The train from Paris to Marseille takes just over 3 hours:
To drive this same distance, it would take just over 8 hours:
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 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 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.
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.
https://twitter.com/donnelly_b/status/1548029348199813120?s=20&t=tom32izajkBfUjQZDAs43A
The Quebec City-Windsor corridor is the most densely populated region in Canada. The last time I checked Wikipedia, it was reported to house about 18 million people, or about half of Canada's entire population.
So it is not surprising that there have been numerous high-speed rail studies for this corridor over the decades, as well as studies for other important links in Alberta (Edmonton-Calgary) and other parts of the country.
And yet, Canada remains the only G7 country without any high-speed rail. Though to be fair, the US doesn't have all that much either; certainly with respect to the size of its population.
However, there is some good news. In March of this year, the Government of Canada announced a Request for Expression of Interest related to high frequency rail service between Quebec City and Toronto. More information, over here.
But from what I have read, it'll be a faster upgraded service (~200 km/h), but not true high-speed rail (~250-300 km/h). I took the TGV from Marseille to Paris last summer, and this is how fast we were going:
If we're going to do this, let's be the absolute best in the world and not settle for mediocrity.
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