mpd618
Active Member
Why not have Metrolinx explicitly build and own freight rail infrastructure, and charge CN, CP, etc. to use it?
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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)
- Thread starter drum118
- Start date
Why not have Metrolinx explicitly build and own freight rail infrastructure, and charge CN, CP, etc. to use it?
TOareaFan
Superstar
Why would the freight companies move from corridors they own to ones they have to pay to use?
nfitz
Superstar
They wouldn't.
Perhaps best deal is to buy CP entirely. Transfer the track needed. Then sell CP at it's reduced value.
But I doubt the province has the tenacity to pull that one off.
TOareaFan
Superstar
Unless the markets were working really inefficiently, the net result of that transaction would be just writing a cheque for the value of the track you needed.
And even if you could buy CP without a premium...their market cap of around $35BUS is a pretty hefty cheque for the province to write.
nfitz
Superstar
I assumed CP wouldn't sell it.
I don't think that would be the challenge. It would be trying to acquire the company in a hostile manner without bloating the price. Probably infeasible ... but it's nice to dream.
TOareaFan
Superstar
We are essentially saying the same thing....it would not even have to be a hostile manner...but it is a publicly traded company with value...as soon as the markets got a sniff that there was a potential purchase in play there would be others joining the bidding...that is what I meant by "even if you could buy it without a premium"....I doubt you could.
mpd618
Active Member
Metrolinx would also need to purchase the existing freight corridors.
A lot of time and money is expended on negotiations with the freight companies, who don't seem particularly keen on investing in corridors they own. If Metrolinx bought up "mainline" corridors, then it could build by-passes as needed to redirect freight from constrained high-volume passenger rail corridors.
Earlscourt_Lad
Active Member
Have a google of the Arbutus railway corridor in Vancouver, to see how CP is playing hardball there. I would expect the same, if not worse here, the sort of thing that ends up in court for years.
nfitz
Superstar
The Vancouver situation would quickly be solved if the city would come up with the $ to buy the land that CP is looking for.
Does anyone know the kind of $ they are looking for, and how that compares to recent Metrolinx purchases of track?
mdrejhon
Senior Member
About $100 million, when the city offered $20 million for this 13-kilometer Arbutus line that's been semi-abandoned. Its condition is similiar to our Don Branch -- deterioriating and unused.
For a comparison, Metrolinx purchased 53 kilometers of the Kitchener line for $76 million in 2014.
However, this is Vancouver, which is far more expensive land than Kitchener/Guelph/Georgetown and farmlands in between, the Arbutus corridor goes through Vancouver suburbs so it has extremely high development value.
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nfitz
Superstar
Okay. Compare to the 53-km old CN Guelph subdivision that the province paid $73 million for. Or $60 million for the 100 km Barrie-Bradford corridor.
Though those are both very rural (and longer of course). The real estate values of that corridor must be quite high.
Anyone got the older purchase details for the downtown Toronto corridors?
Though even $100 million doesn't sound massive ... split the difference and pay $60 million?
mdrejhon
Senior Member
Yes, looking at photos of the Arbutus corridor, it goes through what looks like fully developed Vancouver suburbs. I wouldn't be surprised.
vegeta_skyline
Senior Member
They have a contingency plan in place that they've been using for years new for delays like that. What they will do is have the delayed train run express and skip multiple, quite possibly all, station stops until it returns to its original schedule. Most of the time this requires that the train skip all stops in between the delay and Union station so that its not late for its run on the Lakeshore East. Then next train behind the delayed train would basically only be a few minutes behind by this point and picks up the passengers the delayed train would normally have picked up. But if the platforms are busy i.e. rush hour, that plan won't work because of overloading and then you see your typical cascading effect of delayed service.
crs1026
Senior Member
The purchase of the CN Oakville Sub from Union to Canpa - 9 miles- was $168M. The weston sub - 15 miles - was $160M. Consider that you would need to buy 30 miles from Milton to Leaside, and another 10 to Neilson Rd, and 10 to Woodbridge. Both of the CN lines were suburban - Imagine how much the sliver from Mount Pleasant to Bathurst alone would fetch with a solid line of 60 story condos on it.
My inexpert gut says let's use a nice round $1B. Even if I'm high by 100%, it's clearly a number that CP's shareholder would hold dear. The issue isn't CP executives being obstinate, it's the potential for shareholder litigation if CP settled for less than top dollar.
- Paul
mdrejhon
Senior Member
Sounds about right. Milton would be a pretty dear penny, it needs to be big enough of a purchase for CP to build a bypass track somewhere else (e.g. 407 corridor) and simultaneously still legally satisfy shareholders despite the risk of terminating the CP mainline service. And it's definitely somewhere in that territory, given how densely populated the Milton corridor is. Metrolinx got lucky with Lakeshore corridor ownership.
And you know, you might already own CP stock, or your monthly pension cheque may in part come from CP profits! As part of your bank's favourite mutual fund, your company's pension fund, your family's university education fund, your teacher's pension fund, even our dear Canadian CPP* pension fund invests in stocks too! So YOU might already be an owner of CP rail already, without knowing it!
*It's true. Our CPP owns shares in both CN and CP. list of investments CPP owns. So if you're old enough to be collecting your pension today, some of your grocery money is coming thanks to your own hidden CN/CP ownership! (A tiny percentage, but it's there).
But you never know. Metrolinx might actually pay a pretty penny for more rail eventually -- maybe not Milton but an easier step of purchasing a slice of rail corridor all the way through to Hamilton's Grimsby sub (within 10-20 years). This major track purchase would probably be cheaper since only a few freight trains run through West Harbour per day, and CN would still keep running rights and/or parallel CN-dedicated trackage. This is long-term concept but several steps have already done towards this, with the earlier proposed Lewis yard & Confederation GO now becoming funded realities, so this is a good crystal ball of Lewis Yard's future and a potential portent of eventual Metrolinx purchase of Grimsby sub (beyond current 10 year plan).
Ultimately, this is certainly beyond the Wynne-announced 10 year plan, but Metrolinx does have a strong desire to electricify RER all the way through Hamilton via the CN sub (West Harbour, Confederation) to their Lewis Yard layover (Page 119 of Metrolinx Electrification Project, Part 2, Conceptual Design Report, found in just one PDF as part of massive collection of electrification-related PDFs found at www.gotransit.com/electrification) Page 63 to 94 is a fun read about electricifation planning between Burlington through to the Grimsby sub all the way to Lewis -- so many pages of relatively recent due diligence already about electricifation all the way to Hamilton already. They have electrification of GO to Hamilton in three phases called LW1 (to Oakville), LW2 (to Burlington/Aldershot), and LW3 (to Lewis Yard Layover past Stoney Creek), and what Wynne/Steven publicly announced was electrification of LW1 and LW2, so LW3 electrification is bumped to a future phase beyond 10 years, but it was apparently also a raison d'etre of Lewis; since that trainyard is ultimately intended for electrification someday. Digging these PDFs give you a nice crystal ball of what Metrolinx wants to do eventually, even if it's beyond government announcements (e.g. the current 10-year RER plan, which would probably end up taking 15 years including delays), and gives you a rough idea of what sections of rail that Metrolinx is shopping to buy eventually "at the right price". The plans are more solid than lots of past ones like GO ALRT, given how several parts of the plans are actually ending up happening in the last 10 years, and what is now being funded today well after these reports were published in 2014, are largely in line with the plans. So let's hope the momentum continues. Ultimately, once the CN rail degrades sufficiently (e.g. maintenace becomes more expensive than simply selling out to Metrolinx), CN may sell part of the Grimsby sub, get Metrolinx to renovate and upgrade it, and benefit from running rights paying less for maintenance -- given CN don't run the Grimsby sub nearly as often as CP runs trains on Milton. So, reading the tea leaves, we will probably hear an announcement of a purchase of Grimsby sub (even if not including part of the Hamilton Junction) well before we hear an announcement of a purchase of the Milton line. And even it might not ever happen, you can be pretty sure that it's very far more likely than Milton.
I know, doesn't answer the Milton conundrum. Milton trains are the among the most overcrowded GO trains, and apparently also in most of the Western world (you have to see places like India and China to see trains more crowded than Milton peak GO trains). Heaving nearly a SkyDome's worth of people sardined on just a mere 9 GO trains daily. While lucky Lakeshore GO users have seen the peak trains become a small smidgen less crowded over the years with fewer standees and more people spreading to now-relatively-frequent subsequent trains coming in a few minutes later that always has seats except during sports events. Milton-related PDFs are quite absent from a lot of recent Metrolinx planning documents. Thousand and thousand of pages of PDFs abound, most boring reading, but plenty of nice railfan-worthy info. Sorry to be the bearer of no good Milton news in my PDF sleuthing.
And you know, you might already own CP stock, or your monthly pension cheque may in part come from CP profits! As part of your bank's favourite mutual fund, your company's pension fund, your family's university education fund, your teacher's pension fund, even our dear Canadian CPP* pension fund invests in stocks too! So YOU might already be an owner of CP rail already, without knowing it!
*It's true. Our CPP owns shares in both CN and CP. list of investments CPP owns. So if you're old enough to be collecting your pension today, some of your grocery money is coming thanks to your own hidden CN/CP ownership! (A tiny percentage, but it's there).
But you never know. Metrolinx might actually pay a pretty penny for more rail eventually -- maybe not Milton but an easier step of purchasing a slice of rail corridor all the way through to Hamilton's Grimsby sub (within 10-20 years). This major track purchase would probably be cheaper since only a few freight trains run through West Harbour per day, and CN would still keep running rights and/or parallel CN-dedicated trackage. This is long-term concept but several steps have already done towards this, with the earlier proposed Lewis yard & Confederation GO now becoming funded realities, so this is a good crystal ball of Lewis Yard's future and a potential portent of eventual Metrolinx purchase of Grimsby sub (beyond current 10 year plan).
Ultimately, this is certainly beyond the Wynne-announced 10 year plan, but Metrolinx does have a strong desire to electricify RER all the way through Hamilton via the CN sub (West Harbour, Confederation) to their Lewis Yard layover (Page 119 of Metrolinx Electrification Project, Part 2, Conceptual Design Report, found in just one PDF as part of massive collection of electrification-related PDFs found at www.gotransit.com/electrification) Page 63 to 94 is a fun read about electricifation planning between Burlington through to the Grimsby sub all the way to Lewis -- so many pages of relatively recent due diligence already about electricifation all the way to Hamilton already. They have electrification of GO to Hamilton in three phases called LW1 (to Oakville), LW2 (to Burlington/Aldershot), and LW3 (to Lewis Yard Layover past Stoney Creek), and what Wynne/Steven publicly announced was electrification of LW1 and LW2, so LW3 electrification is bumped to a future phase beyond 10 years, but it was apparently also a raison d'etre of Lewis; since that trainyard is ultimately intended for electrification someday. Digging these PDFs give you a nice crystal ball of what Metrolinx wants to do eventually, even if it's beyond government announcements (e.g. the current 10-year RER plan, which would probably end up taking 15 years including delays), and gives you a rough idea of what sections of rail that Metrolinx is shopping to buy eventually "at the right price". The plans are more solid than lots of past ones like GO ALRT, given how several parts of the plans are actually ending up happening in the last 10 years, and what is now being funded today well after these reports were published in 2014, are largely in line with the plans. So let's hope the momentum continues. Ultimately, once the CN rail degrades sufficiently (e.g. maintenace becomes more expensive than simply selling out to Metrolinx), CN may sell part of the Grimsby sub, get Metrolinx to renovate and upgrade it, and benefit from running rights paying less for maintenance -- given CN don't run the Grimsby sub nearly as often as CP runs trains on Milton. So, reading the tea leaves, we will probably hear an announcement of a purchase of Grimsby sub (even if not including part of the Hamilton Junction) well before we hear an announcement of a purchase of the Milton line. And even it might not ever happen, you can be pretty sure that it's very far more likely than Milton.
I know, doesn't answer the Milton conundrum. Milton trains are the among the most overcrowded GO trains, and apparently also in most of the Western world (you have to see places like India and China to see trains more crowded than Milton peak GO trains). Heaving nearly a SkyDome's worth of people sardined on just a mere 9 GO trains daily. While lucky Lakeshore GO users have seen the peak trains become a small smidgen less crowded over the years with fewer standees and more people spreading to now-relatively-frequent subsequent trains coming in a few minutes later that always has seats except during sports events. Milton-related PDFs are quite absent from a lot of recent Metrolinx planning documents. Thousand and thousand of pages of PDFs abound, most boring reading, but plenty of nice railfan-worthy info. Sorry to be the bearer of no good Milton news in my PDF sleuthing.
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