VIA Rail

[smallspy]

I am wondering if VIA could provide some sort of commuter service to Toronto. I think GO is pretty much maxed out in terms of further extensions out into the suburban GTA. Would a couple morning and evening runs from say London/Belleville/Owen Sound to Toronto with only a handful of stops at major stations be feasible? I imagine service would have to be within 60 mins +/- from the outer stations, and would be a scaled back service from typical VIA services (no food/drink, maybe wifi). Could VIA make this profitable?

VIA already does this with a number of trains into and out of Toronto at key times.

Dan

 

[lenaitch]

I am wondering if VIA could provide some sort of commuter service to Toronto. I think GO is pretty much maxed out in terms of further extensions out into the suburban GTA. Would a couple morning and evening runs from say London/Belleville/Owen Sound to Toronto with only a handful of stops at major stations be feasible? I imagine service would have to be within 60 mins +/- from the outer stations, and would be a scaled back service from typical VIA services (no food/drink, maybe wifi). Could VIA make this profitable?

Tracks would help.

 

[Urban Sky]

(continuation of my previous post, which originally started here)

I'll again start by revisiting some previous points to comment on some of your replies:

#6 About VIA's mandate

What surprised me was that the Canadian is not in the red. So, maybe adding more trains per week is in order.

The only thing which surprises me here is that you make this claim less than 24 hours after I've posted a table which clearly shows that you should have listened to your intuition, as the Canadian lost in 2018 (latest annual data available) $0.68 for every $1 in revenues, which is virtually identical to the losses it incurred on its entire network and one-third higher than the $0.47 it lost for every $1 in revenues on the Corridor:

Repost (with red box added) from previous post

Therefore, adding more trains might not be in order, but more about that in point #9 further below.


#7 About finding viable intercity corridors outside the Quebec-Windsor Corridor

I want to be clear that I greatly appreciate the thoughtful detail in your posts.

Glad to hear!

I am willing to consider the speed rail should be capable of (non HSR, just conventional rolling stock); understanding that peak-speed is certainly not average speed.

Congratulations, virtually every newspaper article which reports about the newest Maglev or Hyperloop route which is "under construction" or "will open in 3 years from now" fails to understand this distinction!

When I see a 700km trip showing a time worse than car travel, I'm persuaded something is wrong.

One doesn't require complete grade separation to hit peak-speeds of 177km/ph or even, subject to equipment and regulatory approvals, 200km/ph.

Why should a trip of that length average 100km/ph or less?

No, there is nothing wrong: these are just rail corridors which were built entirely around a business model in which Canadian Pacific would operate recruiting offices in Europe to attract settlers-to-be, which would then travel as third-class passengers on its steamships and as "Colonist" class travellers on its railways, before getting sold a lot of CP-owned land to which CP would ship all necessary supplies and from which it would ship the produce of said land. As you can see, speed was an absolutely secondary consideration when surveying potential alignments and choosing a circuitous did not only maximise the subsidies paid by the government (as a fixed-sum per mile), but also the land granted by the government around any new tracks laid. Fast forward 150 years and a freight railroad may not feel tempted to upgrade its tracks to track class 4 (which would allow 80 mph or 129 km/h for passenger trains), if it deems track class 3 (which limits passenger trains to 60 mph or 96 km/h) to be sufficient for the volume (and time-sensitivity) of the freight it transports.

There are obvious answers, delays/conflicts; too many stops, other speed restrictions (turning radii, track switch speeds etc.). or the limitations of current equipment.

Whatever the case, it is addressable.

You see, you identified most of these reasons yourself, but fixing it will cost a lot of money and I don't see that the Canadian taxpayer would get a particularly bad deal with the current arrangement: Whereas taxpayers in Europe pay substantial subsidies for a network which transports passengers much more efficiently than goods, Canada gets the opposite (a network which transports goods much more efficiently than passengers - and also: than goods in Europe) for close to no cost. This sucks from a passenger's perspective, but you don't get less than what you paid for...

That does not mean everyone's railway-geek train list should come to fruition.

But it does mean routes shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, when their running conditions are seemingly, needlessly sub-optimal.

Certain routes (Say Edmonton-Calgary) as an example, deserve a fresh-look, with an open mind. Separate the one-time costs from the on-going costs and ask how much would it cost to raise average train speed by 40km/ph?

I'm being entirely arbitrary in that suggestion; and not pre-supposing a positive outcome.

But I don't see it as useful to compare rail running in sub-obtimal conditions with cars whose highways have been subsidized to ensure optimal speed operation.

You may have your own preferences, but the consensus for infrastructure projects in democratic-capitalist countries is that the costs and benefits of any project are assessed as increments over the status quo and that does not black out the infrastructure which already exists. I believe Greg Gormick has a point when he keeps quoting a former CP CEO lamenting that the completion of the Trans-Canada Highway turned the launch of "The Canadian" in April 1955 (and its luxurious stainless steel fleet which serves VIA's name-sake reliably until this day) into the most costly mistake in its corporate history and prompted CP to pursue its total exit out of the passenger business. Nevertheless, if the Trans-Canada Highway continues to pose a barrier to make passenger rail viable (again), then this is a fact we need to accept sooner or later...

***

Now to some new points:

#9 About expanding transcontinental VIA services

For those of you without a CN/CP timetable archive on their HDD, "The Dominion" was CP's flagship Montreal/Toronto-Vancouver train until the introduction of "The Canadian" in 1955 (which operates until this day under the same name and fleet, but on the route of the former "Super Continental") and continued operating as a more basic alternative to The Canadian with more stops and thus slower travel times until 1966 (shown below is the October 1965 timetable):

I would argue that Trudeau might do the reverse. He needs to pander to the ones that didn't vote for him so that he can go to the next election and say "See, I ddid things for you". This is the best time for western expansion of VIA. Something akin to The Dominion could return. If done right, they could alternate it and the Canadian such that every day, a train goes across the Prairies between Vancouver and Toronto.

Yes, sure, but the only things missing are the fleet, mandate, market and funding:

• Fleet: from Skylines over Diners to (Prestige) Park cars, there are unfortunately only enough cars to form four identical trainsets (which is only sufficient to operate 3 departures per week) and even if you would accept having on-board amenities which vary greatly from one departure to the next, you would simply spread the same (finite and constrained) number of coaches and sleepers over more trainsets...
• Mandate: given that the mandates touched by this train (transcontinental service and the regional service between Sudbury and White River) are already covered adequately by existing VIA services, I don't see how such a service expansion could be justified to Transport Canada and the federal taxpayers...
• Market: Given that the current state of the infrastructure (let alone: freight traffic volumes) don't allow for a travel time (let alone: punctuality) which would make it competitive against the car (nor an inter-provincial bus service, which could be reinstated by the federal and provincial governments at rather short notice), I don't see any market which would be adequately served by the service you described above...
• Funding: Without a mandate or obvious market which this service would serve, why would any federal government commit the necessary operational funding to operate such a service?

#10 About jumping from CP to CN between Woodstock and London

What sort of speed does VIA do between Woodstock and London? Have been wondering what sort of time saving could be achieved if VIA was able to do 110-125 over a track parallel to the very straight CPR alignment, with access to the current station via a curve to CN Thorndale (the VIA route to Stratford/Kitchener) and a similar track leaving Woodstock to join the CP ROW

(assuming CP agreeable of course)

I actually looked at this question in one of my very first posts in this forum and my conclusion was that choosing the CP (Galt Sub) alignment between Woodstock and London over the CN (Dundas Sub) alignment would save an estimated 2:23 minutes with a design speed of 200 km/h, but only 11 seconds with a design speed of 160 km/h. We can of course start debating whether 143 seconds is enough of a time saving to build tracks between the Dundas and Galt Subs and then following the latter, but as I've argued in said post over 5 years ago, the distribution of population and the presence of transcontinental freight traffic favours the northern mainline (via Kitchener) over the Southern mainline (via Woodstock and Aldershot), so please feel free to refer to the detailed tables, figures and descriptions which I posted back then...

(I again reached the 10,000 character limit, so to be continued a different day)

 

[micheal_can]

#6 About VIA's mandate

The only thing which surprises me here is that you make this claim less than 24 hours after I've posted a table which clearly shows that you should have listened to your intuition, as the Canadian lost in 2018 (latest annual data available) $0.68 for every $1 in revenues, which is virtually identical to the losses it incurred on its entire network and one-third higher than the $0.47 it lost for every $1 in revenues on the Corridor:
View attachment 218514
Repost (with red box added) from previous post

Therefore, adding more trains might not be in order, but more about that in point #9 further below.

See all the colours? Some are green, some are yellow, and some are red. Toronto to Vancouver i Yellow - Green. That is what I meant. Not the black/red thinking. We should figure out why it dropped. There is a plan to put HFR between the 2 cities that seem to have the lower ridership. Yet, it is still being suggested, and it is still a good idea. The numbers are not the whole story.

#9 About expanding transcontinental VIA services

For those of you without a CN/CP timetable archive on their HDD, "The Dominion" was CP's flagship Montreal/Toronto-Vancouver train until the introduction of "The Canadian" in 1955 (which operates until this day under the same name and fleet, but on the route of the former "Super Continental") and continued operating as a more basic alternative to The Canadian with more stops and thus slower travel times until 1966 (shown below is the October 1965 timetable):
View attachment 218515View attachment 218516

Yes, sure, but the only things missing are the fleet, mandate, market and funding:

• Fleet: from Skylines over Diners to (Prestige) Park cars, there are unfortunately only enough cars to form four identical trainsets (which is only sufficient to operate 3 departures per week) and even if you would accept having on-board amenities which vary greatly from one departure to the next, you would simply spread the same (finite and constrained) number of coaches and sleepers over more trainsets...
• Mandate: given that the mandates touched by this train (transcontinental service and the regional service between Sudbury and White River) are already covered adequately by existing VIA services, I don't see how such a service expansion could be justified to Transport Canada and the federal taxpayers...
• Market: Given that the current state of the infrastructure (let alone: freight traffic volumes) don't allow for a travel time (let alone: punctuality) which would make it competitive against the car (nor an inter-provincial bus service, which could be reinstated by the federal and provincial governments at rather short notice), I don't see any market which would be adequately served by the service you described above...
• Funding: Without a mandate or obvious market which this service would serve, why would any federal government commit the necessary operational funding to operate such a service?

Lets really look at those 4 things.

Fleet

Get more.
Either they locate old ones, refurbish them and put them into service.
Or....
Get new ones. You could have a manufacture, like Bombardier who likely owns the rights to the car designs, build new ones to the original designs, but have them built updated for today.

Now, you would have enough rolling stock to run it daily both ways. In fact, with building new cars, you can replace the old ones. Metal does fatigue over time. Those cars are over 50 years old. That means the metal has been under stress for 50 years. Replacing them with new, but still streamline cars would be a good way to not only increase rolling stock, but increase reliability of that rolling stock.

Mandate

List of census metropolitan areas and agglomerations in Canada - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The 4th largest metro, Calgary is not served by rail. The next largest city is the 15th one; Victoria, which actually is if they return the train to Vancouver Island. I would say that Via has not fulfilled it's mandate fully if a major city such as Calgary, with a population over 1.3 million do not have access to rail. The next city that isn't served; Victoria has a population of 350,000. That i a city 4 times as small.

Market

Bus =/= Train, or, does subway = bus? The argument for bustification is silly at best.

The Corridor is still slower than car and plane, but it is well used and well served. Why? Because it exists, and it fills a need. So, the market could be there. Again, 1.3 million not served is a fairly good market.

Ignoring Vancouver, Winnipeg and Toronto, cities over 50,000 are:
The Southern route would serve:
Calgary 1,300,000
Medicine Hat 76,000
Regina 230,000
Brandon 58,000
Thunder Bay 121,000
Sault Ste Marie 79,000
Greater Sudbury downtown station 164,000

Total: 2,028,000

The current route
Kamloops 103,000
Edmonton 1,300,000
Saskatoon 301,000
(in Greater Sudbury, it serves remote locations)

Total 1,704,000

A difference of over 324,000 This does not include the smaller places, but the southern route is more populated.

I would say a net higher population is a market that exists that is not served.

Funding

This took me about a half hour to look up and type. This clearly shows that a mandate and market do exist. What does not exist is the money, and the agreement to run on CP tracks.

I have clearly shown that which you said did not exist, for the most part does.exist. We just need a government to see this, and put it in place.

 

[dowlingm]

It’s not enough to have sizeable city pairs - there have to be reasons to generate high volumes of travel which will transfer from existing mode to rail at the times when trains operate - e.g. one city has a specialist health facility which the other is too small to separately sustain.

If the only train between (for example) Edmonton and Calgary runs at night, does it matter that the cities are big? Instead it might generate the ridership of more modest urban centres during convenient travel hours. So the numbers alone aren’t decisive, but the investment needed to do better might be dwarfed by even the best case return.

 

[micheal_can]

It’s not enough to have sizeable city pairs - there have to be reasons to generate high volumes of travel which will transfer from existing mode to rail at the times when trains operate - e.g. one city has a specialist health facility which the other is too small to separately sustain.

If the only train between (for example) Edmonton and Calgary runs at night, does it matter that the cities are big? Instead it might generate the ridership of more modest urban centres during convenient travel hours. So the numbers alone aren’t decisive, but the investment needed to do better might be dwarfed by even the best case return.

Edmonton to Calgary is 300km. Let's say a train takes 6 hours to do it. I you ran 4 times a day, that would be more than plenty. Chances are, if you ran 2 times a day, each way, that would be more than plenty to cover the initial demand.

 

[crs1026]

Edmonton to Calgary is 300km. Let's say a train takes 6 hours to do it. I you ran 4 times a day, that would be more than plenty. Chances are, if you ran 2 times a day, each way, that would be more than plenty to cover the initial demand.

That’s a very pessimistic trip timing. Let’s aim for 3 hours.

I do think VIA is on to something with frequency. i’d expect 8 times a day would create more demand than 4 times a day. Capital investment required would be much the same, so why not go for it.

- Paul

 

[micheal_can]

That’s a very pessimistic trip timing. Let’s aim for 3 hours.

I do think VIA is on to something with frequency. i’d expect 8 times a day would create more demand than 4 times a day. Capital investment required would be much the same, so why not go for it.

- Paul

Toronto to Montreal has times of between 5 hours and 9 hours. Driving time is about 5 hours. So, given that, saying 6 hours and it being lower would be good. Also, Toronto to Montreal has less than 8 times a day, and they are the 2 largest cites, so why would Calgary and Edmonton, the 4th and 6th respectively, get more service? Not saying it shouldn't, but an initial 4 times roughly would be a good start.

 

[crs1026]

Toronto to Montreal has times of between 5 hours and 9 hours. Driving time is about 5 hours. So, given that, saying 6 hours and it being lower would be good. Also, Toronto to Montreal has less than 8 times a day, and they are the 2 largest cites, so why would Calgary and Edmonton, the 4th and 6th respectively, get more service? Not saying it shouldn't, but an initial 4 times roughly would be a good start.

Because at four trains a day, many potential customers who can’t make one train will be able to drive or fly and arrive before the next train even departs. The closer the service comes to assuring departure at any potential time, the more a customer will “assume” the train will meet their needs. Doesn’t have to be a departure every 15 minutes, but it has to be better than once every 4 hours - or the potential customer base will be reduced to leisure travellers, and the price point may have to drop to attract even those folks.

- Paul

 

[micheal_can]

Because at four trains a day, many potential customers who can’t make one train will be able to drive or fly and arrive before the next train even departs. The closer the service comes to assuring departure at any potential time, the more a customer will “assume” the train will meet their needs. Doesn’t have to be a departure every 15 minutes, but it has to be better than once every 4 hours - or the potential customer base will be reduced to leisure travellers, and the price point may have to drop to attract even those folks.

- Paul

This route, might be the only oen that could do it, but you might end up with potentially shorter trains.

 

[robmausser]

Toronto to Montreal has times of between 5 hours and 9 hours. Driving time is about 5 hours. So, given that, saying 6 hours and it being lower would be good. Also, Toronto to Montreal has less than 8 times a day, and they are the 2 largest cites, so why would Calgary and Edmonton, the 4th and 6th respectively, get more service? Not saying it shouldn't, but an initial 4 times roughly would be a good start.

I dare you to get to Montreal by car by 5 hours.

Its 6 or more. More with traffic.

 

[innsertnamehere]

I dare you to get to Montreal by car by 5 hours.

Its 6 or more. More with traffic.

Drives that length can vary a lot based on driver behavior, and time of day. One driver that does the speed limit and takes multiple stops may take 6 hours, while another who drives 120 and makes only one quick stop for gas and a meal might take 5. Driving 120 vs 100 alone will cut about 45 minutes off the drive.

If you are a quick driver and do the drive in light traffic, you can cover absolutely huge distances very quickly in a car. Leaving Toronto at, say 10pm on a Tuesday, and drive 120-125? You'll probably be in Montreal in about 4.5 hours.

 

[micheal_can]

I dare you to get to Montreal by car by 5 hours.

Its 6 or more. More with traffic.

Drives that length can vary a lot based on driver behavior, and time of day. One driver that does the speed limit and takes multiple stops may take 6 hours, while another who drives 120 and makes only one quick stop for gas and a meal might take 5. Driving 120 vs 100 alone will cut about 45 minutes off the drive.

If you are a quick driver and do the drive in light traffic, you can cover absolutely huge distances very quickly in a car. Leaving Toronto at, say 10pm on a Tuesday, and drive 120-125? You'll probably be in Montreal in about 4.5 hours.

Been there, did that, sort of.
Drove Barrie to Montreal in 6 hours, about a month ago.
It was a Friday morning.

Next argument?

 

[SunriseChampion]

I dare you to get to Montreal by car by 5 hours.

And if I do it in 4, will you tell the OPP?


Back before the stupid "racing" law nonsense, when I lived in Ottawa, the trips were rather quick by today's "racing" law standards. Though, even at the speeds I cruise at these days, it sure as hell isn't taking me 5 hours.

Anyway, I prefer the train. Less fun, but less stress with regards for the speed fascism controls.

 

[micheal_can]

And if I do it in 4, will you tell the OPP?


Back before the stupid "racing" law nonsense, when I lived in Ottawa, the trips were rather quick by today's "racing" law standards. Though, even at the speeds I cruise at these days, it sure as hell isn't taking me 5 hours.

Anyway, I prefer the train. Less fun, but less stress with regards for the speed fascism controls.

Could you ever outrun Air Canada?