mdrejhon
Senior Member
This dives into semantics at this stage.
i.e. Is ridership going down because of congestion vs ridership going down because of competition;
It also depends if we define congestion as corridor competition rather than ridership competition;
The sentence is also, technically, parseable as acknowledging that regional ridership may competing. The sentence is slightly grammatically ambiguous because the media probably chose comma placements while quoting the VIA CEO. However, if you literally parse the grammar rules, VIA acknowledged ridership competition in addition to corridor competition.
“Ridership is going down, [COMMA] partially because we are having reliability issues around running on time due to increased congestion on the rails from more and longer freight trains, [COMMA] but also more regional trains in and out from metropolitan areas, Toronto and Montreal.”
There are some minor grammar problems, and the sentence is run-on-sentence territory. Three commas, the use of "but", the use of "due", and two uses of "and". That's too many superimposed joiners in one sentence, which makes the sentence ambiguous, too. In one form or another, it still is acknowledging regional trains is affecting VIA one way or another. Actions matter more than words, and all actions point to regional rail service expansions catching VIA's attention in some fronts, including ridership loss.
You can rearrange the newspaper's choice of comma locations on this transcribed speech to more clearly point to corridor issue or the ridership issue. One thing for sure, is that one way or another, commuter services are certainly affecting VIA one way or another (whether be ridership or corridor use), and an increasingly slower VIA due to corridor congestion, still can loses regional (e.g. GTHA+Kitchener) ridership to other options (e.g. Metrolinx, Megabus, whatever), which can also hereby be argued as ridership competition, too.
(Yes -- I acknowledge my grammar is imperfect and I see many grammatical mistakes in my posts, but I am not spending hours proofreading casual discussion on a public forums. This isn't a government or specification document I'm writing.)
At this stage, academically purely semantics whether we want to argue competition on corridor capacity and/or competition on ridership.
i.e. Is ridership going down because of congestion vs ridership going down because of competition;
It also depends if we define congestion as corridor competition rather than ridership competition;
The sentence is also, technically, parseable as acknowledging that regional ridership may competing. The sentence is slightly grammatically ambiguous because the media probably chose comma placements while quoting the VIA CEO. However, if you literally parse the grammar rules, VIA acknowledged ridership competition in addition to corridor competition.
“Ridership is going down, [COMMA] partially because we are having reliability issues around running on time due to increased congestion on the rails from more and longer freight trains, [COMMA] but also more regional trains in and out from metropolitan areas, Toronto and Montreal.”
There are some minor grammar problems, and the sentence is run-on-sentence territory. Three commas, the use of "but", the use of "due", and two uses of "and". That's too many superimposed joiners in one sentence, which makes the sentence ambiguous, too. In one form or another, it still is acknowledging regional trains is affecting VIA one way or another. Actions matter more than words, and all actions point to regional rail service expansions catching VIA's attention in some fronts, including ridership loss.
You can rearrange the newspaper's choice of comma locations on this transcribed speech to more clearly point to corridor issue or the ridership issue. One thing for sure, is that one way or another, commuter services are certainly affecting VIA one way or another (whether be ridership or corridor use), and an increasingly slower VIA due to corridor congestion, still can loses regional (e.g. GTHA+Kitchener) ridership to other options (e.g. Metrolinx, Megabus, whatever), which can also hereby be argued as ridership competition, too.
(Yes -- I acknowledge my grammar is imperfect and I see many grammatical mistakes in my posts, but I am not spending hours proofreading casual discussion on a public forums. This isn't a government or specification document I'm writing.)
At this stage, academically purely semantics whether we want to argue competition on corridor capacity and/or competition on ridership.
Last edited:
