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VIA Rail

reaperexpress said:
They proposed expanding commuter services to places such as Stratford and Niagara Falls in their 2016-2020 corporate plan.

Marked up by me to indicate which of the targets were achieved.
View attachment 507659
via_plan5-jpg.86891
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That corporate plan also proposed the acquisition of the line between Kitchener and London, which hasn't happened.
However, in the presentation given in SW Ontario, we see even more ambition to meet regional demand...
Sarnia_Presentation_FINAL_Page_25.jpg
Sarnia_Presentation_FINAL_Page_26.jpg

Not getting the CN crossings to work with the RDCs put paid to these plans.
 
TerryJohnson said:
This: https://www.systra.com/canada/proje...l-on-dorval-intermodal-station-project-22025/
Transport Action has asked VIA Rail (this isn't a VIA-HFR project) for a briefing on project progress.

However, the original mandate of the JPO was:

So what part of that mandate did the JPO accomplish? I suspect rather less than $71M worth.
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Thanks for the info!

From the sounds of it, all we're going to get for half a billion dollars is some more studies and consultation.

It boggles the mind when you compare it to projects which were able to design and build new transportation infrastructure for less than $40M, like the York University Busway (6 km BRT line for $37 Million in 2009), or the original O-Train Trillium line (8 km commuter rail line for $21 Million in 2001). Obviously HFR is more complicated than either of these, but you'd think they could at least fit some track and station improvements in that size of a budget.
 
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TerryJohnson said:
That corporate plan also proposed the acquisition of the line between Kitchener and London, which hasn't happened.
However, in the presentation given in SW Ontario, we see even more ambition to meet regional demand...
View attachment 507719View attachment 507714
Not getting the CN crossings to work with the RDCs put paid to these plans.
Click to expand...
Since 2015 when that plan was written Via seems to have done a full 180 when it comes to regional/commuter trips. Not only have they not expanded them as envisioned, but they cancelled all of the commuter trips which did exist and eliminated the Via commuter passes.

As we know, the London-Brantford-Toronto commuter trip is returning in a month, but there is still no sign of the Kingston-Belleville-Toronto commuter service which existed prior to the pandemic.

It remains to be seen how well the London commuter service will be now that commuter passes are no longer available. On the other hand, demand for long-distance commuting is presumably increasing as people are now more willing to live further from their workplaces when they only need to go in to the office a couple days per week.

As such it seems more relevant nowadays to push for Metrolinx to purchase the Kitchener - London railway, using the $160M that the Ford government promised for the corridor.
Screenshot 2023-09-19 at 17.14.46.png
 
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reaperexpress said:
From the sounds of it, all we're going to get for half a billion dollars is some more studies and consultation.
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Calm down, little of the $500m have been spent yet.

Budget 2022 provided $396.8 million over two years (fiscal years 2022-23 and 2023-24)to TC and INFC for the HFR project. For fiscal year 2023-24, TC transferred $43.67million of this amount to VIA HFR to establish the corporation and advance its objectives. VIA HFR’s initial budget of $43.67 million for fiscal year 2023-24 will be used for a range of start-up activities. Planned expenditures focus on operationalizing VIA HFR; financing the Technical Office to undertake the activities identified in the Corporate Plan; and the appointment and recruitment of directors, officers, and a small corporate team to support the governance and oversight of the corporation’s operations
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VIA HFR is budget to spend $44m this fiscal year. $1.74m spent for the first 3 months ending June 30th.
 
chrisw said:
Calm down, little of the $500m have been spent yet.


VIA HFR is budget to spend $44m this fiscal year. $1.74m spent for the first 3 months ending June 30th.
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VIA Rail will be spending that money on Dorval station and fixing the bottleneck between Turcot and the Victoria Bridge.

VIA-HFR will be spending a bit more itself this fall as field studies get underway, and the RFP bid teams will each get a stipend - that's fairly common with big procurements, and all three sets of ideas then become the property of Canada, so if team A has a feasible solution for Montreal-Laval, but B has a better overall plan, they can take the best of each. Of course, there was already a well costed and buildable project in 2018, and the end result may be 10% "better" but at what cost in dollars and a decade of delay, not to mention the utter foolishness of outsourcing rather than having the revenues go back to VIA to fund other services.
 
roger1818 said:
^Just curious how he would have determined that from the departure board?
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Just like a lowercaps „r“ behind the train number stands for a Renaissance trainset, a „v“ seems to stand for Venture trainsets.

Wikipedia has a 2010 picture of the departure board which shows the „r“ for Renaissance trains:

New_board_Central_Station_Montreal_2010.jpg
 
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Sorry for being off topic in a Toronto forum. I've got a question about VIA rights of way/GO trains in Ottawa and this forum looks like it might be able to help with an answer.

Is there any possibility of Ottawa starting a shuttle between the main Ottawa VIA station and the Fallowfield Station?
The city has just announced that the transit budget is being cut and that we're not going to get the LRT extension to Barrhaven because they can't afford it. Could they instead just run a simple shuttle between the two Ottawa stations? This wouldn't be as good, but it would be a cheap way of improving transit downtown. I'm thinking something like the Trillium line but even cheaper because you don't even need to built stations or passing lanes. It doesn't seem too hard to schedule a 30 minute service around the VIA departures to Toronto/Montreal, so the only investment needed would be another 2 trains like the ones already running on the Trillium Line.

Is this even legally possible? Who would be responsible, could the city do this, or would it have to be GO/Metrolinx or even the provincial/federal governments?
 
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