# Canada announces high-speed rail between Quebec City and Toronto -- finally!

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2024-10-29

canada, canadian-megalopolis, france, high-speed-rail, lifestyle, marseille, megalopolis, mobility, paris, quebec-city, tgv, toronto, transport, travel, urbanism

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The train from Paris to Marseille takes just over 3 hours:

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/41a47fa5c50baf7c8c163fc07d50a797.png)

To drive this same distance, it would take just over 8 hours:

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/ebe8687e44c648d4061df332d4ce6c2a.png)

So unless you had a very specific reason, I don't know why you'd ever want to drive this route. I certainly hate long drives and would avoid this at all costs.

On a related note, the [Canadian government announced this week](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/high-speed-rail-canada-1.7365835) that it will actually be moving forward with a high-speed train linking Québec City to Toronto, stopping in Peterborough, Ottawa, Montréal, Trois-Rivières, and Laval. And unlike previous announcements, it will actually go pretty fast -- upwards of 300 km/h, which is [comparable to what the TGV does](https://brandondonnelly.com/2022/07/16/toronto-montreal-should-be-a-2-hour-high-speed-train-ride/) on the above route.

There are three consortia currently competing for this contract, but apparently the federal government has already chosen a winning bidder. An announcement is expected next month. At the same time, the project office owns all of the bids, and so there's a chance that elements from each of them could be used in the final project.

According to official messaging, the design _alone_ is expected to take some 4 to 5 years, which is an eternity and way too long. But _at least_ we seem to be moving forward. This rail link is a no brainer. It will compress the geography of an importantly bilingual corridor with nearly 20 million people -- about half the population of Canada! It's our [megalopolis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis).

Now we just need to move forward with urgency and with an unwavering commitment to creating the best high-speed rail service in the world. Let's not accept mediocrity. And let's not cancel it once we've already sunk millions into it. That would be a terrible outcome for such an obviously important nation-building project.

LFG.

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/canada-announces-high-speed-rail-between-quebec-city-and-toronto-finally)*