VIA Rail

[micheal_can]

I’m not your mother, look it up yourself. Here’s a map to get you started.

Here are thee top 20 largest cites in the USA:
1 New York, New York[10] 8,344,910
2 Los Angeles, California 3,819,702
3 Chicago, Illinois 2,707,120
4 Houston, Texas 2,145,146
5 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania[11] 1,536,471
6 Phoenix, Arizona 1,469,471
7 San Antonio, Texas 1,359,758
8 San Diego, California 1,326,179
9 Dallas, Texas 1,223,229
10 San Jose, California 967,487
11 Jacksonville, Florida[12] 827,908
12 Indianapolis, Indiana[13] 827,609
13 Austin, Texas 820,611
14 San Francisco, California[14] 812,826
15 Columbus, Ohio 797,434
16 Fort Worth, Texas 758,738
17 Charlotte, North Carolina 751,087
18 Detroit, Michigan 706,585
19 El Paso, Texas 665,568
20 Memphis, Tennessee 652,050
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities_and_metropolitan_areas_of_the_United_States

Of those, Only Columbus is not served by Amtrak.

Now, lets see the top 10 largest Canadian cities:
1 Toronto, Ontario 5,429,524
2 Montreal, Quebec 3,519,595
3 Vancouver, British Columbia 2,264,823
4 Calgary, Alberta 1,237,656
5 Edmonton, Alberta 1,062,643
6 Ottawa–Gatineau, Ontario/Quebec 989,657
7 Winnipeg, Manitoba 711,925
8 Quebec City, Quebec 705,103
9 Hamilton, Ontario 693,645
10 Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge, Ontario 470,015
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_100_largest_population_centres_in_Canada

Of those, Vancouver, Edmonton, and Winnipeg has Via, but not daily service.
Calgary is not even served.

If we go further to the next 10:
11 London, Ontario 383,437
12 Victoria, British Columbia 335,696
13 Halifax, Nova Scotia 316,701
14 Oshawa, Ontario 308,875
15 Windsor, Ontario 287,069
16 Saskatoon, Saskatchewan 245,181
17 St. Catharines–Niagara, Ontario 229,246
18 Regina, Saskatchewan 214,631
19 St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador 178,427
20 Kelowna, British Columbia 151,957

Only London, Oshawa and Windsor are served daily.
Halifax and Saskatoon are the only ones with some, but not daily Via service.
Victoria, Regina, St John's and Kelowna doesn't have any. Two of them may be on islands, but less than 10 years ago, Victoria did have Via service.

So, Amtrak IS something Via could model.

 

[steveintoronto]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_cities_in_U.S._lacking_inter-city_rail_service

 

[Admiral Beez]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_cities_in_U.S._lacking_inter-city_rail_service

Dammit Steve, you're not supposed to bring facts and data to a debate, lol.

Outside of the NE corridor where Amtrak owns its rails, doesn't the American carrier suffer the same scheduling issues as VIA, where privately owned freight traffic and rail conditions make the passenger service unreliable and constantly late?

https://www.amtrak.com/historical-on-time-performance

I'd say Amtrak is not really a model for VIA to follow. Surely there are better run railways serving small, yet distant population centres? How does Australia do it?

 

[smallspy]

Was suggested for Vermonter, for sure. Downeaster would be an application I could think of - isolated from the rest of the network, has to reverse at Portland anyway.

Could be an opportunity for Nippon Sharyo, assuming that they aren't on the naughty step with Bombardier after the fiasco of the midwest bilevel order.

Not just for that - as part of the Section 305 committee, AASHTO had drawn up rough plans/specifications for "next generation DMUs" 5 or 6 years ago. This is the same group that administers Amtrak's gauging and vehicle specs, and monitors vehicle orders and construction.

When SMART was soliciting proposals, they received not just a proposal from Nippon Sharyo, but also Siemens and Bombardier for FRA-compliant DMUs. And let's not forget that Bombardier, Kawasaki and Rotem have all built FRA-compliant EMUs in the past little while.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[Admiral Beez]

If we go further to the next 10:
12 Victoria, British Columbia 335,696
19 St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador 178,427

How would you propose to get daily passenger rail service to Victoria and St. John's? Bridges, tunnels? And what's the destination, Vancouver I suppose, but where are you taking a daily train that departs from St. John's? For a St. John's to Quebec City route you'd need to include rail to the proposed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newfoundland–Labrador_fixed_link That's a big expense that will need a strong ROI.

When I moved to Fredericton, NB in the early 2000s I was surprised by the lack of a railway, especially for the province's capital. My employer was in an industry that everywhere else in North America would depend on hopper cars to delivery raw materials. Instead ours were trucked from Ontario and Quebec. As I traveled around New Brunswick I saw abandoned passenger train stations throughout the province. It was kind of sad. Some were restored and put to other uses, such as https://www.tourismnewbrunswick.ca/Products/M/McAdam-Railway-Station.aspx

New Brunswick lost most of its rail the Irvings shut it down in the 1980s, who of course own the trucking biz, and so wanted to remove a competitor for freight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Brunswick_Railway

 

[steveintoronto]

Dammit Steve, you're not supposed to bring facts and data to a debate, lol.

Outside of the NE corridor where Amtrak owns its rails, doesn't the American carrier suffer the same scheduling issues as VIA, where privately owned freight traffic and rail conditions make the passenger service unreliable and constantly late?

https://www.amtrak.com/historical-on-time-performance

In many respects, VIA and Amtrak are very similar. Where there's a major difference is in enabling legislation. VIA doesn't exist as a full corporate entity. Amtrak does, but even there, Amtrak is under massive retrenchment due to cutbacks.

From eighteen years ago, and things have deteriorated since:
http://www.trainweb.org/moksrail/documents/pop/pop_article.htm

And today:
Trump's 2019 Budget Slashes Amtrak Rail Subsidies | Fortune

Emulating Amtrak is not in VIA's favour. Where Amtrak does have an advantage is in being roughly ten times the size. That has weight with manufacturers catering to a unique North Am regulatory criteria. The US offers many waivers that allows Amtrak to operate where otherwise they couldn't. (Edit: In fact, in the CETA agreement, this is detailed, something very few rail authors write about)

Canada would be far better off recognizing UIC and EU regs for passenger than blindly following ARR/APTA/FRA ones. As it stands, approval in Canada requires the submission from a potential operator, not from manufacturers.

I'm sure there must be articles detailing this on the web, I'll see if I can post reference later.

VIA's HFR will force Canada to be far more proactive on this if it's to be a success. A good part of that will be investors demanding a modern approach, or they won't invest.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Perhaps VIA should also try to serve the country, rather than only focus on Toronto-Montreal-Ottawa. HSR Vancouver-Calgary-Edmonton should be a priority.

 

[steveintoronto]

Perhaps VIA should also try to serve the country, rather than only focus on Toronto-Montreal-Ottawa. HSR Vancouver-Calgary-Edmonton should be a priority.

This has been discussed many times in this string. My opinion is for VIA to split into two divisions.
One to serve the nation at a financial loss, forever dependent on subsidy, that being the cost of Confederation.

And the second to serve a break-even or profitable and needed service where 95% of the demand is: The Quebec City to London corridor (I purposely didn't include Windsor) over *privately owned and financed tracks* where VIA has clear priority in their lease arrangement. Next would come Metrolinx and AMT (I can never remember the new acronyms) for priority and also any private passenger operations, perhaps even one from the consortium that builds the RoW, and lastly comes temporally separated premium express freight and local freight service.

VIA's lease on the ostensibly HFR+ route may include a number of lease exclusionary and inclusionary clauses, from both the owners and the various operators.

The pertinent point to your post is that this has to be separate VIA business entity to the one for the Rest of Canada which operates at a substantial, sometimes very steep loss. HFR may require a subsidy also, but nothing like the Rest of Canada (with a few exceptions, perhaps Edmonton to Calgary).

I'd suggest an acceptable rate of subsidy for VIA HFR be the same as for highways, which are only partly covered by gasoline taxes.

Australia, btw, is a poor model to copy. Their rail history is even more fractured than Canada's even down to disparate gauges for different states. Canada was given birth by the railway. Oz built their transnational after the fact.

HSR Vancouver-Calgary-Edmonton should be a priority.

Financed by whom?

Here's the missing map legend for the Oz rail map you posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Australia

That tells a story not wanted for VIA or Canadians, even though the Oz Feds do run a transnational passenger train over state-owned tracks.

 

[Admiral Beez]

This has been discussed many times in this string. My opinion is for VIA to split into two divisions.
One to serve the nation at a financial loss, forever dependent on subsidy, that being the cost of Confederation..

Not two divisions, but two separate entities.

Transfer Ontario rail to MetroLinks or GoTransit. Most of the run is in Ontario, but we can still give Quebec some provincial oversight or control.

Sell the transnational tourist trains to the private sector, IIRC, the Russian tourist trains are privately owned, https://www.thetranssiberiantravelc...an railway&utm_content=Trans Siberian Railway As is the Rocky Mountaineer in Canada, albeit on a shorter route.

We need to ask ourselves if the Feds should be subsidizing tourist trains?

 

[lenaitch]

Not two divisions, but two separate entities.

Transfer Ontario rail to MetroLinks or GoTransit. Most of the run is in Ontario, but we can still give Quebec some provincial oversight or control.

Sell the transnational tourist trains to the private sector, IIRC, the Russian tourist trains are privately owned, https://www.thetranssiberiantravelcompany.com/tours/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=SS - Trans Siberian Railway CAN&utm_term=trans siberian railway&utm_content=Trans Siberian Railway As is the Rocky Mountaineer in Canada, albeit on a shorter route.

We need to ask ourselves if the Feds should be subsidizing tourist trains?

I see you point, but don't forget the remote or 'mandated' services in Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba.

 

[Admiral Beez]

I see you point, but don't forget the remote or 'mandated' services in Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba.

Yes, but those remote services don't necessarily need to be part of a national network. Ontario Northland's passenger service to Toronto was never sufficiently popular, but IIRC it's successful in the remote north.

One idea is to grant these remote lines to indigenous or local communities. There are already several indigenous run railways in Canada, two I know of:

Tshiuetin Railway

And...

Keewatin Railway

A great article in the Walrus here https://thewalrus.ca/scenes-from-canadas-first-indigenous-owned-railway/

 

[Garuda]

How would you propose to get daily passenger rail service to Victoria and St. John's? Bridges, tunnels?

That has me thinking... If the Strait of Belle Isle rail tunnel ever gets built, rail from St Johns could connect to the Tshiuetin Rail, along the north shore, across the Saguenay River and with the North American network in Quebec City. This won't be cheap. But having a rail link to the eastern most part of Canada will help diversify the economy of Newfoundland & Labrador, allow for container shipments back and forth, and a passenger rail service. Given that the line would travel over some mountainous terrain, such a service would be very popular with tourists and comparable to the Canadian.

 

[Admiral Beez]

That has me thinking... If the Strait of Belle Isle rail tunnel ever gets built, rail from St Johns could connect to the Tshiuetin Rail, along the north shore, across the Saguenay River and with the North American network in Quebec City. This won't be cheap. But having a rail link to the eastern most part of Canada will help diversify the economy of Newfoundland & Labrador, allow for container shipments back and forth, and a passenger rail service. Given that the line would travel over some mountainous terrain, such a service would be very popular with tourists and comparable to the Canadian.

Let’s get the Churchill VIA service back up, likely through expropriation of the tracks and fines against OmniTracks, before we set ourselves loftier goals.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Australia, btw, is a poor model to copy. Their rail history is even more fractured than Canada's even down to disparate gauges for different states.

Newfoundland ran narrow gauge rail up until the end of rail on the Rock, http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Railway/en/ss.php?id=16

There’s something to be said in throwing out the history and starting fresh, rather than trying to use legacy systems from the 1800s.

 

[steveintoronto]

Newfoundland ran narrow gauge rail up until the end of rail on the Rock, http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Railway/en/ss.php?id=16

There’s something to be said in throwing out the history and starting fresh, rather than trying to use legacy systems from the 1800s.

Newfoundland was an isolated island colony, like Tasmania. The narrow gauge was forever a hindrance and the major cause of it being abandoned.