Ontario Northland/Northern Ontario Transportation

[crs1026]

The question I posed is, would the province in that scenario be better off building 30 km of its own track, with no grade separations, and which would bring it additional revenue?

On a pure cost basis, the CN option would be cheaper .... fewer miles of track to build, a lesser share of maintenance and operating costs - versus full capital cost, full operating and maintenance costs for a dedicated line, plus land acquisition costs.

But cost isn't everything. CN might continue to be an unsympathetic landlord when it comes to scheduling and operating priority. Much more assurance of calling the shots with a dedicated line.....but....if the CN line continued to be needed south of the segment you identified, their needs will still take priority.

A dedicated line makes sense where the need is a greater number of trains and end to end control. I'm not confident that it makes sense for three trains a day each way on only part of the territory.

- Paul.

 

[Sauga89]

if the CN line continued to be needed south of the segment you identified, their needs will still take priority

Would it help if you let CN use the line at a steep discount whenever it was not in use by a passenger train? Then that portion of their transcontinental route would effectively be double track most of the time. If CN is running 8 trains each way every day, they could probably use such a route to avoid a lot of conflicts.

 

[micheal_can]

On a pure cost basis, the CN option would be cheaper .... fewer miles of track to build, a lesser share of maintenance and operating costs - versus full capital cost, full operating and maintenance costs for a dedicated line, plus land acquisition costs.

But cost isn't everything. CN might continue to be an unsympathetic landlord when it comes to scheduling and operating priority. Much more assurance of calling the shots with a dedicated line.....but....if the CN line continued to be needed south of the segment you identified, their needs will still take priority.

A dedicated line makes sense where the need is a greater number of trains and end to end control. I'm not confident that it makes sense for three trains a day each way on only part of the territory.

- Paul.

Then instead of 8km or 30 km, the ~90km double track may be the more prudent way to appease CN, and help Via and ONR stay on schedule.

Unrealistic?
Not after they bought the Newmarket Sub. Remember, it only has a freight a day each way and they bought it.

 

[JasonParis]

Just thinking out loud, but imagine if Ontario’s intercity rail network eventually evolved into something like this:

• Alto: a true high-speed spine linking Quebec City–Montreal–Ottawa–Toronto, via whichever corridor ultimately makes the most sense.
• VIA Rail Canada: Maintains non-Alto services on the corridor. More the "milk run" on the corridor, plus the important services to Windsor.
• Ontario Northland: Union–Timmins/Cochrane–Moosonee, plus restoring service between North Bay and Sudbury, and taking over Via's White River corridor—with potential to push further west over time.
• Ontario Southland (hypothetical): a southern Ontario-focused operator, taking on the northern corridor from VIA and running frequent service to Sarnia via London–Brampton–Union. Possibly also the Niagara run, especially if it can be expanded down towards Welland.
• GO Transit: The true regional rail system for the GGH, with the possibility of expanding a similar model to Ottawa down the line.

Not fully thought through, but the idea would be a clearer division of roles. VIA suffers from having to be too many things, and this would free it from that, at least in Ontario.

 

[McGillicuddy]

Just thinking out loud, but imagine if Ontario’s intercity rail network eventually evolved into something like this:

• Alto: a true high-speed spine linking Quebec City–Montreal–Ottawa–Toronto, via whichever corridor ultimately makes the most sense.
• VIA Rail Canada: Maintains non-Alto services on the corridor. More the "milk run" on the corridor, plus the important services to Windsor.
• Ontario Northland: Union–Timmins/Cochrane–Moosonee, plus restoring service between North Bay and Sudbury, and taking over Via's White River corridor—with potential to push further west over time.
• Ontario Southland (hypothetical): a southern Ontario-focused operator, taking on the northern corridor from VIA and running frequent service to Sarnia via London–Brampton–Union. Possibly also the Niagara run, especially if it can be expanded down towards Welland.
• GO Transit: The true regional rail system for the GGH, with the possibility of expanding a similar model to Ottawa down the line.

Not fully thought through, but the idea would be a clearer division of roles. VIA suffers from having to be too many things, and this would free it from that, at least in Ontario.

Makes a great deal of sense, especially in light of the colossally stupid experiment with running GO Trains to London.

So, on the one hand, there's enough political leverage in play here to force a conservative provincial government to run train service to London. But because the only extant provincial operator is a commuter agency, the only service available is 12-car-long bilevel commuter trains which have to run so slowly that the trip takes four hours, which means the service is uncomfortable, unsuitable for commuters, unsuitable for some of the stations, and destined to lose an absolute fortune.

Having an agency which can run a more appropriate schedule with more appropriate equipment would be transformative. (Of course, it might be most efficient of all to subsidize VIA Rail to offer this service, Amtrak-style.)

 

[micheal_can]

Just thinking out loud, but imagine if Ontario’s intercity rail network eventually evolved into something like this:

• Alto: a true high-speed spine linking Quebec City–Montreal–Ottawa–Toronto, via whichever corridor ultimately makes the most sense.
• VIA Rail Canada: Maintains non-Alto services on the corridor. More the "milk run" on the corridor, plus the important services to Windsor.
• Ontario Northland: Union–Timmins/Cochrane–Moosonee, plus restoring service between North Bay and Sudbury, and taking over Via's White River corridor—with potential to push further west over time.
• Ontario Southland (hypothetical): a southern Ontario-focused operator, taking on the northern corridor from VIA and running frequent service to Sarnia via London–Brampton–Union. Possibly also the Niagara run, especially if it can be expanded down towards Welland.
• GO Transit: The true regional rail system for the GGH, with the possibility of expanding a similar model to Ottawa down the line.

Not fully thought through, but the idea would be a clearer division of roles. VIA suffers from having to be too many things, and this would free it from that, at least in Ontario.

In an idealized world, inner-provincial rail would be provided by the province.

 

[dowlingm]

Just thinking out loud, but imagine if Ontario’s intercity rail network eventually evolved into something like this:

• Alto: a true high-speed spine linking Quebec City–Montreal–Ottawa–Toronto, via whichever corridor ultimately makes the most sense.
• VIA Rail Canada: Maintains non-Alto services on the corridor. More the "milk run" on the corridor, plus the important services to Windsor.
• Ontario Northland: Union–Timmins/Cochrane–Moosonee, plus restoring service between North Bay and Sudbury, and taking over Via's White River corridor—with potential to push further west over time.
• Ontario Southland (hypothetical): a southern Ontario-focused operator, taking on the northern corridor from VIA and running frequent service to Sarnia via London–Brampton–Union. Possibly also the Niagara run, especially if it can be expanded down towards Welland.
• GO Transit: The true regional rail system for the GGH, with the possibility of expanding a similar model to Ottawa down the line.

Not fully thought through, but the idea would be a clearer division of roles. VIA suffers from having to be too many things, and this would free it from that, at least in Ontario.

I wouldn’t bother with Ontario Southland - just have ONR operate Ontario regional services that Alto won’t. It’s in MTO now not northern development, so why bother having to stand up a whole new entity with various mandatory management positions, branding exercises, discrete fleet and spares etc etc.

The problem with the above quoted is not that it makes sense (or some variation thereof) but it requires a degree of provincial and federal coordination on rail which has been rare in recent decades, and that’s before you include a private operator who will attempt to weasel out of any difficult obligation. Quebec may not be happy about agreeing to fund and operate continuing service via Drummondville either, so if they won’t why should Ontario do so on residual routes in this province.

 

[lenaitch]

The question I posed is, would the province in that scenario be better off building 30 km of its own track, with no grade separations, and which would bring it additional revenue?

What additional revenue?

Would it help if you let CN use the line at a steep discount whenever it was not in use by a passenger train? Then that portion of their transcontinental route would effectively be double track most of the time. If CN is running 8 trains each way every day, they could probably use such a route to avoid a lot of conflicts.

I guess I'm missing something. Why would CN want to use it? If bottlenecks are causing CN scheduling problems, they would already have added/lengthened passing tracks on their own property. If the number of ON trains increased to some theoretical point where conflicts were becoming a real problem, that would be ONR's problem to solve or pay to be solved, and I have to believe paying CN to add or lengthen passing tracks would be a whole lot cheaper that building a new, bespoke right of way.

In your scenario, it would ultimately be a fairly slow 'diversion' because of the turnouts and curve required at Atherley (it would either be very slow or very expensive - more land). After all of this, it is still singletrack from Brechin to Bloomington (?).

 

[lenaitch]

I wouldn’t bother with Ontario Southland - just have ONR operate Ontario regional services that Alto won’t. It’s in MTO now not northern development, so why bother having to stand up a whole new entity with various mandatory management positions, branding exercises, discrete fleet and spares etc etc.

I think it would end up being the same thing. Rebranding from Ontario Northland would have to happen anyway, but assuming the current Board and upper management is consistent with the size of the current organization, it would obviously have to grow. Expanding operations into western and eastern Ontario regional nodes, let alone the northwest which some want, would create multiple nodes for staffing, HR, equipment, maintenance and on and on. Even for those functions that could be centralized, they would have to be larger than they are now, and more worker bees beget more supervision and management. All of this would be unsupported by freight revenue. GO gets away with centralizing a lot of their operations because everything comes into Toronto. Even at that, they still have deployed storage yards and crew terminals.

 

[crs1026]

It seems pretty obvious that Ottawa wants to jettison the legacy VIA corridor system, and that requires some sort of provincial assumption of control if that system is to be maintained. A Toronto based entity to manage Kingston-London makes more sense logistically than running it from North Bay.

Getting back on topic, two things about the Toronto- North Bay alignment

1) it only makes sense for someone to own a railway if there is traffic to support it. Frankly, I am skeptical that the ONR has the traffic to be any more than a break-even system that can't cover capital costs for upscaling. It may make political or economic sense for the province to invest in a railway line to the north, but let's not assume that there is enough economic benefit to increase the scale of the ONR portion. Tenancy on CN from Washago south is all that is affordable. Meeting CN's requirements to enable that tenancy is expensive and restrictive, but a separate standalone line built to passenger standards would be hard to justify even with very optimistic projections of people and freight volumes.
.
2) running a railway is all about....control. It's unlikely that CN would route traffic over another railway line, even if it were offered for free. The overriding requirement is to be able to operate as business needs dictate. Running ONR Toronto- North Bay freight as a tenant on the Bala Sub is likely benign because that freight is of like nature to CN's own activities. Adding substantial passenger operation creates greater conflicts. So it's tempting to look for a separate solution.... but the cost is very high.

It makes sense to build dedicated rail lines where there is sufficient volume to justify that solution. The reality is, in some places the imperfect solution is all that is affordable. Good must be good enough..

And if it came down to choices, I would rather see new rail laid down to improve Kingston-London regional rail than in bringing the northern connection to a dedicated state. The North needs something adequate, which ONR to Washago achieves.....but having achieved that, the numbers favour investing further south.

- Paul

 

[lenaitch]

It seems pretty obvious that Ottawa wants to jettison the legacy VIA corridor system, and that requires some sort of provincial assumption of control if that system is to be maintained. A Toronto based entity to manage Kingston-London makes more sense logistically than running it from North Bay.

Getting back on topic, two things about the Toronto- North Bay alignment

1) it only makes sense for someone to own a railway if there is traffic to support it. Frankly, I am skeptical that the ONR has the traffic to be any more than ia break-even system that can't cover capital costs for upscaling. It may make political or economic sense for the province to invest in a railway line to the north, but let's not assume that there is enough economic benefit to increase the scale of the ONR portion. Tenancy on CN from Washago south is all that is affordable. Meeting CN's requirements to enable that tenancy is expensive and restrictive, but a separate standalone line built to passenger standards would be hard to justify even with very optimistic projections of people and freight volumes.
.
2) running a railway is all about....control. It's unlikely that CN would route traffic over another railway line, even if it were offered for free. The overriding requirement is to be able to operate as business needs dictate. Running ONR Toronto- North Bay freight as a tenant on the Bala Sub is likely benign because that freight is of like nature to CN's own activities. Adding substantial passenger operation creates greater conflicts. So it's tempting to look for a separate solution.... but the cost is very high.

It makes sense to build dedicated rail lines where there is sufficient volume to justify that solution. The reality is, in some places the imperfect solution is all that is affordable. Good must be good enough..

And if it came down to choices, I would rather see new rail laid down to improve Kingston-London regional rail than in bringing the northern connection to a dedicated state. The North needs something adequate, which ONR to Washago achieves.....but having achieved that, the numbers favour investing further south.

- Paul

The ONR started out as a development/colonization route (mining, forestry, claybelt settlement, etc.) in the heady days of railroad building when the major railroads of the days showed little interest (ACR is similar). Being a resource-based economy, traffic ebbs and flows. For the ACR, it has ebbed below viability and it remains to be seen if it can hang on longer enough, in one form or another, in the hope that 'something else' comes along. The northeastern economy is somewhat more diversified and has been better able to at least survive downturns in the forestry, mine closures, etc. Maybe a major railway back in the day would have eventually built a similar route - we will never know, but I suspect if not and time moved deeper into the 20th century, I doubt the province would have either, but now they have it.

I remember when a previous government wanted to divest it, they received no assurance from CN that they would maintain service levels, including passenger service, (particularly the PBX) and staffing levels. Complete divestment became too much of a political liability.

My comment on expanding service in southwestern and eastern Ontario were founded on an assumption that places like London and Kingston would serve as hubs, with not all trains travelling to and from Toronto. If everything remained simply as an extension of current GO service, with every route centering on Toronto, tI suppose GO can continue to operate as usual, probably with decreased efficiency the further out they press.

 

[dowlingm]

It seems pretty obvious that Ottawa wants to jettison the legacy VIA corridor system, and that requires some sort of provincial assumption of control if that system is to be maintained. A Toronto based entity to manage Kingston-London makes more sense logistically than running it from North Bay.

Getting back on topic, two things about the Toronto- North Bay alignment

1) it only makes sense for someone to own a railway if there is traffic to support it. Frankly, I am skeptical that the ONR has the traffic to be any more than a break-even system that can't cover capital costs for upscaling. It may make political or economic sense for the province to invest in a railway line to the north, but let's not assume that there is enough economic benefit to increase the scale of the ONR portion. Tenancy on CN from Washago south is all that is affordable. Meeting CN's requirements to enable that tenancy is expensive and restrictive, but a separate standalone line built to passenger standards would be hard to justify even with very optimistic projections of people and freight volumes.
.
2) running a railway is all about....control. It's unlikely that CN would route traffic over another railway line, even if it were offered for free. The overriding requirement is to be able to operate as business needs dictate. Running ONR Toronto- North Bay freight as a tenant on the Bala Sub is likely benign because that freight is of like nature to CN's own activities. Adding substantial passenger operation creates greater conflicts. So it's tempting to look for a separate solution.... but the cost is very high.

It makes sense to build dedicated rail lines where there is sufficient volume to justify that solution. The reality is, in some places the imperfect solution is all that is affordable. Good must be good enough..

And if it came down to choices, I would rather see new rail laid down to improve Kingston-London regional rail than in bringing the northern connection to a dedicated state. The North needs something adequate, which ONR to Washago achieves.....but having achieved that, the numbers favour investing further south.

- Paul

As I have said before, the entire reinstatement of the Northlander, including the necessity to run buses to support it because of the Matheson-Timmins-Cochrane routing, means we’re outside the realm of economics and into politics. That means my preferred metric of net extra passenger-km per million $ spend is out the window

That said, as long as we are clinging to some vestige of reality, and now that ONR is going to be operating passenger and freight to and through Washago, ONRs and MTOs decisions on capital spend are likely to be what is best for them. Presumably in ONR ownership, improvements to Newmarket Sub trackage outside the capacity of ONR’s own crews can be competitively tendered where previously it would have been essentially a grant to CN at their rates.

If I am running the spreadsheet, I am thinking that I can get the same or more time improvement for the same money by investing in the asset I just bought instead of investing in CN’s asset. From what is rumoured on Facebook about barriers being planned for Newmarket Sub grade crossings, we may see that sooner rather than later.

 

[lenaitch]

about barriers being planned for Newmarket Sub

Some have already been installed; although it seems quite random. Then again, so do the barrier upgrades north of North Bay.

 

[micheal_can]

I wouldn’t bother with Ontario Southland - just have ONR operate Ontario regional services that Alto won’t. It’s in MTO now not northern development, so why bother having to stand up a whole new entity with various mandatory management positions, branding exercises, discrete fleet and spares etc etc.

The problem with the above quoted is not that it makes sense (or some variation thereof) but it requires a degree of provincial and federal coordination on rail which has been rare in recent decades, and that’s before you include a private operator who will attempt to weasel out of any difficult obligation. Quebec may not be happy about agreeing to fund and operate continuing service via Drummondville either, so if they won’t why should Ontario do so on residual routes in this province.

GO and ONR are the same thing, but they are very different They are both railway companies owned by the government of Ontario. They both have their own charters. They both have their own mandates. And they both could be better utilized. Anything within ~1 hour train from a city center that needs commuter service to it should be GO. Any intercity within the province, or to the next city out of the province should be under the ONR. For longer distances, put it also under ONR, but use bilevel cars that have more comfortable seating.

I bet if you ask the average GO rider what GO stands for they would not know, or even think it stands for anything.

The ONR started out as a development/colonization route (mining, forestry, claybelt settlement, etc.) in the heady days of railroad building when the major railroads of the days showed little interest (ACR is similar). Being a resource-based economy, traffic ebbs and flows. For the ACR, it has ebbed below viability and it remains to be seen if it can hang on longer enough, in one form or another, in the hope that 'something else' comes along. The northeastern economy is somewhat more diversified and has been better able to at least survive downturns in the forestry, mine closures, etc. Maybe a major railway back in the day would have eventually built a similar route - we will never know, but I suspect if not and time moved deeper into the 20th century, I doubt the province would have either, but now they have it.

I remember when a previous government wanted to divest it, they received no assurance from CN that they would maintain service levels, including passenger service, (particularly the PBX) and staffing levels. Complete divestment became too much of a political liability.

My comment on expanding service in southwestern and eastern Ontario were founded on an assumption that places like London and Kingston would serve as hubs, with not all trains travelling to and from Toronto. If everything remained simply as an extension of current GO service, with every route centering on Toronto, tI suppose GO can continue to operate as usual, probably with decreased efficiency the further out they press.

The history of the ONR is one that had the idea been kept up would see it likely cost a lot more to operate, but it be more utilized. Tome, it is no different than the non tolled 400 series highways in the GTA. Ask someone in Cochrane whether they think the 401 should be under construction ...again, and they will say no. That is more to do with them being removed from the effects of the highway than much else. The same goes to asks someone whether we should add more frequency to the PBX.

 

[JasonParis]

I wouldn’t bother with Ontario Southland - just have ONR operate Ontario regional services that Alto won’t. It’s in MTO now not northern development, so why bother having to stand up a whole new entity with various mandatory management positions, branding exercises, discrete fleet and spares etc etc.

In my head ONR and OSR are the same, just branded to match their geography. But you can certainly merge the branding too and call it ONRail, for example.