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VIA Rail

crs1026 said:
It also limits marketability, imho. Cabins for 2 seem to sell out first on the Canadian. The designs visible in that tweet would not be attractive to couples.
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To be fair: the presentation slide says „Couchette“, whereas the equivalent to cabins would be „Sleepers“, so hopefully there is a different design for those (and I‘m not aware of any sleeper designs anywhere on this planet which are arranged along both sides of the corridor)…
crs1026 said:
I wonder how easy it would be to get a copy of that presentation.

- Paul
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My best guess would be: $5 plus an Email to ATIP@viarail.ca…

chrisw said:
One benefit of increased frequency is that tourists could plan more stopovers. Currently you'd need to plan for a 3 night or 4 night stopover to visit some town/city along the route.
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I‘m not sure how much tourists care about cities like Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Edmonton, especially international ones. Certainly not enough to increase service frequency by 250% to daily (and operating costs by a similar margin)…
 
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Urban Sky said:
To be fair: the presentation slide says „Couchette“, whereas the equivalent to cabins would be „Sleepers“, so hopefully there is a different design for those (and I‘m not aware of any sleeper designs anywhere on this planet which are arranged along both sides of the corridor)…
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I would hope that they have both couchette and sleeper cars. There is a tendency by bureaucratic institutions to loose track of the objective of making things accessible and think that they can't have anything that isn't accessible. A common thing here is replacing stairs with ramps instead of offering both. I also remember some transit agencies insisting that low floor busses be low floor all the way to the back of the bus.

Urban Sky said:
I‘m not sure how much tourists care about cities like Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Edmonton, especially international ones. Certainly not enough to increase service frequency by 250% to daily (and operating costs by a similar margin)…
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It would be interesting to see a study with actual data on this. I can see some tourists not wanting to stop, but others wanting to use the train as a way to tour Canada, rather than just experience the train. It would also be interesting to see how much money foreign riders of the Canadian spend in Canada, or do they just arrive in time to catch the train and then leave once the ride is over. Making it easier to stop overnight could give them more opportunities to spend money in Canada. We don't need daily departures to achieve this though. Even resuming 3 transcontinental trains a week would reduce the minimum number of nights required from 3-4 to 2-3. Adding one more train to 4 per week would further reduce that to 1-2 nights. Would it be worth the cost? I don't know, but a full cost/benefit analysis would need to be done for tourism (not just the cost to VIA Rail). Obviously VIA would need additional equipment to do this, so it isn't going to happen any time soon.

I've often wondered if splitting VIA Rail into 3 distinct divisions (with separate funding). One for the Corridor trains, one for long distance trains and one for regional trains. Things like maintenance and ticketing could still be shared to keep costs down. With HFR, we are working our way towards that, with corridor services being spun off from the rest of the company.
 
roger1818 said:
I would hope that they have both couchette and sleeper cars. There is a tendency by bureaucratic institutions to loose track of the objective of making things accessible and think that they can't have anything that isn't accessible. A common thing here is replacing stairs with ramps instead of offering both. I also remember some transit agencies insisting that low floor busses be low floor all the way to the back of the bus.
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I may be unpopular for saying this, but - I was a bit fearful when I saw that the presentation was made by a Minister other than Transportation. One wonders if the LD fleet has been seized by the LPC virtue signallers, and we will see the design things included that really aren't relevant but make someone feel good. (and to be clear, I am regularly accused of landing on the "snowflake" side of things.... but I do have limits imposed by common sense)

It's one thing to say rhetorically that there should be no barriers whatsoever, but in reality - hotels for instance still maintain a stock of non-accessible rooms (and sometimes even charge more for a room with a bathtub instead of an accessible shower!). the issue is not whether there are such rooms, the principle is that the choice of accommodation for the mobility challenged should not be constrained by short supply. For trains, it is imperative that the full range of train amenities - dining cars, lounge cars, and all classes of accommodation can be reached by the mobility challenged.... but not every nook and cranny on the train needs to be accessible.

roger1818 said:
I've often wondered if splitting VIA Rail into 3 distinct divisions (with separate funding). One for the Corridor trains, one for long distance trains and one for regional trains. Things like maintenance and ticketing could still be shared to keep costs down. With HFR, we are working our way towards that, with corridor services being spun off from the rest of the company.
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My understanding is that this view is available, at least virtually - I'm not big on tinkering with organizations. VIA can clearly articulate how its business is spread across these three silos, and that probably enables all the decision making that matters. Maybe it's just a matter of showing that data more transparently.

- Paul
 
Urban Sky said:
Seems like there is at least some progress behind the scenes:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1752862956184854816

What I find curious is that beds seem to be hinted as parallel (like the Berths and Cabins for 1) rather than othogonal to the rails (like the Cabins for 2), which I believe limits capacity unnecessarily…
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Thanks for sharing this. While nothing has been approved yet, this is still exiting to see. It’s hard to read the text and the images on the slides, but to me it looks there are 14 rooms with attached washrooms, as well as an accessible room/washroom/shower?
 
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crs1026 said:
One wonders if the LD fleet has been seized by the LPC virtue signallers ...
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WTF? I don't think we need this kind of wokeness in an infrastructure thread - particularly with the recent CPC virtue signalling over gender issues. It just get's messy.
 
roger1818 said:
It would be interesting to see a study with actual data on this. I can see some tourists not wanting to stop, but others wanting to use the train as a way to tour Canada, rather than just experience the train. It would also be interesting to see how much money foreign riders of the Canadian spend in Canada, or do they just arrive in time to catch the train and then leave once the ride is over. Making it easier to stop overnight could give them more opportunities to spend money in Canada. We don't need daily departures to achieve this though. Even resuming 3 transcontinental trains a week would reduce the minimum number of nights required from 3-4 to 2-3. Adding one more train to 4 per week would further reduce that to 1-2 nights. Would it be worth the cost? I don't know, but a full cost/benefit analysis would need to be done for tourism (not just the cost to VIA Rail). Obviously VIA would need additional equipment to do this, so it isn't going to happen any time soon.
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Feel free to google some itineraries for „rail tours in Canada“. However, it seems like they generally only cover the trip from a Hotel in the first departure city to the hotel in the last arrival city, which makes sense given that tourists travel from all corners in the world. Here are two of the tours I quickly found, but I‘m not very confident they would feel motivated to add Winnipeg and Saskatoon, even if it would only cost a day, because most international tourists simply don’t care about Canada‘s second-tier cities:
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By the way, this is where rail cruise operators like VIA Rail and rail tour providers like „Canadian Train Vacations“ meet - at the Railbookers Group Global Summit in Phoenix:
www.linkedin.com

Pierre Santoni on LinkedIn: #rbgsummit #viarail #swissrailways #amtrak #rockymountaineer #frankmarini… | 14 comments

Proud to attend the Railbookers Group Global Summit in Phoenix this week with Ryan Robutka. Lots of passenger railway companies here, sharing stories and… | 14 comments on LinkedIn
www.linkedin.com www.linkedin.com
 
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Urban Sky said:
Feel free to google some itineraries for „rail tours in Canada“. However, it seems like they generally only cover the trip from a Hotel in the first departure city to the hotel in the last arrival city, which makes sense given that tourists travel from all corners in the world. Here are two of the tours I quickly found, but I‘m not very confident they would feel motivated to add Winnipeg and Saskatoon, even if it would only cost a day, because most international tourists simply don’t care about Canada‘s second-tier cities:
View attachment 537297View attachment 537298

By the way, this is where rail cruise operators like VIA Rail and rail tour providers like „Canadian Train Vacations“ meet - at the Railbookers Group Global Summit in Phoenix:
www.linkedin.com

Pierre Santoni on LinkedIn: #rbgsummit #viarail #swissrailways #amtrak #rockymountaineer #frankmarini… | 14 comments

Proud to attend the Railbookers Group Global Summit in Phoenix this week with Ryan Robutka. Lots of passenger railway companies here, sharing stories and… | 14 comments on LinkedIn
www.linkedin.com www.linkedin.com
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So what you are saying is if they book through a tour operator they likely aren’t spending much money in Canada other than the cost of the train. Since not everyone is likely booking through one of these tour operators, but could be booking through VIA instead, this googling of itineraries doesn’t really tell us anything.
 
roger1818 said:
So what you are saying is if they book through a tour operator they likely aren’t spending much money in Canada other than the cost of the train. Since not everyone is likely booking through one of these tour operators, but could be booking through VIA instead, this googling of itineraries doesn’t really tell us anything.
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Below is a 20 days/19 night "Canada Coast to Coast by Train" itinerary, which includes one night on board the Ocean and 3 nights on board the Canadian, two daytime trips each on board VIA (QBEC=>MTRL, MTRL=>TRTO) and Rocky Mountaineer (Banff=>Kamloops=>Vancouver) with a total of 15 hotel nights (two hotel nights each in HLFX, QBEC, MTRL, TRTO, Banff and VCVR and one night each in JASP, Lake Louise and Kamloops):
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If you go through the "What's included", you'll find that they rely on a bunch of suppliers:
  • VIA Rail for transportation HLFX=>QBEC=>MTRL=>TRTO=>JASP and Sleeper accommodation (Ocean, Canadian)
  • Rocky Mountaineer for transportation and Hotels Banff=>Kamloops=>Vancouver
  • Local hotels for HLFX, QBEC, MTRL, TRTO, JASP and Lake Louise
  • Local transportation companies in HLFX and VCVR for the airport transfers
  • Local tour companies for a total of 9 tours in HLFX (Day 2), QBEC (Days 4 and 5), MTRL (Day 7), TRTO (Day 9), Jasper National Park (Days 13 and 14), Banff (Day 16) and VCVR (Day 19)
  • Local restaurants for a total of 4 Dinners included in package in HLFX (Day 2), MTRL (Day 6), TRTO (Day 8) and Lake Louise (Day 14)
And all of this is organized by a company apparently based in Vancouver. I didn't go through their company register and analyzed their ownership structure, but I would assume that more than 90% of the package price remains within Canada (given that all their main suppliers seem to be located in Canada). Also, as you can see, only about half of the meals are included (assuming Hotel stays include Breakfast), which leaves plenty of meals the passengers will have to pay for during their trip. And given that they had the $14+k per person sitting around to shell out for their vacation, I'm confident that virtually all of them will take place in quite decent Restaurants rather than being substituted by a sandwich bought in a grocery store...

All told, a couple of international tourists booking above package will easily spend $40k in Canada (which it would have otherwise spent somewhere else in the world), which generates $2k in federal sales tax revenues alone...

Edit: Maybe another example, which allows us to calculate the "multiplier" (i.e., by how much the total amount spent exceeds the cost of VIA's train fare, here is a 8-night "Canadian Cross-Country Journey" itinerary which includes 2 nights in hotels (the examples shown are all Fairmont hotels) each in TRTO and VCVR and the Canadian inbetween:
1707053405489.png
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If we compare the package price with the cheapest fare for a Cabin for 2 ($1,524+tx per person, double-occupation), then the package would represent a multiplier of 3.6 (i.e., $3.60 spent in Canada in total for each dollar spent on a VIA fare: $5,490/$1,524) - and that is before considering that the tourists will spend considerably on Restaurants and other services or goods while in the country...
 
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With how popular it is with tourists,especially not from Canada, is there a case to raise the price of a fare with a bed(Sleeper plus, Prestige,etc) such that the train can break even during the busy times? If there is, could there be a way that if we have the equipment, to go to a 3+ departures a week in the busy season?
 
During the time that buffer cars were required on HEP train sets they were able to provide the same service level without mixing equipment.
If it can be done without mixing equipment then why even have mixed consists to begin with?

If I'm not mistaken the train configuration is fixed for each train so Its not like they would add additional cars based on demand?
 
cplchanb said:
TLDR we are a joke compared to the rest of the world.... long live the automobile!
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3 of the busiest HSR corridors in Europe is not exactly what I would call “the rest of the world”. Intercity passenger rail is virtually nonexistent in Latin America & Africa and the levels offered in Australia, but also (to name 3 European regions) Portugal, the Baltics and the Balkans are quite comparable with what we have in the Corridor…
 
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