VIA Rail

[micheal_can]

Ask Rick Mercer. The more recent serious proposal mileatones were VIA Fast, somewhat actioned during the Harper government in 2008-2010, and then the VIA HFR proposal which was first announced in 2014, revised in 2015, and first reached the Trudeau Cabinet in 2017.

PS - What is differwnt this time? Driving times have increased thanks to congestikn in the GTA and west Montreal, air terminals are closer to capacity, population is growing, and climate change is being taken more seriously. Of course, costs keep escalating so sticker shock just keeps growing.

- Paul

 

[nfitz]

Ask Rick Mercer. The more recent serious proposal mileatones were VIA Fast, somewhat actioned during the Harper government in 2008-2010, and then the VIA HFR proposal which was first announced in 2014, revised in 2015, and first reached the Trudeau Cabinet in 2017.

VIA Fast was killed by the Liberals under Martin before Harper came to power. The key element was the new greenfield alignment from Kingston to Smiths Falls, east of the Cataraqui River.

Some additional track was added along the Kingston Sub later on - but nothing like what was proposed in VIA Fast.

 

[smallspy]

I believe that something similar was widely reported.

I never said they should contact bus companies. But that they should do what they used to do, and contract bus companies in advance.

How do you envision this/these contracts working? How much do you think it would cost? Where will that money come from? What repercussions would exist in the contract to protect VIA and the bus company/ies?

Dan

 

[crs1026]

How do you envision this/these contracts working? How much do you think it would cost? Where will that money come from? What repercussions would exist in the contract to protect VIA and the bus company/ies?

Dan

I can't imagine a scenario where bus companies would have spare capacity sitting around on the eve of a long weekend. I can't imagine VIA being able to afford to pay them to hold capacity unused just to protect against a once-a-year contingency.

Not to mention, in many probable scenarios where the train is immobilised, getting passengers from train to ground to bus is likely not possible.

Having said that, I can certainly think that a bus company might reasonably have an obligation to cancel its charter for a junior football team, or a group going to attend a Blue Jays game, to make a bus available when a train is stranded The transcript pointed to maritime law where every ship has a duty to respond to distress calls. Some lesser version of this legal obligation might be desirable. Compensation to the cancelled party for that kind of priority might be affordable.

I wonder what logistics might be conceivable, however, to bring all necessary resources to a stranded train. Old timers have told me stories about how the auxiliary trains that were called out to major derailments were held in readiness, and if the roundhouse whistle sounded, the response was much like that of a volunteer fire department - all hands dropped what they were doing and suited up. It's not beyond belief that VIA might have to maintain the readiness to dispatch an ample supply of food and water from one of its operating bases. Perhaps also an emergency generator capable of powering one or two coaches, and an air compressor suitable to power one or two toilets, and a portable holding tank to drain same, is not beyond affordability and practicality. (A rescue locomotive may well meet these needs, if it were accompanied by a tool car with the right cabling and equipment....my imagination runs to a couple retired LRC cars might be available, just as old auxiliaries had retired heavyweight coaches as their staples - but more likely a highway or hirail "crash cart" type equipment would be realistic)

Hopefully a more effective protocol can be found as a contingency against future events. They will happen.

- Paul

 

[Urban Sky]

It’s also worth noting that for two out of the three stranded trains I recall in the Corridor (Christmas 2022 winter storm), October 2023 and now, only in the most recent case, buses would have been of any use, due to comprehensive road closures during the winter storm and the train being stuck inaccessibly on the viaduct right ourside Gare Centrale.

If we estimate that we need three different bus bases to cover the corridor (e.g., Drummondville, Kingston and London) and three buses and three drivers each, which cost the bus companies $100k per year to keep at VIA’s disposal, we would add fixed costs of $1.8 million for an emergency capability which would have only been useful once in the last 2 years. Hence my insistence that such rare evacuation events should be treated like natural disaster response and coordinated by the federal government, which can spread its costs across a high multiple of incidents…

 

[micheal_can]

I can't imagine a scenario where bus companies would have spare capacity sitting around on the eve of a long weekend. I can't imagine VIA being able to afford to pay them to hold capacity unused just to protect against a once-a-year contingency.

Not to mention, in many probable scenarios where the train is immobilised, getting passengers from train to ground to bus is likely not possible.

Having said that, I can certainly think that a bus company might reasonably have an obligation to cancel its charter for a junior football team, or a group going to attend a Blue Jays game, to make a bus available when a train is stranded The transcript pointed to maritime law where every ship has a duty to respond to distress calls. Some lesser version of this legal obligation might be desirable. Compensation to the cancelled party for that kind of priority might be affordable.

I wonder what logistics might be conceivable, however, to bring all necessary resources to a stranded train. Old timers have told me stories about how the auxiliary trains that were called out to major derailments were held in readiness, and if the roundhouse whistle sounded, the response was much like that of a volunteer fire department - all hands dropped what they were doing and suited up. It's not beyond belief that VIA might have to maintain the readiness to dispatch an ample supply of food and water from one of its operating bases. Perhaps also an emergency generator capable of powering one or two coaches, and an air compressor suitable to power one or two toilets, and a portable holding tank to drain same, is not beyond affordability and practicality. (A rescue locomotive may well meet these needs, if it were accompanied by a tool car with the right cabling and equipment....my imagination runs to a couple retired LRC cars might be available, just as old auxiliaries had retired heavyweight coaches as their staples - but more likely a highway or hirail "crash cart" type equipment would be realistic)

Hopefully a more effective protocol can be found as a contingency against future events. They will happen.

- Paul

What I am not able to understand is why couldn't Via have one of its other trains pull up to this stranded one, load the passengers on it and then bring them to a nearby station to wait out the clearing of that stranded train?

 

[nfitz]

I can't imagine a scenario where bus companies would have spare capacity sitting around on the eve of a long weekend. I can't imagine VIA being able to afford to pay them to hold capacity unused just to protect against a once-a-year contingency.

Not to mention, in many probable scenarios where the train is immobilised, getting passengers from train to ground to bus is likely not possible.

If it's about VIA saving money - yeah, that's simple.

But they keep bragging of how they could get pizza to the passengers. So I don't think that getting from the train to the ground is a huge issue. My understanding is they were sat in a perfectly accessible area, most of the time, other than an hour or two initially.

How do you envision this/these contracts working? How much do you think it would cost? Where will that money come from? What repercussions would exist in the contract to protect VIA and the bus company/ies?

Ideally the contracts would be with local transit agencies. It's hard to imagine that most agencies couldn't free up 3 or 4 buses quickly.

I can't speak to cost. How much does TTC charge the city and agencies, etc., for simply having the capability to provide them with buses in an emergency? And then if it's activated, how much per bus per hour?

I don't envision this outside of the corridor - but those trains normally have a lot of meals on them, and are well prepared for 24-hour delays.

 

[crs1026]

But they keep bragging of how they could get pizza to the passengers. So I don't think that getting from the train to the ground is a huge issue. My understanding is they were sat in a perfectly accessible area, most of the time, other than an hour or two initially.

I think it's fair to conclude that there was a bureaucratic inertial where the operations people thought they had things under control and didn't need to trigger a more general response. The transcript hints that the notification trees are being reviewed.

Ideally the contracts would be with local transit agencies. It's hard to imagine that most agencies couldn't free up 3 or 4 buses quickly.

A reasonable proposition - but - There are many cases where transit agencies have legal constraints on where and when they can send their vehicles, and labour restrictions on where and when their drivers must go. This is fixable, but it might actually take overriding legislation before this option can work for VIA.

I don't envision this outside of the corridor - but those trains normally have a lot of meals on them, and are well prepared for 24-hour delays.

It would be interesting to know the case history on when, and how often, the long distance trains especially the remote services break down or are stranded. One hears stories about this happening, but I know of no comprehensive source of data. In the corridor I would be worried about working HVAC and toilets first, and food and water second.

- Paul

 

[Urban Sky]

Ideally the contracts would be with local transit agencies. It's hard to imagine that most agencies couldn't free up 3 or 4 buses quickly.

I can't speak to cost. How much does TTC charge the city and agencies, etc., for simply having the capability to provide them with buses in an emergency? And then if it's activated, how much per bus per hour?

I would assume that the cost is dramatically higher for a “guaranteed response” than “if resources are available” type of contract, as that implies owning buses and hiring drivers specifically for this contract. So now you got to ask yourself how much taxpayer money you are willing to burn for an emergency service which seems to be of use far-less-than-annually for any given such contracted company.

Also, having such a contract with someone like TTC is less useful than one in, say, Kingston, as the closer an incident is to Toronto, the more likely you are to have other alternatives in cases of emergencies, whereas it would take the TTC at least 3 (more likely: 4-5) hours to get a bus to Kingston.

I’m repeating myself, but it’s incredibly inefficient for a relatively small railroad with such a spread-out network like VIA Rail to deploy the required scale of resources to respond to such extremely rare events. Only the federal government itself has the capability to pool and coordinate such resources, potentially aided by accompanying legislation which declares stranded trains in need of evacuation as emergency situations which oblige at least public bus services to deploy buses…

 

[crs1026]

I’m repeating myself, but it’s incredibly inefficient for a relatively small railroad with such a spread-out network like VIA Rail to deploy the required scale of resources to respond to such extremely rare events. Only the federal government itself has the capability to pool and coordinate such resources, potentially aided by accompanying legislation which declares stranded trains in need of evacuation as emergency situations which oblige at least public bus services to deploy buses…

I'm not sure that the problem becomes more manageable this way. There is no federal command center I know of that would be mobilised any faster, and in fact the higher one goes in the bureaucracy the harder it becomes to secure quick action. Much of the problem-solving for VIA scenarios requires railway specific knowledge and an appreciation of on-train conditions as passengers and crew are experiencing them. The resources that one imagines might have responded are mostly managed at the municipal or at best provincial level. The only federal resource that I can think of that is distributed along the Corridor would be the militia - there are armouries with some contingent of heavy transports in many smaller towns - but calling out the militia is not done in the timeframe that a VIA scenario considers. Provincial emergency response organizations are likely better positioned, but a stalled VIA train is not the kind of scenario that would trigger their operation.

The gap in the most recent incident was that the required resources existed externally but declined to make themselves available. VIA's operations center had no path to escalate or override that fact. And VIA had no resources of its own that it could deploy to mitigate ie a shelter in place requirement.

Seems to me that it's VIA that needs to tabletop some scenarios and identify what resources are most likely to be needed, and negotiate or seek a legal mandate for these. VIA is best placed to know what will be needed, and to draft the playbook.

Perhaps Transport Canada has a role - but they are seldom "here to help". I wonder how they mobilise for air or marine events, perhaps there is commonality.... but perhaps not.

- Paul

 

[micheal_can]

I'm not sure that the problem becomes more manageable this way. There is no federal command center I know of that would be mobilised any faster, and in fact the higher one goes in the bureaucracy the harder it becomes to secure quick action. Much of the problem-solving for VIA scenarios requires railway specific knowledge and an appreciation of on-train conditions as passengers and crew are experiencing them. The resources that one imagines might have responded are mostly managed at the municipal or at best provincial level. The only federal resource that I can think of that is distributed along the Corridor would be the militia - there are armouries with some contingent of heavy transports in many smaller towns - but calling out the militia is not done in the timeframe that a VIA scenario considers. Provincial emergency response organizations are likely better positioned, but a stalled VIA train is not the kind of scenario that would trigger their operation.

The gap in the most recent incident was that the required resources existed externally but declined to make themselves available. VIA's operations center had no path to escalate or override that fact. And VIA had no resources of its own that it could deploy to mitigate ie a shelter in place requirement.

Seems to me that it's VIA that needs to tabletop some scenarios and identify what resources are most likely to be needed, and negotiate or seek a legal mandate for these. VIA is best placed to know what will be needed, and to draft the playbook.

Perhaps Transport Canada has a role - but they are seldom "here to help". I wonder how they mobilise for air or marine events, perhaps there is commonality.... but perhaps not.

- Paul

What about the military? Throughout Canada, there are buses stationed at many bases. Why not make a call to them to come and do it? Those buses and their operators likely were not driving them. Both the Montreal and Quebec City areas have several military bases to draw from.

 

[nfitz]

Also, having such a contract with someone like TTC is less useful than one in, say, Kingston, as the closer an incident is to Toronto, the more likely you are to have other alternatives in cases of emergencies, whereas it would take the TTC at least 3 (more likely: 4-5) hours to get a bus to Kingston.

And yet you used to see VIA-branded buses in Kingston.

I wouldn't suggest for a second that you'd have TTC deal with Kingston. Or Belleville. Or anywhere else that uses scarecrows!

 

[Garuda]

Please - how long have successive governments sat on this proposed line? Why would now be suddenly different?

Sounds like an election is in the air.

 

[Urban Sky]

I'm not sure that the problem becomes more manageable this way. There is no federal command center I know of that would be mobilised any faster, and in fact the higher one goes in the bureaucracy the harder it becomes to secure quick action. Much of the problem-solving for VIA scenarios requires railway specific knowledge and an appreciation of on-train conditions as passengers and crew are experiencing them. The resources that one imagines might have responded are mostly managed at the municipal or at best provincial level. The only federal resource that I can think of that is distributed along the Corridor would be the militia - there are armouries with some contingent of heavy transports in many smaller towns - but calling out the militia is not done in the timeframe that a VIA scenario considers. Provincial emergency response organizations are likely better positioned, but a stalled VIA train is not the kind of scenario that would trigger their operation.

The gap in the most recent incident was that the required resources existed externally but declined to make themselves available. VIA's operations center had no path to escalate or override that fact. And VIA had no resources of its own that it could deploy to mitigate ie a shelter in place requirement.

Seems to me that it's VIA that needs to tabletop some scenarios and identify what resources are most likely to be needed, and negotiate or seek a legal mandate for these. VIA is best placed to know what will be needed, and to draft the playbook.

Perhaps Transport Canada has a role - but they are seldom "here to help". I wonder how they mobilise for air or marine events, perhaps there is commonality.... but perhaps not.

- Paul

I guess I forgot how decentralized Canada is, but my point was that only authorities can command companies around to mobilize whatever resources are available. Railroad-specific training might be required in certain situations, but much less than in Europe, where the main danger to rescue efforts is overhead catenary. There should be a rule along the lines that once it’s clear that a train will remain stationary for at least 2 hours, local police needs to get dispatched and they determine the need for evacuation or additional supplies. Such a situation should be treated like an accident or the evacuation of residents during floods or wildfires. VIA can’t scatter emergency-response resources across its vast network (even in the corridor), so the logical alternative is to deploy whatever emergency-response resources (police, fire brigades, ambulances, civil protection) are locally available…

 

[dowlingm]

What about the military? Throughout Canada, there are buses stationed at many bases. Why not make a call to them to come and do it? Those buses and their operators likely were not driving them. Both the Montreal and Quebec City areas have several military bases to draw from.

I’m all for aid to the civil power but (a) the military have had as much if not more surge capacity cut as the railroads have and (b) as the Lastman mayoral cabinet would tell you, having the army rescue people from a VIA train would be used as a stick to beat the latter organization until it died of its wounds