VIA Rail

[steveintoronto]

Don't research the facts? Not sure what you're talking about but stay classy as always, Steve.

1. Given how many long posts you're doing and how defensive you are, it can be difficult to see what the actual topic is about.

The ultimate point is that RDCs have no available replacement in Canada at this time. TC guarantees that to be the case.

Feel absolutely free to show reference to an RDC beside the grandfathered Budd that is available and approved by TC and in production at this time. And the Budds wouldn't even come close to being approved now-days. They're allowed to run because they were approved about fifty years ago, albeit I assume they're re-certified after the refits. There's many excellent RDCs (DMUs) produced in the world at this time, and the FRA has approved Stadler (with caveats that the Nippon-Sharyos must also meet) and the Stadler is in production in the US, and approved.

Why isn't it being approved here? Ditto the FLIRT and other MUs. Ontario claims to be promoting Hydrail FLIRTS to ostensibly run on federally regulated tracks.

No mention of TC permitting it though. OCTranspo got an effective 'waiver' for DMUs (two models, one BBD, the other Alstom) but the waiver isn't general, it's specific to OCTranspo and just one line.

If that's the progress we can expect from TC, we're doomed.

Here's how far ahead the US is:
Source: Denton County Transportation Authority (DCTA) Jun 5, 2012 (Over five years ago)

FRA Approves First Integrated Use of Stadler GTW Rail Vehicle for DCTA

On Monday, June 4, 2012, Administrator Joseph Szabo of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) in conjunction with the American Public Transportation Association Annual Rail Conference formally announced approval of DCTA’s request to operate the Stadler GTW concurrent with traditional, compliant equipment. This means that for the first time ever; light-weight/fuel efficient, eco-friendly low-floor vehicles will be permitted to operate in rail corridors concurrently with traditionally compliant vehicles. The waiver, a first of its kind, will expand commuter rail options for transportation authorities across the United States. [...]

http://www.masstransitmag.com/press...ated-use-of-stadler-gtw-rail-vehicle-for-dcta

Caltrain signs double-deck EMU and electrification contracts
16 Aug 2016
[...]
Stadler is to supply 16 six-car EMUs under its $551m contract, and there is an option for a further 96 cars worth $385m. Stadler said its seventh and by far the biggest US order means its KISS family of double-deck trainsets would be used in nine different countries. The 157·1 m long units will have a maximum speed of 177 km/h, and can be extended to seven or eight cars if required. The first EMU is scheduled to be handed over for testing in August 2019 and enter service in 2020.

Stadler owner and CEO Peter Spuhler said the KISS ‘is a high-tech product, perfectly suited for Silicon Valley’. Stadler said the replacement of the ‘heavy steel construction diesel fleet’ currently used on the route with ‘state-of-the-art lightweight aluminium EMUs’ offering ‘high performance and passenger capacity’ would significantly reduce greenhouse gas and noise emissions. The EMUs would meet FRA Alternative Compliance requirements for operating in mixed traffic, with a high level of passive safety.
[...]

http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/...e-deck-emu-and-electrification-contracts.html

I could post more reference, but then be accused of it "being too long". Texas and various other states are hosting "European style designs" too.

Maybe some day it might happen in Canada? Not unless Transport Canada changes.

 

[Allandale25]

@Allandale25 VIA put a Corridor equipment Request to manufacturers pretty recently specifying compliance with existing standards.

Feel absolutely free to show reference to an RDC beside the grandfathered Budds that is available and approved by TC and in production at this time.

@dowlingm provided a helpful update already. So, no need for me to show anything.

 

[steveintoronto]

I'm asking you a question now since you claim to have the answers:
What DMU is in production and approved for sale in Canada by Transport Canada?

 

[lead82]

Weird, I constantly do Toronto to London for like $25 one way.

You have to buy in advance though.

I’ve seen those prices as well but usually for the slow train through Kitchener. I had to buy it only 1.5 weeks in advance and the specific trains I wanted were expensive as they were on the faster southern route through Brantford.

 

[nfitz]

Absolutely, but TC has yet to approve any of the locos. Transport Canada had better shift gears fast, or they'll be forced to.

Which locomotive have they not approved? Who applied to have it approved?

I suspect they haven't approved things that no one has asked them to approve. And why would they?

 

[dowlingm]

Equipment manufacturers and approvals are all very well but the real issue for VIA is that once again it appears to be stagnating under a Liberal government as it did under Paul Martin’s, with VIA scraping and making do with what is available. For all the muttering under the Conservatives from certain Western MPs, there were locomotive and coach rebuilds, some station rebuilds, Kingston Sub tracklaying, and CTC on the Toronto-Kitchener route. What, apart from standing by while the Caisse grabs the Mont Royal tunnel, and promises of a bank VIA can borrow money from, is this government doing?

 

[Allandale25]

I'm asking you a question now since you claim to have the answers:
What DMU is in production and approved for sale in Canada by Transport Canada?

You didn't say who this tweet was directed to.

If it's to me, then no, I never claimed to have "all the answers". This was my original question. It's been answered in the subsequent replies.

 

[steveintoronto]

A surprising amount of this discussion is addressed here:
https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/go-transit-service-thread-including-extensions.4952/page-429

As to locomotives/trainsets and "what's approved and what isn't" I refer to VIA's RFP:

[...]

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c....html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=ubuntu


http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/shron-via-rails-fleet-is-obsolete-cant-we-do-better

All of the above can be misconstrued to be integral with the HFR proposal, which is unfortunate, and partly VIA's doing by being so avid on the Gov't coming through with funding (ostensibly via the Infrastructure Bank) for HFR.

So here's VIA's making clear what is needed, and needed *now* (yesterday actually):

And here's the link in entirety, as some posters fail to access the links, then plead ignorance:

September 21, 2016
IRJ at InnoTrans 2016: CANADIAN inter-city passenger operator Via Rail is moving forward with preparations to procure a new fleet of bi-mode (diesel and electric) trains as part of its $C 4bn plan to upgrade the Toronto – Ottawa – Montreal corridor.

CEO Mr Yves Desjardins-Siciliano told IRJ at InnoTrans on September 21 that Via Rail is seeking to acquire a proven design that is “in production or in use today,” with the first trains due to enter service by 2020.

“We’re looking for an established solution that meets Canadian requirements and is capable of operating in temperatures of between -40 and +40oC,” Desjardins-Siciliano says.
Via Rail plans a minimum order for between 32 and 48 trains, providing a total 10,000-14,000 seats.

The Canadian government is expected to make a decision on the funding structure for the Toronto – Montreal project by March, which will determine the procurement timeline and fleet composition. Tendering could begin as early as March or April 2017.

In March this year the federal budget allocated Via Rail $C 7.7m in the current financial year to fund pre-procurement activities for new rolling stock, level crossing safety enhancements, and station security. This will enable Via Rail to take the rolling stock project to the Request for Proposals (RFQ) stage.

"We’re looking for an established solution that meets Canadian requirements" He's referring to current TC regs. Under the terms that established VIA, he has no choice.

 

[steveintoronto]

What, apart from standing by while the Caisse grabs the Mont Royal tunnel, and promises of a bank VIA can borrow money from, is this government doing?

Agreed on Mont Royale Tunnel, disagree on "borrowing". The Infrastructure Bank is not designed to 'lend'. It is designed to invest in partnership, ostensibly the touted "4:1 ratio". Four times private to one times Gov't investment.

https://www.viarail.ca/sites/all/fi...ate-plan/Summary_2014_2018_Corporate_Plan.pdf

http://www.railjournal.com/index.ph...partnership-for-toronto-montreal-upgrade.html

The Infrastructure Bank will be in the news again shortly. The model for Canada's needs is looking rather limp as time progresses and massive amounts of investment cash are being made available to invest in Cdn transportation *without* the Infrastructure Bank.

 

[dowlingm]

We can have this investment bank horseshit or the government can borrow at sovereign rates and give VIA the money directly. Instead the Liberal establishment at national and provincial levels is enraptured by the lure of giving pension funds ways to make money from public services. Blue22 was going to be a private wonder until they cut and ran and the taxpayer ended up paying capital and an operating subsidy to the bloated UPX entity.

 

[steveintoronto]

We can have this investment bank horseshit or the government can borrow at sovereign rates and give VIA the money directly. Instead the Liberal establishment at national and provincial levels is enraptured by the lure of giving pension funds ways to make money from public services. Blue22 was going to be a private wonder until they cut and ran and the taxpayer ended up paying capital and an operating subsidy to the bloated UPX entity.

You're mixing two completely separate issues, three actually.

HFR is projected for private capital to provide the RoW.
VIA Rail looks to private investment for $3-billion dedicated track plan

VIA Rail (via Government purchase) provides the rolling stock and operating staff.
http://www.viarail.ca/en/about-via-rail/governance-and-reports/dedicated-tracks

And then there's the Fleet Renewal Program:
http://www.viarail.ca/en/about-via-rail/governance-and-reports/fleet-renewal-program.

There's no borrowing involved. (at least directly, but this is semantics based on gov't debt financing or not) It would be financed completely from Gov't Appropriation by the agreement of Parliament (ostensibly in a Budget Bill).

Library of Parliament Research Publications
Current Publications: Business, industry and trade
VIA Rail Canada Inc. and the Future of Passenger Rail in Canada

[...]
3 A financial portrait of VIA Rail Canada Inc.
VIA Rail was set up by executive fiat and, despite federal government pledges, still has no enabling legislation that would provide it with an explicit mandate or with a legal framework outlining its governance powers and responsibilities.

The corporation is designated as a parent Crown corporation in Schedule III, Part I, of the Financial Administration Act. Under this legislation, VIA Rail has limited operating autonomy and borrowing authority;6 it depends on parliamentary appropriations to offset any operating deficit incurred while providing federally mandated passenger rail service. Currently, no specific provisions or commitments assure stable and predictable annual government funding for VIA Rail.

Despite the lack of a legislative mandate, VIA Rail has an implicit obligation to provide Canadians with year-round passenger rail service to both large and small communities. VIA Rail offers three main services:7

• intercity rail service that is concentrated in the Québec City–Windsor corridor (representing 85% of all passenger rail traffic volume);
• year-round coast-to-coast transcontinental services in eastern and western Canada (largely targeted to the tourism industry); and
• year-round service to a number of remote communities that are otherwise accessible only by air (where road construction is not feasible).

VIA Rail's income is derived principally from two sources: passenger rail revenues and federal government subsidies. Because of VIA Rail's dependence on federal appropriations, its operations are influenced by political decisions in addition to commercial considerations.

VIA Rail does not own most of the rail networks it uses on a daily basis, so it must negotiate contracts known as Train Service Agreements (TSAs) with the networks' owners (CNR, CPR, and other short-line carriers) for access to and use of the rail infrastructure. VIA Rail's operational performance hinges, in large part, on the terms of those contracts. VIA Rail's passenger rail service must compete for the use of the same tracks with freight trains owned by CNR, CPR and other short-line operators. Thus, VIA Rail has only limited ability to establish the service schedules that would best serve its own commercial interests. In recent years, VIA Rail has struggled to improve the punctuality of its passenger rail operations. Following the negotiation with CNR and CPR of more realistic arrival and departures times for VIA Rail's trains, the corporation's 2009 annual report announced a significant year-to-year improvement in its "on-time performance (OTP)," stating that 83% of its trains ran on time in 2009, compared to only 75% in 2008.8 In 2014, VIA Rail reported a drop in its OTP to 76%, owing to rising traffic in oil, grain and freight haulage and increasing commuter rail traffic volumes in Toronto and Montréal.9
[...]

https://lop.parl.ca/Content/LOP/ResearchPublications/2015-55-e.html?cat=business#txt6

Note 6 above:

Under the Financial Administration Act (s. 127(3)), "[N]o Crown corporation shall enter into any particular transaction to borrow money without the approval of the Minister of Finance with respect to the time and the terms and conditions of the transaction."

What is confusing to some extent was the hope that the HFR scheme and fleet renewal would occur simultaneously, and the same fleet would also service the HFR. That's apparently not going to happen, and VIA Rail needs a new fleet yesterday, HFR or not.

This actually renders the now past RFP as redundant, as it spec'd "bi-mode"...just a little specious without any catenary. The RFP is going to have to be done again, with straight diesel, and perhaps single ended, so that come the time for a "bi-modal fleet" an electric loco can be one end, diesel the other. So order the diesel fleet now, and add electric loco other end when the time comes. Bi-modal locos are twice the cost and almost twice the weight of an electric or diesel alone loco. And more problematic for a number of reasons, not least dragging dead weight at both ends of a consist.

Yes the Libs have failed so far on this, just as the Cons before them. It's a Cdn tradition, of any political stripe.

But HFR is a great plan more than ever. I'm sure there's howls of outrage coming when there's a private bid to build and operate HFR due to the failure of the People of Canada to finance it. And a foreign bid at that...

 

[kEiThZ]

Private capital can absolutely work. With the right business case. And therein lies the problem. It's debatable whether HFR makes enough of a return for private investors.

With the Chinese. They build infrastructure with shitty business cases everywhere. But those are for political leverage and usually to get access to resources (see their many deals in Africa). They aren't going to give a sweetheart deal on VIA HFR, when there's no real way to get access to more resources (provincial jurisdiction and all). They'll build high speed rail between Calgary and Edmonton before HFR in Ontario.

 

[SaugeenJunction]

Haven't posted here in a while but have been lurking. Canada's Minister of Infrastructure just posted this on Twitter:

So now that the Infrastructure Bank is running, I am sure that they will want to start announcing projects (after due diligence of course). I haven't been surprised that there hasn't been any new info on HFR, as the CIB wasn't running yet. But now that it is, it is make or break time for this project. I know there have been varying opinions about if this project will get funded or not, but for political reasons I think that it will.

 

[steveintoronto]

Alex: You're right up on this, it's not even hit the major media yet. Excellent heads-up.

I'm sure Bill Curry will have a piece on this shortly at the Globe, but some reflection:

Bill Curry
OTTAWA
Published November 16, 2017
[...]
Other board members announced Thursday include Vancouver lawyer Jane Bird, who led the development and construction of the city's Canada Line rapid transit project; Michèle Colpron, an international finance executive who has previously held senior positions with the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, as well as overseas banks as chief financial officer of both Merrill Lynch Bank (Suisse) S.A. and Standard Chartered Bank (Switzerland) S.A.; former public pension executive Bruno Guilmette, who managed infrastructure files for the federal Public Sector Pension Investment Board and the Caisse; Christopher Hickman, chairman and CEO of Marco Group of Companies; Osgood Hall Law School professor Poonam Puri, who was recently voted as one of Canada's top 25 lawyers and focuses on corporate governance and accountability issues; First National Financial LP chief executive officer Stephen Smith, who is also a former board member of Metrolinx Inc.; and former SaskPower president and CEO Patricia Youzwa.
[...]

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/new...w-canada-infrastructure-bank/article37002382/

Even though I shouldn't be surprised, these are exactly the people needed to 'talk investment turkey' with those of deep pockets. I'm left a little uneasy, and the consensus prior was that an outsider (of the board) was to be chosen as CEO.

Nuff said on that, Mr Curry writes brilliantly on this subject, and his articles had warnings written when I was still a 'disciple' of the InfraBank concept. We'll see what he and others think of this.

But the bottom line remains this: (and I've run this past two investment bankers, one Fed, one Ontario fund plan, who just smile and nod when I state for their reaction):
"If I were an investment org with deep pockets, why in hell would I want to cut in the Feds to meddle for 20% (if that) just to call the shots on this? I'd take 100% and supply the project from my own associated companies, no tendering or political favouritism, and run this like a business, not a vote machine."

Interesting times, we'll see what's left in the barrel...besides monkeys on our backs.

Addendum: Bear this in mind when considering how needy Canada's Transport Infrastructure is:

DAVID ISRAELSON
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published 2 days ago Updated December 13, 2017

If you're reading this while waiting for a bus or a train or a shipment of goods – or a download – then you'll understand: Canada has an infrastructure problem.

"Ten thousand years is how much additional time commuters in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver spend stuck in traffic every single year as a result of road congestion from key bottlenecks in those cities," the Canadian Chamber of Commerce said in a report released this year.

"This severe congestion is an issue not just for businesses and residents of those cities, but for the entire Canadian economy."


According to the Business Council of Canada, it may require an investment of $150-million to $1-trillion to make the Canadian economy run with optimal productivity and efficiency.

Whatever the size of the gap, "the inability to get people to the right places at the right times and to move goods and services is a tremendous loss," says James McKellar, professor and director of the Brookfield Centre in Real Estate and Infrastructure at York University's Schulich School of Business in Toronto.


The profit that's missed as a result of the gap "is money you might as well just put into a bonfire," he says.

In 2016, a consortium of construction companies, municipalities, engineers and public works organizations released its fourth annual Canadian Infrastructure Report Card. "One-third of our municipal infrastructure is in fair, poor or very poor condition, increasing the risk of service disruption," the report card said.

"Roads, municipal buildings, sport and recreation facilities and public transit are the asset classes most in need of attention."

It's worse than that. According to this year's Canadian Chamber of Commerce report, the infrastructure gap extends well beyond the difficulty in getting from point A to point B. [...]

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/rep...ucture-gap-a-tremendous-loss/article37302054/

 

[nfitz]

"We’re looking for an established solution that meets Canadian requirements" He's referring to current TC regs. Under the terms that established VIA, he has no choice.

No he's not. He's referring to in-production. TC approval is not an issue if they generally meet US standards.

There's lot's of flexibility - Waterloo is even running Flexitys on main-line track (though not at the same time that locomotives will run).