Kingston Could Join High-Speed Rail Network

A major change could be coming to Canada's first high-speed rail network. The federal government announced June 23 that it's considering a new route option for the proposed Toronto to Quebec City rail line that would bring the corridor farther south toward Lake Ontario and potentially include a stop in Kingston.

This follows feedback gathered through Alto's What We Heard Report, which summarizes input from the first phase of a 100-day consultation process and Indigenous consultation activities that took place between October 2025 and June 2026 across the Toronto–Quebec City Corridor.

The high-speed rail line is set to stretch across 1,000 kilometres and reach speeds of 300 km/hour or more, with proposed stops in Trois-Rivières, Laval, Montreal, Ottawa, and Peterborough. Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon noted that his office will be taking "a very, very, long, strong and positive look" at the possibility of including Kingston in the rail network and has asked Alto to consider an alignment option that would offer a stop in or near the Ontario city.

The rail line would cut travel times between Kingston and Toronto to just 90 minutes and place up to 80 per cent of residents between Peterborough and Ottawa within a 25-minute drive of a station. The first proposed route, which excludes Kingston, runs along a relatively straight line between Peterborough and Ottawa, while a second option dips just south of downtown Kingston. Local mayors met earlier this year to vouch for a third option that would run along the Highway 401 corridor and stop in Kingston.

Across its consultation process, Alto says it hosted 26 in-person open houses, engaged more than 10,000 people, and gathered nearly 45,000 comments online. Once the project's design work is completed in 2029, construction is expected to take place over 12 years, with an estimated cost between $60 and $90 billion.