micheal_can
Senior Member
So, is it much of a fantasy to see all those other withdraws to return if they brought the line up to a higher standard?
As I understand it, the Dayliner and the Gaspe were in that status. Are the others?
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Lack of meaningful Passenger Rail service outside the Quebec-Windsor Corridor
- Thread starter Urban Sky
- Start date
So, is it much of a fantasy to see all those other withdraws to return if they brought the line up to a higher standard?
As I understand it, the Dayliner and the Gaspe were in that status. Are the others?
Urban Sky
Senior Member
I’m more sceptical about the other services, especially the „Atlantic“, as its frequencies were transferred to the Ocean (which was only 3tpw before December 1994), making its withdrawal technically a rerouting…
micheal_can
Senior Member
For the Atlantic, most of the stations are not served, and the rail line exists. It is a fantasy to see any service return to the Ottawa Valley. The Atlantic service could return if the want was there. TBH, the want for anything more than what Via has does not exist within the government.
cplchanb
Senior Member
Like any majorntransit project is it the chicken or the egg?? No demand because the service isn't there and no service becuase there's no demand. There needs to be an impetus to take that leap. If done propely people will come.
I recall seeing an article about this Chinese subway station in the middle of nowhere and people were laughing at them... guess what 5 years after that article the stop is now in the middle of a developed city block.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
Agreed, but in the case of „Atlantic“, where a hamlet of 6,000 (Lac-Megantic) is the largest population center encountered between Sherbrooke and Saint John, we can safely assume that the service reflects the demand and not the other way around…
cplchanb
Senior Member
Obviously case by case but for starters there should passenger rail linking all provincial capital cities (Fredericton, Victoria, charlottetown missing) and major cities (Calgary missing).
Admittedly territorial capitals are too remote to be realistic but at the very least all the major population centers should be linked
Urban Sky
Senior Member
The decision to not preserve the passenger rail service and railway tracks leading to Victoria, Fredericton, Charlottetown and Saint John’s were done by their own provincial governments, which are of course free to find the necessary funding to reverse the direct outcomes of their own decisions. Same goes for Calgary where it pertains the fate of intercity rail service to Edmonton…
micheal_can
Senior Member
You are someone with the background needed to figure this out...
Lets say a 3 day a week service was to be put in for this line regardless of whether it is the full length or segmented. To service the 2 segments ofMontreal - Sherbrooke and Saint John - Halifax, vs the entire line, which would need more rolling stock? Which would need more train crews?
cplchanb
Senior Member
Isn't via a federal service? Shouldn't it be a federal mandate to maintain service just as the remote communities mandate? It's a joke that our capitals aren't linked like any other country in the world. You might as well move the capitals to Vancouver and Moncton
lenaitch
Senior Member
In some cases, it's not just a matter of improving the quality of the ROW, but that the ROW simply doesn't exist anymore (i.e. Cochrane to Seneterre, Charlottetown, Fredericton). In some cases, I'm not sure the business case exists for pax rail. Without enormous public money subsidies, how many potential people want to take a train from from Victoria to up-Island, Senneterre/Northeast Quebec to Cochrane. I'm not even convinced there will be sufficient year-round to justify Gaspe service; although I don't know if there is freight potential awaiting. Creating and maintaining rail solely for passenger travel on non-high-volume routes is a money pit - our money pit.
Saying every major city (defined?) "deserves" rail service seems like a 'just cuz' type of argument. I get the argument of trying to reduce road travel, but there has to be sufficient numbers to make the large infrastructure and operating costs worthwhile over air or bus.
I would imagine that, post-9/11, a double border crossing of the Montreal-Saint John route would complicate matters.
Saying every major city (defined?) "deserves" rail service seems like a 'just cuz' type of argument. I get the argument of trying to reduce road travel, but there has to be sufficient numbers to make the large infrastructure and operating costs worthwhile over air or bus.
I would imagine that, post-9/11, a double border crossing of the Montreal-Saint John route would complicate matters.
cplchanb
Senior Member
So it's a game of who blinks first? If you don't build they won't come. If they won't come nobody builds. That's the major problem. Noone wants to take the first step.
You need to develop infrastructure in order for there to be development, even at the risk of losing money initially
micheal_can
Senior Member
You bring up some good points. I'll address each separately.
Sennterre - Cochrane still exists, but you need to go through Val D'or.and Rouyn-Noranda. Both of those are substantially larger (32,000 and 42,000) than either the terminus of Senneterre (2,900) or Cochrane.(5000). It wouldneed to pass through Englehart.
Then lets start with the top 10 largest metro areas. Number 5 is not connected.
Sennterre - Cochrane still exists, but you need to go through Val D'or.and Rouyn-Noranda. Both of those are substantially larger (32,000 and 42,000) than either the terminus of Senneterre (2,900) or Cochrane.(5000). It wouldneed to pass through Englehart.
Then lets start with the top 10 largest metro areas. Number 5 is not connected.
There is a good chance that had it been running, they may have forced the closure of any stations in ME. Then, after they sorted things out, it may have been reopened. Kind of like how all border crossings were annoying for a whle, but are now at a reasonable level for 2 allied countries.
lenaitch
Senior Member
That's a lot of playing with words. It's like saying the ROW between Sudbury/North Bay and Ottawa still exists, you just have to go through Toronto. To be clear, VIA doesn't serve northwestern Quebec because it is a good business case or has meaningful ridership (honestly, I don't know, but doubt it is substantial) - it does it because they have to. I would be curious about the trainloads of people from Northwestern Quebec who yearn to get to northeastern Ontario.
True. Something like this is why I'm a fan of the AMTRAK-style provincial financial support for VIA.
Perhaps, but I read on here how passenger rail border issues at Niagara, Winsdor/Sarnia are, or would be a major PITA. Keep in mind the train crosses the border near (not at) at a village of 1100 people on our side and about 100 on theirs.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
The federal responsibility (as executed through VIA‘s mandate and funding) includes the operation of a transcontinental network, but not the maintenance of any track infrastructure to provide the prerequisite for operating such services. In the case of NL and PE, these two provinces voluntarily and explicitly waived the rights to receive rail service in exchange for Highway funding (the „Confederation bridge“ in the case of PE and the TCH in the case of NL). These provinces deliberately and explicitly chose to be rail-free and as residents of neither province, we ought to respect the decisions these provinces have made, even if we regret them as short-sighted.
As for Victoria-Courtenay, the BC government sued the federal government to add that service on the list of services to survive the 1990 cuts, but they could not be bothered to provide any infrastructure funding to save the service when the line became unusable some 20 years later. Similarly, the AB government provided only a measly $1 million (i.e. presumably a fraction of the operational funding the Feds spent through VIA every year to provide this service!) to fix some of the level crossings causing a horrendous series of deadly level crossing accidents and then decided that saving the Calgary-Edmonton service was not worth spending anything beyond that. These two cases (add QC for Gaspé until very recently) strongly suggest that provincial governments have a tendency to demand VIA service to maximize the federal services/funding they can extract for their own constituents, but place absolutely minimum value on passenger rail (or often even: any kind of public intercity passenger transport) services in itself.
We can deplore this all we want, but this is the country we live in and the „lack of meaningful passenger rail service outside the Q-W Corridor“ (to quote the title I chose for this title are a direct consequence of deliberate actions taken by the provincial governments the citizens of these provinces have elected…
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lenaitch
Senior Member
I read somewhere that 20 US state capitals are not served by AMTRAK (I don't know how accurate that is).