Sean Marshall

Tag: ALTO

  • Why Kingston needs a new VIA station

    Why Kingston needs a new VIA station

    Located in a marshy area, Kingston Station is unnecessarily isolated from the rest of the city

    Kingston, Ontario, is the largest city between the Greater Toronto Area, Ottawa, and Montreal. With Queen’s University, Royal Military College, and St. Lawrence College, Kingston is a major trip generator for VIA Rail, and has one of the busiest stations on the Quebec-Windsor corridor. It is also one of the most isolated intercity rail stations in Southern Ontario. Kingston’s geography and earlier decisions made by CN are largely to blame, but the future of VIA’s existing rail services is largely dependant on the fate of Kingston Station.

    The VIA Rail station, off John Counter Boulevard, was constructed by CN in 1974 to replace a 1850s-era railway station on Montreal Street. The station has a ticket counter, washrooms, a ticket counter, and a small business class lounge, and two platforms. The south platform is connected to the station by way of a tunnel, with elevators, stairs and escalators providing access. Renovations in the early 2000s added a peaked roof and a tower displaying the VIA Rail logo to the minimalist CN station.

    But the station is in an isolated location, located in a marshy area; the nearest businesses are a furniture store, a funeral home and a used car dealership. Despite this, Kingston Transit does a satisfactory job connecting the station to the downtown and post-secondary institutions, but the bus stop is unsheltered and a short walk away from the station building.

    The two-track arrangement at Kingston Station does not suit CN or VIA particularly well. Both tracks are on the mainline, meaning that they are shared by VIA and freight. Delays to either CN or VIA causes congestion, one of several causes of train delays, contributing to VIA’s poor on-time performance. It also limits VIA’s flexibility in offering early morning or late evening trains that originate or terminate at Kingston or local all-stop service in conjunction with through express services. Newer VIA stations in Belleville and Cobourg have three platforms; the Belleville station tracks allow VIA trains to bypass the CN yard to the north.

    The two-platform Kingston Station

    The reasons for the Kingston station’s relative isolation compared to other mid-sized centres like London or Brantford, partly goes back to the 1850s, when the Grand Trunk Railway, which built the Toronto-Montreal mainline, routed its tracks away from Kingston’s urban centre. As the historic downtown sits at the mouth of the wide Cataraqui River, the Grand Trunk sought a narrower crossing further inland. To compensate, it built a spur into Downtown Kingston to serve local passengers and freight service; eventually a streetcar line ran to the main Montreal Street station and the city grew north to meet the railway.

    In the 1970s, Canadian National, the successor to the Grand Trunk, was in the midst of modernizing its core infrastructure to focus on long-distance freight and container shipping. It rerouted its mainline north of Kingston on a shallower curve while eliminating several at-grade crossings. As CN continued to operate passenger rail on the corridor, it had to build a new station to replace the old Montreal Street location. The new Kingston Station had plenty of parking along with a passenger pick-up/drop-off loop, easily accessible to Princess Street and the new subdivisions in Kingston Township.

    CN had the same principles in mind when it built new stations after the Second World War in Oshawa, Saskatoon, and Ste-Foy, outside of Québec City. Ease of rail operation and access to parking were bigger considerations than having a downtown station accessible by foot or public transit.

    Trees grow around the stone ruins of the 1850s Kingston GTR Station
    A similar view eight years earlier, in 2018

    Today, the original GTR station lies in ruins, fenced off, and partially hidden by trees that have grown around it. The roof is long-gone, as are the additional station buildings such as the express freight and restaurant structures. With the vacant railway lands sitting abandoned for decades, this part of Montreal Street looks rough.

    Montreal Street near the old station. The old railway telegraph lines at left betray the old railway route

    An opportunity for a new station

    Happily, there’s an ideal place for a larger Kingston Station between the old Montreal Street and the newer John Counter Road site that could serve as a proper multimodal hub while being somewhat more convenient to Downtown Kingston and Queen’s University: Division Street. I alluded to this in an earlier post, but after a recent visit, it appears that this is an excellent opportunity.

    Looking west from Division Street over the CN mainline. The wooded area immediately to the north (right side) offers plenty of room for a new intermodal station.

    The CN mainline passes under a long overpass at Division Street that was built in the 1970s not only to cross the CN line but also a Canadian Pacific-owned branch line that once ran between Kingston’s waterfront and Renfrew, near the Ottawa River. The additional room allocated for the now-abandoned CP branch could easily fit two VIA-exclusive tracks, separate from through CN freight trains. This would allow VIA trains to sit overnight, and provide early-morning service to Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa leaving on schedule. If the Alto HSR takes over the bulk of the through passenger traffic, Kingston will have an excellent regional hub that will serve Eastern Ontario rail passengers far better than the status quo, with more reliable schedules and the opportunity for late night arrivals.

    Looking north from the Division Street railway overpass towards Highway 401.

    Another advantage of the Division Street site is the proximity to Highway 401. This would allow intercity and regional buses to easily exit and enter the intermodal station. As Division Street continues south towards Downtown Kingston and Queen’s University and is already a major Kingston Transit corridor (with direct and regular service on Routes 1, 2, and 701/702 express, as well as other nearby routes), it’s a logical focal point that can consolidate the various intercity bus stops.

    Back in June, Alto announced that federal transport minister Steven MacKinnon directed the consortium to “…develop a plan to assess a southern route option between Peterborough and Ottawa that includes a potential stop in Kingston that would interconnect with VIA Rail services, subject to technical feasibility and project requirements.”

    Map from Alto’s “What We Heard” report, June 2026

    Previous conceptual maps showed the proposed southern alignment located far from Kingston’s urban area, with the closest potential station locations in sparsely-populated South Frontenac Township near the communities of Verona, Sydenham, or Perth Road, at least 20-30 minutes north of Kingston’s urban area by car. If Alto were to serve Kingston properly, it would have to swing much further south, adding to construction costs and through travel times. A spur line into Kingston might make more sense, then, just as the Grand Trunk did 170 years ago.

    The time savings to Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa with a high speed line from Kingston might be better provided with a new conventional railway station and more flexible, reliable service to meet the needs of communities like Kingston, Belleville, and Brockville, rather than forcing Alto farther south. Division Street offers that opportunity.

  • Alto: Yes, and…

    Alto: Yes, and…

    A “No ALTO HSR” sign on a property near Marmora, Ontario

    There’s a running joke that Canada leads the world in high speed rail studies, but we never follow through with actually building those high speed lines. Comedian Rick Mercer had at least two sketches on his old weekly CBC television show mocking this state of affairs, as the idea goes back to the 1970s.

    “VIA Rail: Yesterday’s speeds, today.”
    “Canada’s High Speed Rail Study Industry: The future, never!”

    In 2026, however, Canada is finally past the high speed rail study phase and appears to be committed to building the seven-station corridor between Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec City, with a consortium selected that is already planning the detailed route. It’s an exciting time as the first phase, between Ottawa and Montreal, should start construction in three years once the exact corridor is decided upon and land acquisition has begun.

    High speed rail, if done right, should benefit Eastern Canada as a whole. Fast and frequent train service will divert a lot of the travel in the busy Toronto-Montreal-Ottawa triangle from the air, reducing emissions and allowing existing airports to handle any increases in long-haul demand. Faster and more reliable passenger train service would also take traffic off the highways and boost commerce within the most populated part of the country. If done right, it will also support plans for better transport infrastructure outside the corridor to Southwestern Ontario and provide Canadian expertise for other projects such as in Alberta, which is contemplating its own passenger rail network between Calgary and Banff and north to Edmonton.

    Map of potential routings for the Alto high speed line in Ontario

    Not unexpectedly, there is opposition from residents and landowners along the route, especially in Eastern Ontario and the area of Quebec just northwest of Montreal. In Hastings County, north of Trenton and Belleville, there are a few dozen “No Alto HSR” signs on lawns and farms in places like Madoc, Marmora, Stirling, and Tweed. In this part of Ontario, between Peterborough and the Rideau Lakes region southwest of Ottawa, there are two broad potential routes: a southerly corridor runs near Campbellford, Stirling, Tweed, and Westport, including through some productive farmland in Northumberland and Hastings Counties. A second route runs north of Highway 7, just north of Madoc and Perth, along the southern fringes of the Canadian Shield.

    Though a high speed railway line would be straight and relatively narrow, it would require the acquisition and severance of hundreds of properties. Along the existing CN and CP railway corridors to the south constructed in the 1850s and 1900s, there are frequent public road and private-access level crossings, something that is not possible with modern high speed trains passing at up to 300 kilometres per hour, so farmers whose land is crossed by the new high speed railway corridor may not be able to access parts of their property easily. Furthermore, there are no stops planned between Peterborough and Ottawa, a distance of over 250 kilometres.

    In Prescott & Russell Counties in the Lower Ottawa Valley, even the local governments are opposed to Alto crews doing early survey work to determine an optimum route, with county warden Mario Zanth clear on the matter: “This council does not want them on our territory.” For now, Alto surveying is mostly done by way of drones over land where landowners have not granted access.

    Once a more specific route is selected, hopefully some of the opposition will fade. Detailed design work and further consultation should also help mitigate concerns. This is especially important west of Ottawa, where there are the two diverging routes.

    Despite the rural opposition, Alto should go ahead. Other major infrastructure projects, especially new highways, can be far more disruptive to local land use. But without local community benefits — at least a new freeway has regular access points — it will be harder to get buy-in.

    Therefore, this needs to be a matter of “Alto and” than just “Alto” by itself. This means building and maintaining a supporting network of conventional VIA service, intercity and regional buses, and local transit connections. It might also mean adding a few additional stations along the route, in places such as Perth. Adding additional stops doesn’t have to slow down trains at all; Japan’s Shinkansen has three classes of trains, from the super-express Nozomi to the all-stops Kodama. While most passengers would be through Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal travellers, offering additional stops for select trains can make Alto more accessible to more people, especially if it means providing new options to underserved communities.

    An express train passes the local Odawara Shinkansen Station in April 2019

    If Alto becomes the backbone of a strong, integrated transportation network in Ontario and Quebec, the benefits will go far beyond those in the six cities directly served the planned high speed line, even to those directly bypassed by Alto trains. This integration is commonplace in Japan and Europe.

    In Kingston, for example, a new or upgraded VIA station with additional tracks and platforms would allow for early morning departures and late evening arrivals from Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal without having to sit on active CN freight tracks overnight; VIA schedules built around serving cities like Belleville, Kingston, and Drummondville would ensure the existing service remains vital as through passengers switch to the faster line. A new Kingston station near Division Street could integrate rail and bus services, with easy access to Highway 401, with local and regional buses to places like Gananoque. Enhanced bus connections to the rest of the Ottawa Valley from the Ottawa Alto/VIA Station could allow travelers from Pembroke, Arnprior, or Hawkesbury to quickly continue their journeys via train. At Trois-Rivières, there should be seamless connections to places like Shawinigan and Victoriaville. The Canada Intercity Transportation Map on this website shows which communities are unserved or underserved by bus and rail: these include many towns in Southern Ontario and Quebec that are within 100 kilometres of the Alto corridor.

    Canada is right to invest in high quality and sustainable transportation infrasturure as a nation-building project, to boost the regional and national economy, and promote environmentally friendly travel options. But focusing only on Alto, without a strategy of leveraging the conventional VIA network and intercity bus connections to feed that network, can only limit the success of high speed rail. The communities in between deserve better.