steveintoronto
Superstar
I'm led to believe that there's more than one study been done. 'In depth'? Probably not, but Transport Canada as well as VIA have done at least cursory analysis. I can't provide reference at this time, but the pros and cons have to be balanced with the *availability* and most importantly, an extant RoW that is now protected by the Province and is, with the exception of only two sections that I can find owned by Bell Telecommunications, in public hands. Bell is governed by both provincial and federal utility acts that require sharing the corridor with other users.I think it's pretty farfetched to suggest that no engineers have worked on the Via dedicated tracks proposal or, worse, to question their competence based on a hunch or some Google Maps measurements. Even if the work that's been done so far has been in house or not made public, I think that Via has some knowledge of how fast a train can go around a curve. And it's safe to say that the people working on the proposal know a lot more about that than us lay people on the internet.
In fact, parts of the WCML were as curvy as the old O&Q, but like the O&Q is touted be, (within 100 metres of the centre of the RoW) the curves were softened within the terms of the UK Railway Act (albeit the Brits are far more amenable to supporting passenger rail).Yeah I'm aware that the other two mainlines have gentler curves, but I was interested in the West Coast Mainline specifically. With trains going 200 km/h, it no doubt isn't as curvy as the Havelock sub, but it would be interesting to see the comparison.
But even more important than the softening of curves, which was always the plan on the O&Q, along with grade separation rendering stretches well above 110 mph:
Implementation of Tilt Activation Speed Supervision on West Coast Mainline Agenda
Mike Hoptroff
Head of Operations Strategy
http://digitalrailway.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Mike-Hoptroff.pdf
File attached.
The challenge isn't the route and the technology to deal with it at all. The real challenge that I can garner is the *business model* and the expected growth of passengers as projected. There's a lot, as others have alluded to, yet to be made public. The reason we have to wait for answers is (and perhaps rightly so) that the InfraBank is not up and running yet, and it will take *private engineering surveys* as well as what's been done to satisfy all parties concerned before an investment is made.
The route and technology aren't a problem, a number of nations have been doing this with the Pendolinos and competition for well over a decade. Early bugs are long ago figured out.
Here's the term "balise" defined and well-explained:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurobalise
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