VIA Rail

[Urban Sky]

again, you can talk all you want about km per capita and years after initial opening, but it doesn't change the fact that those metrics are crap. What matters isn't how many km per capita some random nation has, what matters is whether the project makes sense in the corridor it is in. Fankly, I couldn't give a rats a** about how many km per capita Spain or Japan have, what I care about is what is the best and most realistic option for rail travel in the Corridor. How the hell does the feasability of HSR from Toronto to Montreal relate to how many people live in freaking Vancouver or Calgary? It doesn't, at all.

I'm talking about financeability (i.e. the likelihood that the project will receive the funding it needs to get started and completed within any reasonable time frame), not the economic viability (i.e. the degree to which the ticket revenues and economic benefits can outweigh the construction and operating costs). This is the answer to your entire rant...

 

[mdrejhon]

One REALLY important element is transit at the train stations themselves.
Toronto and Montreal is good, but Kingston currently isn't.
Ottawa, Kitchener-Waterloo and soon London, will all have good LRT/RT connections.

Due to lack of public transit at any stations between Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal, I do think that Toronto-Kitchener-Pearson(WoodbineGO)-London will be the first HSR segment that is cost-effective.

It's the cheapest plus will have a very large commuter catchment, as you need to capture travellers and commuters to make HSR viable.

Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal time will come at some point (perhaps as a Phase 2 after HFR deployment), but I think economically, Toronto-Kitchener-London will be more practical being shorter distances & better-connected intermediate cities within commuter distances.

 

[reaperexpress]

One REALLY important element is transit at the train stations themselves.
Toronto and Montreal is good, but Kingston currently isn't.
Ottawa, Kitchener-Waterloo and soon London, will all have good LRT/RT connections.

Due to lack of public transit at any stations between Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal, I do think that Toronto-Kitchener-Pearson(WoodbineGO)-London will be the first HSR segment that is cost-effective.

It's the cheapest plus will have a very large commuter catchment, as you need to capture travellers and commuters to make HSR viable.

Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal time will come at some point (perhaps as a Phase 2 after HFR deployment), but I think economically, Toronto-Kitchener-London will be more practical being shorter distances & better-connected intermediate cities within commuter distances.

Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal and Toronto-Kitchener-London are such different corridors that it barely makes sense to compare them.
TOM has 3 big cities hundreds of kilometres apart with little in between, which makes speed the key factor.
TKL has a many closely-spaced medium-sized cities, which makes frequency and flexibility the key factor.

Whether or not intermediate stations have good connections is besides the point for TOM, because the base ridership the 3 core cities, all of which have excellent transit connections.

TKL's closely spaced mean that the demand is more suited for regional rail service, which is nothing like the cheapened HSR line proposed for TOM. And given that the trips are so much shorter in TKL (same-day round trips), I'd argue they shouldn't even be operated by the same agency. Obviously VIA is best suited for the 400km+ trips common in the TOM corridor, with reserved seats and many amenities. But for the comparatively short trips in the 185km TKL corridor, GO's fixed-fare system makes it the obvious candidate. VIA's fare system is unattractive for short trips because you need to book a specific departure time weeks in advance to get affordable prices. So even if there was frequent service, passengers wouldn't benefit much from it, because they're locked to a specific trip. On the other hand with GO's fare system, frequent service would allow people to decide in real-time when they'd like to travel, based on how their day is going. That flexibility is key to making rail a competitive alternative to driving.

 

[mdrejhon]

I realize there's a bit of apples-versus-oranges, although being subsections of an eventual (sometime during this century) Windsor-to-Quebec route. So when HSR happens, it likely will be born for very different reasons on these two separate sections (TKL and TOM) and, gradually, be subsections of a longer HSR network.

I agree about different agencies. One possible scenario is Metrolinx operating TKL either as high speed GO, or via a new agency. And VIA operating TOM. And where viable, VIA would also operate the TOM trains onto TKL. Eurostar and TGV have different markets in Europe, yet share various subsets/overlaps of high speed lines.

Though first, Metrolinx needs to establish RER towards Kitchener, and VIA needs to establish HFR on TOM. And both needs to be successful before we implement HSR in either.

 

[reaperexpress]

I realize there's a bit of apples-versus-oranges, although being subsections of an eventual (sometime during this century) Windsor-to-Quebec route.

Indeed TKL could become part of a longer HSR network. But rather than Windsor-Quebec, the more promising route would be Chicago-Toronto. Without the major population centres of Chicago and Detroit, I don't think there would be enough long-distance ridership to support high-speed infrastructure west of Toronto. The Toronto-London route via Kitchener has the advantage that it will likely get electrified long before the route via Brantford, and with the 407 bypass, could become fully owned by passenger rail companies.

West of Toronto fantasy track ownership map:

Red = CP
Blue = CN
Green = GO
Yellow = VIA (high speed tracks)

 

[Euphoria]

Okay, so we need additional financing for HSR trains and VIA to go electrical, let alone all the track upgrades which everyone here seems to agree could be completed incrementally over time. I think that when government considers the value of this investment, they need to think about big picture productivity and national unity gains made possible by the more efficient flow of people, ideas, and culture between the dynamic centres.

There are obviously synergies and opportunities when Toronto and K-W can better access the tech sectors and talent of both cities. What would it mean to Torontonians if they could be in Montreal affordably in less than three hours? What would it mean to have fast access to Ottawa? We're really talking about access to markets, markets that matter in Canada. Private investors might be attracted to these opportunities as well, and the potential of profit derived from increased ridership.

HSR, if made affordable to riders, really is a game changer in terms of lifestyle and culture for the better. It makes the cities that have it more liveable and attractive.

 

[crs1026]

What incentive, however, should CN have to provide CP with the advantage of overcoming the shortcomings of its single-tracked Belleville subdivision if they already enjoy the advantages of their entirely multiple-tracked Kingston subdivision?

Reclaiming unneeded double track is Railroading 101 level business strategy. At low train frequency, double track is a luxury whose capital cost far exceeds any operational gain. If VIA disappeared, CN could remove two-thirds of the second track without affecting operations on that line. The economics of doing so are deafening. Every market analyst would be on their case if they didn't.

Hypothetically, if VIA built a totally new line, and CN downsized, the economics would still argue for the two railways doubling up, but more likely through directional running. The railways already know how to equalise the costs and gains of that type of arrangement.

Moving to a joint line has the risk to be a more win-lose proposition. The capital freed up might not be sufficient incentive to the railways to meet in the middle of their own accord.

What HFR brings to the table is the potential for a larger pot. The negotiation could still have risks, but the incentive to pursue a deal is that much greater. And, the pot needed is less than what VIA would spend to build its own line on its own ROW. So it is win-win-win.

All these issues are valid and serious, but pale in comparison to having to build any greenfield segments (especially in such difficult areas as with the Gananoque bypass between Kingston and Smith Falls)...

Meh, it's not that long a stretch. Railroads are not that hard to build in open terrain, even through Canadian Shield. A few swamps, yes, and some rock blasting/drilling. Precious few people, and most of it is not prime cottage country. The biggest unknown is what mitigation to natural impacts is required. Considering the amount of support for twinning Highway 7 all the way from Tweed to Ottawa - a much more expensive proposition - the rail option ought to be a much easier sell.

- Paul

 

[1overcosc]

One REALLY important element is transit at the train stations themselves.
Toronto and Montreal is good, but Kingston currently isn't.
Ottawa, Kitchener-Waterloo and soon London, will all have good LRT/RT connections.

This is a problem that will require relocating Kingston station.

The train station in Kingston is in a bad location. There's really no way for Kingston Transit to effectively serve it. The train station is badly set back from nearby roadways meaning any bus route going there has to either waste a huge amount of time double backing into it, or be a bus route designed solely for train station traffic.

If VIA moved the station a few hundred metres to the west, it would be directly underneath Princess Street which would automatically give the train station 6-8 buses per hour within a few years. Alternatively, it could be moved a few kms to the east to be at Division St; that would place it at the crossroads of a bunch of transit routes.

Kingston has made major efforts to improve its transit service in the past few years. Seriously. They've introduced an express bus network, hiked up frequencies, and provided service in all time periods to all places (like many other small cities, many routes used to not run evenings and Sundays). Ridership is up 30% in the past 3 years alone. VIA just needs to play ball.

 

[MisterF]

@MisterF is correct.

I was surprised when I found out how close the densities were.

Southern Ontario: 86/km2
Spain: 92/km2
France: 116/km2

And I'll be if you re-adjust for the high population of Paris, the rest of France looks even more like Southern Ontario. Germany is an anomaly. Even in Europe.

Clearly, the context is there to at least start. And I think Toronto-Montreal via Ottawa is around 600km or so. The only question is how to phase this. For example, I could actually see economic validity in building Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec City first. Then working on Toronto-Ottawa. Cheaper and possibly higher return from commuter traffic.

Yup, and that includes Parry Sound and Muskoka districts, which have been in and out of the official definition of southern Ontario. Exclude them and the number goes up to 95/km2 in the last census. Plus our population is growing faster than both France and Spain.

As I already said two posts back: Population size is an inappropriate measure for comparing the network lengths of road or rail infrastructure, but it definitely influences the pace at which that infrastructure can be built, especially for highly capital-intensive mega-projects like HSR. For instance, the California HSR is expected to cost (at least) $68 billion, which represents only 0.4% of US GDP, but 3.8% of Canadian GDP. Similarly, the three options for implementing real HSR on the US Northeast Corridor are expected to cost between $64 and $308, which represents between 0.4% and 1.8% of US GDP, but 3.6%-17.3% of Canadian GDP, while the $21.3 billion estimated construction costs for the E-300 Q-W scenario in the Ecotrain study translate to 1.2% of Canadian GDP, but only 0.12% of US GDP. Does anyone here seriously want to make the argument that a Canadian project with the capital cost of a few billion $$$ is as easy to finance through public budgets as an equally expensive project would be in the US...?

I'm not sure why you're bringing up the United States, and specifically their two most densely populated corridors. The US has 9 times our population, which means it has 9 times as many potential rail corridors as we do. If we have a handful of routes, they have dozens. So no, it's no more difficult to upgrade the Toronto-Montreal route than it would be to upgrade any one of the many comparable corridors in the States.

I'm afraid that Spain and France are the anomalies, while among the 11 European countries with dedicated HSR infrastructure, only Switzerland and Italy are closer to the average density of these 11 countries than Germany:
View attachment 70249

No, they're not anomalies, they're well within the range of densities where high speed rail is feasible. France was the first European nation with high speed rail and Spain has the densest network by population. Those two countries are perfectly valid evidence that HSR can work in areas less densely populated than Germany and Japan.

Of course, if we're talking about Via's high frequency rail plan, then we can also look at parts of the world that are much less densely populated and already have that type of service.

 

[TOareaFan]

It's the cheapest plus will have a very large commuter catchment, as you need to capture travellers and commuters to make HSR viable.

That's funny, when Glenn Murray first floated out his back of the envelope HSR idea for KW and a thread popped up about it....every time I expressed dismay that it was going to bypass a city of 600k (that would likely be close to 750k before the HSR opened) the most common answer i got was "HSR is not for commuters".

 

[MisterF]

^I don't know who was saying that HSR is not for commuters but they're wrong. Commuters are a big part of HSR ridership. I assume that you're talking about Hamilton? Seeing as the primary purpose of the province's HSR plan is to improve the connections between Toronto, Pearson, and the Kitchener-Waterloo tech sector, service to Hamilton is a bit of a red herring.

 

[TOareaFan]

^Hamilton will never be 750k people....Brampton will.

 

[nfitz]

^Hamilton will never be 750k people....Brampton will.

The Hamilton census metropolitan area was 693,000 in 2006 and 721,000 in 2011. I'm not sure why it would never hit 750,000.

 

[TOareaFan]

The Hamilton census metropolitan area was 693,000 in 2006 and 721,000 in 2011. I'm not sure why it would never hit 750,000.

I was talking city populations.

 

[nfitz]

I was talking city populations.

Because there's a sign at the train station that those who live in Burlington can't use it ... oh wait, the main station for Hamilton on the old CN line from Toronto to Brantford is in Burlington ...