Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently unveiled Cadence, the consortium selected to design the Toronto to Quebec City high-speed rail network. The project is one of the largest infrastructure endeavors in Canada’s history.
This transformative rail network will span approximately 1,000 km (621 miles) and reach up to 300 km/hour (186 miles/hour), with stops in Toronto, Peterborough, Ottawa, Montreal, Laval, Trois-Rivieres, and Quebec City. Once operational, travel times will be slashed in half, getting people from Montreal to Toronto in just three hours. The official name of this high-speed rail service will be Alto.
Cadence team members include CDPQ Infra, AtkinsRéalis, Keolis, SYSTRA, SNCF Voyageurs, and Air Canada. Cadence has been selected to co-design, build, finance, operate, and maintain this project. The consortium will further collaborate and support Alto as work begins on detailed design, Indigenous consultations, land acquisition, and the environmental assessments necessary to enable construction.
The project will boost the GDP by up to $35 billion annually and create more than 51,000 jobs during construction.
Our nation needs this kind of galvanizing infrastructural project, one that will increase the level of expertise in our professional, manufacturing and construction communities, and open up new opportunities throughout the world. It will help remove some of the unnecessary traffic that continues to congest our infrastructure and help on the long journey to decarbonize our economy. Finally, it will increase the synergy and vitality of our culture and economy by introducing a high speed, high capacity and high-end transportation alternative that will allow Canada to step into the future.