Alto - High Speed Rail (Toronto-Quebec City)

[kEiThZ]

I'm not sure even you know how exactly their yield management/revenue management works.

I don't need to. The very fact that they don't have fixed pricing should tell you something.

Also, being in aviation I've gotten enough exposure to the idea from my civvie friends.

Just that it appears to work in a suboptimal way: for both Via and the customer.

Works just fine for VIA. If a train goes out full, yield management has failed or it's an exceptional day. In the absolutely ideal yield management system, the last seat on the train should cost infinity dollars.

Time-to-departure seems to have a bigger effect.

With lower service frequency (not necessarily capacity), yield management places greater weight on departure time differentiation. Via frequencies are much lower than flights for TO-MTL right now.

Capacity not frequency. What do you think would happen if the number of seats for each departure were 1000 instead of 300? Still think the same sensitivity to timing would be there?

Also technical jargon can make discussions less inclusive.

Who cares? Don't like it? Don't engage.

 

[Bordercollie]

I don't need to. The very fact that they don't have fixed pricing should tell you something.

Also, being in aviation I've gotten enough exposure to the idea from my civvie friends.



Works just fine for VIA. If a train goes out full, yield management has failed or it's an exceptional day. In the absolutely ideal yield management system, the last seat on the train should cost infinity dollars.





Capacity not frequency. What do you think would happen if the number of seats for each departure were 1000 instead of 300? Still think the same sensitivity to timing would be there?



Who cares? Don't like it? Don't engage.

So when I travel in the corridor certain cars are assigned to certain stops. So from Ottawa to Toronto is car 1. So along the route nobody gets off and if the car is not full leaving Ottawa people board along the way.

I always wanted to know if they ever allocate more than one car for one destination? When car 1 gets full and business class is full do they stop selling tickets? Because I've never seen a situation where both car 1 and 2 was for Toronto. Or is that just my experience?

 

[urbanclient]

"With lower service frequency (not necessarily capacity), yield management places greater weight on departure time differentiation." Conversely, lower capacity per departure does not in itself increase departure time differentiation. It would increase prices for all departures, all other factors being the same. <--- Feel free to look this up.

Lower capacity per day, due to less departures/lower frequency does increase departure time differentiation.

Capacity not frequency. What do you think would happen if the number of seats for each departure were 1000 instead of 300? Still think the same sensitivity to timing would be there?

That changes scarcity, not how substitutable one departure is for another. Lower capacity per departure only reduces total daily capacity if frequency is fixed. Hence, lower frequency causes yield mgmt to emphasize departure time differentiation, by reducing temporal substitituion, whereas lower capacity per departure affects scarcity and in practice is only correlated with the aforementioned.

Frequency and capacity move together in some cases which is what you are probably getting at. That's why I said not necessarily.

 

[kEiThZ]

So when I travel in the corridor certain cars are assigned to certain stops. So from Ottawa to Toronto is car 1. So along the route nobody gets off and if the car is not full leaving Ottawa people board along the way.

I always wanted to know if they ever allocate more than one car for one destination? When car 1 gets full and business class is full do they stop selling tickets? Because I've never seen a situation where both car 1 and 2 was for Toronto. Or is that just my experience?

I've been moved cars before. But no idea how that lines up with their yield management. I assume Urban Sky can speak to that if it's not in his NDA.

The broader point here is that VIA does a bunch of things today to squeeze as much revenue as they can from the few seats they can sell. They'd be way cheaper if they could sell more seats. But the government won't allow that. Alto won't have anywhere near the same constraints. Abd I fully expect the Corridor will go from one of the most profitable aviation markets in the country to one that is mostly about serving connecting passengers.

 

[urbanclient]

Abd I fully expect the Corridor will go from one of the most profitable aviation markets in the country to one that is mostly about serving connecting passengers.

I hope so, fingers crossed

 

[afransen]

Have you used WiFi on a via rail train? I’m assuming it’s satellite-based, and it’s so bad I usually don’t even bother. I can’t imagine ALTO improving it that much.

Why? Starlink and eventual competitors will make satellite internet ubiquitous before Alto is realized.

 

[urbanclient]

Why? Starlink and eventual competitors will make satellite internet ubiquitous before Alto is realized.

Starlink is rolling out on some airlines like WestJet and it works great. Within 10 years, it or a similar competitor will be on every airliner.