Increasing Energy Efficiency in Canada: Highspeed Rail in the Montreal Toronto Corridor

It is undeniable that anthropogenic carbon emissions are damaging the climate. Accordingly, and within Canada especially, there is a growing demand for technological efforts that improve energy efficiency. One avenue to potentially achieve this is the replacement of airplanes with high speed rails (HSR), specifically between Montreal and Toronto. As such, this paper describes the methodology and results of the two simulation tools, being the "Pathfinding Simulator" and "Socioeconomic Impact Simulator", developed to address the feasibility and impact of such a rail. Notably, the Pathfinding Simulator determined the optimal HSR route to be along the Northern shores of the Saint Lawrence and Lake Ontario, and the Socioeconomic Impact Simulator determined that such a HSR could reduce perpassenger CO2 emissions by almost 1000% (10x) as compared to air travel while maintaining a competitive pricing structure. Cumulatively, this research supports a high speed rail linking Montreal and Toronto due to its improved energy efficiency.