Alto has completed a key step en route to completing Canada’s first high-speed rail network that would be one of the largest infrastructure investments in decades.
The Crown corporation, and wholly owned subsidiary of Via Rail, said they recently completed the most extensive public consultation in the country’s history that involved 26-inperson open houses, 10 virtual sessions and 32 stakeholder roundtables.
Alto said it spoke to more than 10,000 Canadians in rural and urban communities in Quebec and Ontario, the two largest provinces, about the high-speed rail network designed to connect Toronto to Quebec City.
"We made a deliberate choice to engage early, and we used the past hundred days to listen to communities to better understand their realities," Alto’s President and CEO Martin Imbleau said in a statement. "All of this feedback will help us find the right balance to design a project that reduces impacts on communities while delivering lasting benefits across the entire corridor."
Canada's federal government late last year said it was moving ahead with plans to construct the Alto High-Speed Rail network. The project could boost gross domestic product by $35 billion and create 51,000 jobs during construction, according to officials. For real estate, faster connections are expected to spur housing development and transit-oriented communities along the corridor with Ottawa, Gatineau, and Montreal likely to see the most activity.
Alto’s consultation portal recorded 324,026 unique visits and 24,142 questionnaires since the beginning of the year, and an interactive map of the project accrued 19,903 comments pertaining to local realities in rural areas that Alto said will “be taken into account as the project moves forward.” The Crown corporation said 70% of attendees expressed satisfaction with the information they were provided by Alto.
Although the network ultimately would connect Ontario and Quebec’s capital cities, the initial portion is set to run between Montreal and Ottawa. Some had expected that the planned Toronto–Montreal segment would be the starting point, given the heavy traffic between the cities.
Although critics argue a Montreal-Ottawa route would be less efficient, Imbleau said in December that it “is a logical step to optimize the project, accelerate delivery and generate tangible local economic benefits.”
Alto said it will publish a report in June detailing key findings and insights from the first phase of public consultation. By fall, it plans to present "a more precise corridor" to the public.