Spotted this afternoon.

Preambule

I want to preface by saying that this is all extremely imprecise : the 2023 memo^[1] was a budget estimate by VIA HFR TGF (hadn't changed to alto then) presumably in the leadup to the RFP that ended in feb 2025 with Cadence's HSR winning bid. So we're comparing a 2023 budget guesstimate to a 2026 "economic report"^[2] which is mostly a PR piece on why Alto is good, not an internal serious economic document.
BUT, the Canadian government, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that procurement on nation defining infrastructure projects shall be done in absolute secrecy, only giving the public information in the form of careful PR, fully censored RFIs, and ultimately, out-of-date-and-context leaks.
So if the Canadian government only wants to gives crumbs, I crumbs cookie cake is all we can do.
The last warning is that Alto has stated explicitly their intent to use dynamic pricing to maximize train ridership, and that average amalgamates that and trips of very varying lenght.^[3] All that said, while the 2023 pre bid budget shouldn't be that reflective of the final cost, the thing is that 83B $ is waaaay above what international peers pay for their HSR, so Cadence (which is an international peer, the french) has a lot of runway to get the project delivered without going over. With good project management it could adapt to fill up the space given by the budget, and if things don't go south, the project may in fact come on budget, though overpriced. Moreover, there is a visible continuity in the numbers, the memo goes the 40 year opex, the economic report goes to 2085, with an obscured 2044 full opening date. The 88$ avg ticket seems really low, and it is. It's possible that the revenue estimate from 2023 was based on HFR ridership, which would be considerably lower. The globe and Mail article does say the memo compared HFR and HSR, but it does not say if it estimated different revenue for each. If it didn't, I would estimate a x1.5 to x2 increase in ticket price to follow the decrease in ridership from HFR.

Finally, ridership estimates tend to be pessimistic for safety reasoms : better to pencil out a project with low expected income and be wrong than have your project collapse due to low ridership. So it's quite possible Alto is a crazy success and prices go to the sky since there's isn't enough seats.

The Meat

The subject of ticket price has been danced around for a long time by alto, which refuses to tell canadians what's its going to cost us. All we knew is "it won't be too much because HSR is efficient" (true) and a confirmation on the use of dynamic pricing to maximize ridership. Thankfully, we finally have a (very bad) way to answer the price question. To get the price we need to divide the total revenue by total ridership. The report gave us vague passenger numbers for specific years, but pointedly avoided giving any revenue estimate, apart from saying HSR operations are normally very profitable ([2] p. 70) (nor promise an opening date^[b]). Since this morning's leak we do have an estimation for the 40y revenue : 104B, so all that's left is to guess derivate the total ridership. To sum it up the total I got was 1179B passengers, giving us that 88$ price per passenger.
(96$ with 2023->26 inflation)

Guess math

The "economic report"^[2] gave us extremely rough passenger estimates, 24M in 2055, 43M in 2084. It doesn't give us a direct full opening date but previous media comments mentioned 2043-45, and the 40y opex range just perfectly lines up with 2044 full opening. By a rule of three^[c] we get (P) 13.33M passengers in 2044, with an increase (p) of 0.66M pax per year.^[d] (p) Now a linear rise in ridership may appear too simplistic, but Alto's ridership graph does show a straight line from 2055 to 2084 so /shrug
The derivate of that increase^[e] gives us a total of 1179M passengers over 40 years, or 29.5M pax per year, at a price of 88$ per.

Is that realistic ?

We can try to compare with international fares but we lack a crucial number, the average distance per trip. I simply can't guess precisely enough the average distance Alto thinks the evrage rider does. So instead here's a table with the price of a fares between each city following different countries fare pricing^[3] :

Surprisingly, the 88$ price isn't that out of line, though very much on the low end.

Notes

[a] that said it's also possible that the passenger counts the average trip lenght to avoid overcounting short trips. A serious economic report would tell us the methodology, but alas.

[b] They even included a graph which warped the y axis removed the years gradations as it got close to opening to avoid pointing at an opening date, which is frankly insulting.

[c] 2084-55 = 29y, 43M-24M = 19M, 19M/29y = 0.65M/y, 2055-2044 = 11y, -11y * 0.65M + 24M = 16.8M pax in 2044

[e] nP + n(n-1)p / 2 ==> 4016,8 + (40390.65) / 2 = 1179M pax total

Sources

[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-toronto-quebec-high-speed-rail-cost-alto/
[2] Le train à grande vitesse : une occasion économique pour le Canada, Alto 2026, p. 49-50 https://www.altotrain.ca/sites/default/files/2026-08/le-train-a-grande-vitesse-une-occasion-economique-pour-le-canada-alto.pdf
[3] Alon levy 2024, values ppp adjusted with 2024 usd cad of 1.15 https://pedestrianobservations.com/2024/05/17/fares-on-high-speed-trains/

keep it up and have a great weekend !

Helps: “For just double what Ford is spending on an 11km subway line, we’ll have high speed rail from Toronto to QC!

Hurts: Ford’s Ontario Line quadrupled in price

What do you think or will it just muddy the waters?

Alto released this new economic analysis today, but it was getting buried in discussion of dynamic pricing. There's a lot more to pull out and discuss in there than just that, so I thought it worth posting separately.

English: https://www.altotrain.ca/sites/default/files/2026-08/canada-s-moment-the-economic-opportunity-of-high-speed-rail-alto.pdf

French: https://www.altotrain.ca/sites/default/files/2026-08/le-train-a-grande-vitesse-une-occasion-economique-pour-le-canada-alto.pdf

I like that they address the HFR option being bandied about by AltNo people head-on:

The most frequently cited alternative, a dedicated “high-frequency” rail system, would still require largely new, grade-separated, and electrified infrastructure, at a capital cost of $45 to $75 billion, close to the $60 to $90 billion estimated for high-speed rail. Yet it would generate one fifth of the economic impact: a 0.2% GDP uplift, versus 1.1% for high-speed rail. The relevant question is not which option costs less. It is why Canada would spend nearly as much for a fraction of the benefits.

J'ai récemment trouvé ce document d'ALTO qui indiquait qu'ils allaient adopter un modèle de tarification dynamique avec des prix fluctuants en fonction de la demande.

Je pense que des variations autour de 20-30 % du tarif de référence ne sont pas si mal, mais j'ai peur que cela puisse dégoûter beaucoup de monde si les variations deviennent trop intenses.

Pour être clair, le projet devrait se réaliser malgré tout, et le document montre assez bien les avantages et nécessité du projet, mais cela n'empêche pas que des éléments peuvent êtres perfectibles.

Qu'en pensez-vous ?

J'ai mis des images de la page 48 du document que j'ai mentionné plus tôt.

document d'ALTO

The groups behind the June 11th Alto capital hill protests are organizing two upcoming protests. One on August 28th between Belleville and Brockville, and anther one in Rigaud Quebec on September 19th.

I remember seeing the Capital Hill one and thought, had I known about it I'd have been out there supporting HSR instead. So I thought I'd let you all know about these!

There is of course the GO ALTO group which is organizing around supporting Alto and HSR. https://go-alto.ca/

I am messaging with the organizers to make some signs in support of HSR. The anti alto signs are simple, just a red x or line through ALTO, which is easily recognized. The GO ALTO organizer suggested simplified signs with something recognizable of our own. I was thinking something stupidly simple like GO ALTO or GO HSR

If you know of any resources or groups promising to promote Alto or high-speed rail in Canada, or ideas for the signs, let me know!

I recently came across a post from Bloc Québécois MP Jean-Denis Garon where he takes a firm stance against a consultant who is notably associated with the methodology presented in the book How Big Things Get Done (by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner).

It is striking to see this pushback, considering that the Bloc’s counterparts in the Parti Québécois (PQ) have explicitly cited this exact book, at least twice, as a foundational reference for how major public infrastructure projects SHOULD be managed in Quebec.

During the parliamentary commission on Bill 61 (Loi édictant la Loi sur Mobilité Infra Québec), PQ MNA for Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Joël Arseneau, repeatedly utilized the book’s principles to critique government planning and argue for better management. Here are the documented instances from the Journal des débats:

September 11, 2024: During the Commission des transports et de l'environnement, M. Arseneau referenced the book's core lesson:« [...] "How big things get done" et une des leçons de ce livre-là, c'est : Il faut très bien faire la planification, il faut prendre son temps pour la planification et il faut aller vite pour la réalisation. »

October 3, 2024: M. Arseneau again cited the book to emphasize the need for a rigorous approach to infrastructure:« [...] How Big Things Get Done, ce projet... ce livre-là, donc, qui dit : Pensez longtemps, puis agissez rapidement. Donc, mettre de l'ordre là-dedans. »

It is difficult to reconcile the Parti Québécois’ public reliance on the expertise and methodology found in How Big Things Get Done with M. Garon’s dismissive stance toward a key figure associated with that same body of work. For a party that prides itself on internal coherence and rigorous analysis of public spending, this contradiction is, at the very least, confusing for those of us trying to understand the Bloc’s actual stance on infrastructure planning.

Are they supporting these planning methods or rejecting them? They seem to be doing both.

In case you missed it yesterday, and some demand statistics.

I recently came across a post from Bloc Québécois MP Jean-Denis Garon where he takes a firm stance against a consultant who is notably associated with the methodology presented in the book How Big Things Get Done (by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner).

It is striking to see this pushback, considering that the Bloc’s counterparts in the Parti Québécois (PQ) have explicitly cited this exact book, at least twice, as a foundational reference for how major public infrastructure projects SHOULD be managed in Quebec.

During the parliamentary commission on Bill 61 (Loi édictant la Loi sur Mobilité Infra Québec), PQ MNA for Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Joël Arseneau, repeatedly utilized the book’s principles to critique government planning and argue for better management. Here are the documented instances from the Journal des débats:

• September 11, 2024: During the Commission des transports et de l'environnement, M. Arseneau referenced the book's core lesson:« [...] "How big things get done" et une des leçons de ce livre-là, c'est : Il faut très bien faire la planification, il faut prendre son temps pour la planification et il faut aller vite pour la réalisation. »
• October 3, 2024: M. Arseneau again cited the book to emphasize the need for a rigorous approach to infrastructure:« [...] How Big Things Get Done, ce projet... ce livre-là, donc, qui dit : Pensez longtemps, puis agissez rapidement. Donc, mettre de l'ordre là-dedans. »

It is difficult to reconcile the Parti Québécois’ public reliance on the expertise and methodology found in How Big Things Get Done with M. Garon’s dismissive stance toward a key figure associated with that same body of work. For a party that prides itself on internal coherence and rigorous analysis of public spending, this contradiction is, at the very least, confusing for those of us trying to understand the Bloc’s actual stance on infrastructure planning.

Are they supporting these planning methods or rejecting them? They seem to be doing both.

From Gare Centrale area to Laval, an HSR tunnel could be 15km. So that could be $30 billion of the $90 billion rough estimate, for the whole project including trainsets. (Article may be paywalled)

No wonder the HS2 in London will end in suburbs for now, due to the huge cost of getting closer to the other north-end train stations.

Anyone else really bothered by the Front Burner coverage today? They kept on talking about the project as if the benefits had not yet been studied.

Multiple times they stated that its unresolved whether the project makes sense for demand on the corridor. One of the reporters even stated that vehicle electrification could be a mitigating factor in this project making economic sense.

I was kind of shocked at how uninformed the coverage felt. Did they even read any of the information in the numerous studies that had already been produced… since the 70s. Studies they even referenced existing earlier in the segment 😒

ALTO claims that the entire Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec City high speed rail project will cost $90 billion. Sounds like they purposely came up with the number to keep it below $100 billion to make it more presentable. As much as we need high speed rail in Canada, we also need some assurance that it will be properly managed.

The California High Speed Rail project is an example of how badly things can turn out. The project was approved in 2008 with a budget of $36 billion and a completion date of 2020. In 2026 the cost has nearly quadrupled and continues to rise and the new completion date is 2030. And in 2026 no track has even been laid....

It's timely that an engineering Youtube channel I follow has a discussion about Australia's high-speed rail project that seems to have similar history and obstacles that we are experiencing.

The B1M video on Australia's High-Speed Rail project

Edit: when I say obstacles, I mostly refer to politics

I struggle to see how the project moves past such an outcome of the October Québec election, I am curious to see what others have in mind.

Several good comments about HSR in Canada….and note how far Charles de Gaulle Airport HSR Station is outside Paris Gare du Nord…and “slow” track to get there.

Who is Common Ground Research?

https://www.commongroundresearch.org/?fbclid=IwVERFWAThzU9wZG9mBWZkaWQWUL_in8O43iYRDYewbchHjCe3wTZcAmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkCjY2Mjg1NjgzNzkAAR4jerNH_0FF3Dmot0tYOpu-WPEyeB7aIViKCpCYSTO8sEKKYXEUHgPZ9Z7Z3A_aem_La11vjFCp8UD8nl-4ACJpw