lenaitch
Senior Member
Maybe they could re-lay the Kingston & Pembroke and run doodlebugs for the tens of people who would use it.
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VIA Rail
- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
Urban Sky
Senior Member
The station for Kingston will be where it is at the moment:
The number of trains stopping there will be determined by whatever minimum number of departures the federal government contractually defines in the RFP documents…
The number of trains stopping there will be determined by whatever minimum number of departures the federal government contractually defines in the RFP documents…
nfitz
Superstar
With VIA out of the HFR business, would the RFP even cover non-HFR services like Kingston, Drummondville, and Brantford.
crs1026
Senior Member
The RFI documents made it clear that the proponent will operate both the new HxR and the legacy regional services.
- Paul
SaugeenJunction
Senior Member
The bidder who wins HFR will also take over all corridor services.
nfitz
Superstar
Interesting.
It would be interesting to see CP and CN as part of one of the consortiums, to do operations. Or part of the same consortium.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
Why would their shareholders want them to do this?
Northern Light
Superstar
Presumably, because it would enhance their ROI? (Return on Investment)
I'm not clear on what the potential ROI is here, but to the extent that there is any private bidder, clearly they would believe there is profit to be made.
The potential profit for a freight operator that can control every part of the schedule on those tracks not occupied by a new HFR service.......certainly has the potential to be interesting.
Would the numbers work? I have no clue, but I would argue the potential is there certainly.
One of the curiosities of our current world.........
The Class 1 carriers have long since divorced their former real estate arms; that expertise could be quite advantageous here.......but it would now have to be purchased from a third party.
roger1818
Active Member
While there isn't anything most of us didn't know in this video, Michael Downie's ( of DownieLive) way of presenting this makes it worth a watch.
LemonCondo
Active Member
Maybe DB could bid for operations and we could have GO and GOX (GO Express) or GOR (GO Regional) or something... GC? (Government of Canada) Have PRESTO on corridor services...
GO VIA? VIA GO?
I know it's diffrent levels of government but it would be cool to have it be a unified brand like DB or SBB. Any better suggestions welcome.
GO VIA? VIA GO?
I know it's diffrent levels of government but it would be cool to have it be a unified brand like DB or SBB. Any better suggestions welcome.
roger1818
Active Member
Better yet, call it EXO Express, since half of the routes will be based out of Montreal.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
Canadian Pacific used to be arguably the most vertically integrated company on this planet, which operated recruitment offices for prospective settlers in Europe, which would take a CP-owned steamship to emigrate to Canada, then ride a CP-owned train to colonize some land which CP would sell them and then produce agricultural products which would then get shipped by CP to the nearest market.
Nowadays, with negligible transaction costs and massive institutional investors, investors don‘t diversify by investing in diversified conpanies, but by holding diversified portfolios. Investors prefer to decide themselves to which industries they want to expose themselves by how much and consequently, the shareholders of former conglomerates like GE (and of course: CP) have long realized that bunching together related activities and splitting them off from unrelated activities increases overall market capitalization, as the collective market capitalization of the parts is higher than that of the conglomerate.
We can disagree on this, but I unfortunately don‘t see any reason to believe that the shareholders of CN and CP (which are characterized by relatively low exposure to government intervention and high exposure to macroeconomic business cycles) will see any passenger rail activities (which are characterized by high exposure to government intervention and relatively low exposure to the health of the national economic health) as anything else than a detrimental distraction from their company‘s core business.
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Northern Light
Superstar
So that we're clear, that is profoundly insulting; as a sophisticated investor, and someone with a professional relationship to some of the largest companies in the country, I assure you my knowledge of how capitalism works is just fine.
* I would like to thank @Urban Sky for rephrasing his post above; I'll simply leave this here so the thread doesn't read as too confused.
You are free to have that opinion; and indeed it may be correct. I commented on why a company might wish to consider it, because you expressed yourself in such a manner as to make someone else's conjecture seem outlandish, when it was not.
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Urban Sky
Senior Member
My sincere (though slightly confused) apologies, I really didn‘t want to offend or discredit you, nor did I think that your point (if I understood it correctly) was stupid or anything. It just seems to me that there is a very strong consensus in the freight industry that they want to have as little as possible to do with passenger rail and the attached government involvement.
Brightline (being owned by the same investor as their host railroad) really is the exception, but other than Florida East Coast, the host railroads go at extreme lengths to avoid interactions with passenger activities as much as possible. This is certainly regretable, but also part of the reason why we are much closer to achieve our carbon goals with freight operations than Europe…
PS: I‘ve tried to rephrase my post to make it sound more constructive and less personal, but let me know if there is still anything objectionable!
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roger1818
Active Member
To top it off, Brightline is no longer owned by the same investor as their host railroad, Florida East Coast Railway (FEC). Brightline is owned by Florida East Coast Industries (FECI), which is owned by Fortress Investment Group. According to Wikipedia, "Although Florida East Coast Railway at one time fell under the FECI umbrella, it is now a completely separate corporate entity owned by Grupo México's GMexico Transportes SAB de CV since 2017." Brightline started operating in January 2018.
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