VIA Rail

[Allandale25]

https://www.facebook.com/139381346199651/posts/1406927479445025

 

[kEiThZ]

Where’s their campaign for actually funding VIA properly and providing legislation to stop VIA getting screwed over by the freight rail operators?

 

[SaugeenJunction]

Some good news, hopefully it will help with restoring VIA service to Gaspé:

Canada invests in protecting the Gaspésie against erosion and restoring railway transportation

 

[Admiral Beez]

Just to clarify my position...……………..I don't there should be any rail services outside the QC/Windsor Corridor and I would ditch other services in it like Gaspe, Jonquiere, and North Bay/Sudbury. Perhaps there is room for a seasonal service for the Ocean and Canadian but only if it is reasonable financially viable. Outside the Corridor the only line that makes any sense is the one VIA doesn't offer...……...Calgary/Edmonton.

Canada does need a national transportation service and especially now with the demise of Greyhound in the West but it should be based on value for the dollar and service to the citizens and not on some stupid idea that everyone needs rail no matter how useless it is nor this idea that it is everyone's responsibility to keep a few tourists happy at the expense of regular Canadians who need transportation services. The obscene amounts wasted on running services that no one uses to every God-forsaken settlement in the country would be far better used by offering a comprehensive bus service.

This started friendly enough, but soon turned dark. "stupid idea, useless it is, every God-forsaken"

If, with few distant exceptions every medium town and city in Canada is entitled to road access to the rest of the country, I see no reason we can't offer passenger rail to many cities, especially if CP and CN are rolling through the same town. The reason people don't use passenger rail is because of price. It's supply and demand, price it accordingly and see if people use it. If we're willing to give billions in subsidies to national gas and resource companies, etc, etc., I don't see why we can't run a subsidized passenger rail network at ticket prices people will use.

 

[robmausser]

This started friendly enough, but soon turned dark. "stupid idea, useless it is, every God-forsaken"

If, with few distant exceptions every medium town and city in Canada is entitled to road access to the rest of the country, I see no reason we can't offer passenger rail to many cities, especially if CP and CN are rolling through the same town. The reason people don't use passenger rail is because of price. It's supply and demand, price it accordingly and see if people use it. If we're willing to give billions in subsidies to national gas and resource companies, etc, etc., I don't see why we can't run a subsidized passenger rail network at ticket prices people will use.

Also of note is that there are VIA services in areas that specifically do not have reliable road access, or road access at all.

Churchill for example.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Also of note is that there are VIA services in areas that specifically do not have reliable road access, or road access at all.

Churchill for example.

Also Ontario’s only saltwater port, Moosonee. If it had been priced better, would the Northland train from Moosonee to Toronto have been more popular?

Ontario Northland and the End of the Northlander

March 23, 2012 10:00 AM Ontario has chosen to take a new approach to regional transportation in northeastern Ontario by winding down the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission (ONTC). This decision will allow the government to protect investments in northerners' health and education...

urbantoronto.ca

Perhaps VIA can takeover this rail route. They still list the station https://www.viarail.ca/en/explore-our-destinations/stations/moosonee

 

[dowlingm]

Canada invests in protecting the Gaspésie against erosion and restoring railway transportation

The project involves repairing ten parts of the railway over 127 kilometres between Port-Daniel–Gascons and Gaspé as well as reinforcement work. In some locations the railway will also be relocated because of ground movement and shoreline erosion.

Bet VIA will still have some excuse not to restart service... once the election is over

 

[Urban Sky]

Personal note:
I have been wrestling with myself over whether I should continue contributing in this forum after @nfitz and myself got banned (me for 10 days, him for a full year) - over a dispute which we had already been able to settle via private messages and to return to a respectful discussion with multiple direct interactions for a full week before the admins surprised us with their bans and which I'm convinced that it (just like the two previous conflicts we have had with each other during the last weeks) would have been easily resolved hadn't my repeated pleas to the moderators to moderate the discussion been ignored (the message that I was banned was the first and only message I recall as having ever receiving from UT staff members).

Now, that we've effectively lost another top-commenter (and valuable source of scepticism which balanced well with the often over-optimistic views of other members or with my own professional biases disclosed in my signature) permanently, I'm starting to worry about how many of us will be left in one year's time if this forum continues to be governed the way it has been recently. Anyways, it seems that the UT forum has become a victim of its success and that the burden of moderating and administrating this forum has become too overwhelming for the number of shoulders over which it is currently divided (and which execute their responsibilities with the best intentions). I'm unfortunately not the right person to moderate a discussion about my own employer, but if you believe that maintaining this community is worth a few hours of your time every week and that banning members should be the last resort reserved for the hopeless cases on which all other measures (such as "moderating", which is actually the activity a "moderator" is named after and may appear as surprisingly similar to parenting) have repeatedly failed rather than being your principle activity, then I wholeheartedly believe that you would be a valuable and highly complementary addition to the existing UT Forum team...

Thank you for having taken the time to read this personal note!


Back to the discussion:

This started friendly enough, but soon turned dark. "stupid idea, useless it is, every God-forsaken"

Expect the same trolling to restart in 6 months time: That diverting the "obscene amounts" which are currently spent on VIA's operating funding for non-Corridor routes ($129.1 million in 2018, or $3.42 per Canadian) could pay for frequent passenger rail service between Calgary and Edmonton and for restoring not just all of Greyhound's abandoned intercity bus routes, but also for increasing its scale (i.e. frequencies) and scope (i.e. network length) and probably also for a one-percentage point cut in the federal sales tax rate...

If, with few distant exceptions every medium town and city in Canada is entitled to road access to the rest of the country, I see no reason we can't offer passenger rail to many cities, especially if CP and CN are rolling through the same town. The reason people don't use passenger rail is because of price. It's supply and demand, price it accordingly and see if people use it.

Would you like to use some real-life data to test your hypothesis that ticket prices are the primary determinant of rail travel demand? I'd be curious to know how VIA Rail has been able to achieve a 25% increase in passenger volume and 23% increase in distance travelled without decreasing ticket prices (they actually increased by 5% per passenger transported and 7% per mile travelled, even after adjusting for inflation!):

If we're willing to give billions in subsidies to national gas and resource companies, etc, etc., I don't see why we can't run a subsidized passenger rail network at ticket prices people will use.

At a cost-recovery rate of 59%, there is no doubt that we have a subsidized intercity passenger rail network ($0.69 subsidy for every $1 in ticket revenues) and with passenger volume and passenger mileage travelled being at the highest they've ever been since the devastating cuts almost 30 years ago, I'd argue that there is also no doubt that people use it:

Compiled from: VIA Rail Annual Reports

Also of note is that there are VIA services in areas that specifically do not have reliable road access, or road access at all.

Churchill for example.

This is true for at least 5 of VIA's current routes:

• Montreal - Jonquiérre (Rivières-à-Prairie to Chambord)
• Montreal - Senneterre (La Tuque to Senneterre)
• Toronto - Vancouver (Capreol to Elma)
• Sudbury - White River (Benny to O'Brian)
• Winnipeg - Churchill (The Pas to Churchill)

Also Ontario’s only saltwater port, Moosonee. If it had been priced better, would the Northland train from Moosonee to Toronto have been more popular?

Ontario Northland and the End of the Northlander

March 23, 2012 10:00 AM Ontario has chosen to take a new approach to regional transportation in northeastern Ontario by winding down the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission (ONTC). This decision will allow the government to protect investments in northerners' health and education...

urbantoronto.ca

If the demand for a certain product is unelastic, then decreasing the price will only increase the operating deficit, especially if you have to add additional capacity (i.e. cars, which also require substantial upfront capital expenditure for their acquisition). Faced with a 754 km long rail corridor with only one significant population center (North Bay) with a population (70k) somewhere between Sarnia (96k) and Cornwall (59.7k), which is located after just under half the distance (351 km from Toronto), makes especially the Northern segment very challenging to serve in a remotely economic fashion and the inconvenient location of the only significant population center north of North Bay (Timmins) with a population (41.7k) somewhere between Saint-Hyacinthe (59.6k) and Woodstock (40.9k), which would require an unattractive last-mile bus transfer...

Perhaps VIA can takeover this rail route. They still list the station https://www.viarail.ca/en/explore-our-destinations/stations/moosonee

No idea why VIA mentions Moosonee station on their website, but Cochrane-Moosonee was always an Ontario Northlander and never a VIA operation and the obligation to fund this service therefore falls onto the provincial and not federal taxpayer, as with the Kaoham Shuttle (serving with Lillooet - Seton Portage - D'Arcy the only surviving section of the former BC Rail passenger rail service).

Bet VIA will still have some excuse not to restart service... once the election is over

Indeed, and the excuse will still be that the current state of the tracks is not safe enough for passenger operations, which is the most basic requirement for any public passenger service after the mere existence of tracks. I didn't find one mention of "passenger rail" in the entire press release, which strongly suggests that the federal government does not expect that their funding commitment will be sufficient to allow a return of VIA Rail service. That said, the operation of this VIA route is still mandated (and therefore only temporarily suspended) and will return as soon as someone has provided the funding to restore the tracks to a reasonable quality...

The folks running VIA want to offer comprehensive rail nationwide. There’s no point working there if all you want is to reduce yourself to a niche service. It comes down to money from the governments.

No, it comes down to outgrow your subsidy need, so that you no longer have to wrestle with TC over if and where you can increase your service. The last 4 years (2014-2018) was a big step towards that direction (refer to above table, which shows that VIA's operating subsidy decreased by 14% over that period, thanks to a 40% increase in revenues and fuelled by an 11% increase in scheduled train service), but full financial independence from the federal taxpayer (and thus: TC) can only be achieved with the substantial (yet moderate) investments into a dedicated infrastructure which the HFR proposal calls for...

 

[Admiral Beez]

I have been wrestling with myself over whether I should continue contributing in this forum after @nfitz and myself got banned (me for 10 days, him for a full year) - over a dispute which we had already been able to settle via private messages

Why not start the personal, private exchange on PM instead? I for one fully support sanctions of any poster(s) who diverge from discussion and instead begin a personal argument. Imagine you're in a meeting room of 50 people, all there to discuss a topic, and then two guys across the table from each other, instead of taking their personal dispute outside or offline, start shouting about some other topic that has nothing to do with the discussion and/or does not contribute to the group discussion. Of course you'd want those two guys ejected from the meeting and perhaps never invited back. As for nftiz, I've had him on my Ignore list for ages due to his inciting and belligerent ways. Good riddance.

That diverting the "obscene amounts" which are currently spent on VIA's operating funding for non-Corridor routes ($129.1 million in 2018, or $3.42 per Canadian) could pay for frequent passenger rail service between Calgary and Edmonton..

Can't Alberta just run their own train on this route, perhaps in partnership with the resource sector? Does it have to be VIA? Who ran it in 1985? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calgary_and_Edmonton_Railway

 

[smallspy]

Can't Alberta just run their own train on this route, perhaps in partnership with the resource sector?

There have been studies into doing just that by various bodies over the years, but nothing results from it.

Does it have to be VIA?

Of course not. But who else might be best suited do to it? Who has the existing rolling stock, management and other associated network and facilities in place?

Any new entity created to operate such a line would have to start from square one - and so there would be pretty substantial startup costs required.

Who ran it in 1985? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calgary_and_Edmonton_Railway

Did you think to look it up? Hint: they're still around today.

Dan

 

[Admiral Beez]

Did you think to look it up? Hint: they're still around today.

Jeez I hate dick comments and dismissals like that. Yes, that's why I provided the Wiki link.

There are other links on the Wikipedia page, but they're both broken. The Wikipedia page says CP Rail acquired the Calgary and Edmonton Railway (C&E) in 1912. Wiki also says the passenger service was operated to 1985, but does not say which firm operated it. In 1978 VIA Rail took over CP Rail's passenger services, so perhaps it was VIA that ran the line to 1985. Or CP continued to run it outside of VIA, or lastly a third party ran passenger service on the CP line.

EDIT - I think I found it, VIA's RDC between Calgary & Edmonton terminated - 1985

Though this photo from 1985 doesn't make it much clearer, as the cars are VIA but the engine is CPR. So, which company is operating this train? The website suggests it's both, and also shows that CP ran trains elsewhere for VIA into the 1980s.

VIA's Calgary-Edmonton RDCs, Part 4

CP and VIA operated the Calgary-Edmonton intercity service primarily with RDC's during the 1970's and into the VIA era. Earlier parts in ...

tracksidetreasure.blogspot.com

 

[DSC]

Can't Alberta just run their own train on this route, perhaps in partnership with the resource sector? Does it have to be VIA? Who ran it in 1985? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calgary_and_Edmonton_Railway

I think the main problem with running trains between Edmonton & Calgary is that the traffic is simply not enough. The (express) bus service is run by Red Arrow and they have only ca 6 runs a day. The one I was on last week was not full. There is also the problem that neither City has a city-centre train station any more and the VIA station in Edmonton is a real bottleneck with freight trains. (We took about 5 hours to reach Edmonton from Viking - about 80 miles - due to being held-up repeatedly by freight trains.)

 

[Urban Sky]

Why not start the personal, private exchange on PM instead?

Because I was counting on the admins/moderators to quickly resolve our point of contention: whether sharing his political views over the government of a province which is not Ontario belonged into this forum and the particular thread he had chosen. Granted, had I known that it would take them 3 weeks to check their inbox of reported messages, I wouldn't have even bothered to hit the "Report" button...^^

I for one fully support sanctions of any poster(s) who diverge from discussion and instead begin a personal argument. Imagine you're in a meeting room of 50 people, all there to discuss a topic, and then two guys across the table from each other, instead of taking their personal dispute outside or offline, start shouting about some other topic that has nothing to do with the discussion and/or does not contribute to the group discussion. Of course you'd want those two guys ejected from the meeting and perhaps never invited back.

The better analogy to banning someone from a forum is to fire someone from work and this is clearly only the very last resort. You would put the participant in question aside after the meeting and ask him in a one-to-one conversation whether he thinks that his behaviour is conducive to make the meeting productive.

Just to provide a positive example of how the admins and moderators could have reacted also in any of his three posts which each started a contention:

K. called B. something along the line of "snowflake", to which B. reacted with an offended response. Rather than banning K., the admins chose a much more appropriate measure by removing the offensive part of K.'s remark via a "MOD EDIT" and deleting B.'s (now obviated) response. That (or writing me a message that they have reviewed the post I have reported and didn't find any violations of the rules which govern this forum) would have been all what would have been required from the mods to solve every single of my three separate conflicts with nfitz.

As for @nfitz, I've had him on my Ignore list for ages due to his inciting and belligerent ways. Good riddance.

Just as with @steveintoronto (and my very own experience), I have the impression that the mods/admins were much faster in banning nfitz than to reach out to him and to explain to him what the expectations are in how we members interact with each other. As much as I disagreed with his notorious pessimism, I appreciated him as a valuable source of often very interesting critical thinking. I had started writing a detailed response to his conclusions from the 2010 Metrolinx study on Peterborough before we both were suddenly banned from this forum, but what is the point of finishing that post if the person to which I'm responding is barred from replying to my comments? This is why I said that we have now lost two top commenters and that I am starting to ask myself how many of us will still be able and willing to contribute in the discussions here...

Can't Alberta just run their own train on this route, perhaps in partnership with the resource sector?

Of course they can, but there are good reasons why they (or any potential partners) are reluctant to afford it, as I'll explain below:

I think the main problem with running trains between Edmonton & Calgary is that the traffic is simply not enough. The (express) bus service is run by Red Arrow and they have only ca 6 runs a day. The one I was on last week was not full. There is also the problem that neither City has a city-centre train station any more and the VIA station in Edmonton is a real bottleneck with freight trains. (We took about 5 hours to reach Edmonton from Viking - about 80 miles - due to being held-up repeatedly by freight trains.)

No, the main issues were the series of level crossing accidents, the inaccessibility of downtown Edmonton and the inability to achieve travel times which would have been competitive against the car or bus:

Often referred to as the 'Death Train', CP's perilous Calgary-Edmonton passenger service was a quick dash at speeds reaching 90 mph. For more than 94 years, spanning August 1891-September 1985, Canadian Pacific and after 1978 VIA, provided Calgary-Edmonton intercity passenger service between Alberta's two largest cities. [...] The ultra-modern Dayliners (at the time) reduced travel time to 3 hours 30 minutes, and in 1969 there were three trains per day each way. A busy rail corridor passing through agricultural land and oil fields, and criss-crossed by many road crossings, CP's Red Deer Sub runs north out of Calgary 93 miles to Red Deer, continuing the final 95 miles as CP's Leduc Sub from Red Deer to South Edmonton(though referred to as Edmonton in this and subsequent posts).

By the time I rode the Budd car on August 31, 1981, the run terminated in South Edmonton, as CP's passenger trains originally had, at Strathcona station. CP's downtown Edmonton station was reached via the High Level Bridge across the north Saskatchewan River until 1972, with the downtown station out of use by 1977.

[...]

Over the years, CP's and then VIA's passenger trains provided intercity rail passenger service which had more than its share of accidents on the line. At one point, LRC service was proposed. CP Rail and VIA had made numerous presentations to the Canadian Transport Commission's Railway Transport Committee in Ottawa, hoping to discontinue the service. The CTC mandated upgrades to equipment and service. Increasing truck and agricultural traffic was starting to take its toll. By early 1985, the run's future was tenuous at best. [...]

On January 15, 1984, Transport Minister Don Mazankowski announced the indefinite suspension of Edmonton-Calgary service. Eleven Dayliner accidents in the previous two years led Edmonton's mayor of the day Laurence Decore to state "It's a seedy, tacky service used by very few people. Its 200 level crossings make it an absolute calamity that has caused too many deaths." Even with $1,000,000 in Alberta government spending and the elimination of 12 grade crossings, the Dayliner made its last run on September 6, 1985. The unsuitability of the South Edmonton station, four miles from the VIA (ex-CN) Edmonton station, as well as competition from road and air travel contributed to the service's demise. Though there have been efforts to start a High-Speed Rail intercity service, since the competition is still out there, this would seem unlikely!

VIA's Calgary-Edmonton RDCs, Part 1

Often referred to as the 'Death Train', CP's perilous Calgary-Edmonton passenger service was a quick dash at speeds reaching 90 mph. For...

tracksidetreasure.blogspot.com

This post lists many of the Dayliners serving this busy corridor during the VIA era, including notable accidents.
[...]
April 1, 1980
9023 wrecked at Lacombe, repaired at Transcona.
[...]
August 1981:
RDC-3 6357 (ex-CP RDC-3 9023) involved in a major accident at Balzac, then rebuilt to RDC-2m 6224 in 1982.
[...]
December 18, 1981:
6124 hit a cement truck 34 miles north of Calgary.
[...]
1982:
6124 collided with a gravel truck. [...]

August 1982:
6101 received extensive damage, to be repaired.
[...]
March 23, 1983:
Recently-rebuilt (December, 1982) 6146 in fatal collision with standing cars at Carstairs. Moved to Transcona by flat car in January, 1984.
[...]
May 19, 1983:
6105 collided with truck Mi 90.57 Leduc Sub, to Transcona for repairs.
[...]
April 12, 1984:
6104 collided with truck at Mi 90 Leduc Sub, resulting in $35,000 damage, to Transcona for repairs. [...]

April 30, 1984:
6144 collided with farm machinery near Airdrie, resulting in $50,000 damage, to Transcona for repairs.
[...]
June 29, 1984:
6147 collided with van at Mi 86 Red Deer Sub

August 31, 1984:
6205 collided with grain truck at Hobbema, while operating with another Budd car, baggage section demolished.
[...]
February 3, 1985:
6124 collided with auto at Ponoka. Sent to Transcona for repairs, returned to Calgary in late March.

March 26, 1985:
6147 collided with auto at Leduc. Sent to Transcona for repairs.
[...]
July 24, 1985:
6144 in collision with a tractor-trailer at Penhold, killing the engineer and injuring 25 passengers. [...]

September 6, 1985:
Last train No 195 Calgary-Edmonton, with 6124. Last train No 194 Edmonton-Calgary with 6102.
[...]
The replacement of the usual RDC with an F-unit and conventional equipment usually indicated one of the following three events: heavy passenger traffic requiring both RDC's to operate on one train; mechanical malfunction (especially on unrebuilt RDC's), or recent damage to an RDC from grade crossing collision or other mishap.

VIA's Calgary-Edmonton RDCs, Part 2

While creating my book Trackside with VIA: Cross-Canada Compendium , I wanted to focus on the RDC services provided by VIA in western...

tracksidetreasure.blogspot.com

 

[Urban Sky]

Just a quick nod at a similar discussion on the Edmonton section of the Skyrise Cities forum (highly read-worthy and only 15 posts in total, of which I present a selection below):

So I was talking to somebody today who flew in from NYC. First time in Edmonton, and as I drove him in from the airport, he asked if there was a train between Edmonton and Calgary. He didn't believe me at first when I said no.

It really bothers me how VIA Rail, a crown corporation, does not service Western Canada the way it does in Ontario and Quebec. The Calgary-Edmonton Corridor could be profitable like the Windsor-Quebec City Corridor. The track is there, it's fast. CP owns it, but VIA runs on CP tracks in Ontario. Upgrade a few sidings, it could work. Every time trains are brought up in Alberta, people always find a reason to say no. But I think it's embarrassing that a corridor of 2.9 million people does not have a similar level of service as VIA has between Toronto and Windsor, for example.

If you had trains every hour, with a travel time between 2.5 and 3 hours, and cheap enough, I think it would be attractive enough. I'm sure this is all reasonable. Yes, freight trains get in the way. Reality is, the CP line is way overbuilt right now for the level of traffic on it. There's room. The infrastructure is pretty much there. We just need to get it going!

If one were to dig up the study from the 80s, when they were trying to save the dayliner service, you would find that to make the dayliner reliable at around 3 1/2 hours round trip versus the oft delayed 4 1/2 hours, you have to pay 2/3rd of what it takes to get to a TGV, without the associated extra earnings of a TGV, so it was decided then that the only viable option was TGV, since the extra earnings more than pay for the extra capital costs, and helps defray some of the dayliner associated. Even in the 80s, with 80s population and growth projections.

The 80s study called for a CPR alignment with mostly double track, with the ability to pass freight using high speed crossovers. I believe the more modern studies call for sterile HSR track outside of the city limits of Edmonton and Calgary.

The problem wasn't capability, the problem was even then competition with the 17 daily freight trains that used the line at that time. Having a trainset capable of 150 or 200 kph get stuck behind a few freight trains in each direction doesn't make for good service.

If someone is of an inclination, you can head down to the legislature and look at the reports:
https://librarysearch.assembly.ab.c...earch/results?qu=high+speed+rail&te=ILS&st=PA

Population is there, market is there, but yes, political will is hard.

Intercity standard is not viable because of the amount of freight. There just isn't that much capital cost savings if you were to put in enough upgrades to make it reliable. The extra speed once you put in those upgrades pays for itself, that is why every study the province has ever commissioned recommended 300 kph.

The thing about VIA is that they are struggling to build any new infrastructure even for the Quebec City Windsor corridor where they would most assuredly make money, its a lot harder to convince them to start a service in AB.

That being said if the business case is there why not pursue a Brightline Style service as with Florida? The service seems VERY nice and from what I can tell its been really popular, and they seem to have taken to the MTR model of funding most of it with developments at the station in Miami something that could surely be replicated in AB.

Yeah, the province has studies this extensively and found the number is rather large to get to a standard level, and that there is a better economic case for going directly to high speed than for standard, as your incremental ridership more than pays for the incremental capital and operating.

To have service that is faster or even as fast as a bus, pretty expensive. There is a reason the service was suspended 30 years ago. The rail lines are reasonably well used by freight and mostly single track.

The CP line is currently 55 mph for freight for most of the way between Calgary and Edmonton. Passenger trains can generally go 10-15 mph faster than the freight speed, so that’s not far off from 120-140km/h...

But you need to be able to pass freight trains to actually reach anywhere close to those speeds.

From VIA rail's 1984 study:
View attachment 154170

From CP Rail's 1974 study, they estimated getting to 8 round trips a day at 95 miles per hour would cost $450 million ($2.3 billion today). For 120 miles per hour would only be marginally more, at $500 million ($2.5 billion). It would follow the CPR alignment.

 

[mdrejhon]

Personal note:
I have been wrestling with myself over whether I should continue contributing in this forum after @nfitz and myself got banned (me for 10 days, him for a full year) - over a dispute which we had already been able to settle via private messages and to return to a respectful discussion with multiple direct interactions for a full week before the admins surprised us with their bans and which I'm convinced that it (just like the two previous conflicts we have had with each other during the last weeks) would have been easily resolved hadn't my repeated pleas to the moderators to moderate the discussion been ignored (the message that I was banned was the first and only message I recall as having ever receiving from UT staff members).

I want to chime in to say:
“Please continue contributing to these forums.”

I like your data-filled posts as the only well-known VIA employee here.

P.S. My experience running a discussion forum as an admin and/or as an unpaid volunteer moderator (including running forums bigger than this one) is, there is a left hand/right hand situation especially with volunteer moderators versus administrators. The non-admin volunteer moderators have no access to your private messages, and most ethical admins will avoid looking at private messages (except under things like subpoenas etc). Elsewhere, I frequently see volunteer moderators surprised at what a different moderator or Admin did. It’s just the way that large forums work, even a 7-judge Supreme Court don’t always agree. And sometimes it takes on 1 out of 7 for a ban to occur, as all mods necessarilyhave the power to unilaterally ban, as part of the workload of cleaning up plain spammers/Nigeria/scams/etc. Nature of large forums including ones I currently or historically owned/run/ran/helped too.