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The VIA Venture fleet is for corridor daytime service, and it is too late the change the Airo order too, at least for the first 82 trains. (Although I really hope the Northlander order has specified a different seat because the economy seats on the VIA Ventures do not really recline far enough...

There are creative ways around the "one journey per day" problem, such as lie-flat beds or convertible seating like the "butterfly seat" which can be sold as two seats or one bed. On routes of 8-9 hours daytime and slightly longer at night, the same equipment could be cycled, or 60-70% or the...

Is there a public copy of that somewhere?

Was any thought given to leaving the Trillium Line in place and raising the VIA line instead? It might not have cost less upfront, but it could've taken care of a couple of road bridges that would need to be rebuild for HFR anyway. Also, the timber walkway at that bridge was so well built it is...

According to various presentations that have been given and discussions with the HFR Team there are some invariants, such as serving the six major cities in order, and continuing at least the current service level on the lakeshore, in addition to electrification and 200 km/h+ on at least some...

Agreed. The usually way of evaluating projects is to look at the cost:benefit and rarely does opportunity cost get fully considered. One of the reasons for keeping HFR cheap at the beginning was so Ottawa's cupboard wouldn't be left bare and it could be the start of a passenger ail resurgence...

The new video is pretty well made, and makes some good points about the changes in the country over the past decade, but I disagree about GO to Peterborough and reverting to the Ecotrain alignment, and not just because throwing all the cards in the air would further delay getting anything at all...

The procurement process explicitly excludes rolling stock manufacturers at this stage, so the co-development partner can seek competitive bids for equipment later on.

The plan before the structural testing was going to be to redeploy the remaining HEP1/2 cars to long distance and regional services. Whether that still holds we'll have to wait and see, but they'll probably be running through the early 2030s even if the government approves new long distance...

Investment in stations. Now we need some new long-distance and regional trains... https://www.transportaction.ca/national-news/via-rail-announces-80m-investment-in-heritage-stations/

That price for fixing up the Guelph sub came from approaching CN officials with a higher estimate and being told it could be done for less, with corroboration from a track maintenance firm. The route was in good shape when the CTC was put in a decade ago, just before the VIA budget cut kyboshed...

VIA was blindsided by the original announcement in 2021. That won't have sat well. Whatever happens on this route needs to be coordinated and collaborative, not competitive and chaotic. While I wouldn't count 3-4 daily departures as "fullsome" it would certainly have been much better, and...

This conceptual diagram is close to one I've handed to both the feds and province. Two door heights at London are pretty much inevitable unless there's a way to make a parallel VIA service between Kitchener and Toronto make economic sense, and fit on the infrastructure, that I haven't been told...

The problem is not making the business case for rail, which is easy, it is the hundred plus years of insulting and high-handed treatment of First Nations. This "proposal" continues that trend, so take it with trainload of salt.

One person was trying to handle at least nine disrupted trains at once on Dec 23. Being able to juggle all that perfectly would have been up there with walking on water, even if the aging computer system hadn't picked that moment to fall over, which is a funding issue. Not having the bench...

Unsurprisingly, Unifor continues to be very concerned about the proposed operating contract: https://www.unifor.org/news/all-news/high-frequency-rail-announcement-still-leaves-questions-about-rail-sell It takes real talent to take natural allies of passenger rail investment and push them into...

The lack of transparency, and the increase in uncertainty since the previous announcements do not inspire confidence. https://www.transportaction.ca/national-news/hfr-request-for-qualifications-confirms-over-complex-procurement-process/

There are some very confusing narratives around this project for sure, and Ottawa has squandered at lot of the opportunities in the original proposal, including by not securing access to the Mount Royal Tunnel or doing any corridor protection. At this point, seven years in, they don't seem to...

The presentation deck Alstom have been circulating, which of course has a lovely red maple-leaf liveried Avelia as the first slide, suggests that their thinking is to make Peterborough to Smith Falls a 300 km/h section, plus the north shore sections between Montreal and Quebec City: Because...

There are some areas of the economy where we don't have the technology yet to completely eliminate pollution, but railways are easy. I won't say OCS is 100+ year old tech, because it has moved on a lot since the Milwaukee Road extension, but it is off-the-shelf, scalable, and proven. The...