VIA Rail

[Urban Sky]

Why do people keep assuming that the CP mainline would be the only option? Be it strawman arguments or just poor short term memory, it gets tiring when people keep bringing up fake arguments to prove their point.

If you allow me to guess: maybe because that’s the only alignment which has been proposed by anyone in this thread so far, yourself included? So, if you can think of a different one, please provide a map and start looking for a “fair comparison” anywhere else in the world...

 

[kEiThZ]

Why do people keep assuming that the CP mainline would be the only option?

Whatever the option, bypassing Ottawa has a substantially narrow business case. Well past the point of hourly service and HSR.

We're discussing marginal return when we're in bypass territory. And let's say we're at the point where Toronto-Montreal is 3.5 hrs with HSR. At that point, the gains on saving 10-15 mins are so minimal, it's probably not worth the increased cost of another corridor and reduction in overall frequencies.

A lot of the old plans (like ViaFast) were made when Ottawa was substantially smaller than it is today. And I suspect was relatively less important to VIA than Montreal. This is not the case today. And won't be the case going forward.

 

[roger1818]

I'm suggesting this won't be enough. Because at that point, the comparison will be against half hourly service on the whole route. And 30 min headways would be an absolute gamechanger. No more booking tickets on Tuesdays. Tap your Presto, Opus or credit card and board, 10 mins after you show up at the station. Traveling from Ottawa or Montreal to Toronto will be no different than taking a GO train from Union to Kitchener at that point. Weighing that kind of service against saving a few minutes for a subset of riders will not work well for that subset. The dead time saved for all passengers outweighs the trip time savings for a subset of passengers.

I am not convinced that an upgrade from hourly service to 30 minute service is the "gamechanger" you are implying. The law of diminishing returns kicks in at some point.

Presto, Opus or credit card and tap and board could be done without need for half hourly service. VIA already has various rail passes which are competitive with the Tuesday rates for frequent travelers.

Besides, if a last minute, peak period ticket from "Ottawa or Montreal to Toronto" is regularly as cheap as a "GO train from Union to Kitchener" (which is 1/4 the distance), that is a sign that HFR is failing miserably. Prices are based on demand and if HFR is successful, peak period trains will frequently sell out. As a result, the last tickets will be not only be expensive but they may not always be available on the day of departure during peak periods.

Keep in mind, too, the bypass doesn't just impact Ottawa-Toronto. It also reduces frequencies on Ottawa-Montreal, a stretch that would see several towns become notable exurbs to both metros as service increases.

That is why I said, "Montreal-Toronto, Montreal-Ottawa and Ottawa-Toronto."

If there's HSR funding, a bypass becomes even less important because the time savings from the bypass would be even lower, while the capital and operating costs go up. VIA would have to maintain the HSR bypass and the HSR Ottawa-Montreal mainline. All to save 10-15 mins? Not going to happen.

As I said before, it isn't the shorter distance but the faster speed from not having to slow down and stop in Ottawa. And if you think that an HSR train could wiz through Ottawa Station at 300km without slowing down, I don't know what to say. Straightening out track in an urban setting is not easy.

But if we're at the point that we have HSR trains leaving Union in Toronto every 30 mins and demand is still growing such that they need to increase frequencies, a bypass might start looking appealing. But that is realistically outside of any of our lifetimes here. And who knows what kind of technology will be there at that point.

Maybe. Demand might grow faster than you think.

 

[kEiThZ]

@Urban Sky has brought this up before and I'll remind again that frequency matters a lot. All those European and Asian HSR lines are frequent. That's what makes them so great. If the choice is saving 10-15 mins on Toronto-Montreal or doubling frequency on Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal, it's the rare analysis that would show the former yielding higher ridership over the latter.

 

[Urban Sky]

I am not convinced that an upgrade from hourly service to 30 minute service is the "gamechanger" you are implying. The law of diminishing returns kicks in at some point.

Which part of my previous post (see below) did you not understand?

[...]

This is complete nonsense: the GJT model shows that a decrease in headway from 60 to 30 is equivalent to a reduction of travel time by 13 minutes (i.e. the perceived penalty decreases from 39 to 26 minutes). Therefore, having that second hourly train stop in Ottawa has the same effect to demand for Ottawa-Montreal and Ottawa-Toronto than upgrading the lines to shave off 13 minutes on both sides of Ottawa. This extra demand might not matter for stations like Kingston or Peterborough, but in the case of Ottawa, it would be huge...

I'm always happy to lay down why bypassing Ottawa would be extremely wasteful in terms of capital and operating costs, but I do start to wonder what still remains to be explained...

Increasing frequency is the by-far most cost-effective way to decrease perceived travel times...

 

[kEiThZ]

I am not convinced that an upgrade from hourly service to 30 minute service is the "gamechanger" you are implying. The law of diminishing returns kicks in at some point.

Diminishing returns sure. But hourly service is still far from that point. And again we're talking about relative return. A bypass would have to yield more ridership than a frequency increase. And that's a tall order for the kinds of savings that we're talking about.

Also, I don't get why you think going to 30 min headways isn't notable. The airlines do this at peak on the Corridor. There's clearly a demand for it. And it clearly makes a difference. Would you rather wait half an hour or an hour for the next train?

Presto, Opus or credit card and tap and board could be done without need for half hourly service.

Besides, if a last minute, peak period ticket from "Ottawa or Montreal to Toronto" is regularly as cheap as a "GO train from Union to Kitchener"

My point here was not the fare medium or that fares would be as low as GO (never said that) but rather that it's possible to have a very low friction service concept that is as easy to use as a GO or Exo train today. And this is what a lot of European intercity rail service is actually like. Especially non-HSR services.

Maybe. Demand might grow faster than you think.

Demand on Toronto-Montreal would have to grow faster than the rest of the line to justify a bypass. I don't see much probability of that. But sure, if that happens, I'm sure a bypass will be considered.

 

[kEiThZ]

Increasing frequency is the by-far most cost-effective way to decrease perceived travel times...

Yep. And looking at the GJT, I would argue that half hourly service is the absolute minimum before any kind of service splitting can be considered. And that's just on the diminishing returns on the perceived travel time. We're not even looking at the business case for a whole other corridor, to be built to HSR standards for 1 train per hour.

Canadian railfans are a weird breed. We don't even have HFR yet and people are dreaming of split services at frequencies lower than what Renfe, Deutsche Bahn and JR Central would run at. I imagine if I told the Japanese that the Tokaido Shinkansen should skip Nagoya to save 10-15 mins between Tokyo and Osaka, they'd find it pretty funny. And they run those trains every 15-20 mins at peak and every 30 mins off-peak.

 

[nfitz]

And yet we are skipping Kingston to save a few minutes ... despite having a bigger demand to Toronto than Quebec City to Ottawa.

 

[kEiThZ]

And yet we are skipping Kingston to save a few minutes ... despite having a bigger demand to Toronto than Quebec City to Ottawa.

How is Kingston being "skipped" when it gets its own hub and originating service to Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal?

 

[Urban Sky]

And yet we are skipping Kingston to save a few minutes ... despite having a bigger demand to Toronto than Quebec City to Ottawa.

Currently (i.e. pre-CoVid), only trains 68 and 646 skip the stop in Kingston.

As for Quebec City to Ottawa, you don’t seem to grasp the difference between a plane making point-to-point connections and a train serving a string of stops: Therefore, what matters is the total demand on the QBEC-MTRL and MTRL-OTTW segments, i.e. the sum of the demands for any O-D pairs using these segments, of which QBEC-OTTW is just a small subset...

 

[kEiThZ]

As for Quebec City to Ottawa

And brings up "skipping" Kingston while advocating for bypassing a metro that is 8x the size, the 6th largest metro in the country, and the national capital, on a route between the largest and second largest metros. Some bizarre logic.

 

[nfitz]

And brings up "skipping" Kingston while advocating for bypassing a metro that is 8x the size, the 6th largest metro in the country, and the national capital, on a route between the largest and second largest metros. Some bizarre logic.

Don't twist my words. I've advocated that the current service to Ottawa be increased - running through Kingston.

Are you claiming there won't be service cuts to the Toronto-Kingston service if they build HFR from Toronto to Montreal through Ottawa? Based on what I've seen elsewhere, I'd expect less trains, and the runs that survive are going to be stopping services, rather than expresses.

 

[kEiThZ]

I'd expect less trains, and the runs that survive are going to be stopping services, rather than expresses.

And? Kingston is so precious they have to throw Trenton and Port Hope under the bus? Interesting logic. So basically, the entire Corridor East service concept should be based around the existing schedule in Kingston? Do you own real estate in Kingston?

Don't twist my words. I've advocated that the current service to Ottawa be increased - running through Kingston.

What was the discussion on the Winchester sub about? How do you increase service to Ottawa while bypassing it?

 

[MisterF]

Don't twist my words. I've advocated that the current service to Ottawa be increased - running through Kingston.

How would this address the issue of trains being constantly late because of CN, even on padded schedules? Or Via not being able to schedule trains when they want because they don't control the tracks? How would it reduce travel times to Ottawa the way that HFR will?

 

[kEiThZ]

It's incredible that people think rail service between the first, second and sixth largest metros in the country should be held hostage by the 25th largest metro in the country. This is why nothing ever gets built in this country.

I'm happy that Kingston is getting a hub. I'm happy that they are getting service that is tailored to them. Insisting that Toronto-Ottawa traffic take a longer and slower route and have frequencies split from Toronto-Montreal, just to serve Kingston? This is the kind of aggressive ignorance that prevents progress in this country.