Toronto-Montreal vs Seville-Madrid Passenger Rail Lines Comparison After a recent visit to Portugal and Spain, and a lot of reflection, I am even more committed to advocate for a modern passenger rail system in Canada. Currently VIA Rail has a $6 billion dollar plan to have a rail corridor from Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal on a largely abandoned rail corridor. High Speed Rail Canada has exposed the major flaws in the plan in previous articles. I do believe it is good to give a factual example of comparing the Seville to Madrid High Speed Line with the current and future proposed VIA Rail line Toronto to Montreal. Populations The population of Toronto is 2,731,571 (source: Statistics Canada).  The wider Greater Toronto Area (GTA) population was 6,417,516 at the time of the most recent (2016) census. The population of Montreal is 1,704,694. The population of the wider Montreal metropolitan area is 4,098,927 (2016 data). Madrid has almost 3.2 million inhabitants ...

The train that derailed in Santiago de Compostela on Wednesday evening killing 79 people and leaving more than a hundred injured was reportedly travelling at more than twice the speed limit. See below for video. Police sources told Spanish newspaper El Pais that, moments after the crash, the traumatised driver made another call to the operator. "It derailed!" he said. "What am I going to do, what am I going to do? We are all humans – we're humans. I hope there are no fatalities because it will all be on my conscience." Both the drivers escaped the crash with minor injuries.The carriages careened off the tracks at a curve approaching the station at Santiago where the limit is set at 80 km per hour (50mph). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/10201311/Train-in-Spanish-crash-was-travelling-at-more-than-double-the-speed-limit.html