Talk Of A High-Speed Train From Toronto To Montreal Is Back Again & Here's What It Means

The age-old topic of a high-speed train in Canada is back and there's a renewed push to offer service between Toronto and Montreal.

For years, there's been talk of some sort of high-speed rail (or HSR) connecting Ontario and Quebec, but talk is as far as things have gotten and Canada is now the only G7 country without any kind of HSR service.

Two Montreal city councillors are hoping that will soon change.

Craig Sauvé and Serge Sasseville have jointly planned to ask the federal government to support a new HSR project at a council meeting on February 20.

They said their request follows, "a series of favourable stands across Quebec concerning the creation of a High-Speed Rail (HSR) network in the Quebec-Toronto corridor."

The councillors said a proposal from a French manufacturing company, Alstom, could reduce the time of a trip between Toronto and Montreal down to three hours.

That's compared to a roughly five-hour long trip on VIA Rail.

Taking the HSR from Montreal to Ottawa would take just one hour, and a trip from Montreal to Quebec City would last an hour and 40 minutes.

Councillor Sauvé called the HSR proposal a "huge legacy for quality of life and for the environment."

"We have been studying scenarios for an HSR network for decades," he said. "As the Government of Canada is ready to invest massively in rail transport, we must seize this opportunity to provide ourselves with a passenger rail infrastructure which is truly competitive with domestic flights."

It's not surprising to see this latest attempt to launch an HSR network is being met with skepticism.

"I look forward to my great grandchildren's great grandchildren to ride this," one person commented on the story on MTL Blog's Facebook.

Hundreds of other comments showed plenty of excitement and people sharing how much this is needed, or how long it's been that Canada has been talking about it.

Narcity reached out to Ontario's Ministry of Transportation for comment on this latest HSR proposal but did not hear back in time for publication.

In 2019, the Doug Ford government scrapped plans introduced by the previous Liberal government to install high-speed rail service between Toronto and Windsor, which according to Global News, could've been set up between Toronto and London by 2025 and extended out to Windsor by 2031.