VIA Rail

[innsertnamehere]

Waterloo is a lot more white-collar employment based and has a larger student population - key transit users.

Hamilton is mostly blue collar employment with little in the way of high density jobs and business travel. Their downtown office buildings sit mostly half empty.

I imagine that Hamilton would see less trip generators than KWC, at the same population.. Which by the time this thing is built, it won't be. It'll be smaller.

 

[kEiThZ]

The studies have always shown that the Toronto-Montreal section would perform the best, with the others lagging behind.

I really question if the studies have actually accounted for commuter traffic on short stretches. If I recall, previous studies have done stuff like comparing Toronto-Windsor to Toronto-Montreal. Obviously no contest there. But we need to look at how returns compare on just Toronto-London and Ottawa-Montreal compared to Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal as a whole.

Lots of big infrastructure projects that are specific to just one region get federal money. There are lots of reasons that HSR hasn't been built in the Corridor yet, but I think that regional jealousy is pretty low on the list.

And yet we have had nothing for decades but studies. I don't get why people discount political motivations and the fact that a $20 billion announcement that mostly benefits Ontario might be a tough sell for a lot of federal politicians.

I think it's far easier to push for HSR on short stretches with commuters, and build those lines in partnership with the provinces, while fielding HFR on the Toronto-Ottawa corridor. That could realistically happen in the next decade. Purists who insist on the absolutely ideal solution will never get anything built. And I'm sick of not having progress. Let's start building where there's some political will to do so. Or build in a manner that is politically amenable.

 

[Northern Light]

Waterloo is a lot more white-collar employment based and has a larger student population - key transit users.

Hamilton is mostly blue collar employment with little in the way of high density jobs and business travel. Their downtown office buildings sit mostly half empty.

I imagine that Hamilton would see less trip generators than KWC, at the same population.. Which by the time this thing is built, it won't be. It'll be smaller.

Without commenting on preferred train routes.......

The above statement is a tad hyperbolas.

As per the report below the downtown Hamilton commercial office vacancy rate is about 13.6%.

I gather the large office towers are well above average, but most are not as high as 50%

https://www.thespec.com/news-story/8373864-core-office-vacancy-inching-downwards-report/

Further, Hamilton isn't all that blue collar anymore.

Its largest employment sector is Health/Education, followed by professional/financial services.

 

[kEiThZ]

Why do you need HSR from Hamilton? It's 70km from Toronto. Express GO trains would deliver travel times that are pretty close, with very little cost. It's a 1 hr 15 min ride. Electrification and express service could get that down to under an hour. Waterloo on the other hand is over 100km away. And it takes 2 hrs from Kitchener GO to get to Union. . HSR only gets Waterloo to the same ballpark as Hamilton in travel time. Combine that with the airport being en route, and there's a strong case for the northern alignment.

Heck, if I lived in Hamilton, I'd much rather have GO service every 30 mins that takes an hour to reach Toronto than an hourly (or worse) HSR that would probably take 45 mins at least. It's not like that HSR will get up to full speed on Lakeshore.

 

[SaugeenJunction]

New High Frequency Rail/Dedicated Tracks map from a presentation in Drummondville. Tweet.

 

[Streety McCarface]

Let's see - 2016 census puts one (City of Hamilton) at 537 thousand and the other (Region of Waterloo) at 535 thousand. Hmm, and 2006 says 505 thousand versus 478 thousand.

Well, Waterloo is certainly growing faster. But in terms of trip demand, I don't see that either is particularly more important - let alone "far" more important!

Waterloo Region has a booming tech sector and huge growth. Hamilton pretty much already has all-day GO service. It makes a lot more sense to invest in an area with huge development potential over a rust belt city with little incentive to use HSR over GO.

 

[MisterF]

I really question if the studies have actually accounted for commuter traffic on short stretches. If I recall, previous studies have done stuff like comparing Toronto-Windsor to Toronto-Montreal. Obviously no contest there. But we need to look at how returns compare on just Toronto-London and Ottawa-Montreal compared to Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal as a whole.

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the studies are infallible. I've poked a few holes in the joint Ontario-Quebec one from 2011. But the studies are the only real documents we have to point to the viability of HSR and they all conclude that the Montreal-Toronto portion would be the best performing. There's a huge amount of travel demand in that corridor and plenty of commuting opportunities too. The current plan to Kitchener and London does take commuting into account, with the conceptual stop pattern layering slower all stop trains with high speed express trains

And yet we have had nothing for decades but studies. I don't get why people discount political motivations and the fact that a $20 billion announcement that mostly benefits Ontario might be a tough sell for a lot of federal politicians.

I think it's far easier to push for HSR on short stretches with commuters, and build those lines in partnership with the provinces, while fielding HFR on the Toronto-Ottawa corridor. That could realistically happen in the next decade. Purists who insist on the absolutely ideal solution will never get anything built. And I'm sick of not having progress. Let's start building where there's some political will to do so. Or build in a manner that is politically amenable.

Those studies always included Quebec City and they never went anywhere anyway, so I can't see its inclusion being all that relevant. The feds have never backed any HSR plan, whether QC is included or not. It's hard to argue that plan B will be less effective than plan A when the success rate of plan A is zero.

By the way, that $20 billion figure is for the entire corridor; the Toronto-Montreal section was estimated at a much more palatable $11 billion ($12.3 billion in 2018 money).

I think Via Rail has realized that the best way to get HSR is to start with a cheaper conventional speed line with no freight conflicts. If it works as well as they say it will, it (along with commuter rail expansion) will make intercity rail relevant again and may even get congested. At that point people and politicians will start to see HSR not as fantasy or a political gamble, but as the next logical step to take.

 

[dowlingm]

It is a shame, they sound pretty wonderful on paper:

https://www.railengineer.uk/2017/07/04/take-a-look-around-hitachis-pistoia-train-production-plant/

Per the above article the pantos are made by Brecknell Willis, a well established manufacturer with a proven record.

When Hitachi took over AnsaldoBreda I figured there might be some issues there if Hitachi didn't make a lot of QA related changes, given the performance of the IC4 train in Denmark and the Fyra V250 in Belgium/Holland. The Class 800 problems might be unrelated but when a company takes on a troubled business unit and there is more trouble, one wonders...

 

[steveintoronto]

^In all deference to Hitachi, until the technical details are published (if we ever get the real story, but UK rail journalists are pretty well-connected) it might have been a glitch in the catenary as much as the panto. What I see as a possible/probable fault is the necessity to raise panto at speed when going from diesel to electric, albeit this was reported to have taken place near or at Hanwell, not a normal stopping station for higher speed trains.

Some minor detail here:
http://www.railtechnologymagazine.c...etwork-whilst-on-its-test-run?dorewrite=false
And reported in Japanese news here:
http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0004903144

 

[Admiral Beez]

New High Frequency Rail/Dedicated Tracks map from a presentation in Drummondville. Tweet.

I'm always surprised the St. Marys station stays operational. My old employer had a plant there, so I would drive there 4-5 times a year, and recall my surprise at the station, thinking I could have taken the train here (if I had a day to blow).

 

[innsertnamehere]

When a town like Washago has a train station on the Canadian - St Mary's certainly can.

 

[robmausser]

I'm always surprised the St. Marys station stays operational. My old employer had a plant there, so I would drive there 4-5 times a year, and recall my surprise at the station, thinking I could have taken the train here (if I had a day to blow).

Dude the same train stops in Wyoming Ontario. Population 7,500.

Heres the train station.

 

[Urban Sky]

I'm always surprised the St. Marys station stays operational. My old employer had a plant there, so I would drive there 4-5 times a year, and recall my surprise at the station, thinking I could have taken the train here (if I had a day to blow).

According to 2016 Census data, St. Mary's has twice the population of Casselman (7,265 vs. 3,548) and is only marginally smaller than Napanee (7,439) and Smiths Falls (8,780), all of which happen to be Corridor stations with at least 2 stops per day and direction...

When a town like Washago has a train station on the Canadian - St Mary's certainly can.

There is a subtle difference between stations on the Corridor and those on the regional or transcontinental routes. Also, Washago is a request stop and the closest VIA station to Barrie (CMA of 197,059 and only a 54.5 km or 36 minutes drive away)...

 

[innsertnamehere]

I can assure you that almost nobody *ever* uses Washago. The station building is smaller than Wyoming there, and the platform is more weeds than concrete.

"only" 55km? har har, good joke.

 

[littlewill1166]

There is a subtle difference between stations on the Corridor and those on the regional or transcontinental routes. Also, Washago is a request stop and the closest VIA station to Barrie (CMA of 197,059 and only a 54.5 km or 36 minutes drive away)...

Aren't all stops request stops, I've ridden VIA too many times this year and Glencoe and Ingersoll and even Woodstock get bypassed if no one books a ticket in advance.