The VIA Rail high frequency rail (HFR) project, a proposed network set to span almost 1,000 kilometres of dedicated railway lines in Eastern Ontario and Quebec, was first announced by the federal government in 2016.
Since then, the project has been the subject of public discussion and controversy as affected communities from Toronto to Ottawa to Quebec City ask what it will entail and what it will mean for them.
A newly formed Crown corporation, VIA HFR, has been named the project authority. VIA HFR will also operate as the public-sector counterparty to the eventual private-sector development partner.
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On July 24, 2024, three pre-qualified consortia submitted their proposals to become the private developer partner to work collaboratively with VIA HFR to design and develop the High Frequency Rail project. The government and VIA HFR plan to make a decision by the end of this year.
OBJ sat down with Martin Imbleau, CEO of VIA HFR, to learn more about the project, its timeline and goals, and what it means for business in Ottawa and Eastern Ontario.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
What is the HFR project?
It’s a project to develop and build a new rail network that would be dedicated to passengers between Quebec City and Toronto. It’s close to 1,000 kilometers and most of it would be on new tracks dedicated to passengers.
The intention is to offer new services that are faster, more reliable and much more frequent than the current service and to increase train usage from around four million annual passengers to more than 30 million.
What does this project entail?
This is probably the largest project that Canada has launched since the development and the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway 75 years ago. So, we need to do it very methodically. There are three big phases.
The first one that we’re in right now is the procurement phase. We have launched a request for proposals within a pre-selected consortium formed of Canadian companies and international companies. In the coming weeks, we and the Government of Canada will select the consortium with which we will do the development of the project. That will be the end of the first phase.
Then, we’ll do the development and engineering design. What can be done? What do we build? This will examine where, at what cost, as well as the schedule and reaching out to communities, getting their permission.
We also want to have the support and participation of Indigenous communities, so we’ll be getting in touch with them and having agreements in place. That phase will last maybe six or seven years.
The third phase would be the construction. It’s not only dedicated tracks, but it’s also an electric grid that we need to build, because the whole system is going to be running on electricity. We’ll do it in segments or phases, how many segments we don’t know. That remains to be decided, and so that will happen in six or seven years.
It’s so long because we need to do things correctly. It’s huge, it’s long, and we need to be very, very close to the communities. Every 10 or 100 kilometres is quite specific.
Our job is to be the project management office. We’re solely dedicated to managing the project with the private consortium that will be developing the project.
VIA HFR is a newly formed Crown corporation. What was the process and how does this position you for this project?
The reason behind it is that you really need a dedicated team with experienced people who have done linear projects. It’s difficult enough to do a large project if you manage operation and development, and sometimes you have a lack of focus.
Canada has decided to have a project office concentrated only on development. A lot of members of the team have done linear project development in the past, and because linear is different — because your environment changes, basically in all communities — it takes a different mindset to do that type of project.
VIA HFR is a Crown corporation dedicated to that. But also what was important, I think, for the government and for us is to ensure private-sector involvement in it, to get their expertise, their experience, and have the best partners that come from anywhere on the planet.
We have Canadian companies, but also enterprises, engineering firms, financial partners, potential partners that come from basically all over the world. So it’s a good balance of the private sector and the public sector to ensure that we adequately manage the risk and the complexities of the cost, the scope and the calendar.
What does this mean for the existing VIA service along this corridor?
This new service is needed because, unfortunately, there’s not enough services. They have some issues with the reliability and how fast the train goes. This is about providing what is required.
It will probably cut the travel time in half. So you can imagine that the ridership would increase significantly for workers, for business people, for students, for people travelling, for health-care needs, for tourists, for everyone.
The current service will be maintained because It’s not going to be the same corridor. Definitely it’s going to be a different route going from city to city with way fewer stops.
The current services will be maintained, so that there are stops in Kingston, etcetera, and those services will be maintained down the road, but the new service will definitely be faster and you will see a significant increase in usage.
The faster the service wants to be, the more direct it has to be, and stops have to be limited. So if we really want to ensure that there’s a true modal shift from cars to trains and, to a certain extent, from short-distance plane to train, it needs to be fast.
Today, the project has seven stops only, but it’s seven stops that are intuitive: Québec City, Trois-Rivières, Laval, Montréal, Ottawa, Peterborough, and Toronto. We need to get in the cities and out of the cities very fast or as seamlessly and as efficiently as possible.
Will the rail use the same stations that are already there for VIA?
We don’t know yet. That’s going to be part of the development phase, because right now, we haven’t done enough of our homework.
We need to think about the stations and how people will be commuting for the next 75 years and not how we used to commute to get in town or out of town in the last 60 years.
We know that downtown Montreal and downtown Toronto are not easily accessible, so we need to find the right balance in offering that service as seamlessly as possible, but ensuring that we do something achievable and doable.
What are the impacts that you imagine this will have on the cities along the corridor? How will this impact cities like Ottawa?
It’s a bit too early. I think we will be in a position to present in the coming months on the economic and social impacts of that service. We’re not productive enough in the country not to have a fast train that will link the 15 to 20 million people that live and will live in the corridor. That has to be demonstrated.
But we also have to look at the other benefits on productivity, on GDP growth, on (greenhouse gas) reduction. Because, of course, this is going to be an electric train, so imagine the number of commuting cars that we’re avoiding.
It’s really a generational project that, honestly, should have been done decades ago.
One of the phrases that I like to repeat is that if the need of that type of project will only increase and if the cost of that type of project will only increase as well, now is the time to do it. Canada needs that service to be developed and built ASAP.
Are you looking to other high-frequency projects and light-rail systems for guidance or as examples? Ottawa’s own LRT system has been the subject of plenty of discussion and controversy.
The project office that I lead would not be doing its job if we were not learning from all other projects, LRT being one, but also for other projects in the world. There’s a lot of lessons out there. One of the most, well, two big lessons.
First, ensure continuity in your development team, ensure that your project office and your private partner remain the same all along in the development, engineering, construction and operation, then you avoid the gap in the transfer of responsibility. That’s a big, big, big lesson learned from other projects.
Second, you need to invest the proper resources and timing and development phase.
You need to have the time and the resources. Get the community’s support, go get the permits, add the environmental mitigations in place, and then start construction.
The third big lesson is, don’t throw numbers out there too soon unless you’ve done your homework. It’s too soon today to present detailed numbers and a calendar because we haven’t done enough of our work.
How is VIA HFR enlisting the communities that are going to be impacted?
One of the first priorities since the corporation was created and I joined was the community outreach, first with Indigenous communities.
There’s a fairly large group of Indigenous communities out there, so we have a team dedicated to the relationship with the communities. We really want not only their support but for them to actually participate in the project.
We’re also working with the communities in general, whether they’re municipalities, local governments, provincial governments, or other groups of stakeholders. We have a pretty good team in Ottawa, in Montreal, in Toronto, and soon in Quebec, that are out there not only promoting the project, but explaining how we will do it and getting the feedback very early in the process so we can adapt the project and ensure that we take into consideration their concerns.
The culture of trains is not sufficiently developed today in some communities, so we have a lot of education to do. But definitely, this project has to be desired to become a reality. It cannot be imposed. It has to be desired.
Do you feel it is?
I can only say that the support is not only strong, it is very, very strong. We’re growing significantly. But more to come in the next few months.
The next big step will be selecting the partner in the fall and then launching the development phase. We think it’s going to happen around November or December of this year.
Every fast train developed in the world has shrunk the country. You look at the map and how people commute between the regions and when there’s a fast train, you see the country getting smaller because people can travel much more efficiently, more economically, and the communities are getting closer and closer with each other.
It has been the case in France, Italy and Spain. Montreal and Toronto will be closer. I made a joke this morning about musicians from Quebec City coming to Bluesfest much more often. Workers will be able to commute from Peterborough to Ottawa without having to leave their community to live elsewhere for work.
It will bring people closer. That’s definitely one of the objectives and we’re going to create and generate growth, because economically it will be a big boost for the communities along that corridor.
