VIA Rail

[Allandale25]

High Speed options, standards challenges for HFR

Graeme Hampshire, Project Director for High Frequency Rail, gave a presentation at the TRACCS Rail Day event in Toronto on June 19, 2024, discussing the project's ambitions and current status, as well as challenges along the way.

www.transportaction.ca

 

[nfitz]

Jake Landau rode Amtrak/VIA Maple Leaf and boy was he unimpressed

The Maple Leaf train from Toronto to NYC is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, because I'll be damned if I ever ride it again.

If you love your family, you will never let them ride this train.

www.jakelandau.ca

Wow - that's an understatement!

Cascades runs great when I've used it. I'd happily take it again. And certainly better than the bus, where you all have to get off at the border.

 

[dowlingm]

The plan involves a preclearance facility in Windsor, where passengers would clear customs and immigration while switching trains. The experience would resemble that on Amtrak’s Cascades, not the Maple Leaf (which is a lot worse than the Adirondack)…

Cascades is a bit different, no? There are no intermediate stops between the US border and Vancouver, just as the St Lambert stop will be deleted from Adirondack if one day the clearance facility ever opens at Montreal Central.

My suggestion is that if Amtrak absolutely insist on running their equipment to Toronto, that they do so over as an Amtrak crewed non-stop from Windsor, routed over CP from Chatham to Toronto Union via a curve at the diamond west of Chatham itself, and anyone who needs to stop anywhere else are booked on a separate VIA service over the current route. (Edit to add further specificity - my notion would be that Windsor-Toronto only or Toronto-Windsor would not be a valid ticketing option on the Amtrak service)

 

[Urban Sky]

Cascades is a bit different, no? There are no intermediate stops between the US border and Vancouver, just as the St Lambert stop will be deleted from Adirondack if one day the clearance facility ever opens at Montreal Central.

My suggestion is that if Amtrak absolutely insist on running their equipment to Toronto, that they do so over as an Amtrak crewed non-stop from Windsor, routed over CP from Chatham to Toronto Union via a curve at the diamond west of Chatham itself, and anyone who needs to stop anywhere else are booked on a separate VIA service over the current route. (Edit to add further specificity - my notion would be that Windsor-Toronto only or Toronto-Windsor would not be a valid ticketing option on the Amtrak service)

To the best of my knowledge, there is no intention to create a direct Toronto-Chicago train, just to run a Chicago-Detroit-Windsor train, which would connect with a VIA train…

 

[dowlingm]

To the best of my knowledge, there is no intention to create a direct Toronto-Chicago train, just to run a Chicago-Detroit-Windsor train, which would connect with a VIA train…

The little train overlapping Kitchener has a label "Chicago-Detroit-Toronto". Now that can be delivered in different ways, but...
https://www.amtrakconnectsus.com/maps/

 

[micheal_can]

Cascades is a bit different, no? There are no intermediate stops between the US border and Vancouver, just as the St Lambert stop will be deleted from Adirondack if one day the clearance facility ever opens at Montreal Central.

My suggestion is that if Amtrak absolutely insist on running their equipment to Toronto, that they do so over as an Amtrak crewed non-stop from Windsor, routed over CP from Chatham to Toronto Union via a curve at the diamond west of Chatham itself, and anyone who needs to stop anywhere else are booked on a separate VIA service over the current route. (Edit to add further specificity - my notion would be that Windsor-Toronto only or Toronto-Windsor would not be a valid ticketing option on the Amtrak service)

Could they instead have only pick ups one way and one side and drop offs the other side? For example Chicago-> Toronto, train only picks up on the USA side and only drops off on the Canada side. For Toronto -> Chicago, it only picks up on the Canada side and only drops off on the USA side? Then have all stops have some sort of way of preclearance?

 

[Urban Sky]

The little train overlapping Kitchener has a label "Chicago-Detroit-Toronto". Now that can be delivered in different ways, but...
https://www.amtrakconnectsus.com/maps/

View attachment 580598

There may be the ambition to eventually provide Chicago-Detroit-Toronto through services, but all of the plans I am aware of and which acknowledge the sensitivies of the relevant border protection agencies assume a cross-border facility in either Detroit or Windsor…