VIA Rail

[ec_traindriver]

Alas, Canada is not a socialist economy that can't afford modern roads and gives no other option but to send stuff by freight both by practical reasoning and by planned-economy reasoning

How's russia's freight industry doing in the last 30 years now that it has to be actually productive and cost-competitive, especially since Russia now has a some-what modern road network?

I expected the "Canada is not a socialist country" comment to be posted earlier, though. Jokes apart, there's some truth in your remarks.

The last available data (Y2019) put Russia second to China and ahead of the US in terms of volume of rail freight transport (2 617 039,00 million tonne/km), which isn't surprising considering the huge efforts undertaken by Russian Railways to expedite freight trains through the Trans-Siberian railway. The entire 9298 km between Moscow and Vladivostock is a double-track line (maximum speed of 140 km/h) and has been entirely electrified since 1998. Freight trains take approximately 7 days to cross the entire route, which is almost half the time CN takes to take a container from Vancouver to Montréal (302 hours, or 12 days and 14 hours). In comparison, the transit time between China and Germany by rail is 11-to-15 days.

So, Russian Railways makes freight trains cover almost twice the distance in almost half the time, with faster, shorter, but all-electric trains.

That isn't to say that the "Planned economy" is better than the "Free market economy", it just means that with some government involvement and infrastructure investment, maybe the Canadian railway infrastructure would be better equipped to handle both freight and passenger trains with fewer issues dictated by private corporations that are willing to gnaw away pieces of their own rail infrastructure (which, in the case of CN was actually built with government money) in order to gain a penny.

 

[kEiThZ]

I and not sure why Russia is relevant here. It's a massive country. In population and geography. Moscow to Vladivostok is ~80% longer than Los Angeles to Boston. Russia should have higher output than the US on raw tonne-km. What would be much more interesting is looking at the modal share of freight in Russia vs the US. All that said, what does any of this have to do with VIA Rail or even passenger rail in Canada?

 

[ec_traindriver]

I and not sure why Russia is relevant here. It's a massive country. In population and geography. They should have higher output than the US on raw tonne-km. What would be much more interesting is looking at the modal share of freight in Russia vs the US. All that said, what does any of this have to do with VIA Rail or even passenger rail in Canada?

I took it as a counter-example to disprove a claim.

Also, I fail to understand why Russia should have a higher output than the US on a raw tonne-km basis considering that all the factors play against them. On the contrary, one would expect the US to far outperform Russia, given the geographical and economical circumstances.

The Russian railway system has a modal share of 85% for freight, excluding pipelines, and 27% for passengers.

 

[smallspy]

Freight trains take approximately 7 days to cross the entire route, which is almost half the time CN takes to take a container from Vancouver to Montréal (302 hours, or 12 days and 14 hours). In comparison, the transit time between China and Germany by rail is 11-to-15 days.

While I'm not here to argue about your other points, your comment about the time it takes CN to move a container is incorrect.

CN regularly gets containers from Vancouver to Toronto faster than the Canadian. And it's only another 8 hours more to get that same container to Montreal.

Dan

 

[Bordercollie]

While I'm not here to argue about your other points, your comment about the time it takes CN to move a container is incorrect.

CN regularly gets containers from Vancouver to Toronto faster than the Canadian. And it's only another 8 hours more to get that same container to Montreal.

Dan

So if they would allow the Canadian to run faster, it could be possible?

Why not take venture cars and create a bigger bagged door for the can car without seats? Easy fix.

The problem with DMU'S is that they need to be inspected and treated like a locomotive, which requires more maintenance and inspections.

 

[ec_traindriver]

While I'm not here to argue about your other points, your comment about the time it takes CN to move a container is incorrect.

CN regularly gets containers from Vancouver to Toronto faster than the Canadian. And it's only another 8 hours more to get that same container to Montreal.

Dan

You can check the transit times yourself here. Type Montreal and Vancouver as endpoints and you'll see that transit times for a container moving from Vancouver, BC to Montréal, QC ranges between 269 (11d5h) and 302 (12d14h) hours. It's a CN calculator that you can find on their website, so it's their published timetable, not something I'm making up to prove my point.

 

[Urban Sky]

You can check the transit times yourself here. Type Montreal and Vancouver as endpoints and you'll see that transit times for a container moving from Vancouver, BC to Montréal, QC ranges between 269 (11d5h) and 302 (12d14h) hours. It's a CN calculator that you can find on their website, so it's their published timetable, not something I'm making up to prove my point.

Maybe the shipping time they are able to achieve for a preferred customer (especially those who book entire trains) is not the same as what they promise a random prospective customer using their online shipping time calculation tool (especially those who only ship a single car load)?

 

[ec_traindriver]

Maybe the shipping time they are able to achieve for a preferred customer (especially those who book entire trains) is not the same as what they promise a random prospective customer using their online shipping time calculation tool (especially those who only ship a single car load?

You may be right, and I have no way to otherwise prove my claims.

 

[kEiThZ]

Maybe the shipping time they are able to achieve for a preferred customer (especially those who book entire trains) is not the same as what they promise a random prospective customer using their online shipping time calculation tool (especially those who only ship a single car load?

Moreover, this argument on speed for freight is ignorant. North American freight has designed their network to ship at a speed that their customers are willing to pay for. And that's fine.

Also, not sure what exactly this has to do with VIA again. Hope we can get back to talking about passenger rail.

 

[smallspy]

You can check the transit times yourself here. Type Montreal and Vancouver as endpoints and you'll see that transit times for a container moving from Vancouver, BC to Montréal, QC ranges between 269 (11d5h) and 302 (12d14h) hours. It's a CN calculator that you can find on their website, so it's their published timetable, not something I'm making up to prove my point.

The times on that site are if you are using CN as a broker, and include the times for them to handle stuffing/destuffing as well as local pick-up/delivery. The transit time is quite a bit longer than the actual train trip because of that.

The company I work for currently has 4 shipments about to be shipped from the west coast, and had another shipped in the past 2 weeks, and so I see the times on a regular and ongoing basis.

Dan

 

[roger1818]

Also, given that all of the tracks and highways into Vancouver were recently washed out, I suspect CN is a little behind schedule at the moment.

 

[Frank_Lee]

I think it's not so clear that North American freight railways are superior to Russian ones as this pile on suggests. Yes, private sector management is generally far more efficient than state stewardship. However, it's reasonable to argue that the short term mindset of managers (whose tenure is short compared to the lifetime of the enterprises they operate) has consequences in the railroad domain just as it does in many other industries. It's quite common to see excessive attention paid to explicit costs (e.g. maintenance, cost of new infrastructure) as opposed to implicit or intangible ones (e.g. lost market share) in ways that are detrimental to the business. It seems pretty clear that North American railroads also aren't interested in the kinds of risk taking that might really transform their business---e.g. electrification, tunneling under the rockies, etc. It may well be that all of these ideas have been thoroughly costed out and investigated but it surprises me a great deal that none of the CEOs of the class one railroads talks about much beyond efficiency and intermodal (unless I'm greatly mistaken). Hunter Harrison was a brilliant guy, but that doesn't mean his way of running a railroad is the only way to make it immensely profitable.

 

[Urban Sky]

I would like to treat the comment by @Frank_Lee as closing remarks for this side discussion of the relative performance of the North American and Russian freight rail networks and in reference to the repeated pleads of @kEiThZ to ask everyone who wants to continue this discussion to respond in the "General Railway Discussions" thread:

General railway discussions

Mexican regulatory agencies green-light proposed CP-KCS merger

urbantoronto.ca

 

[Bordercollie]

I would like to treat the comment by @Frank_Lee as closing remarks for this side discussion of the relative performance of the North American and Russian freight rail networks and in reference to the repeated pleads of @kEiThZ to ask everyone who wants to continue this discussion to respond in the "General Railway Discussions" thread:

General railway discussions

Mexican regulatory agencies green-light proposed CP-KCS merger

urbantoronto.ca

Does anyone know if baggage car service will return to the corridor?

 

[sacred]

Was the HFR RFP put out?