A train to New York as an Easter gift

We have good news and bad news for Quebec tourists who love New York (especially for the long Easter weekend) and who are sensitive to their carbon footprint.

The good news: the Adirondack train connecting Montreal to the Big Apple resumed service last week, after being interrupted during the pandemic.

The bad news: it’s still just as slow. It takes 11 hrs 5 mins. Almost twice as much as by car.

In 2023, when we want to reduce our CO emissions₂ without necessarily confining oneself to one’s region of residence, that makes no sense. We need a second public transport option that is more comfortable and as fast as the bus.

Imagine: there were more train options between Montreal and New York in 1994, before Amtrak dropped the Montrealer night train that year. Since then, it remains the Adirondack, which takes the day to make the trip.

In terms of public transport, we are unfortunately not in Europe, where two cities 600 kilometers apart like Montreal and New York would have been linked for a long time by a TGV.

The idea of ​​a Montreal-New York TGV has come up periodically in political news since… Mayor Jean Drapeau, more than 35 years ago!

Let’s face it: money doesn’t grow on trees and there are plenty of other fish to fry when it comes to public transit. The last time we seriously talked about a TGV was when New York State Governor George Pataki was promoting a 240 km/h train in the early 2000s. Quebec and New York even did a feasibility study in 2004. The conclusion was clear: too expensive and too complicated from an environmental point of view.

Quebec and New York, however, agreed “that they would study the gradual improvements to be made” to the existing route and to the borders “in order to reduce the travel time”, concluded the study.

Two decades later, nothing has been done. We cut almost nothing from the travel time, there were few improvements to the route, and the train always stops 45 minutes at the border.

First: (finally) go through customs before leaving for Montreal, as is the case at airports and at the train station in Vancouver. Quebec financed a study on this subject in 2022. We are not talking about sending astronauts to the Moon, but customs officers at the train station!

Second, improve the railway infrastructure so that the train is faster. In Canada, the rails from Montreal to the US border currently give priority to freight trains.

The Americans have good service between Albany and New York. This section takes the same time by train as by car (2h40).

The problem is the Montreal-Albany section, which takes 3 h 40 min by car and… double that (7 h 50 min) by train!

With the landscapes of the Adirondacks, Montreal-Albany is one of the most beautiful rail routes in North America. Except that the train passes by at a snail’s pace. Is it possible to go faster without destroying the landscape, by improving the rails? We don’t claim to have the technical answer. On the other hand, from an economic point of view, it is not very profitable for the Americans. Between Montreal and Saratoga Springs, near Albany, there is only one American city with more than 6,500 inhabitants (Plattsburgh with 32,000 inhabitants). The clientele that would benefit from it is in Montreal.

If we want a train at a reasonable speed to Albany, Canada and Quebec will probably have to pay part of the rail infrastructure costs in upstate New York.

It’s unusual to pay for rail infrastructure in another country, but it would be worth the effort: we would have one more public transit option, more comfortable than the bus, to compete with planes and cars.

If we wait for the Americans to finance 100% of a rail route that will mainly benefit Quebeckers, we risk waiting a long time.