VIA Rail

[innsertnamehere]

Buttonville is planned to close as soon as Cadillac Fairview has OMB approvals for the development it plans to replace it with. I believe that hearing is scheduled for early 2017, meaning the airport will probably close sometime next year.

 

[muller877]

Don't most people who fly direct take Porter now? The bulk of the remaining triangle passengers using Pearson are connecting. HFR could take a chunk of those too if Via allows for ticket resellers to integrate them into the trip.

Frankly, I'm not sure Air Canada would mind cancelling all TOM flights if they still got the same market-share for their international flights.

That amusing. Air Canada wouldn't mind cancelling 80 flights a day. Average of say $250 for a one-way ticket x 75 people. That's $1.5M per day or $1/2 BILLION per year of lost revenue. Plus WestJet's. Plus Porters.

And there are a lot of people that don't live in downtown Toronto that find Pearson more convenient than both Porter and VIA.

Via would cannibalize Porter's traffic but not Pearson's. But in the long run there is a demand for more commuter connections between the 3 cities and it would mean not needing as many additional commuter gates at Pearson when they develop their 30 year plan....slowing down the growth of Air traffic, not eliminating it.

 

[rbt]

That amusing. Air Canada wouldn't mind cancelling 80 flights a day. Average of say $250 for a one-way ticket x 75 people. That's $1.5M per day or $1/2 BILLION per year of lost revenue.

$250 ain't so much when you have $230 in costs. Airport fees (landing/gate/baggage handling/etc.) are a non-trivial component of these short flights.

ACs domestic profits are really crappy but they make up for it on international tickets. A standard 20% commission on a $150 VIA service is a $30 for booking the ticket; they profit by just as much, still get the international flight, and don't even have the risk involved with running the service.

Ticket aggregation services make mint once they get through the billion dollar advertising phase.

 

[lead82]

AC makes a huge profit on some key domestic routes, mainly in the YYZ-YOW-YUL triangle. $250 is the bottom price to get between Toronto and Ottawa/Montreal. Business travellers often pay $600+ to travel on same route. It is the business travellers which provide the profits. This is why there are hourly flights that are mostly full during the week. AC would not give up its core routes that easily. However, VIA won't be competing in this market unless they can get travel time down to 3 hours or less.

 

[smallspy]

AC makes a huge profit on some key domestic routes, mainly in the YYZ-YOW-YUL triangle. $250 is the bottom price to get between Toronto and Ottawa/Montreal. Business travellers often pay $600+ to travel on same route. It is the business travellers which provide the profits. This is why there are hourly flights that are mostly full during the week. AC would not give up its core routes that easily. However, VIA won't be competing in this market unless they can get travel time down to 3 hours or less.

Don't kid yourself - Air Canada (and Westjet and Porter) are barely competing in the Toronto-Ottawa-Montréal triangle, either.

I'm going to have to see if I can get updated numbers, but the last set of numbers that I can recall seeing had their market share for all travel in the triangle is about 9%, or maybe a little less. The car is the real champion, and who VIA should be going after.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

That amusing. Air Canada wouldn't mind cancelling 80 flights a day. Average of say $250 for a one-way ticket x 75 people. That's $1.5M per day or $1/2 BILLION per year of lost revenue. Plus WestJet's. Plus Porters.

And there are a lot of people that don't live in downtown Toronto that find Pearson more convenient than both Porter and VIA.

Via would cannibalize Porter's traffic but not Pearson's. But in the long run there is a demand for more commuter connections between the 3 cities and it would mean not needing as many additional commuter gates at Pearson when they develop their 30 year plan....slowing down the growth of Air traffic, not eliminating it.

We need to stop treating Passenger rail as a competitor to Passenger air service. Yes they occupy similar sectors, yes they operate on many of the same routes and maybe that is what causes some of the antagonism between the two. However in Europe and many other places in the world they have learned that the two can operate hand in hand even while operating on the same routes. We need to think of a rail system as providing links to the airport rather than competing with it.

 

[sixrings]

FYI I was on VIAs site the other day booking a trip to Quebec City. It is cheaper to book the tickets individually to Montreal and then to Quebec vs buying one ticket from Toronto to Quebec city. In case people dont know all trains route through montreal for this trip so it is the exact same trains. It was about a 40$ difference per ticket. Thats insane.

 

[steveintoronto]

FYI I was on VIAs site the other day booking a trip to Quebec City. It is cheaper to book the tickets individually to Montreal and then to Quebec vs buying one ticket from Toronto to Quebec city. In case people dont know all trains route through montreal for this trip so it is the exact same trains. It was about a 40$ difference per ticket. Thats insane.

Echoes of the UK news just yesterday:

Plans for 'simpler, more modern' UK train fare system to be announced
The Guardian-21 hours ago
Rail passengers could be given a boost under government plans to make it clearer which is the cheapest ticket option available to them.
Money-grabbing rail companies forced to show passengers ...
The Sun-1 hour ago
Rail companies to be forced to highlight cheapest fares
Evening Standard-13 hours ago
Train Ticket Machines Could be Upgraded to Prioritise Cheapest ...
Gizmodo UK-10 hours ago
Rail operator ticket machines to face major redesign to stop ...
Daily Mail-14 hours ago
Rip-off rail companies forced to display cheapest fares
Highly Cited-The Times (subscription)-21 hours ago

'Splitting' your ticket could save you £100s on train fares this Christmas
Telegraph.co.uk-Nov 25, 2016
With more than 600 trains cancelled every day and ticket prices continuing to rise faster than wages, it's a difficult time to be a train passenger in ...
[...etc...]

In the case of VIA, I suspect you'll find some detail in that fare structure that applies to some, but not other passengers. One of the details *can be* your/a seat on the follow-on part of the journey reserved.

 

[sixrings]

Echoes of the UK news just yesterday:

In the case of VIA, I suspect you'll find some detail in that fare structure that applies to some, but not other passengers. One of the details *can be* your/a seat on the follow-on part of the journey reserved.

my via tickets are always reserved. At least I think that they are. I dont know but I saved myself $160 between 2 people going both ways. I had to make my own Black Friday deal because although VIA kept advertising to me through my email of these great sales that were coming up they were not any cheaper than their normal escape fares.

 

[kEiThZ]

Triangle population is growing. AC, Westjet and Porter will only be taking small, interim hits. They'll still be running hourly flights, with smaller aircraft (think 120 seater CSeries instead of 150 seater Airbus/Boeing narrowbody).

The HFR won't damage Pearson as much as killing commercial traffic at a potential Pickering airport and damaging Porter a bit. Depending on fares, HFR will actually do the most damage to greyhound. The value proposition is so much higher. The value oriented customers move to VIA. The bargain basement price-sensitive customers stay on Greyhound depressing their yield.

 

[SaugeenJunction]

Considering VIA wanted the ability to stop trains at Weston Station earlier this year (for UPX transfer) and Metrolinx said no, I wonder if a) VIA will bite at Pickering's request, and b) will Metrolinx allow it? What are the forum's thoughts on this request?

Pickering wants Via Rail stop at GO Station
November 28th, 2016 http://www.durhamregion.com/community-story/6991101-pickering-wants-via-rail-stop-at-go-station/\

PICKERING -- Pickering council is asking that Via Rail Canada add a stop at the Pickering Go Station.

The stop would be part of its east-west Lakeshore corridor line.

Ward 1 City Councillor Maurice Brenner introduced the motion at the Nov. 21 council meeting, and it was approved. The motion notes Pickering has been named in City, Regional and Provincial plans as a regional hub that will see increasing levels of intensification within its city centre to accommodate an additional 8,300 people and 8,700 jobs over the next 20 years and beyond. Also, a new innovation employment corridor will be built abutting the Hwy. 401 corridor.

 

[ottbike]

What are the forum's thoughts on this request?

If VIA were to accept the proposal, I could see them alternating between Guildwood and Pickering for stops on non-express trips. With the exception of the evening "milk run", typically VIA prefers to reduce the number of intermediate station stops. I say this as a frequent Ottawa-Toronto VIA customer.

 

[lead82]

I'm surprised Guildwood is a VIA stop. I don't think Pickering makes much sense as it's too close to Oshawa. GO train service should be more than sufficient to transfer passengers to the nearest VIA stop for inter-city travel.

 

[kEiThZ]

I'm surprised Guildwood is a VIA stop. I don't think Pickering makes much sense as it's too close to Oshawa. GO train service should be more than sufficient to transfer passengers to the nearest VIA stop for inter-city travel.

The problem is that GO train service isn't well co-ordinated with VIA.

 

[lead82]

True. That is a lot easier to fix. They need to work together to make connections as a single system. ViA already sells GO tockets. With more frequent service on Lakeshore the connections to VIa would become easier.