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Shorter equipment lifecycle spans might be one very minor factor explaining the thriving rail rolling stock industry in Japan, but the real reason is of course the sheer Economies of Scale Japan enjoys compared to Canada: Metric Canada Japan (vs. Canada) Population (2024) 41,289,000...

I suspect that the biggest progress blocker right now is the massive interdependence with Regional Express Rail and HSR, which means that as long as until the ongoing expansion plans for Union Station, the Kitchener Corridor and ALTO are finalized, there is very little which can be done for the...

Again: the problem was not what ideas HH had, but that the regulators continue to sit on the same hands they had already been sitting on for decades rather than growing some guts and teeth and making sure that he couldn’t cut into safety-relevant redundances. Also, if you believe that CN‘s...

Listen, if the promoters of the REM had made their minimum diligence, they would have reached out to exo and VIA Rail well before the grand reveal of the project to the public on April 22, 2016, to enquire their requirements to not preclude their future plans. It should have never become the...

It would have taken maybe 6 months to replan the REM in a way which would have accommodated transportation priorities which had already been known since decades and should have been treated as base requirements for planning any transit network in the first place („must protect for future plans...

When I compare the freight rail modal share in Europe with that of us in North America, I don’t feel too tempted to swap: As I keep repeating myself: this is not a question of operating philosophies, but of “self-regulation” vs. actual regulation…

Why so convoluted? You just need to prescribe certain track maintenance levels and impose serious fines for repeated violations…! You know, all these things which would be done by a regulator in any other developed country…

The problem clearly isn‘t PSR, but the self-regulation, as we‘ve already seen in Lac-Megantic…

I’m not sure how many more times this needs to be explained here: intercity rail must serve the hubs which have excellent transit links into the entire region and there is only one such hub in the entire GTHA. Conversely, once a suburban/regional rail corridor has already frequent services to...

The signals I'm receiving from my former colleagues indicate that his departure was neither voluntary nor unexpected. I'm just wondering who would possibly want such an unattractive ejector seat where the federal government habitually blames you for their own failures...

Just a quick reminder that the current travel time averages around 5:30h (nominal) and 6:00h (after adding delays), and with just a bit of bad luck 7 hours (like I had this Thursday on 63) or even more. And all of that with only 6 frequencies per day. I absolutely don‘t give a single damn...

Replace „cheaper“ by „more expensive“ and that sentence makes perfectly sense and matches what I strongly suspect was intended.

Just out of interest, what kind of travel time would you find appropriate for two cities 504 km apart (Euclidean distance, measured between the respective VIA stations and partly running through Lake Ontario and the US) and what European or Asian examples come into your mind where a comparable...

The difference between taking the train and flying is that the travel time spent on board the train is productive time for me, whereas the entire door-to-door travel time of the travel chain involving the plane is just frustrating me, as I will arrive in office after 3 hours without a single...

To underline this with my personal, anecdotal experience traveling between Montreal and Toronto on 5 round trips during the last 2 years: Train Scheduled Travel Time Actual Travel Time Delay (in minutes) 63/2024-06-12 5:32 5:33 1' 668/2024-06-13 4:53 5:06 13' 63/2025-01-08 5:32 5:26 6'...

The global standard procedure is that you would first accommodate the intercity/HSR services and then add as many regional services until the line is full. If the amount of GO trains Metrolinx wants to add to its Corridors exceed the available capacity at Union, then they can start to identify...

Whatever I kept saying about Toronto-Montreal Express services skipping Ottawa also applies to Ottawa-Quebec services skipping Montreal: The combined ridership of the to-be-skipped cities exceeds those of the routes bypassing the city to be skipped: (TO+OM)>TM or (OM+MQ)>OQ The ridership for...

Give. That every revenue run takes at least 2 hours, it’s impossible to fit two round-trips into the maximum work hour limit of 12 hours - or to fit one round-trip into a half-day. A half-day almost inevitably means that it starts and ends in different cities, which implies a hotel stay before...

Sure, and as with every job, it’s impossible to deliver on the job expectations 100% of the time. Sure, but that’s dealing with a hand full passengers at a time, not 3 trainloads full of passengers and a service disruption which will affect the entire Corridor over the next 24 hours. Sure, but...

Comments like that make me seriously wonder how many folks people here believe are working at VIA’s Operations Control Center (OCC) at nighttime to expect them that they could book hotels and Ubers/Taxis for hundreds of passengers at virtually no advance notice, all while also planning service...