Recent content by Urban Sky

Friendly reminder that this is the ALTO and not the VIA Rail thread, but I once was greeted at Paris Gare de l‘Est on a Friday afternoon by a sign announcing that every single TGV train departing towards Strasbourg, Metz, Luxembourg and basically any major city served from that station was...

Indeed, despite railfans advocating for yet another rebuild, these dinosaurs have already endured almost twice their intended useful life (30-40 years) and are in desperate need of replacement, not refurbishment…

Not sure you are aware of the avalanche of train cancellations on the Corridor currently… https://groups.io/g/Canadian-Passenger-Rail/topic/117673793#msg102934 https://www.transportaction.ca/topics/intercity-rail-and-bus/siemens-failures-force-via-rail-cancellations/

… and just until there is a permanent fix for what seems to be just a normal teething issue.

Indeed, there are level crossings on conventional lines which are used by only a few TGV trainsper day, but all main corridors (Paris-Lille/Brussels, Paris-Strasbourg, Patis-Lyon-Marseilles, Paris-Bordeaux) should be free of any level crossings. As a near-universal safety standard, level...

Please provide specific examples for what “such policies” in what “such places” you are referring to… Again, could you provide more specific examples? The main difference between checked baggage and baggage brought by the passenger on board is that luggage can be lifted horizontally into a...

We've discussed this so many times, but I'll try to provide a handy table so that I can throw it at someone's head every time these questions get repeated: Infrastructure limitation Difference to customer-centric infrastructure in Europe Implication for passenger handling at stations...

Friendly reminder that every character spent on replying to Vancouver’s and Fake-London’s saddest Troll and his ever-same talking points* represents a loss in lifetime nobody will ever be able to recover for you… * feel free to use the search function to inquire how often he has already...

Shorter equipment lifecycle spans might be one very minor factor explaining the thriving rail rolling stock industry in Japan, but the real reason is of course the sheer Economies of Scale Japan enjoys compared to Canada: Metric Canada Japan (vs. Canada) Population (2024) 41,289,000...

I suspect that the biggest progress blocker right now is the massive interdependence with Regional Express Rail and HSR, which means that as long as until the ongoing expansion plans for Union Station, the Kitchener Corridor and ALTO are finalized, there is very little which can be done for the...

Again: the problem was not what ideas HH had, but that the regulators continue to sit on the same hands they had already been sitting on for decades rather than growing some guts and teeth and making sure that he couldn’t cut into safety-relevant redundances. Also, if you believe that CN‘s...

Listen, if the promoters of the REM had made their minimum diligence, they would have reached out to exo and VIA Rail well before the grand reveal of the project to the public on April 22, 2016, to enquire their requirements to not preclude their future plans. It should have never become the...

It would have taken maybe 6 months to replan the REM in a way which would have accommodated transportation priorities which had already been known since decades and should have been treated as base requirements for planning any transit network in the first place („must protect for future plans...

When I compare the freight rail modal share in Europe with that of us in North America, I don’t feel too tempted to swap: As I keep repeating myself: this is not a question of operating philosophies, but of “self-regulation” vs. actual regulation…

Why so convoluted? You just need to prescribe certain track maintenance levels and impose serious fines for repeated violations…! You know, all these things which would be done by a regulator in any other developed country…