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From the 1984 VIA Rail Study

No. What I am saying is the freight market changed significantly, and the railway industry adapted in response, and corridors that could be justified through a combination of long distance commodity transport, and service to local industry, just ended. For Ottawa valley service in particular...

Ottawa didn’t have the freight demand to continue to justify a high level of service (decline of lumber, pulp and paper businesses) and western Canada —> Montreal demand is far less than when the lines were put in. CN and CP removed almost 60 million tonnes of grain from the prairies this year...

How much is it worth it to you to restore the secondary connection through northern Ontario to be more ready for a once every decade or so freight use? Like seriously, could jack up the shed in Winnipeg for way less than that and it would be more beneficial.

Where was capacity cut where it is needed today, besides the lines slated for HFR? Lots of the rail removed served few customers. Commodity flows didn’t support the same lines as before. The needs of supply chains weren’t served well by once a week service anymore. Demand can grow for certain...

Have to temper the want for industrial spurs everywhere and lines serving them (the old way) with trucks for much regional in Canada freight movement with the adoption of time value of money approach and just in time delivery to inventory management by customers. Freight rail might be cheaper...

Privatize the corridor in that circumstance. Mandate minimum service standards, regulate a maximum rate of return (common in P3s these days, to avoid asset pricing problems). If they can do it, why should the government provide the service? You can keep VIA elsewhere as a crown, and deal with...

And we all saved a buck, as taxpayers. The removal and not upgrading of passing sidings cited above came when? When CN was still solidly a crown corp no? Heavily implied it was before the LRC era. Our government decided that it did not want to invest in passenger rail. What you're really...

The 407 was always meant to be a free standing privately funded project - when it was launched by the NDP! Then they ran into difficulty - no company wanted to finance it up front, so the model was changed by the NDP to build then sell. The price it was sold it didn't reflect the chance that...

Ripping up capacity where it wasn't needed, and creating it where it is. We as a country decided we did not want to subsidize unneeded capacity, and capacity that didn't go where it was needed. Now we are getting to the point where we will have to to continue economic growth. With decades in...

Open access assumes there is network capacity. There isn't. With a bunch of investment that will be needed over the next 30 years for freight capacity, a bunch of network capacity that isn't needed for freight will be created. And the rail roads won't be able to pay for it by themselves. That is...

Expanding freight capacity had a Harper era program in the west - the Pacific Gateway. Funding the non-rail elements of rail de-bottlenecking projects to increase throughput. I suspect in the next 20 years the government will run into a wall with CN and CP - they will both need major network...

The province has already done it, and so did VIA in the 80s. Every time they do an analysis it is found to be more economical to go straight to HSR. Incremental options aren't possible. The cheapest upgrade requires an entire rebuild of the CPR to two tracks with frequent high speed crossovers...

This is jumping back, but Superliners are 16 feet 2 inches and Dome cars are either 15 ft 6 inches or 15 foot 10 inches. Are people super sure that 8 — 8! Inches max is a deal breaker? Seriously.

Depending on the design, it wouldn't be the hardest to have the roof when retracted extend over portions of Lake Shore or even the DVP. As for construction phasing, one of the most interesting parts of the design of Safeco/T-Mobile in Seattle is at least superficially, different stands aren't...

Like selling off federal land but the profit goes to stadium construction. Which is what Rogers proposes.

Think you ended up with the wrong link there: Rocky Mountaineer orders luxury dome cars from Stadler https://www.railwaygazette.com/traction-and-rolling-stock/rocky-mountaineer-orders-luxury-dome-cars-from-stadler/42482.article

I think part of it is scale and the media reaction and reporting of 2 deaths a day initially versus the big surge we had here. 2 a day and the media can tell stories about all of them. How they got it, what the path of infection was, who they were, and provide emotional context of what the death...

Yes, since transportation costs have strict lowest available cost requirements. Would need a public exhortation campaign aimed to companies to change policies which undercut overnight train travel to fix it.

Canada entered into the pandemic without a tool that most other developed countries have: monthly reporting from companies of employment income payments to individuals into a centralized citizen database, which is then used to help automate programs like employment insurance and other forms of...