VIA Rail

[innsertnamehere]

would 9 hours to Chicago even be possible? It's at almost 9.5hrs today when you combine the fastest Chicago-Detroit trip with the fastest Toronto-Windsor trip.. Plus you have to add a border crossing to that which will probably take at least an hour.

Maybe with some improvements on the US Side and some VIA HFR style changes on the Canada side.. but not right away.

I imagine this would service the market that the Maple Leaf currently services to New York.. which is a boutique service that mostly is for people travelling to Toronto from Upstate New York, not Toronto - NYC service.

 

[Aylmer]

Sleeper trains are dying. Even in Europe. The economic case for them is poor.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/12/europe-night-trains-sleeper-service

The economics are poor in Europe thanks to low-cost airlines, as that Guardian article points out. When I lived in the Netherlands, I could grab a 20 EUR return flight to Rome, with multiple daily departures. At that price and those speeds, flying is a no-brainer. However, we don't have the luxury of low-cost flights in North America (yet, at least). Forget 20 EUR, $300 is the absolute cheapest return connection between Toronto and Chicago. Rail might not be able to compete with $30, but it can at $300.

They can't give you a high speed train ride and a berth for $150. And if it's more, you'll fly or drive instead.

The advantage of night rail is that speed isn't as much of a concern. As Insertnamehere wrote, the trip currently takes about 9.5h. Even at 11h, you could leave Toronto at 10 pm and arrive in Chicago by 8 am. I would assume that not having to significantly upgrade the tracks would mean a lower capital cost and ticket price.

 

[Northern Light]

would 9 hours to Chicago even be possible? It's at almost 9.5hrs today when you combine the fastest Chicago-Detroit trip with the fastest Toronto-Windsor trip.. Plus you have to add a border crossing to that which will probably take at least an hour.

Maybe with some improvements on the US Side and some VIA HFR style changes on the Canada side.. but not right away.

I imagine this would service the market that the Maple Leaf currently services to New York.. which is a boutique service that mostly is for people travelling to Toronto from Upstate New York, not Toronto - NYC service.

Best travel time Detroit to Chicago appears to be 3h59. Best travel time Chicago to Detroit appears to be 6h4. I wonder why the huge difference?

Interesting to note that Toronto is already on the schedule. (albeit by way of a bus connection)

Best travel time for tomorrow, on VIA, to Detroit, from Toronto-Union is 3hrs 59.

So that puts best travel time at 7hr58 for the two discrete segments.

The US segment is only 450km by track. The shorter speed isn't unreasonable for that. Average speed 112.5km/ph

Why it balloons at other times ......

 

[Urban Sky]

The advantage of night rail is that speed isn't as much of a concern. As Insertnamehere wrote, the trip currently takes about 9.5h. Even at 11h, you could leave Toronto at 10 pm and arrive in Chicago by 8 am. I would assume that not having to significantly upgrade the tracks would mean a lower capital cost and ticket price.

Even though passengers could sleep through the night, you still have to pay your staff for every hour travelled and this results in a dramatically lower labour productivity of trains compared to planes. Also, if Windsor is 4 hours from Toronto and your westbound departure from Toronto is 10pm and your eastbound arrival in Toronto is 8am, at what time will your passengers get woken up for customs?

Best travel time Detroit to Chicago appears to be 3h59. Best travel time Chicago to Detroit appears to be 6h4. I wonder why the huge difference?

For the same reason my flight from Tokyo to Vancouver arrived before its departure time: because Chicago is in a different time zone (CT, like Winnipeg).

Don’t get me wrong: I happen to be on vacations in Chicago as we speak and I would have loved to connect in Toronto from an afternoon train from Montreal to a night train to Chicago rather than having to endure 7 hours of travel on the Adirondack (for a mere 350 km) before transferring onto the Lakeshore Limited in Schenectady (a connection which doesn’t even work in the opposite direction!), but I have to assume that there were very good reasons which led to the termination of any Toronto-Chicago night train service more than a decade prior (!) to the creation of VIA Rail or Amtrak.

Greetings from the (thankfully more sunny than windy) city of Chicago,

Urban Sky

 

[Aylmer]

I presumed this new proposal would be coming with preclearance facilities to eliminate the need for the check at the border.

 

[Urban Sky]

I presumed this new proposal would be coming with preclearance facilities to eliminate the need for the check at the border.

And where and how would international travellers wanting to travel from places like Oakville, Aldershot, Brantford, London, Chatham or Windsor (westbound) or from Michigan City, Kalamazoo or Ann Arbour (eastbound) clear customs? And how would you separate domestic from international travellers?

 

[Aylmer]

Thankfully, I'm not employed by VIA to answer these questions. You know a lot more than I do - it's why I always like reading your posts on this thread.
I'd be much more interested in getting your unique insights outright rather than having you beat me over the head with them after answering your unnecessarily snide rhetorical questions.

 

[smallspy]

Thankfully, I'm not employed by VIA to answer these questions. You know a lot more than I do - it's why I always like reading your posts on this thread.
I'd be much more interested in getting your unique insights outright rather than having you beat me over the head with them after answering your unnecessarily snide rhetorical questions.

But he's got a point though - how do you offer customs preclearance for people crossing the border AND offer service to all of those intermediate stations? It's two completely different markets and services, and at first blush the two are totally incompatible.

It's kind of the same question that needs to be asked about the suggestion of making the train an overnight train - sure, it helps the people going from end-to-end, but by doing so you end up missing a huge potential market. Those intermediate towns which also need service as well, and for which providing that service is a small incremental cost but a huge potential gain.

Dan

 

[Northern Light]

But he's got a point though - how do you offer customs preclearance for people crossing the border AND offer service to all of those intermediate stations? It's two completely different markets and services, and at first blush the two are totally incompatible.

It's kind of the same question that needs to be asked about the suggestion of making the train an overnight train - sure, it helps the people going from end-to-end, but by doing so you end up missing a huge potential market. Those intermediate towns which also need service as well, and for which providing that service is a small incremental cost but a huge potential gain.

Dan

There are a variety of options as to how to address customs issues. Whether any are seriously on the table or would be deemed impractical by authorities is a different matter.

All over the world, I've witnessed on-board customs checks, done from 1-stop prior to a border, to the border point. ie. Customs boards the train one stop prior to the border, and exits, with any non-admissible persons at the border.

Presumably either taking a train back the other way, or being car shuttled.

Alternatively, pre-clearance can be be used with 'sealed' cars.

The question is really one of whether its worth the bother of the set-up for a comparatively limited service. Might make more sense in Vancouver with 3 frequencies a day to the US and the potential for a lot more.

Where a Chicago service is unlikely to exceed 2x daily (if that) well into the future.

 

[Northern Light]

For the same reason my flight from Tokyo to Vancouver arrived before its departure time: because Chicago is in a different time zone (CT, like Winnipeg).

Urban Sky

Can't believe that slipped my mind.

I'm used to having to think of that w/planes, but most rail trips beyond commuter rail, are corridor for me, and its all one time zone.

 

[Urban Sky]

Thankfully, I'm not employed by VIA to answer these questions. You know a lot more than I do - it's why I always like reading your posts on this thread.
I'd be much more interested in getting your unique insights outright rather than having you beat me over the head with them after answering your unnecessarily snide rhetorical questions.

My genuine intent was to show you the limitations in your envisioned solutions, but I have to concede that I might have also perceived them as “unnecessarily snide rhetorical questions” if they had been directed at me, so my sincere apologies for carelessly giving you this impression! I remember very well when I was starting my presence in this forum a half-decade ago and how happy I would have been if one of the participants in these discussions would have identified as a VIA employee...

You are of course right that unlike you I actually get paid for finding answers to the questions I’ve raised and that it would therefore be unreasonable to expect you to find answers yourself. I will therefore try to provide an answer to the two questions you’ve raised, which will be as elaborate as is possible (while watching my four month old peacefully sleep in this Hotel’s breakfast room and while my wife gets some well-deserved extra sleep):

Concerning the viability of night trains between Toronto and Chicago, I would like to refer you to an excellent report conducted by Steer, Davis and Glee for the European Parliament, which has studied extensively the various factors which contribute to the decline of night trains observed in Europe and beyond:

As you can see in this table (to be found on page 48 in the report I linked above), night trains are at a significant cost disadvantages compared to other (i.e. day) trains or modes (esp. the airplane) and most of these disadvantages also apply to North America. This doesn’t stop the Canadian from obtaining a cost-recovery rate which is only a few percentage points below the corresponding figure on the Corridor, but we are talking more about a land cruise which serves as a “destination in itself” to mostly foreign tourists than as the intercity night train for business and more traditional leisure travellers, which you envision for Toronto-Chicago...

Concerning the practicality of border checks on the Toronto-Detroit-Chicago corridor, you seem to be inspired by how the Eurostar works between London and Paris or Brussels: However, the Eurostar does no longer transport domestic passengers (at least not prior to the border crossing), which is no problem given that London-Ashford and Brussels-Lille-Paris are more than sufficiently served by domestic high-speed trains (note that most continental European countries like France, Belgium or the Netherlands form an internal market which reduces border complexities to that of crossing provincial/territorial/state borders within Canada and the United States). Lille-Brussels used to be served by Eurostar services, but this Remains only possible in the westbound direction ever since the UK has moved its border checks onto the European mainland and this is also the reason why trains inbound to London from Eurostar destinations without pre-clearance facilities (e.g. Rotterdam, Amsterdam or Marseilles) have to stop at either Brussels or Lille so that all passengers can leave the train and re-enter through the pre-clearance facility. Such an arrangement would of course be also possible at the Canadian-US border, but my experiences on board the Adirondack and from tracking the on-time performance of the Maple Leaf suggest that this would delay the journey by significantly more than the 15 minutes it adds to the journey on the Eurostar.

With pre-clearance facilities being unlikely to ever getting built in Toronto (lack of space), Oakville/Aldershot/Brantford/London/Chatham/Ann Arbour/Michigan City (lack of passenger potential to justify building and staffing such a facility) or Chicago (lack of both), this only leaves the Vancouver model, which would be to build a pre-clearance facility in Detroit and to let all international trains terminate here. Whereas Detroit’s current Amtrak station would be too small for such facilities, Ford’s plans to redevelop Michigan Central station into an urban mobility hub could be a god-sent: There are no current (St-Lambert/QC, Oakville, Aldershot, Grimsby, St-Catherines or Niagara Falls/ON) or potential (Surrey/BC or Hamilton) intermediary stops which would be foregone if all border checks were centralized in Detroit and the “transiting” distance between the tunnel and Michigan Centrale station is even shorter than in Rousses Point (and a small fraction of that into Vancouver).

In short, I don’t see any business case for offering a night train between Toronto and Chicago (because of the usual challenges of offering intercity night train services plus the border challenges, which would likely result in border checks having to be performed in the dead of the night), but I do see a potential to extend the Toronto-Windsor services into Detroit (with a pre-clearance facility at a revitalized Michigan Central station) with attractive connections towards Chicago. Having to move the train station in Windsor is certainly not a showstopper...

Cant be because this service is provided by a foreign entity. Wheres our train down to Detroit?

I don’t understand the problem you are highlighting: The Adirondack and the Cascades are Amtrak services operating into Canada and the Maple Leaf is an Amtrak train operated with VIA Rail crews on this side of the border (while the Atlantic was a VIA train transiting through the United States), so what would be the regulatory problem with operating an international service like Toronto-Windsor-Detroit(-Chicago)?

 

[Aylmer]

Maybe a crazy idea, but if customs checks can be done on-board, would it be conceivable to have a customs officer on board the train between the sealed and unsealed portions? So instead of preclearance facilities at every small town on the way, intl-bound passengers would board a 'customs car' between the two sections and have their documents checked by an officer before being allowed into the sealed cars, all while the train is moving. You avoid the expense of permanent preclearance infrastructure all along the route (except at the largest centres - Toronto, Detroit, Chicago - where there'd be too many people to have them wait in an on-board clearance car), as well as the inconvenience of stopping the entire train for 1-2 hours at the border.

The question of whether or not it would be worth the bother for a 1-2x daily service is a valid one. But it's interesting to think about nonetheless.

 

[Aylmer]

My genuine intent was to show you the limitations in your envisioned solutions, but I have to concede that I might have also perceived them as “unnecessarily snide rhetorical questions” if they had been directed at me, so my sincere apologies for carelessly giving you this impression! I remember very well when I was starting my presence in this forum a half-decade ago and how happy I would have been if one of the participants in these discussions would have identified as a VIA employee...

You are of course right that unlike you I actually get paid for finding answers to the questions I’ve raised and that it would therefore be unreasonable to expect you to find answers yourself. I will therefore try to provide an answer to the two questions you’ve raised, which will be as elaborate as is possible (while watching my four month old peacefully sleep in this Hotel’s breakfast room and while my wife gets some well-deserved extra sleep):

...

It came off poorly just because I know that you know more than I do about this. And your reply certainly doesn't disappoint.

It's a shame about the business case. I just remember how, from a passenger perspective, I was just blown away at my first night train experience for a day trip between Malmö and Stockholm. I had never been able to have as full a day in one place. Even when I'd flown, it was always a half day of travel at most between getting to and from airports with enough time to pass security and wait at the gate. I couldn't justify the trouble for a single day, so I'd usually sacrifice a day before and after for the purposes of getting there, with one nice day in the middle. Flights were cheap in Europe, but hotels aren't.

But with the night train, I got get there fully-rested at 6 am and explore the city until 11 pm. And instead of dropping $150/night at a hotel on top of my transportation expenses, I spent only $65 per way for the train. It was just a complete revelation for me - a cheap, uncomplicated, full day trip.

As you've pointed out, there are a whole host of reasons why it's more complicated - or even impossible - to run overnight service. But from the perspective of a passenger, it simply provides a travel product which no other mode can come close to in the 700-1000 km range. Whether you drive, bus, fly, or ride high-speed rail, no other mode can offer you a day-trip/weekend product at that range. At a time when rail transportation can seem irrelevant or uncompetitive for most trips, this just seems to me like a niche where rail can not only compete, but really shine as the irresistibly-practical option.

 

[smallspy]

There are a variety of options as to how to address customs issues. Whether any are seriously on the table or would be deemed impractical by authorities is a different matter.

All over the world, I've witnessed on-board customs checks, done from 1-stop prior to a border, to the border point. ie. Customs boards the train one stop prior to the border, and exits, with any non-admissible persons at the border.

Presumably either taking a train back the other way, or being car shuttled.

And that's the catch. It can work elsewhere because either the regulatory systems work, or the frequencies are so much greater as to make them overcome any of the regulatory issues.

For instance, here in North America, due to the (lack of) frequencies of crossing there are all sorts of hurdles that the respective border security agencies have put into place. For instance, as there is only one set of trains crossing the border at Niagara Falls neither of the respective border security agencies can field a dedicated crew of staff to service them. The crews need to be driven over from the nearest office in advance of the train arriving. And because they need to be driven back to the office afterwards, the checks can not be done while the train is in motion.

Alternatively, pre-clearance can be be used with 'sealed' cars.

That may work on a shorter route within Canada, where there may not be any stops from the origin to the border. But Transport Canada will absolutely not allow cars to be locked while occupied by travellers, so how to you enforce a "sealed" car? Place staff at all doorways? If that's the best way to do it, that's another cost that will then need to be factored in to the operating costs of the train, then.

The question is really one of whether its worth the bother of the set-up for a comparatively limited service. Might make more sense in Vancouver with 3 frequencies a day to the US and the potential for a lot more.

Where a Chicago service is unlikely to exceed 2x daily (if that) well into the future.

Exactly. There are routes where it absolutely makes sense, such as the Cascades service into Vancouver or perhaps Montreal southward. But with Toronto being so far away from the border, I suspect that the hoops that need to be jumped through are so excessive as to make it practically unworkable.

Dan

 

[mdrejhon]

At 8-9h, it's a distance which, if done during the day, takes up pretty much a full one. Considering I can fly YYZ-ORD for about $150-200 one way in only 1h30, it's unlikely to be particularly attractive unless it's significantly cheaper. And if we base ourselves off the fact that a ticket to Ottawa is regularly $70-90 for 400km, I'd imagine a ticket to Chicago is likely to be somewhere around $150-200, roughly the same as flying. Much as I enjoy taking the train personally, I'd probably be hard-pressed to justify taking VIA on that route.

While I do know VIA is often expensive last minute and holidays, for most destinations, I must remind you....

For advance bookings, VIA is now cheap Toronto-Ottawa nowadays thanks to the huge number of trains they added. There are more than double the number of trains Toronto-Ottawa now than there were in the 1970s.

VIA fares between Toronto-Ottawa are only $40 if you book a month in advance -- much easier to find than cheap airfares for a 1-month booking.

Go to www.viarail.ca and search for train fares one month in advance. Avoid those vacation and weekend dates, like a Friday night - Monday morning roundtrip, and you can easily pay less than $100 taxes included for a roundtrip Toronto-Ottawa on VIA train.

Especially if you book during one of those Tuesday sales, though the $40 are non-sale prices if you book a month in advance. I've seen them go as low as $29 during better annual sales, though $34 and $36 is more common during a Tuesday sale, and $40 to $49 everyday 1-month-advance prices.

I always can get sub-$50 VIA airfares reliably almost year-round on non-Holiday dates simply by doing my bookings on a Tuesday for any trips approximately one month in advance.

Just stop the mentality of searching at the last minute on common holiday dates like Good Friday and Ottawa-Toronto VIA is reliably cheap about 350 days of the year provided you remember to book sufficiently (~5-6 weeks) in advance

Chrissakes. So few know how to book cheap Toronto-Ottawa VIA fares. People become experts at searching airfares but never bother to even learn the 101 basics of finding cheap VIA fares.

I get it. Yes. VIA isn't cheap for other city pairs, and it should become cheaper. And those cheap seats often sell out too quick on other routes. But hundreds of cheap seats now exist on VIA Toronto-Ottawa if you do 6 week advance searches, and they don't sell out until around 3-4 weeks prior. So it's kid's play to land those $33-$34-$36-$39-$40 seats for a sub $100 roundtrip.

Many don't realize how good we now have Toronto-Ottawa -- we've never had this much VIA train service ever in history between Ottawa and Toronto. That's how much VIA has climbed back for this specific city pair, unbeknownst to many, and how the volume in the last ten years has allowed VIA to offer reliably lower prices in the last decade for 5-6 week advance bookings of this popular corridor pair. People have given up on VIA but Toronto-Ottawa is now become almost price-competitive to 2 persons driving a SUV between Toronto-Ottawa, if you only do a little advance booking planning.