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Maybe a crazy idea, but if customs checks can be done on-board, would it be conceivable to have a customs officer on board the train between the sealed and unsealed portions? So instead of preclearance facilities at every small town on the way, intl-bound passengers would board a 'customs car'...

Thankfully, I'm not employed by VIA to answer these questions. You know a lot more than I do - it's why I always like reading your posts on this thread. I'd be much more interested in getting your unique insights outright rather than having you beat me over the head with them after answering...

I presumed this new proposal would be coming with preclearance facilities to eliminate the need for the check at the border.

The economics are poor in Europe thanks to low-cost airlines, as that Guardian article points out. When I lived in the Netherlands, I could grab a 20 EUR return flight to Rome, with multiple daily departures. At that price and those speeds, flying is a no-brainer. However, we don't have the...

I think this would be a route best served by a night service. It's about 800 km, meaning you could have a late evening departure from Toronto which would get to Chicago by early morning, and vice-versa. Say an 11pm departure and a 6am arrival. At 8-9h, it's a distance which, if done during the...

What I'd love to see is a streetcar- or bus-mounted camera. If a car is blocking a streetcar illegally, the footage is sent for a brief analysis, the license plate is run, and a ticket is neatly sent to the driver's address. Transit vehicles would enforce its own priority 100% of the time while...

I think that Gare Centrale might actually get a rebuild sooner than we think. At rush hours, the station concourse is already at capacity as it is. And if HFR attains its ridership goals (triple the current on triple the frequency) and REM multiplies ridership, then the situation will quickly...

“It is unwise to pay too much, but it is worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business...

I never called them LRVs. I don't know exactly what kind of vehicles will be used, but I was told they'd be high-floor and powered by catenaries. That could mean anything from Calgary/Edmonton-style LRT to Australia-style metro/commuter rail. But in any case, they'll be narrower than the...

I got the chance to speak to a few people close to the project and it would seem that interoperability was indeed a sine qua non for federal money. From what I understood, VIA trains will be outfitted with automatic capabilities compatible with the REM's, allowing the control centre to take...

It would've been a while - I changed that years ago! I was trying to represent reduced frequency with a reduced width. I may have sacrificed clarity for simplicity, whoops! My rationale is that the nearly-unused railway that runs between Ottawa and Buckingham could be used by a handful of...

Thanks! The Rapibus BRT line was built towards the east back in 2013. It's been described as less than stellar at best, mostly because of the lack of right of way downtown, which is the only place where RoW was actually really needed. It's in the "eventually maybe" plans to convert it to LRT to...

Not Toronto, but a recent bout of procrastination has led me to make a rapid transit map for Gatineau. Two of the lines (A, P) are already under active consideration by the new municipal administration. Lines 1 and 2 are part of Ottawa's LRT network which is set to open a first phase in a matter...

Well, no. The $29B deficit is a deficit not seen since 2010 ($33.4B) or 2009 ($55.6B). Let's not lose our heads.

Hence the need for a second fence to protect people from the first fence.

Well, that escalated quickly. It might also be that KW already has regular rail service, so the gains in ridership from a slightly higher speed might be smaller than opening up a completely new market in TR. That in no way means that TR is more important than KW, but for a phase 1 of a...

Actually, that might not be necessary. As someone quite astutely suggested to me, th reason why they're moving ahead with level boarding in Ottawa might have a lot to do with the HFR routing: Since all Toronto-Montreal trains would also pass through Ottawa, there'll be a need to make boarding...

Why Montreal?

Barrhaven, Kanata and even Orleans could all be well served by OTrain/SBahn-type rail with minimal new infrastructure, not to mention the north of Hull, Chelsea, Buckingham, Masson-Angers and beyond on the Gatineau side. Regional rail to surrounding towns like Smith Falls, Casselman and Arnprior...