From Canada.com:

A study into the feasibility of a high-speed train link in the Windsor-Quebec City corridor shows the project could benefit the entire Canadian economy.

The report conducted by the EcoTrain consortium — grouping Dessau, MMM Group, KPMG, Wilbur Smith & Associates, and Deutsche Bahn International — was released Monday by High Speed Rail Canada, an advocacy group which promotes the service.

The federal government has yet to release the study publicly.

“The taxpayers have a right to see it. We have posted it on our website. Canada is 30 years behind the rest of the modern world in passenger rail. It is a national embarrassment,” said Paul Langan, president of High Speed Rail Canada.

The fast train would cost between $18.9 and $21.3 billion depending on the chosen technology and yield revenues between $1.21 and $1.48 billion, according to the study financed equally by the federal government and the governments of Quebec and Ontario.

The study points out that the Quebec City-Windsor route would not be financially viable as a whole, but notes that the Montreal-Toronto segment, as well as the Quebec City-Toronto segments would benefit the entire Canadian economy, not just that of Ontario and Quebec.

The $3-million study looked at two high-speed technologies, one diesel train travelling at 200 km/h and a 300km/h electric powered train. Both would be suitable for the corridor, but the study notes the worldwide trend is the faster electric train.

The Quebec City-Windsor corridor would attract more than 10 million passengers in 2031 and serve the cities of Quebec City, Trois-Rivieres, Montreal, Ottawa, Kingston, Toronto, London and Windsor.

Source: http://www.canada.com/business/Study+says+high+speed+train+could+benefit+Canadian+economy/5561938/story.html

News release from Nordik Institute:

SAULT STE. MARIE, ON (October 25, 2011) – Ninety-five kilometers of rail that connect Northern Ontario to Ottawa, Montreal and the East Coast are slated to be torn up.

This rail is critical to Northern Ontario’s economic opportunities that depend on rail transportation.

Also, opportunity to develop passenger train service from Northern Ontario to Ottawa and Eastern Canada would be lost.

Serpent River First Nation hosted a meeting Saturday of EACMR (East Algoma chiefs, mayors and reeves), CAPT (Coalition for Algoma Passenger Trains), TPR (Transport Pontiac Renfrew), Transport Action Canada and regional provincial and federal politicians.

Rick Hamilton, mayor of Elliot Lake, chaired the meeting.

A ribbon of rail consisting of the Ontario Northland Railway along with underused and orphaned rail belonging to CN and CP has been identified as infrastructure that interconnects the communities, First Nations, people and businesses of Northeastern Ontario to Ottawa and Toronto as a foundation of socio-economic opportunity.

CP’s Mattawa-to-Pembroke rail that links to Ottawa is in abandonment procedures and scheduled to be torn up.

TPR described the process for saving the CN rail link and illustrated the impact of the Mattawa-to-Pembroke Rail link to the rail connectivity of Northern Ontario.

This is the last direct rail link from Northern Ontario to Eastern Canada.

If lost rail freight from Northern Ontario would have to be hauled 18 additional hours through Toronto to reach Eastern Canada resulting in higher costs.

For passenger trains there would be no possibility of taking trains from Northern Ontario to Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City and Halifax without first routing through Toronto.

Harry Gow, co-chair of TPR stated: “Canadian Pacific has started lifting the tracks between Pembroke and Smiths Falls, but there is still hope to save the line from Pembroke west, thus preserving Northeastern Ontario’s link for freight and passengers to Ottawa, Montréal and the eastern seaboard.”

“The Mattawa-to-Pembroke rail link is critical to economic opportunity for Northern Ontario,” says Hamilton. “Trains are efficient and cost effective all-season transportation for both goods and people that Ontario needs for our economy, quality of life and environmental responsibility” said Al Errington of CAPT.

“In a time of economic uncertainty and change, what we need is our various jurisdictions working together, coming from a position of strength. Tearing out infrastructure at this time is not only a step backward, it’s simply not prudent from a long-term planning perspective. Rail has been critical to northern economies for over a century and it will continue to be vital for years into the future. A Northern Growth Plan for this region of the province needs rail service to stay on track. In today’s competitive global economy rail is essential infrastructure,” says Chief Isadore Day of Serpent River First Nation.

The group of diverse interests and communities has committed to aggressively pursuing saving this critical rail link and promoting the expansion of rail passenger and freight opportunities for Northern Ontario through public education and political lobbying.

Trains and effective transportation options are important to the economy, quality of life and the environment.

The EACMR passed a resolution supporting saving the Mattawa to Pembroke rail link and will be contacting other municipalities throughout Northeastern encouraging their support.

Chief Isadore Day has been appointed as the EACMR’s delegate for this issue to upcoming municipal meetings on Ontario’s Northern Growth Plan.

The politicians in attendance committed to bringing the rail link situation to the attention of both the federal and provincial parliaments.

A feasibility study on a functional Northeastern Ontario Passenger Rail network will be fast tracked by CAPT.

Source: http://www.sootoday.com/content/news/full_story.asp?StoryNumber=54483

From the Detroit Free Press:

Gov. Rick Snyder today will announce plans for a 110-mile network of sleek rapid transit buses in metro Detroit, operating within two or three years, that will move people as fast and conveniently as light rail.

A new regional transit authority, made up of Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Washtenaw Counties, will govern the system, paid for, with voter approval, by a $40 increase in vehicle registration fees.

I’ve seen these buses work in Curitiba, Brazil  — at one-eighth the cost of light rail — and I know people will use them here once they get a taste.  Along with planned light rail on Woodward and a functioning city and suburban bus system, they can make mass transit real in southeast Michigan.

Rapid buses will run on dedicated lanes at about 40 m.p.h.

“People just love these buses because they get them where they’re going as fast as light rail,” SMART General Manager John Hertel told me this morning.

Routes, he said, will include a line from downtown Detroit to Metro Airport and on to Ann Arbor. Other lines will run down Woodward and Gratiot. An east-west route in Oakland and Macomb Counties, including M-59, will help link the four-county region.

Capable of signal control, the buses won’t need to stop for lights. Leaders of all four counties have signed off on the plan, which will dovetail with the Woodward Light Rail Project. Rapid buses won’t run on any part of Woodward served by light rail.

After years of transit dead ends, and now deep cuts in city and suburban bus service, Snyder has helped put some gas in the region’s tank. It’s a day to get pumped, but it would be a mistake to forget about the crisis in basic bus service now afflicting the region’s 150,000 daily bus riders.

At any rate, for light rail or rapid transit bus service to work, an adequate and reliable basic bus service must feed them. And none of this can happen without a regional transit authority. Legislation will be introduced soon to create one, and the region must get behind it after more than a decade of failure.

In Curitiba, Brazil, rapid transit buses move people as smoothly as any light rail or subway system I’ve used. Elevated stations allow passengers to pay before boarding, entering buses on the same level, without stepping up or down. Rapid buses look more like rocket ships than conventional buses.

Even people who wouldn’t think of riding a bus now — and, unfortunately, in southeast Michigan there a lot of them — will find these buses sleek and smooth enough to get out of their vehicles and save some chips, at least some of the time.

Source: http://www.freep.com/article/20111026/BLOG2505/111026019/Jeff-Gerritt-Rapid-transit-rolling-our-way

Editorial from the Toronto Star:

Of all the issues endlessly studied without resolution in Canada, high-speed rail (HSR) tops the list.

The latest unreleased HSR study, which was revealed by the Star last week, only confirms that more than 30 years of rosy political promises and large consulting fees have accomplished nothing. Canada remains the only G8 nation that hasn’t taken the first step on the high-speed trail, while even China, Russia, Turkey, Morocco and Uzbekistan have launched HSR projects. By 2025, there will be 43,000 kilometres of high-speed lines worldwide, but none in Canada if we don’t change our ways.

No one should expect that change to come from this $3.4 million study commissioned by the federal, Ontario and Quebec governments. It merely replows ground covered by a joint $6 million Ontario-Quebec government study in 1995, which flowed from a 1991 interprovincial study that consumed another $6 million.

This time around, the recommendation is 200 or 300 km/hour service from Toronto to Kingston, Ottawa, Montreal, Trois-Rivieres and Quebec, with nothing for southwestern Ontario or across the border to connect with the expanding U.S. rail passenger network. Other cities along the truncated corridor would have their VIA service replaced by buses. Much of the existing passenger infrastructure would be dumped in favour of an all-new Quebec-Toronto “greenfield” system costing $14 billion to $16 billion that wouldn’t carry its first passenger for 15 years.

Read more: http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1071421–high-speed-train-stuck-in-station

From Crain Detroit Business:

A new nonprofit wants to transform Detroit’s logistics assets into an inland port linked by rail to the deepwater facility in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to take advantage of the newest generation of massive cargo ships.

Organizers of the Great Lakes Global Freight Gateway say Halifax is one of just two ports on the East Coast — the other is Newport, Va. — that can handle the “Ultra Post-Panamax” container ships that will ply the seas by 2014.

The group believes it can convince logistics providers, maritime operators and manufacturers that it’s cheaper and faster to ship goods to the Midwest through the Detroit-Halifax link.

“In the end, they all want the lowest price,” said Michael Belzer, an economics professor at Wayne State University and CEO of Great Lakes Global Freight Gateway. “Detroit has never sold itself as an inland port before. It has all the assets.”

Goods would arrive by mega-freighter in Halifax and then be shipped the 1,300 miles to Detroit via Canadian National Railway Co. trains (and CN’s tunnel in Port Huron). From there, they would be offloaded for truck shipping locally and to the Midwest.

Read more: http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20111016/SUB01/310169996/new-groups-plan-link-detroit-to-halifax-future-mega-ships#