Jet fuel costs have nearly doubled since the US and Israel attacked Iran in February. This is obviously straining the overall economics of air travel, but the most impacted segment is the one that has always been tenuous: short-haul flights.
As I understand it, airlines generally prefer flights that are at least 2 hours long. Takeoff and landing consume the most fuel, and add a lot of wear and tear on a plane's equipment, so you want a long enough flight to amortize these costs. This is why for the 10 years spanning 2016 to 2026, US flights spanning less than 250 miles declined by 11% — the largest drop of any route length.
Now, in some cases, these short-haul flights are simply necessary loss leaders. For example, the flight from Milwaukee to Chicago is comically short. It's only about 70 miles, translating into an actual cruising time of around 20 minutes. But it's an important route for connecting passengers and the overall hub-and-spoke airline model.
This also makes it slightly harder for rail to effectively compete, because you need to solve for two clear passenger demands (again, assuming they're connecting): (1) people leaving Milwaukee will want to check their bags at the point of departure and (2) they don't want to arrive downtown, they want to arrive at the airport for their connecting flight.
That said, both of these wants are solvable. Hong Kong, for instance, allows in-town check-in where passengers drop their bags downtown before boarding the airport train. This is particularly convenient if you have to check out of your hotel and need to rid yourself of your luggage until you arrive at your final destination.
Very cool, so what's my point?
I mention all this because if short-haul flights are the flight segment that airlines don't love to operate, then it only strengthens the opportunity for high-speed rail to fill this gap in the market and become a seamless component of overall global mobility.
Here in Canada, the obvious opportunity is the Toronto-Montreal corridor. This is arguably the single best opportunity in North America when you consider its geography, construction viability (lots of undeveloped land to lay new track), and ability to replace short-haul flights. The broader Windsor-Quebec City corridor is also, as we know, the densest part of Canada with roughly 50% of our entire population.
But the overall opportunity is twofold: it will service origin-destination travel and it will connect Toronto and Montreal as global airport hubs. In fact, this is one of the stated reasons for why Air Canada joined the high-speed Alto project as a core consortium partner:
Connections with other modes of transport, such as rail or bus, are part of the solutions the company is already developing to offer the most relevant mobility option, responding in a sustainable way to the specific needs of each of its customers. In the longer term, the contribution of its expertise to the Cadence team will enable the airline to contribute to the harmonious integration of a future intercity rail network with existing airport hubs in the Quebec-Windsor corridor, for the benefit of all travellers.
Here's a specific example. Montreal largely serves as Canada's direct gateway to France's secondary cities, Francophone Africa, and the Mediterranean. So if you live in Toronto and want to fly to Marseille or Algiers or Mallorca, you are going to connect in Montreal (or connect across the Atlantic somewhere in Europe).
The multi-modal train option would include an in-town baggage check at Union Station in Toronto, a 3-hour train ride to Montreal, a seamless rail connection from Gare Centrale to YUL (with the REM airport train set to open in 2027), and then your flight to Europe or Africa.
The overall travel time should be comparable, except in the high-speed rail option you'd have more uninterrupted time to work, watch a movie, or sleep. And now that Air Canada gets to rid itself of its less profitable (or unprofitable?) short-haul flights, it should have the margin to aggressively market these tickets.
If this customer experience is designed properly — with one booking, competitive fares, clean transfers, and convenient baggage handling — it will quickly dominate the market. We know this because it's already working in Europe.
Yesterday morning, I took the train from Toronto to Montréal. I'm here for one night for a few meetings. I love trains. You can show up right before departure, the seats are more spacious, and they go downtown to downtown. Plus, there's something romantic to me about whizzing through the landscape. But currently, this trip takes just over 5 hours once you factor in the above stops (see cover photo). That's too long in this day and age, so Canada is, as I understand it, working on a new high-speed rail solution called Alto.
The first phase will connect Ottawa to Montréal (construction is expected to start in 2029), and a subsequent phase will connect Ottawa to Toronto. The top speed will be around 300 km/h, which I'm guessing will result in an effective speed closer to 200 km/h when you factor in stops and any speed limits required near urban centers. With this, the goal is to bring the journey from Toronto to Montréal down to around 3 hours.
One thing to keep in mind is that Ottawa does not lie on the fastest route between Toronto and Montréal; it adds about 70 km. But it's of course necessary. In theory, an express route with no stops running TGV or Shinkansen-like trains could bring the journey time down closer to 2 hours. But that's not what is being planned from what I have read. Regardless, 3 hours is still a big deal and a meaningful improvement. It makes the trip faster than flying, and certainly faster than driving.
Could current drive times ultimately change with autonomous vehicles? Maybe, but it's unlikely to be by this much. I hate long road trips and the same would be true even if a robot were driving me. So I look forward to one day — in my 50s? — doing this journey in 3 hours. If we could get it down to 2 hours and change, that much better. That's a trip worth taking for a night out or just to stock up on bagels.
Yesterday, the federal government announced that Canada has just awarded a high-speed rail contract to a consortium led by the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. The plan, at least as it stands right now, is for the service to run between Toronto and Québec City, have a total 7 stations, and operate at 300 km/hour. And since this is the most densely populated part of Canada, this 1,000-km corridor is expected to connect and unify roughly half of the people in this country (~20 million people).
However, many people are rightly reacting to this news with extreme cynicism. Some of the comments: It will never actually happen. It will never happen in my lifetime. The next administration will cancel it as soon as they get into office (and then we'll have to pay hefty cancellation fees). It'll be too expensive. This corridor is already adequately serviced by air travel. 300km/h isn't fast enough and the technology will be outdated by the time it's ever complete. And the list goes on.
These are all valid and expected feelings. It's almost as if we're accustomed to politicians making lofty promises right around election time! And of course, deep down in side, I too share this same cynicism. History has taught us. I mean, look at John Tory's SmartTrack proposal from 2014. This thing was supposed to be done by now. But instead, we are now in 2025 and not one station has been built and we're down to only three on the books. Maybe this year will be the year for construction to start.
This shouldn't be the case. We shouldn't have zero confidence in our country to be bold, get things done, and make transformational investments for future generations. So I'm putting cynicism and politics aside to say: let's build! This is the right direction and attitude for our country to be taking. It's positive for our economy, the environment, our international prestige, and our political integration, among many other things. Expect to hear more high-speed rail talk on this blog going forward.
Image via Bloomberg