alto—the Crown corporation created to build the line—would gain stronger tools to secure the right of way. That includes the ability to expropriate land without first negotiating with landowners, and it would remove the current requirement for the relevant minister of public services to hold a public hearing to respond to objections.

Alto estimates the corridor would serve a region of about 18 million people, or roughly 60 percent of Canada’s adult population. The proposed travel-time cuts are central to the pitch: Toronto to Quebec City would drop to about 4.5 hours, compared with nearly 8.5 hours by car, while Toronto–Montreal would be about 3 hours versus a 5.5-hour drive.

Alto, the Major Projects Office, and the 2040s completion target

Alto held its first public meeting in August, after former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the project’s launch in February, as covered by Railway Supply. Officials initially estimated that the full Toronto–Quebec City high-speed line could be completed by the early 2040s.

Since then, the emphasis has been on clearing obstacles and tightening the timeline. A notable step was bringing the project into Canada’s Major Projects Office (MPO), which launched in August to support transformative infrastructure projects. For the Alto line, the MPO is expected to help streamline the engineering, regulatory, and permitting work needed to reach construction.

Skeptics remain unconvinced. They point to Canada’s history of false starts and broken promises on high-speed rail, along with the practical difficulty of establishing a workable route and the technical complexity of building it.

VIA Rail, Amtrak, and Canada’s “abundance” debate

The article sets the high-speed push alongside the reality of conventional passenger rail in Canada. VIA Rail’s intercity trains, like Amtrak’s in the United States, run on tracks owned by freight railroads—an arrangement often tied to low speeds and weak on-time performance.

This week, VIA Rail made news after passengers were stranded overnight for 12 hours because a train ahead broke down on the tracks. VIA’s on-time performance from 2018 to 2022 ranged from 57 to 72 percent, versus about 90 percent for European passenger trains. Amtrak’s average on-time performance is 75 percent. Canadian officials have said VIA trains are expected to continue operating once the high-speed line is up and running.

In the realm of high-speed rail, the piece argues that California’s project actually puts the U.S. ahead of Canada, where proposals have been floated for decades without tangible results or concrete movement forward. Those repeated delays—along with other infrastructure frustrations—have helped spark a Canadian version of the “abundance” debate that has also emerged in the U.S., tied to the recent book Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.

The projected payoffs: GDP, housing, and shifting travel choices

Despite the doubts, the article highlights a growing consensus that the benefits could be substantial. A report released this year found the Toronto–Quebec City line would boost Canada’s GDP by about CAD 25 billion annually—more than 1 percent of national GDP—and spur the building of more than 60,000 residential units near stations.

That framing links high-speed rail to an “abundance” agenda: stronger economic growth, a larger tax base, more housing supply, and higher productivity—along with fewer car trips and short-haul flights between cities. On the Toronto–Montreal route, passenger rail’s current mode share is about 10 percent, but it is projected to rise to 40 percent when Alto is operational, while the share of short-haul flights would decline from 32 to 19 percent.

Alto’s own publication pitches the corridor as a way to broaden access to work and education, urging readers to “Imagine finding a job in a different city without needing to relocate …” and pointing to “700,000 students” across “more than 30 colleges and universities” along the Corridor.

In that vision, people could travel through the 600-mile corridor without what it describes as an expensive and exhausting journey—and with less exposure to highway congestion, costly flight delays or cancellations, and the anxiety of missing those important moments.

News on railway transport, industry, and railway technologies from Railway Supply that you might have missed: