VIA Rail

[generalcanada]

So the orginal price tag was like 8 billion IIRC? upgrading it all to full HSR could be closer to 30 billion right?

IMO CPC only gives the green light for HFR as originally proposed which could be like 10 billion. Not the full expensive HSR, they will take credit for it though and still attempt to call it "High Speed Rail" when it really isnt.

It really is a cheap easy win for them.

 

[ARG1]

So the orginal price tag was like 8 billion IIRC? upgrading it all to full HSR could be closer to 30 billion right?

IMO CPC only gives the green light for HFR as originally proposed which could be like 10 billion. Not the full expensive HSR, they will take credit for it though and still attempt to call it "High Speed Rail" when it really isnt.

It really is a cheap easy win for them.

The real factor is how much private funding they could get for this line + how much business groups pressure them to support this line. The CPC loves infrastructure projects that can provide major boosts to the economy, they just don't like actually paying for it.

 

[kEiThZ]

Both, in the case of Wynne’s HSR election stunt and the Carbon Tax now, these policies were/are highly controversial amongst the Conservative’s core constituents and the Conservative’s campaign was/is very transparent about their intentions post-election-victory. Has PP publicly said anything critical about VIA (or HxR) since 2012, when VIA’s fiscal credibility was orders of magnitudes worse than today?

There's a distinct willingness with this group to slaughter sacred cows. Just look at how they are willing to go after the CBC. No previous politician has done that. I don't think VIA will be exempt from this instinct.

 

[kEiThZ]

You say that, meanwhile Alberta elected a hyper conservative premier, who also committed to developing and building a massive intercity network, with an HSR-lite line connecting Calgary to Edmonton. I feel like there are too many people in this country who look at conservatives, and just duct tape US republicans on their face without actually looking at their proposals and plans.


Like guys, literally in the last convention the party passed a motion to commit to funding HSR in this country:
View attachment 583294

From: https://cpcassets.conservative.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/23175001/990863517f7a575.pdf

Can we stop dooming and glooming for a second?

Via HFR is being built as a P3, that means not only is it not being fully funded by the public sector, but it has a SIGNIFICANT amount of private sector money backing the project, companies (the ones that the CPC as a party wants to be friendly towards) that would be really mad if all of the time and money they had spent developing these proposals go down the drain. In other words, the likelihood that the CPC will fully pull the plug on this project is very low.

This is also a conservative party whose leader says they can't commit to meeting NATO targets for defence spending because of the budget. That's for an issue that matters to many more conservatives and is in all their policy and campaign documents.

 

[generalcanada]

The real factor is how much private funding they could get for this line + how much business groups pressure them to support this line. The CPC loves infrastructure projects that can provide major boosts to the economy, they just don't like actually paying for it.

Is that true? the "private funding" is just front-loading and financing the project over the 10 year construction timeline. In a normal p3 project money gets paid in stages.

 

[Urban Sky]

There's a distinct willingness with this group to slaughter sacred cows. Just look at how they are willing to go after the CBC. No previous politician has done that. I don't think VIA will be exempt from this instinct.

The Conservative’s criticisms of the CBC are well documented and none of them seem to apply to private investors queuing to invest billions to modernize our intercity passenger rail networks. If you have anything beyond conspiracy theories to back up your claims, you shouldn’t have any trouble answering my previous question which was directed at you:

Has PP publicly said anything critical about VIA (or HxR) since 2012, when VIA’s fiscal credibility was orders of magnitudes worse than today?

 

[micheal_can]

The real factor is how much private funding they could get for this line + how much business groups pressure them to support this line. The CPC loves infrastructure projects that can provide major boosts to the economy, they just don't like actually paying for it.

This ignores the idea that only HSR was mentioned. I can see the argument get made that it will be either HSR or nothing. This is one of those times where taking their platform as the whole truth may be warranted. He said "ax the tax", so it isn't hard to expect the carbon tax to be cut. He said "defund the CBC" so we can expect the amount the government gives the cBC to be cut. If he has said that he will fund HSR, then why, if we believe the rest to be true, will he fund the HFR? What this really means is: will the TOM see HSR? I am hopeful it might happen. That would be a good thing.

 

[ARG1]

This ignores the idea that only HSR was mentioned. I can see the argument get made that it will be either HSR or nothing. This is one of those times where taking their platform as the whole truth may be warranted. He said "ax the tax", so it isn't hard to expect the carbon tax to be cut. He said "defund the CBC" so we can expect the amount the government gives the cBC to be cut. If he has said that he will fund HSR, then why, if we believe the rest to be true, will he fund the HFR? What this really means is: will the TOM see HSR? I am hopeful it might happen. That would be a good thing.

I recommend you actually read the last few pages of this thread, I know its difficult, but its worth actually knowing about the project we're discussing. I recommend this post by UrbanSky:

That’s why they asked each proponent for two different alignments (one for HFR and one for HSR): For those segments which overlap, you already build HSR-ready (so that you can later upgrade to HSR at minimal total cost) and the rest you build as cheap as possible (because it would eventually be bypassed when the upgrade to HSR comes.


HFR-TGF obtains the full rights to all proposals, which will allow them to mix-and-match the best elements and ideas from the 6 proposals (3xHFR and 3xHSR).

Honestly, I can’t think of how HFR-TGF could have made this procurement even more PP-proofed…

There's a reason many of us call this project 'HxR', since whether this will be HFR or HSR is not set in stone.

 

[nfitz]

... whether this will be HFR or HSR is not set in stone.

With the alignment through Peterborough and the Canadian Shield, a lot of it is going to be set in stone!

 

[micheal_can]

I recommend you actually read the last few pages of this thread, I know its difficult, but its worth actually knowing about the project we're discussing. I recommend this post by UrbanSky:

I have.

There's a reason many of us call this project 'HxR', since whether this will be HFR or HSR is not set in stone.

I know what we call it. AFAIK, none of us are going to be decision makers, so we can label it what we want. The question is whether the CPC will like the label used and fund it. I know some of the bidders have both HSR and HFR. The challenge is whether they get picked. The other challenge will be whether once they are decided, what is chosen after election day aligns with the CPC views. For example, if the contract is awarded to an HFR will the CPC change the contract to HSR or cancel it all together. Right now, that is speculation.

 

[ARG1]

I have.

I know what we call it. AFAIK, none of us are going to be decision makers, so we can label it what we want. The question is whether the CPC will like the label used and fund it. I know some of the bidders have both HSR and HFR. The challenge is whether they get picked. The other challenge will be whether once they are decided, what is chosen after election day aligns with the CPC views. For example, if the contract is awarded to an HFR will the CPC change the contract to HSR or cancel it all together. Right now, that is speculation.

"We don't like the fact that the project is called HFR, therefore we will fully restart procurement and waste money by demanding new RFPs for an HSR that will likely be identical to what was received for the HSR portion of HFR RFPs". Is that what you're implying? I don't have to explain why that's completely nuts.

Here's a more realistic scenario: The CPC comes in and rebrands the project. That's it, the end.

 

[micheal_can]

"We don't like the fact that the project is called HFR, therefore we will fully restart procurement and waste money by demanding new RFPs for an HSR that will likely be identical to what was received for the HSR portion of HFR RFPs". Is that what you're implying? I don't have to explain why that's completely nuts.

Here's a more realistic scenario: The CPC comes in and rebrands the project. That's it, the end.

That is one realist scenario. Another is they cancel it and it dies till they leave office. Think that can't happen? Line 5 would like to speak to you.

Who really knows what they will do. They may be the party that ushers in a renaissance in intercity passenger rail. They may be the one who puts the final nail in the coffin. I don't think anyone here would be willing to say with certainty what will happen. A crazier thing would be if we see another government much like now where the CPC are not in charge. Then all of this conjecture goes out the window and we have HFR at worst.

 

[Urban Sky]

"We don't like the fact that the project is called HFR, therefore we will fully restart procurement and waste money by demanding new RFPs for an HSR that will likely be identical to what was received for the HSR portion of HFR RFPs". Is that what you're implying? I don't have to explain why that's completely nuts.

Here's a more realistic scenario: The CPC comes in and rebrands the project. That's it, the end.

As much as I admire your patient explanations, most of us regular contributors here have already assigned a well-deserved space for @micheal_can on our respective “Ignore” lists, for various reasons you are apparenty already in the progress of discovering. However, unfortunately, that only blocks his posts, not the (parts of) comments which reply to him and we are still forced to see (while sometimes unhiding his comments to understand the context for your posts).

For the sake of our sanity, may I ask you (and anyone else) fearless enough of engaging @micheal_can, to move such discussions to either of the following threads, which mostly only exist for no other reason than distracting @micheal_can from spamming this thread and thus making any focused discussion impossible? (Unfortunately, not everyone here can tame the urge to debunk his nonsense, myself included until far too recently.)

Lack of meaningful Passenger Rail service outside the Quebec-Windsor Corridor

Google is your friend - Paul I was hoping for the actual subdivision acquisition costs. Where those pieces refer to sums expended, it is in signalling and track improvement not what consideration went CN’s way.

urbantoronto.ca

Ontario Northland/Northern Ontario Transportation

Where else can they expand to? Considering that part of the line is not on ONR tracks, I look where there is potential ridership. Here are my thoughts: 1) A Toronto -Sudbury line. It could even use the Mactier sub south of where the one way directional agreement with CN and CP are. 2) A SSM -...

urbantoronto.ca

General railway discussions

https://www.sootoday.com/local-news/agawa-canyon-tour-train-has-a-new-500-a-seat-vip-section-9166676?utm_source=Villager&utm_campaign=Content&utm_medium=Twitter Interesting. Value-added is always good. It seems the car came up from Wisconsin & Southern which is owned by Watco which bought the...

urbantoronto.ca

Many thanks in advance and please keep up the good posts!

 

[Akshitha12345]

Spam

 

[C_Johnson_1995]

You say that, meanwhile Alberta elected a hyper conservative premier, who also committed to developing and building a massive intercity network, with an HSR-lite line connecting Calgary to Edmonton. I feel like there are too many people in this country who look at conservatives, and just duct tape US republicans on their face without actually looking at their proposals and plans.


Like guys, literally in the last convention the party passed a motion to commit to funding HSR in this country:
View attachment 583294

From: https://cpcassets.conservative.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/23175001/990863517f7a575.pdf

Can we stop dooming and glooming for a second?

Via HFR is being built as a P3, that means not only is it not being fully funded by the public sector, but it has a SIGNIFICANT amount of private sector money backing the project, companies (the ones that the CPC as a party wants to be friendly towards) that would be really mad if all of the time and money they had spent developing these proposals go down the drain. In other words, the likelihood that the CPC will fully pull the plug on this project is very low.

The important part of that Alberta plan is that it is PROVINCIAL. Note that VIA and the federal government didn't have anything to do with it. Sure, conservatives here do have some differences to Americans, however the federal conservatives are cut from a different cloth because they can't use rail as an appeal to populism and grievances against other provinces and the federal government. Instead, the only winning formula is to cut and devolve responsibility. That plan reinforced my belief that VIA is useless and ought to be done away with, even if most of that map should just be served with busses instead of trains.

When it comes to the party resolution in support of HSR, party convention resolutions are worth less than nothing and are ignored almost every time with few exceptions. The only thing that will matter is the party platform come the next election and the comments from the incoming prime minister do not inspire confidence.

While HFR will have significant private backing, it will still be funded in large part by government. When we are talking about spending 10s of billions of dollars on a project, there is no way a CPC government will be able to stomach it. They would sooner buy every man, woman, and child in Canada a Hummer H1 while axing the tax.

But at the end of the day, all this is just speculation. We won't know until it happens, but I think it is probably best to prepare for the worst.