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VIA Rail

cplchanb said:
arent they still keeping the refurbished HEPs or will those be reassigned somewhere else?
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The whole purpose of the Corridor Fleet Replacement is to replace the entire legacy Corridor fleet with a modern and standardized fleet, to finally ensure a consistent customer experience…
 
Urban Sky said:
The whole purpose of the Corridor Fleet Replacement is to replace the entire legacy Corridor fleet with a modern and standardized fleet, to finally ensure a consistent customer experience…
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The plan before the structural testing was going to be to redeploy the remaining HEP1/2 cars to long distance and regional services. Whether that still holds we'll have to wait and see, but they'll probably be running through the early 2030s even if the government approves new long distance fleet procurement soon.
 
^ essentially, the person in the video offering commentary and @Reecemartin who is interviewed recommend this. New GO train line to Peterborough and a HSR corridor on the GO LSE/VIA/CN corridor to somewhere near Kingston, and then up to the Havelock Sub (on a former corridor? CNoR? I think.

Not sure how willing CN would be to do that. Legal battle/expropriate might be required. Also not sure how well
Screenshot_2023-08-24_151037.jpg
the GO/HSR portion would work west of Guildwood without more track.

@crs1026 @smallspy @reaperexpress @Urban Sky @TerryJohnson

Screenshot_2023-08-24_150206.jpg


Another view:
 
Allandale25 said:
Posted three hours ago.

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Really good piece overall.

I didn't even realize Paige Saunders was contributing to CBC News.

The one real flaw in the piece is failing to discuss why the existing route (CN) was not considered, what political and financial choices would have to be made to make that happen.

Still, a good piece overall.

****

@Urban Sky may, however take some issue with how YDS takes a slagging.
 
Allandale25 said:
^ essentially, the person in the video offering commentary and @Reecemartin who is interviewed recommend this. New GO train line to Peterborough and a HSR corridor on the GO LSE/VIA/CN corridor to somewhere near Kingston, and then up to the Havelock Sub (on a former corridor? CNoR? I think.

Not sure how willing CN would be to do that. Legal battle/expropriate might be required. Also not sure how well the GO/HSR portion would work west of Guildwood without more track.
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I don't necessarily share the conclusions of the commentator, but the article makes a number of points that are pretty valid
  • There has indeed been a huge shift in the pro's and con's and fans and adversaries of HxR since the original HFR proposal, and we should not be using the original lens that HFR was conceived to glow in to make the investment decision we now face
  • His description of the wobbly political and lobbying and corporate process that got us to today is pretty valid and insightful. It may be lamentable in many ways but it may have saved us from vanilla HFR (or got us to HSR sooner... HFR was originally seen as an interim step) and we may in hindsight be glad of that
  • The Peterborough route may have been suitable for the original legacy HFR (now there's an ironic term) but it is unquestionably a bad choice for a high-end HSR line that is being contemplated .... provided that the cost constraints assumed by the original HFR have been removed
  • The strategy of funding lesser projects that build demand towards some sort of better rail network was not wrongheaded, and may have been an enabler of the shift in taxpayer and investor mood that has emerged since 2015 and that now enables something better than the bare-bones legacy HFR
I'm not taking the suggested route on the Lakeshore too literally, but if one does now feel that a HSR-quality and -cost line can be justified, the proposal to forget Peterborough and build it somewhere parallel to the CN-CP Lakeshore lines is achievable and probably no more costly or time consuming - and possibly delivers greater value. Some gentle changing of the bargaining leverage of the freight railways might lead to use of some elements of their lines without causing them any objective harm.

And (the drum I keep beating) - quickly improving regional service to Lakeshore communities currently served by VIA on CNR may be a good "lesser project" strategy that justifies leaving HSR on the back burner a little longer. Maybe building some new trackage to get that service away from CN/CP in places is all that's needed to be car competitive - for now. It's a logical next step taking us beyond a LRT/GO-First strategy. We can eliminate as many auto trips (and reduce that amount of carbon) by removing regional trips from the 401.... targeting the through Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal driver targets a certain number of auto trips, but excludes an awful lot of the traffic in and out of the GTA. In fact, taking two Napanee-Toronto trips off the 401 does more good than taking one Toronto-Ottawa driver out of the mix. And taking four Cobourg-Toronto drivers off the 401 does even more good for the same vehicle miles and carbon usage.

- Paul
 
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crs1026 said:
I don't necessarily share the conclusions of the commentator, but the article makes a number of points that are pretty valid
  • There has indeed been a huge shift in the pro's and con's and fans and adversaries of HxR since the original HFR proposal, and we should not be using the original lens that HFR was conceived to glow in to make the investment decision we now face
  • His description of the wobbly political and lobbying and corporate process that got us to today is pretty valid and insightful. It may be lamentable in many ways but it may have saved us from vanilla HFR and we may in hindsight be glad of that
  • The Peterborough route may have been suitable for the original legacy HFR (now there's an ironic term) but it is unquestionably a bad choice for a high-end HSR line that is being contemplated .... provided that the cost constraints assumed by the original HFR have been removed
  • The strategy of funding lesser projects that build demand towards some sort of better rail network was not wrongheaded, and may have been an enabler of the shift in taxpayer and investor mood that has emerged since 2015 and that now enables something better than the bare-bones legacy HFR
I'm not taking the suggested route on the Lakeshore too literally, but if one does now feel that a HSR-quality and -cost line can be justified, the proposal to forget Peterborough and build it somewhere parallel to the CN-CP Lakeshore lines is achievable and probably no more costly or time consuming - and possibly delivers greater value. Some gentle changing of the bargaining leverage of the freight railways might lead to use of some elements of their lines without causing them any objective harm.

And (the drum I keep beating) - quickly improving regional service to Lakeshore communities currently served by VIA on CNR may be a good "lesser project" strategy that justifies leaving HSR on the back burner a little longer. Maybe building some new trackage to get that service away from CN/CP in places is all that's needed to be car competitive - for now. It's a logical next step taking us beyond a LRT/GO-First strategy. We can eliminate as many auto trips (and reduce that amount of carbon) by removing regional trips from the 401.... targeting the through Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal driver targets a certain number of auto trips, but excludes an awful lot of the traffic in and out of the GTA. In fact, taking two Napanee-Toronto trips off the 401 does more good than taking one Toronto-Ottawa driver out of the mix.

- Paul
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We already tried the "paying for improvements" to the corridor, and it didn't result in anything better than we had previously.

So how would it be different this time?

How do you build a bypass at Smith Falls?
 
Bordercollie said:
We already tried the "paying for improvements" to the corridor, and it didn't result in anything better than we had previously.

So how would it be different this time?

How do you build a bypass at Smith Falls?
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The third-tracking project was a textbook lesson in how not to structure a project, but even with lessons learned I wouldn't go there twice.

There is an awful lot of undeveloped land alongside the existing right of ways. I'm not convinced it's any more expensive per mile to deliver new trackage there than to build HSR east of Havelock. More expensive land, perhaps - but cheaper construction.

And I'm not convinced that doing so right on the edge of the existing rights of way is an unfair encroachment on CN-CP.

Take the Davenport flyover and paste it onto a map of Smiths Falls. Not that much expropriation of housing or industry required. Again, Davenport wasn't that expensive in comparison to some number of km's of new line alongside Highway 7.

- Paul
 
Note that there is no historic rail right of way between Kingston and Smiths Falls. The former Canadian Northern, ran between Smiths Falls and Napanee, crossing the Rideau Canal at Jones Falls, some distance north of Kingston.

While the Havelock line runs through the Shield, the Lakeshore line runs through densely populated areas, with many roads requiring grade separation. While those grade separations are mostly present for the existing rail line, we will need to replicate them for HSR requiring separate track. It is also complicated by the need of both local and express service. Where will the local trains run? This remains part of the current dilemma, providing both services using the same set of tracks. The current situation where we do both express and local service poorly.

Note also that the old Canadian Northern route also crosses the Shield, mind you for a shorter distance compared to the Havelock route.
 
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crs1026 said:
The third-tracking project was a textbook lesson in how not to structure a project, but even with lessons learned I wouldn't go there twice.

There is an awful lot of undeveloped land alongside the existing right of ways. I'm not convinced it's any more expensive per mile to deliver new trackage there than to build HSR east of Havelock. More expensive land, perhaps - but cheaper construction.

And I'm not convinced that doing so right on the edge of the existing rights of way is an unfair encroachment on CN-CP.

Take the Davenport flyover and paste it onto a map of Smiths Falls. Not that much expropriation of housing or industry required. Again, Davenport wasn't that expensive in comparison to some number of km's of new line alongside Highway 7.

- Paul
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The ROW was originally owned by the crown and when CN was privatized the ownership was transferred.

The issue is that not only would you need to build a new ROW but stations also. Where is there space for two or three tracks plus a station building? Unless you sandwich the existing station building and build tracks around it.

It might be easier to build a double tracked dedicated fright corridor and retain the existing trackage for passenger rail since the station infrastructure already exists.

This would be similar to how Metrolinkx owns the corridors and controls the dispatching. Local freight can operate inbetween passenger trains.

This would allow you to run trains at 100mph continuously in the corridor without any interference with freight traffic and would only require the removal or upgrade of rural crossings that don't have crossing gates. Even though trains run at 90mph on the Chatham sub with crossings that are not protected, however since trains would be hourly not 4 times a day it would be required. This would allow you to build it within two years and it would mostly require upgrading of signaling infrastructure, and the cross overs would need to be upgraded to support higher speeds. You could do it in stages by upgrading where you have maximum benefit for where you see value.

The problem is that you would need to get the host railways to agree to that. And the communities would need to be okay with two more tracks of freight trains going through their community.

A better idea is to pay to upgrade the Belleville sub and have CN and CP share that as a dedicated freight corridor. You would just need to make the entire line double tracked all the way from Toronto to Ottawa. Figure out a bypass for Ottawa and a way for trains to get from the York Sub directly to the Belleville sub.

Again. Fat chance on them agreeing to that.
 
lrt's friend said:
Note that there is no historic rail right of way between Kingston and Smiths Falls. The former Canadian Northern, ran between Smiths Falls and Napanee, crossing the Rideau Canal at Jones Falls, some distance north of Kingston.

While the Havelock line runs through the Shield, the Lakeshore line runs through densely populated areas, with many roads requiring grade separation. While those grade separations are mostly present for the existing rail line, we will need to replicate them for HSR requiring separate track. It is also complicated by the need of both local and express service. Where will the local trains run? This remains part of the current dilemma, providing both services using the same set of tracks. The current situation where we do both express and local service poorly.
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You can build passing sidings at the station and have the local train hold while the express would pass.
 
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