Must be election season. Anyway, last time the train discussion came up, it was pointed out that for a modest $1.5 billion, Via rail could provide dedicated passenger tracks in the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto corridor. (Parts of the corridor are currently shared with freight, leading to delays, less frequent service, slower speeds, and frustration). For $4 billion the whole corridor could be electrified.

Ontario is now talking about spending 4x to 10x that amount serving a handful of much smaller cities in Southern Ontario. Is it *really* necessary to build an entirely new rail line to reduce the Toronto-London travel time from 2 hours to 1 hour? Presumably there are similar improvements that could be made to existing train routes for a fraction of the cost.

But I can already tell that the province wants those photo-ops with hard hats and shovels. Enhancing existing stuff is not as attractive as building new stuff. So high-speed rail it is.