VIA Rail

[k10ery]

I'm saying that if VIA lost its' federal subsidy, it would drop other routes (the Canadian, etc) before it got rid of or sold off the QC-W routes. Like any business, if you lose a revenue stream (even if that stream happens to be government money), you cut the services that you offer that are a net loss to run until you achieve a fiscal balance. VIA would only really go bankrupt if none of the services it offered were making money, and they were all relying on federal subsidies to break even. But that isn't the case, because the QC-W corridor is a net profit for VIA.

That ignores the legal and financial realities. I would not want to be an unsecured private creditor of VIA, because the federal government could dissolve the entity and I might lose almost everything in bankruptcy court. On the other hand, I could own the third track and rent it to VIA for its (profitable) use. But now I own an asset that is worthless without access to the rolling stock and train stations that I do not own. That is a recipe for disaster - for why would VIA pay me a fair rent for my track in the future when they know I have no one else to rent it to? This is what's known as the "hold up problem" in the finance business.

No, I'm not giving a few billion to a politically dodgy federal Crown corporation without an upfront long-term contract that says what they're going to pay me the next 30 years, and who owns what after that. In other words, I'm going to want a P3. Which is fine, really, Harper likes P3s. If this project really is financial viable, there is no reason it can't work that way.

 

[rbt]

So this is just a PR campaign, not a serious plan? Because, of course, there is no way a private flotation is going to attract investors without federal loan guarantees. This would have to be a P3 or bust.

It's very serious for VIA's executives. They're clearly worried about losing a huge chunk of their fiefdom.

They aren't launching a new, unproven service. They're making upgrades to their infrastructure so that they can deliver the service they're already delivering more efficiently.

Agreed. It shouldn't be all that different from the finance structure airports and other crown corporations have in terms of borrowing to support their service expansion.

 

[k10ery]

Agreed. It shouldn't be all that different from the finance structure airports and other crown corporations have in terms of borrowing to support their service expansion.

I don't think there are any airport crown corporations left. They are all non-share capital corporations, i.e. a kind of P3.

http://www.cacairports.ca/node/95

 

[nfitz]

It's very serious for VIA's executives. They're clearly worried about losing a huge chunk of their fiefdom.

Fiefdom?

The issue is that increasing levels of freight are making it even more difficult to run reliable passenger service. It's pretty evident.

 

[mdrejhon]

Fiefdom?

The issue is that increasing levels of freight are making it even more difficult to run reliable passenger service. It's pretty evident.

Milestones:
- Metrolinx bought most possible trackage between Kitchener to Oshawa, including recent 2014 purchase near Kitchener
- Lakeshore East & West increased to 30min in 2013, slowing VIA sometimes too. Soon, Kitchener corridor.
- A surprising 150km of somebody else's dedicated passenger rail that today VIA has to go over to go from Ottawa to London.
- Ontario High Speed Rail feasibility study recently under way. OUR province, potentially gping ahead without feds.
- Consider the scary (to VIA) concept of Metrolinx GO High Speed Rail towards London, before VIA does. VIA just slammed a flag in London, potentially as insurance.
- GO RER just officially got massive funding announcement, April 2015.
- Revitalization now makes GO concourses far bigger and nicer than VIA. York just opened, April 2015
- Rail Happy Ontario & Toronto

If I were VIA's CEO, I am now getting VERY concerned about being "left out" of the fun.

 

[nfitz]

If I were VIA's CEO, I am now getting VERY concerned about being "left out" of the fun.

GO doesn't compete with VIA. VIA would prefer that those not travelling the entire trip take GO.

Unless GO is going to start servicing Montreal or Ottawa, I just can't believe this.

GO isn't going to start servicing Montreal or Ottawa.

 

[crs1026]

VIA has had any number of very energetic and engaged executives who really wanted to build the business, and had any number of good ideas about how to do that.

The problem has been the degree to which the feds - elected and staff - have systemmatically undermined and punished good ideas. You can only get beaten down so many times before you either move on or the system wears you down and you realise you are swimming upstream.

- Paul

 

[rbt]

The issue is that increasing levels of freight are making it even more difficult to run reliable passenger service. It's pretty evident.

That's been true for decades.

What encouraged them to solve this issue now (without government support), rather than in 2006 when it became clear Porter was stealing all their higher paying passengers due to long travel times?

It's absolutely necessary work. It was necessary work a decade ago too when VIA was playing around with adding short stretches of passing track.


Also, the press release had a quote from the VIA CEO on how high speed rail is not useful for most passengers. That's pretty telling when the MTO is going to be starting their EA in a few months.

[Via Rail CEO Yves Desjardins-Siciliano] added if someone is travelling between 100 to 250 kilometres, in that short distance speed is not an advantage. “You will miss the points in between,” he said.

I'd love to see a trip breakdown for the triangle (Ottawa/Toronto and Montreal/Toronto trains). Kingston to Toronto is 260km; it would very much surprise me if a majority of their passenger revenue was on trips under 250km.

 

[rbt]

I don't think there are any airport crown corporations left. They are all non-share capital corporations, i.e. a kind of P3.

http://www.cacairports.ca/node/95

Yeah, technically not a crown corporation, just a crown creation and something the crown can take back at any time or change nearly any way they want (it's effective, so they won't). Also the fed, province, and local cities collectively and directly control a large %age of the board, 40% to 60%, and indirectly more as Director at Large, Law Society/Accounting/Engineering, and Board of Trade nominees are typically politically active with the political parties in power in some way (former ambassadors, campaign/office managers, or advisors).

So it's a not-for-profit created by the crown, controlled largely by the crown (with infighting as usual), on crown land, following crown regulations, and with crown backing the debt (a default would not occur in the event of a bankruptcy).


Airlines do not get to appoint reps on the board. They have a substantial say in what goes on at the airport simply because they are big customers (and the board typically doesn't have a clue), but ultimately the airlines have zero legal authority of airports.

 

[gweed123]

That ignores the legal and financial realities. I would not want to be an unsecured private creditor of VIA, because the federal government could dissolve the entity and I might lose almost everything in bankruptcy court. On the other hand, I could own the third track and rent it to VIA for its (profitable) use. But now I own an asset that is worthless without access to the rolling stock and train stations that I do not own. That is a recipe for disaster - for why would VIA pay me a fair rent for my track in the future when they know I have no one else to rent it to? This is what's known as the "hold up problem" in the finance business.

No, I'm not giving a few billion to a politically dodgy federal Crown corporation without an upfront long-term contract that says what they're going to pay me the next 30 years, and who owns what after that. In other words, I'm going to want a P3. Which is fine, really, Harper likes P3s. If this project really is financial viable, there is no reason it can't work that way.

If it ends up being a P3, I'd be fine with that. These improvements need to happen. As long as VIA still has control over prices and the timetable, I'm fine with a private consortium getting a chunk of the profits.

 

[mdrejhon]

GO doesn't compete with VIA. VIA would prefer that those not travelling the entire trip take GO.

Unless GO is going to start servicing Montreal or Ottawa, I just can't believe this.

GO isn't going to start servicing Montreal or Ottawa.

If you read my other posts, this has nothing to do with it. I never ever said Ottawa or Montreal, except in the context of VIA having to share Metrolinx highspeed rail when Ottawa visits London.

London-Kitchener-Toronto has been VIA territory in the past, and now GO is inadvertently competing with VIA on this segment for Kitchener, and possibly London later (GO HSR). GO has already unintentionally accidentally decimated VIA's Hamilton business, and VIA stopped staffing Aldershot shortly after Aldershot got frequent all day offpeak service. See photo below. 3 fully staffed GO booths, zero staffed VIA, since AD2W 365 days/year started. It has become an unstaffed VIA and VIA mothballed the escalators to their platform with plywood here at Aldershot which I use daily, VIA now requiring people to use stairs to their own platform.

GO DOES unintentionally accidentally compete with VIA in SOME cities and they are now affecting VIA's Kitchener business. Ontario operated high speed will affect VIA's business, and VIA just slammed a flag in London to make sure they are not out of the game.

VIA long lost Hamilton, photographic proof hereby included above, now VIA is losing Kitchener, and now they don't want to be left out when London becomes a bedroom community for Toronto with 70minute GO HSR commuter service.

 

[nfitz]

That's been true for decades.

No it hasn't. Freight reduced for many years. I don't think the current uptick goes back much more than a decade.

More to the point, it's in the last 3-4 years that on-time performance has particularly started to get worse.

Sure, they should have dealt with it earlier (and there's been many abortive attempts - this is likely another one).

But in terms of competing with GO - if VIA cared about that, would they have made the recent ticketing changes that explicitly were designed to discourage people from daily commuting? VIA doesn't give a crap about Kitchener to Toronto or Toronto to Oshawa service.

 

[mdrejhon]

Why Ontario will operate high-speed GO commuter service, London-Kitchener-Ontario
a.k.a. forcing VIA to go over Metrolinx-owned track to London
a.k.a. why VIA slammed a flag in London for their western Ontario hub

(For new readers not believing in GO HSR)
exhibit 1: Rail Happy Ontario [cue background sound of a football stadium full of cheerleeders]
exhibit 2: $13.5 billion Ontario-only GO expansion (GO RER), massively out-funding VIA Canada-wide
exhibit 3: Ontario High Speed Rail feasibility assessment currently under way
exhibit 4: Ontario Liberals have already talked about $10 fares for commuter high speed rail for frequent commuters
exhibit 5: Mostly commendable track record of actual shovels happening (ECLRT, UPX, Union Revitalization, Lakeshore AD2W 30-min, Georgetown Corridor), mostly guilty of delay and somewhat tolerable cost overrun, rather than cancellation, with (based on whole-picture) not too many broken promises except when forced by others (e.g. Ford).
exhibit 6: Since it rebranding, Metrolinx has grown gangbusters as the catchall for all Ontario-based rail services (UPX, ECLRT, GO, etc). Intra-Ontario HSR will be a Metrolinx commuter service, possibly as a subsequent 10-year megaplan GO RER II 2025-2035 when the initial GO RER buildout is mostly finished.
exhibit 7: London-Kitchener-Toronto becomes within a daily commute of each other (London only 70 minutes from Toronto), growing taxpayer base, especially with people permanently priced out of Toronto's housing market (even taking into account of a future 25% housing market correction). By 2035 opening date, twenty years of population expansion from now, Ontario potentially profits from HSR, with full farebox recovery and more taxpayers.

See? I am even willing to put money on this, at approximately 1-to-4 odds (25% chance Metrolinx high speed rail will be announced by end of 2020s, and built by end of 2030s). I think 1-to-2 odds, but I'm leaning on the safe side. We may have to survive a cycle through a few different goverments, but provided Ontario economy improves and they find unorthodox ways to fund things without bankrupting us (I don't like the sale of Hydro One, but I love the GO RER expansion enough that many people will think Liberals is the lesser poison during some future election cycle, as an example), continued 10-year GO megaprojects creates de-facto GO highspeed at far better-than-10% gambling chance. Many Ontarioians will become addicted to ION, ECLRT, UPX, GO RER, and if at least most of these are delivered eventually (e.g. GO RER by ~2029, after several year delays and a few relatively minor broken promises), and provided we end up being in better financial shape by then, then people are possibly going to eventually vote back in an Ontario government that begins shovels for HSR to London. And it may not even involve a single dollar of feds funding, and when announced, it may end up being a prize awarded to Metrolinx rather than VIA. Hello, GO high speed commuter trains.

This IS going to indirectly compete with VIA usage of the London-Kitchener-Toronto route, and VIA CEO knows all the above, very clearly. Does VIA CEO want to take the risk of being left out of all valuable Ontario rail west of Oshawa? Nope.

VIA has slammed a flag in London, I bet, partly because of all the above. This may help win fed funding (good for us) say in compatible high speed rail, such as co-funded high-speed-rail and guaranteed high-speed-corridor-sharing (VIA Windsor-QC intercity service and Metrolinx highspeed commuter London-Kitchener-Toronto, much like in Europe where Eurostar international highspeed sharing with France TGV domestic highspeed). Regardless of what happens, if high speed happen then there are very huge odds are Metrolinx high speed trains will run somewhere in the province before VIA high speed trains runs somewhere else in the province, much like TGV trains started running before Eurostar trains did (on TGV track). The next 20 years will be very interesting for Ontario rail watchers, this is only a beginning.

 

[rbt]

No it hasn't. Freight reduced for many years. I don't think the current uptick goes back much more than a decade.

The actual quantity of freight traffic on the line isn't overly significant (until very recently) but many restrictions impacting VIA have been in place since at least 2003 when I started using it regularaly.

I don't recall a Toronto/Montreal trip ever taking 3:30. A non-stop express should be closer to 3 hours with their current equipment.

In fact, I don't remember ever hitting the occasionally scheduled 3:50. I worked for a company in Montreal and live in Toronto so I made more than a few of these runs between 2003 and 2009. They scheduled 4 hours regularly but almost never actually hit it.

Yes, not hitting 5 hours is worse but not hitting 4 hours was unacceptably poor already.


I prefer to think they're worried about giving up their routes to Metrolinx/MTO rather than believing they found 4+ hours perfectly acceptable for that trip and not worth any significant effort to try and improve on it.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

If you read my other posts, this has nothing to do with it. I never ever said Ottawa or Montreal, except in the context of VIA having to share Metrolinx highspeed rail when Ottawa visits London.

London-Kitchener-Toronto has been VIA territory in the past, and now GO is inadvertently competing with VIA on this segment for Kitchener, and possibly London later (GO HSR). GO has already unintentionally accidentally decimated VIA's Hamilton business, and VIA stopped staffing Aldershot shortly after Aldershot got frequent all day offpeak service. See photo below. 3 fully staffed GO booths, zero staffed VIA, since AD2W 365 days/year started. It has become an unstaffed VIA and VIA mothballed the escalators to their platform with plywood here at Aldershot which I use daily, VIA now requiring people to use stairs to their own platform.

View attachment 45444

GO DOES unintentionally accidentally compete with VIA in SOME cities and they are now affecting VIA's Kitchener business. Ontario operated high speed will affect VIA's business, and VIA just slammed a flag in London to make sure they are not out of the game.

VIA long lost Hamilton, photographic proof hereby included above, now VIA is losing Kitchener, and now they don't want to be left out when London becomes a bedroom community for Toronto with 70minute GO HSR commuter service.

I highly doubt GO will be operating a HSR type service, if ONT EVER GETS HSR. GO is already hitting it's upper limit in terms of travel times on it's commuter services. Which probably partially explains why they have started looking at RER type services now, something that many have been demanding for at least 15 years.

Even if GO were to introduce 200km/hr service London would be quite a long shot to be served. Once you calculate in acceleration/deceleration + stopping at other stations on the line + slower portions of the track I imagine it would be well over a 90 minute ride. If you offer express from London, say with a stop in Brampton/Airport and Bloor, than you may as well leave that market to Via.