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Rail: Ontario-Quebec High Speed Rail Study

I drop in to this thread from time to time because I am a railway history fan as well as a modeller.

I haven't noticed any mention of fares to be expected on this HSR service, wouldn't this be a very important consideration in assessing it's viability? Porter fares are almost low enough to coax me into leaving the car at home now.
 
Express fares would need to be competitive with Porter to make any sense, but also low enough to coax drivers out of their vehicles on the non-express trips. There's also no reason why Porter can't buy-in to a HSR type service.
 
Wrenkin said:
Many of the "Ottawa" trains begin in Montreal and end in Toronto, or vice versa. E.g. 656 and I think 659.
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And most of the passengers get off in Ottawa. Not many of those riding between Ottawa and Montreal have gotten on in Toronto. If you go back to 2 years ago, before there were any through trains to Montreal through Ottawa, the totals were similar - almost as many trains from Toronto to Ottawa as Montreal.
 
Wrenkin said:
Many of the "Ottawa" trains begin in Montreal and end in Toronto, or vice versa. E.g. 656 and I think 659.
Click to expand...

So? The Montreal-Ottawa train becomes the Ottawa-Toronto train, and vice versa. Either way, almost everybody on those trains is going to/coming from Ottawa. It's not like somebody voluntarily rides from Montreal to Toronto via Ottawa just for fun.
 
dunkalunk said:
Express fares would need to be competitive with Porter to make any sense, but also low enough to coax drivers out of their vehicles on the non-express trips. There's also no reason why Porter can't buy-in to a HSR type service.
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I think fares should be somewhere between what Via offers now, and what Porter offers. Hopefully the fares should be lower than Porter though, because you can fit many more people per train, and because travel times would be basically cut in half over the current service, you could run double the number of trains per day and still have the same number of crews working.
 
gweed123 said:
So? The Montreal-Ottawa train becomes the Ottawa-Toronto train, and vice versa. Either way, almost everybody on those trains is going to/coming from Ottawa. It's not like somebody voluntarily rides from Montreal to Toronto via Ottawa just for fun.
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I rode back from Montreal to Toronto via Ottawa once, but I can't remember why...
 
Really. Why discuss fares before we have a train?

And really Porter's fares will never be low enough to compete with HSR. Taxes will ensure that. Cheapest Porter fares are consistently over $200 (closer to $220). Cheapest VIA fares are about ~$160. That's at least 25-40% jump.

Now I'd argue that the challenge will be that the fares have to stay the same for the HSR. Or at least not grow substantially (10-20% is tolerable).
 
kEiThZ said:
Really. Why discuss fares before we have a train?
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likely because fares will have a lot of influence on whether or not there ever would be train....no? Priced too high, they might scare off potential customers.....priced too low and they give the project no chance of economic viability.

kEiThZ said:
And really Porter's fares will never be low enough to compete with HSR. Taxes will ensure that. Cheapest Porter fares are consistently over $200 (closer to $220). Cheapest VIA fares are about ~$160. That's at least 25-40% jump.

Now I'd argue that the challenge will be that the fares have to stay the same for the HSR. Or at least not grow substantially (10-20% is tolerable).
Click to expand...

Comparing Porter to current VIA service is not applicable.......I make a bunch of trips to Montreal every year for work. I can leave my office and be in downtown Montreal in about 2.5 - 3 hours. Via can't get me close to that. If HSR can and be at similar or lower fares...then you have a comparison.....what is not clear how you invest that amount of capital and still keep fares low.
 
kEiThZ said:
Really. Why discuss fares before we have a train?

And really Porter's fares will never be low enough to compete with HSR. Taxes will ensure that. Cheapest Porter fares are consistently over $200 (closer to $220). Cheapest VIA fares are about ~$160. That's at least 25-40% jump.

Now I'd argue that the challenge will be that the fares have to stay the same for the HSR. Or at least not grow substantially (10-20% is tolerable).
Click to expand...

As I mentioned before, I would think fares would stay the same or even possibly decrease (working on the assumption of course that the capital investment of construction isn't factored into the fare, and is completely separate). Why? Because if you're cutting the trip time in half, you can run twice as many trains with the same crew working the same shift length. That's twice as many butts in the seat over the ~9hr shift length as previously.

Right now a crew normally goes from Montreal to Toronto and back in a day. Including stops and everything it's generally around 9 hours. But with HSR you could get Montreal -> Toronto, Toronto -> Montreal, Montreal -> Toronto, Toronto -> Montreal in roughly the same shift length. The ratio of crew members per passenger per day is much higher with HSR than it is now for the current VIA service.

Of course, some of the fare will need to go to construction costs. The question then becomes how much of the cost do you want to recoup through fares, and over what length of time? If you want to recoup 50% of the construction costs over a period of 30 years, then the per-ticket 'construction surcharge' wouldn't be that significant. If you want to recoup 100% over 10 years, then you're looking at a pretty significant surcharge.
 
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energy costs to propel the trains at the higher speeds must be factered in as well, plus the much larger infrastructure matienence costs for the new electrical equipment, and the higher quality of tracks needed to sustain 300km/h.
 
The French seem to have gotten the ticket pricing an service well worked out for HSR. First they used it to phase out all the slower speed trains so all long distance trains are high speed and provides cheap tickets but with extra baggage and cancellation fees.

And their new Ouigo service is the high speed train equivalent of low cost airlines, and are even cheaper than their TGV train prices.
 
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