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VIA Rail

Admiral Beez said:
What savings or expenses is VIA incurring if one does or does not reserve a seat? There should be no extra charge unless VIA is incurring an extra cost.
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By that flawed logic, VIA would not be allowed to charge more than the marginal fuel costs of transporting the body weight of each individual passenger. Marginal costs incurred per additional passenger are mostly nonexistent in the transportation industry and thus almost irrelevant for pricing, which must generate enough revenues to not just recover variable costs, but also fixed costs.

The entire point of „price discrimination“ is to restrict certain perks to higher fare options, so that customers can decide by their own whether they are prepared to pay extra for them or not, which leads to much better outcomes for the customers than offering a single fare at a single price, as price-conscious customers end up paying lower prices wheress value-conscious customers get to enjoy the perks they desire (and value)…

And just to add another point: given that customers generally pay more the later they book, why should the customers who pay the least have the best seats (because they book and therefore can chose their seats before everyone else)?

This is the same principle as with Netflix: if you can’t stand watching ads, just don‘t buy the basic plan!
 
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Admiral Beez said:
What savings or expenses is VIA incurring if one does or does not reserve a seat? There should be no extra charge unless VIA is incurring an extra cost.

While we're at in, if I have to self check and bag my groceries, the law should demand that I am refunded the ten minutes of minimum wage I would have been paid to do their job.
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The cost that VIA incurs is the opportunity cost of people not getting the best ratio of service to price, which could result in marginally lower revenue. Different seats have different value to different passengers, so efficiently allocating resources to match rider preferences will maximize the total benefit experienced by people on a given train.

Most people prefer sitting forward, but some people care more than others. Given that only half of the seats in Corridor trains face forward, it makes sense to try and match those seats with the passengers who have the strongest preference for them. People who have a strong preference for facing forward can pay for seat selection (either via a higher-end ticket type or paying the seat selection fee), while people who just want the cheapest fare can take the less high-demand seats.

From my experience with the new booking system, most of the default seat assignments I have gotten were rear-facing seats, which would support my theory of using seat selection as a method to allocate forward-facing seats. I don't have a strong preference but I do generally change them to forward-facing seats. But since I often book Escape fares and don't care that much one way or the other, once they start charging for seat selection I will just stay in the default backward-facing seat. Which is an optimal decision for passengers overall, because chances are that whoever gets that forward-facing seat cares more than I do.

A similar situation exists with window vs aisle seats. This is definitely a consideration for Via given the new policies also include a surcharge for the standalone seats in Business Class compared to the paired seats if you pay the basic Business fare.
 
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Pics of the renovation work going on at TMC. Tough to get a good shot while on the move:

Jun 5, 2024
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Did VIA have to put in an application, or are they somehow exempt due to being on rail lands or being federally owned?
 
Urban Sky said:
Not sure whether you mean Environmental Assesment Studies or just Building Permits, but VIA certainly isn’t excempt from the latter…
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A development app or something else where some of the drawings would be posted is what I had in mind
 
Dunno, if this is at all burdensome but it would be cool for VIA to colour code Corridor East and Corridor West trains.
 
kEiThZ said:
Dunno, if this is at all burdensome but it would be cool for VIA to colour code Corridor East and Corridor West trains.
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I don’t know if this would be burdensome for Siemens but I would like their trains to work reliably so that VIA stop having to put the Renaissance trains back to work as they have this week
 
dowlingm said:
I don’t know if this would be burdensome for Siemens but I would like their trains to work reliably so that VIA stop having to put the Renaissance trains back to work as they have this week
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Possibly having two locomotives per train would have avoided this situation (like broghtline). But with any new rolling stock there will be teathing issues and kinks to work out.
 
I'm currently on VIA train #53 from Ottawa to Toronto.

We just passed Pickering GO station, and they announced that we caught up to a GO train and have to wait to get the green light to continue on. Also, we will have to travel at a reduced speed.
While on the CN network, the train was never slowed down by freight and routinely hit a top speed of 155km/h.

Clearly Metrolinx is becoming a problem for VIA more so than CN.

EDIT: We didn't stop for long, but we're travelling at a reduced speed of about 60km/h towards Guildwood.
 
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Bojaxs said:
I'm currently on VIA train #53 from Ottawa to Toronto.

We just passed Pickering GO station, and they announced that we caught up to a GO train and have to wait to get the green light to continue on. Also, we will have to travel at a reduced speed.
While on the CN network, the train was never slowed down by freight and routinely hit a top speed of 155km/h.

Clearly Metrolinx is becoming a problem for VIA more so than CN.
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So probably if the VIA train was on time it would not have to wait for the GO train. But I mean the GO train probably carries per people and Metrolinx owns the network so what do you expect?

Also past rouge Hill there are three tracks so you should be able to pass the GO train.

Also thats only a small percentage of track utilized if coming from Ottawa or Montreal. Blame CN for the 15min you lost between Brockville and Pickering not the 90 seconds between Pickering and Union station.
 
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