Moose Rail (National Capital Region)

[OCCheetos]

I think you're missing my point which is that MOOSE's current documents are incomplete, therefore you're jumping to conclusions by assuming that they implicate anything for the Trillium Line.

 

[Allandale25]

^ Their silence on key aspects and refusal so far to clarify other points provides more than enough information at this point to draw conclusions. Again, the contradiction on the frequency levels between what they have online and what they said in this thread is startling. I remain concerned. I think @Charles and @kEiThZ make important points that should be considered and taken seriously, including their specific comments about Trillium.

 

[OCCheetos]

Again, the contradiction on the frequency levels between what they have online and what they said in this thread is startling. I remain concerned.

As I've mentioned numerous times before, the hourly frequencies mentioned in their papers refer to the rural sections of their line. They only mention those frequencies since that is the major component of their proposal.

I think @Charles and @kEiThZ make important points that should be considered and taken seriously, including their specific comments about Trillium.

I don't disagree with that. If you, or anyone else wants to make assumptions and form personal opinions and beliefs based on available information, then there's obviously nothing wrong with that. My issue is that those assumptions are now being treated as indisputable facts.

 

[Allandale25]

As I've mentioned numerous times before, the hourly frequencies mentioned in their papers refer to the rural sections of their line. They only mention those frequencies since that is the major component of their proposal.

I really think this post by Charles post helpful and encourage all to read it: https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/moose-rail-national-capital-region.25806/page-36#post-1309239

What does Moose consider on their map the "rural" sections? Can you point that out to me? As far as I can tell (and please correct me if I'm wrong) there is no such labelling by them.

What's in the rural section and what's in the urban section?

Further, take a look at how often they mention this phrase: "hourly service every day, through Ottawa and Gatineau" (emphasis added). What else could they be referring to other than the Trillium Line as the connection to enable "through Ottawa and Gatineau"? Isn't that the entire reason why they want the City to give them the bridge?

 

[OCCheetos]

I really think this post by Charles post helpful and encourage all to read it: https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/moose-rail-national-capital-region.25806/page-36#post-1309239

What does Moose consider on their map the "rural" sections? Can you point that out to me? As far as I can tell (and please correct me if I'm wrong) there is no such labelling by them.

What's in the rural section and what's in the urban section?

Further, take a look at how often they mention this phrase: "hourly service every day, through Ottawa and Gatineau" (emphasis added). What else could they be referring to other than the Trillium Line as the connection to enable "through Ottawa and Gatineau"? Isn't that the entire reason why they want the City to give them the bridge?

I've read all of the quotes. They were each brought up at least once on the other forum in the past.

I would consider the rural parts of the lines the parts that would actually receive hourly service (since that's what the documents say). Obviously, even at a bare minimum, the Trillium Line won't receive only hourly service since two of the lines would be interlined along the Trillium corridor. It's the parts of the line that stretch out into Arnprior, Pontiac, Wakefield, Montebello, Smiths Falls, and Alexandria that would have hourly service.

Through could just mean that they pass through the city (because well, they do..). Obviously these are two interpretations of the same facts. This is kind of why I believe that any assumptions taken from these facts shouldn't be treated as facts themselves.

 

[Allandale25]

^ Rather than get hung up on a debate about what a fact is or isn't, I'm simply noting on concerns. I am happy to read any new or additional information for any transit proposal. The more information the better.

 

[Charles]

MOOSE would work to achieve 5-minute service on the Trillium Line. Of course double-tracking.

Joseph,

Does this mean that MOOSE has actually completed a feasibility study and come up with an updated financial estimate.

FUN WITH FIGURES:

• Current MOOSE financial estimates: $500 Million to operate 6 trains over a 400km network on an annual basis. That will provide service approximately once every three hours as per our previous discussions.
• To provide hourly service as MOOSE has indicated in their plans (contradicting their financial estimates) will take at least 18 trains. Using a linear extrapolation for three times as many trains brings us to $1.5 BILLION dollars annually.
• To provide hourly service to the rural towns and 5 minute service inside the core Ottawa-Gatineau corridor (can't discriminate against Quebec and only have 5 minute service in Ottawa) we would need approximately 30 trainsets. Once again using a linear extrapolation of costs we get to $2.5 BILLION dollars in annual operating costs.

$2.5 Billion dollars in annual operating costs comes out to approximately $2000 for every person in the NCR. Yet MOOSE proposes to get that funding by extracting it in 'voluntary' payments from the property owners/landlords (thus involuntarily tenants) within an 800m radius of each station.

Is there anyone here who honestly thinks that you can harvest $2.5 Billion dollars a year from property values around stations???

 

[Charles]

^ @Charles and @kEiThZ know the Ottawa Region better, so I'm interested in what they think about how 6 trains compares to the City's plan and particularly Stage 2.

@Allendale25 , I've discussed the six train issue that MOOSE is currently using in their financial estimates in previous posts and I've linked to one of them below. By my rough calculations the best service that could be provided over the 400km network is approximately every three hours with only six trains. So first of all, that level of frequency is almost completely useless both for rural residents and for those within the City of Ottawa.

Even if service is increased to hourly on each MOOSE line, it still doesn't come close to the Trillium line. Current service on the Trillium Line is every 12 minutes and after Stage 2 I believe it is expected to go up to every 8 minutes (don't quote me on that). It appears that MOOSE would also have fewer stations along the Trillium corridor (according to their map) and of course it would cut off the southern leg of the Trillium Line which leads to one of the fastest growing suburbs within Ottawa.

Even if the MOOSE plan was financially viable (which it isn't), the level of service would be well below what we currently receive and significantly less than the Stage 2 LRT will provide.

More info on Ottawa LRT Stage 2 can be found at the following link.

In your Letter of Application to CTA of 29 Jun 16 you claim that MOOSE will operate a 400km (para 20) network over 3 lines (Annex F). There will be approximately 50 stations (para 20). You indicate that you will use 6 trains to do that. (Annex J, para 3b) and that you will provide hourly service (page 6 of update 25 Nov 16).

To do that you would need each train to complete its run from end to end of each line in under an hour, give some time to conduct your “pit stop program” at the end of each line (Annex J, para 4.2), and then head out again in the opposite direction.

This is obviously impossible. Some simple math:

Assuming each line is 130km long.

Assume 15 stops per line and each stop reduces travel time by 2 minutes due to deceleration, offloading/onloading passengers, and acceleration. Total time lost at stations = 30 min.

To get from one end of the line to another in an hour would require the train to travel over 300km/hr. (60 min/hr -15x2 min/stop – 5min pitstop)=35min leaving 25min or 0.416 hours for travel. 130km/0.416hr = 312km/hr.

A more likely scenario is about a 3 hr turn around. This would give you a much more comfortable 3 minutes loss per station (45 min total), a 15 minute pit stop at each end, and 2 hours to travel 130km equating to an average of 65km/hr (remember we’re dealing with passing tracks, bridges, etc). In my mind that means you would require at least 18 trains and would probably need another 2 or 3 for ongoing maintenance issues.

 

[Allandale25]

^ Thanks for expanding on your thoughts Charles and for the clarifications. Apologies if I wasn't capturing your concern, which I share, correctly.

I will continue to highlight this point you are making: "Even if the MOOSE plan was financially viable (which it isn't), the level of service would be well below what we currently receive and significantly less than the Stage 2 LRT will provide."

 

[Urban Sky]

Some interesting points here in the other forum by acottawa:
[1. The Bridge has not appear to have been used for passenger services in 98 years (when Union Station opened downtown). It has not been used for freight services for a long time.]

So, no passenger operations via the Prince of Wales bridge since 1920?

Strange, I count 12 trains scheduled on a typical weekday in 1943...

Source: CP train timetable, effective 1943/06/27

...and even 14 in 1955,...

Source: CP train timetable, effective 1955/04/24

...which was later reduced to 8 trains by 1965:

Source: CP train timetable, effective 1965/04/25

In 1966, the National Capital Commission unfortunately had the "foresight" to close the old Union Station (you know, the rail station which opened in 1912 and supposedly ended passenger operations over the Prince-of-Wales bridge) and to move passenger operations from what is now the Government Convention Centre (it makes me mad whenever I remember that we could still have our rail station opposite Chateau Laurier Hotel and thus less than 500 meters from the parliament). Even though this brought an end of transcontinental trains transiting through the city of Hull and thus the province of Quebec for just a few kilometers, this forced CP to now route its Montreal-Montebello-Ottawa trains via Hull West (renamed as "Hull") and Ottawa West, which retained passenger operations over the Prince of Wales bridge with up to 6 trains daily,...

Source: CP rail timetable, effective 1966/10/30

...which were soon cut back to 3 trains by CP...

Source: CP rail timetable, effective 1974/04/28

...and then superseded by VIA Rail until passenger operations over the Prince of Wales bridge fell victim of the federal government's first big round of cuts in 1981 (36 years ago or a mere 61 years later than claimed by "acottawa"):

Source: VIA Rail timetable, effective 1981/06/01

Some geographical orientation with station locations:

Source: Google Earth with map data from The Ontario Railway Map Collection

FUN WITH FIGURES:

• Current MOOSE financial estimates: $500 Million to operate 6 trains over a 400km network on an annual basis. That will provide service approximately once every three hours as per our previous discussions.
• To provide hourly service as MOOSE has indicated in their plans (contradicting their financial estimates) will take at least 18 trains. Using a linear extrapolation for three times as many trains brings us to $1.5 BILLION dollars annually.
• To provide hourly service to the rural towns and 5 minute service inside the core Ottawa-Gatineau corridor (can't discriminate against Quebec and only have 5 minute service in Ottawa) we would need approximately 30 trainsets. Once again using a linear extrapolation of costs we get to $2.5 BILLION dollars in annual operating costs.

$2.5 Billion dollars in annual operating costs comes out to approximately $2000 for every person in the NCR. Yet MOOSE proposes to get that funding by extracting it in 'voluntary' payments from the property owners/landlords (thus involuntarily tenants) within an 800m radius of each station.

Is there anyone here who honestly thinks that you can harvest $2.5 Billion dollars a year from property values around stations???

Little sanity check for whatever you try to read out of these numbers: VIA Rail's Annual Report 2016 shows an annual operating cost of $106.7 million for its Canadian - a service which operates with 3-4 trainsets year-round over a distance of 4466 km with up to 30 cars and a crew staffing multiple sleeping cars and kitchens. $2.5 billion is more than 4 times VIA Rail's total operating budget ($591.9 million) and almost half of what Amtrak's national network costs to operate (US$4322.6 in 2015)...

 

[Charles]

Little sanity check for whatever you try to read out of these numbers:.

Urban Sky: I don't disagree that we need a little sanity here, I realize that these figures are somewhat ridiculous, hence the "FUN WITH FIGURES". However, what I'm trying to highlight in some respects is that after 8 years MOOSE has yet to complete a feasibility study and doesn't have a clue yet how much money it's going to cost to operate a railway, or if it is even possible. They put out all sorts of claims but can't back them up. The six trainsets and $500M in annual operating costs comes directly from their CTA submission, I've simply extrapolated their own numbers, appreciating that their own numbers have no foundation.

 

[Urban Sky]

They put out all sorts of claims but can't back them up.

Some people in this forum don't seem willing to even try to understand the difference between "can't" and "don't feel compelled to, at least not at this exact time": Just because I'm not willing to share with you my medical records, tax declarations and Social Insurance Number, this does not mean that I don't have this information already available and that I'm unable to share with you in an instant should I ever feel compelled by either the law or by the strength of your arguments that doing so is in the interest of myself and of my personal stakeholders...

 

[Allandale25]

^ 8 years is still a long time, with several elections and now a funded and shovel ready Stage 2. Doesn't Moose require *some* type of governmental approval and wouldn't it help if their feasibility study coild be public so that they could try to get the public on board?

 

[Charles]

Some people in this forum don't seem willing to even try to understand the difference between "can't" and "don't feel compelled to, at least not at this exact time":

Perhaps I should have said that they make claims that they can't (or fail to) live up to. Here's an example:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-area-commuter-rail-gathers-steam-1.1003316
14 Sep 2011: But Potvin said if the municipalities all get on board, the first trains could be running by the winter of 2012.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz47kauZsx60V09CTWpnalo3bHc/edit
23 April 2013: Our target start-up date for the Moose Consortium’s whole-region private-sector railway service is Friday 29 July, 2016,

http://www.discoversmithsfalls.ca/commuter-train-track-2017-operation/
??2015: Mobility Ottawa-Outaouais Mobility Systems and Enterprises Inc. (Moose) are on track for their 2017 schedule,

https://www.insideottawavalley.com/news-story/6763308-moose-commuter-train-in-smiths-falls-threatened-by-track-issues-in-ottawa/
July 12, 2016: Potvin said Smiths Falls could see trains running as early as 2018, a slight shift from the 2017 that was first anticipated

Perhaps if they got that feasibility study they keep talking about completed they might be able to make more realistic claims. But of course, that means someone needs to invest some money and that is yet to happen.

 

[Urban Sky]

Perhaps I should have said that they make claims that they can't (or fail to) live up to.

Yes, but you are now making a completely different argument (one about timelines, rather than costs) than the one I was responding to...

Perhaps if they got that feasibility study they keep talking about completed they might be able to make more realistic claims.

Regardless of whether they have already the results of any feasibility study or not, it would investigate the economic, financial and technical feasibility, not the political feasibility of any of the claims you listed.

But of course, that means someone needs to invest some money and that is yet to happen.

If nobody was investing any money into MOOSE, @Joseph Potvin would be looking for a new job and not bother defending his project against you. They clearly don't have the funding to proceed to the construction phase, but they wouldn't be able to spend it anyway at this point, since they are still busy with engineering the political and legal prerequisites for their project...