Bordercollie
Senior Member
There is no freight service west of Stratford? Why did CN take back the line then?
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VIA Rail
- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
robmausser
Senior Member
There is freight service, I dont see what that has to do with anything.
Darwinkgo
Active Member
Cost benefit analysis comes in again. It can cost more to spend less.
roger1818
Senior Member
Assuming you are talking about the Collenette HSR in Ontario plan, the preferred route would bypass Stratford and St. Marys, so it was not the same line but a new one.
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Allandale25
Senior Member
robmausser
Senior Member
Assuming you are talking about the Collenette HSR in Ontario plan, the preferred route would bypass Stratford and St. Marys, so it was not the same line but a new one.
It absolutely was a new line.
My point isn't the line or what line, my point is that it is odd that is a business case and ridership for a $15 billion dollar HSR line stopping at Guelph, Kitchener and London, but not for upgrades to the GEXR line at a fraction of the cost. Hmmm...
micheal_can
Senior Member
Has the HSR line gone out for tender?
Urban Sky
Senior Member
First of all, the "business case" for the Ontario Liberal's Toronto-London HSR proposal was based on a BCR of 1.02 (i.e. about the smallest-possible margin above "destroying more value than it creates"):
Source: High Speed Rail in Ontario - Special Advisor for High Speed Rail: Final Report (p. 46)
Note: re-post from the High Speed Rail: London - Kitchener-Waterloo - Pearson Airport - Toronto thread.
Just a quick refresher of what Scenario A and Scenario B referred to:
Therefore, if there seems to be diminishing returns on increased speeds (BCR of 1.02 for 250 km/h, but only 0.36 for 300 km/h), but upgrading a certain segment of infrastructure doesn't yield sufficient benefits to be deemed economically viable, then maybe the bottle neck constraining increased and improved service on that segment is elsewhere along the route(s) by which it is served...?
This suggests that the value-for-money is maximized somewhere between a double-tracked and fully upgraded line to 250 km/h and whatever speeds and frequencies the current infrastructure allows, as I already pointed out back when I first posted above table:
As for the published Special Advisor's Final Report, once you note that the BCR decreases as the design speed increases and as the length (and especially the distance from Toronto) increases, you might guess what additional column and line I would have expected to see in the table below:
Source: High Speed Rail in Ontario - Special Advisor for High Speed Rail: Final Report (p. 46)
However, what else would you expect from a report for which "meeting the UIC definition for HSR" seems to have been a major concern?
Source: High Speed Rail in Ontario - Special Advisor for High Speed Rail: Final Report (p. 47)
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crs1026
Superstar
^It’s possible that the Wynne government actually believed that HSR was a valid transportation solution for Southern Ontario and that they were positioned to deliver it. I’m inclined to think their interest was a lot more superficial. They shamelessly promised an awful lot without having the slightest idea how to get there, and they were very skilled at backing away from test balloons that turned out to be unsustainable.
Building a new line when the Stratford line is so underutilised made no practical sense. Maybe in 2040.....
- Paul
Building a new line when the Stratford line is so underutilised made no practical sense. Maybe in 2040.....
- Paul
Urban Sky
Senior Member
As I've pointed out repeatedly in the the High Speed Rail: London - Kitchener-Waterloo - Pearson Airport - Toronto thread, the northern route is much easier to adapt to fast and frequent intercity services and serves much more population, even if it might be marginally slower than the Southern route:
I refer to one of my first posts here in this forum, in which I compared the Toronto-Brantford-London, Toronto-Brantford Cut-off- London and Toronto-Kitchener-London routes with each other, including the following graphs/tables:
The fastest and most direct route would of course be the "Toronto-Harrisburg-Thamesford-London" alignment I outlined back then, but the map I made back in my early days here in UT also shows quite clearly how effective it is in avoiding any population centers (other than Woodstock) between Toronto's greenbelt and London:
Re-post from the High Speed Rail: London - Kitchener-Waterloo - Pearson Airport - Toronto thread
That said, you are of course right that any alignment along the Northern route will realistically depend on the construction of the "Missing Link", but that link would allow the increase "desirable" rail traffic (i.e. passenger services) going through (and stopping in) Brampton, while diverting "undesirable" rail traffic (i.e. non-local freight traffic) around it, while the "Brantford Bypass" would fail to achieve either (by reducing/eliminating passenger traffic, while keeping freight traffic unchanged)...
The fact that this project surfaced out of nowhere just in time for the 2014 election and nothing was heard until just a few months before the 2018 election (in the form of the HSR study I just quoted) certainly speaks in that direction...
Bordercollie
Senior Member
But I thought that an actual bi-pass was designed and negotiated around Bramelea GO station but the Doug ford government was able to get it done for cheaper? I'm not sure what the difference is in design.As I've pointed out repeatedly in the the High Speed Rail: London - Kitchener-Waterloo - Pearson Airport - Toronto thread, the northern route is much easier to adapt to fast and frequent intercity services and serves much more population, even if it might be marginally slower than the Southern route:
The fastest and most direct route would of course be the "Toronto-Harrisburg-Thamesford-London" alignment I outlined back then, but the map I made back in my early days here in UT also shows quite clearly how effective it is in avoiding any population centers (other than Woodstock) between Toronto's greenbelt and London:
Re-post from the High Speed Rail: London - Kitchener-Waterloo - Pearson Airport - Toronto thread
That said, you are of course right that any alignment along the Northern route will realistically depend on the construction of the "Missing Link", but that link would allow the increase "desirable" rail traffic (i.e. passenger services) going through (and stopping in) Brampton, while diverting "undesirable" rail traffic (i.e. non-local freight traffic) around it, while the "Brantford Bypass" would fail to achieve either (by reducing/eliminating passenger traffic, while keeping freight traffic unchanged)...
The fact that this project surfaced out of nowhere just in time for the 2014 election and nothing was heard until just a few months before the 2018 election (in the form of the HSR study I just quoted) certainly speaks in that direction...
crs1026
Superstar
With the benefit of being older and wiser than I was when the Missing Link was first proposed, I’m not so sure it is all that critical that a Milton bypass be part of the solution. Things may have mellowed such that CN ML and GO could find a way to share or expand the existing CN corridor, without relocating CN to a whole new route. That assumes a much more modest passenger footprint than Ontario’s HSR vision, perhaps, but also a more affordable capital cost. Certainly, if CN and VIA can find a framework to share the line between Coteau and Montreal for HFR, then the parties can find a solution to share the shorter segment between Halwest and Silver. The newer administration may even be easier for CN to trust than the Wynne era players.
I expect expansion through Brampton will happen eventually, it’s a matter of timing and cash flow. Curiously, while ML is undertaking work elsewhere to ease its master procurement, not much is getting said about the Kitchener line beyond revising the electrification feed points. One has to think that the Halton stretch is not raising red flags from the bidders.
- Paul
2transpo
New Member
Urban Sky
Senior Member
You may find some tables and graphs I posted back in fall interesting:
VIA Rail
New tender on MERX: 20-JPO08 - Public Consultation Services for the VIA High Frequency Rail (HFR Project) That's okay, they can just consult me. I say yes please go for it
VIA Rail
That seems to be from the website, not the train. The one I put above is a photo from inside a new Azur train, and you can see that the symbol for Central Station is not there, nor is there an entry in the legend. Your photo from the "new" Azur train is also 4 years old... taken in 2016. STM...
VIA Rail
We are offering our customers in Western Canada an additional choice in regions where intercity transportation is more limited as a result of this pandemic. Likely there isn't a lot of demand for Toronto to northern Ontario or Winnipeg (especially via train) while it is reasonable to use the...
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crs1026
Superstar
^If you read back in this thread you will see a pretty intensive thrashing out of issues with the HFR right of way. In the end, the available data (which was mostly generated by inspecting Google Earth, and therefore pretty good but not perfect) seemed to show that superelevated track could, depending on assumptions, get one’s numbers close enough to the trip times proposed by VIA. There’s not much point in debating those numbers further until the JPO studies emerge.
But yes, to then enhance trip time to a higher level than VIa is specifying for HFR 1.0 would be expensive. Assuming HFR performs well, and a case is made for further investment, the dilemma for VIA is, indeed, whether to attempt piecemal curve easement or just find a new alignment altogether along parts of the route.
The only new data I can add to that is that I did find documented speed limits from “the old days”. In the 1948-1958 timeframe, CP allowed 50 mph on curves east of about Ardendale, and 60 mph on most curves west of there, except near Tweed. There was no restriction on tangent other than by class of locomotive, which was nominally up to 90 mph. Not all steam locomotives even had speedometers, of course, and tangent speed was not verified by radar ;-)
The numbers we debated here last fall were a lot more granular, in that each curve had its own specific speed values based on “precise” curvature. That might be possible with an automated loco, but for human drivers some zone speeds would prevail. Anyhow, if one assumes even 65-70 mph on banked curves through the toughest zones, the speed may well be there without changing the alignment all that much.
- Paul
- Paul
But yes, to then enhance trip time to a higher level than VIa is specifying for HFR 1.0 would be expensive. Assuming HFR performs well, and a case is made for further investment, the dilemma for VIA is, indeed, whether to attempt piecemal curve easement or just find a new alignment altogether along parts of the route.
The only new data I can add to that is that I did find documented speed limits from “the old days”. In the 1948-1958 timeframe, CP allowed 50 mph on curves east of about Ardendale, and 60 mph on most curves west of there, except near Tweed. There was no restriction on tangent other than by class of locomotive, which was nominally up to 90 mph. Not all steam locomotives even had speedometers, of course, and tangent speed was not verified by radar ;-)
The numbers we debated here last fall were a lot more granular, in that each curve had its own specific speed values based on “precise” curvature. That might be possible with an automated loco, but for human drivers some zone speeds would prevail. Anyhow, if one assumes even 65-70 mph on banked curves through the toughest zones, the speed may well be there without changing the alignment all that much.
- Paul
- Paul
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