VIA Rail

[robmausser]

Any VIA improvements in Southern Ontario must include London. London is the 4th busiest VIA station on the network and the VIA corridors and 401/402/403 all merge there. Anyone going to Detroit or Chicago must also pass thru London.

HSR never made any sense and never had a chance of being built but then neither does the Mon/Ott/Tor route. That doesn't mean however that SWO doesn't need much faster and more frequent VIA service. The most cost effective way to improve service and speed is to build the Brantford By-pass, bribe CN/CP to get off the corridor, build VIA passing stretches, and run Union-London express trains.

I remember in the 1980s when I lived in Toronto and getting to London was an easy and fast affair. The trains were frequent but most importantly there were Union-London express trains. No stops in between just a fast and pleasant trip and then the trains would continue to Windsor only making one stop in Chatham. Greatly improving VIA service to SWO does not have to be a hyper expensive endeavour but saying so does make for a good political excuse for VIA, Ottawa, and QP to write-off the proposal as being too expensive.

Well I agree with your statement about London being a hub that needs better service, I vehemently disagree about your methodology.

The best plan in my opinion is to purchase the GEXR track from CN, upgrade the track to 177kmh service and add sidings, and have an equivalent of the VIA HFR along the GEXR corridor from London, Kitchener, Brampton, Pearson, Union.

Not only would trying to get CN/CP off of their mainlines be a complete non-starter, bypassing Kitchener, Brampton and Pearson would be asinine, even for express service.

 

[p_xavier]

The terminals that the airlines use store all transactional data until the flight lands/the handset gets returned to its cradle, and only at that point do they communicate and authorize the transactions. Because debit/Interac require a live link to the banks to ensure that sufficient funds exist to complete the transaction, they can't be used.

It sounds like VIA will be using this same off-the-shelf product to complete their on-board transactions, so the same restrictions will apply.

Dan

Interac is changing these rules later this year. I doubt VIA is still that advanced especially that it's not a big player.

 

[smallspy]

Interac is changing these rules later this year. I doubt VIA is still that advanced especially that it's not a big player.

They may be changing those rules, but until the handsets get upgraded/changed, they won't be able to take advantage of it.

This applies not just to VIA, but also the airlines that are using the same devices.

Dan

 

[Urban Sky]

Up to 40% off on the Canadian and 15-30% on other routes:

Black Friday Sale | VIA Rail

Don't wait: take advantage of our Canadian Black Friday Sale. Book your train tickets and save up to 40%!

m.viarail.ca

https://twitter.com/x/status/1182309852531630080

 

[Allandale25]

Wonder if the data gathered will be shared with the HFR team.

 

[Urban Sky]

Federal election just the ticket for regional rail improvements

Tired of watching Southwestern Ontario be left behind economically, and with high-speed rail likely dead, some communities want to make better rail passenger servic…

lfpress.com

Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley, the region’s longest-serving mayor, has watched Via service in the region erode over decades. He calls it “benign neglect” by Ottawa, insisting its focus has been on other regions, especially the Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec City area.

I'm not sure why exactly, but this quote still irritates the hell out of me, even 2 weeks after I first read your article: It's of course true that service (expressed in scheduled intercity passenger train mileage per week) in Southwestern Ontario is down by almost two-thirds since its record high in 1951, but when actually looking at how intercity services have actually developed in the Corridor over the last decades, it should become clear that the focus focus has not exactly been on the Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec route, which will become clear when comparing the relative size of the stacked areas in brown tones (i.e. Southwestern Ontario) with those in blue tones (i.e. Quebec-Montreal-Ottawa):

Compiled from: official CN, CP and VIA timetables
Note: The current weekly mileage of Southwest Ontario is 30,244 km, which is 66.8% below than the record high of 85,486 km in 1951 and 1.2% above the post-1950 low of 29,896 km, whereas Quebec-Ottawa-Montreal accounts for 32,143 km (47.9% below the record high of 61,678 km, but 63.6% higher than the post-1950 low of 19,652 km in 1990-1992) and the remainder of the Corridor (i.e. Montreal/Ottawa-Toronto) accounts for 104,484 (which is an all-time high and 84.4% above the post-1950 low of 56,648 km in 1990-1992)

I suspect that what triggers me is that it seems to exploit the narrative that VIA's services are biased towards the province where its HQ is located (and therefore most of its administrative staff is located and originates from). Because "the Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec City area" just becomes a code for "Quebec", once you consider that the area covers 100% of VIA's 367 km of Corridor network in Quebec (i.e. Quebec-Montreal-QC/ON border), but maybe only 10% (QC/ON border-Ottawa-Fallowfield: 120 km) of VIA's 1,395 km of Corridor network in Ontario:

In reality, however, only 18.6% of all Corridor mileage falls onto the province of Quebec, which is exactly half (!) of its share of the population of both provinces combined (37.8% in the 2016 Census). Furthermore, only 2.4% (in words: less than a fortieth!!!) of all Corridor mileage falls on train services which operate only within Quebec (there are so few left that you can count them with four fingers: #20, #25, #29 and #622, collectively accounting for as little as 15 one-way journeys between Quebec and Montreal per week) and both figures happen to be the lowest Quebec has ever seen:

Compiled from: official CN, CP and VIA timetables
Note: the highest share of Corridor mileage in Quebec was 36.0% in the confederation year 1967 (or if excluding inter-provincial services: 15.8% in 1989).

Therefore, rather than blaming Quebec for their own misery, the mayors and local politicians in Southwestern Ontario may ask themselves if the fact that they are the only area of the Corridor which has even less (rather than significantly more) intercity passenger rail service than directly after the January 1990 cuts could be related to their selfish and ultimately counter-productive and self-defeating tendency to object against any passenger rail investment program which doesn't reach into their own city rather than uniting behind a consolidated plan which will bring better rail passenger rail service incrementally and progressively into the entire region...

 

[Allandale25]

^ Excellent analysis. Just note that any time I share the article I'm sharing it for discussions purposes, not necessarily because I agree or disagree with it

On a separate topic, this CPC candidate has a view on VIA and Thunder Bay.

Passenger Rail in Northwestern Ontario is Feasible – Frank Pullia - NetNewsLedger

THUNDER BAY - POLiTICS 2.0 - Passenger rail service in Northern Ontario for the major population centres of Thunder Bay through to Kenora are not met as the VIA Rail route is on the northern CN tracks. Thunder Bay-Superior North Conservative candidate Frank Pullia is talking transportation...

www.netnewsledger.com

 

[lenaitch]

Wonder if the data gathered will be shared with the HFR team.

Most likely just regular track evaluation. No doubt any HFR planning is well aware of the alignment and I doubt anybody is under the illusion that the condition of the trackbed is anywhere near passenger rail standards of any speed (watch the tailend evaluation car rock).

^ Excellent analysis. Just note that any time I share the article I'm sharing it for discussions purposes, not necessarily because I agree or disagree with it

On a separate topic, this CPC candidate has a view on VIA and Thunder Bay.

Passenger Rail in Northwestern Ontario is Feasible – Frank Pullia - NetNewsLedger

THUNDER BAY - POLiTICS 2.0 - Passenger rail service in Northern Ontario for the major population centres of Thunder Bay through to Kenora are not met as the VIA Rail route is on the northern CN tracks. Thunder Bay-Superior North Conservative candidate Frank Pullia is talking transportation...

www.netnewsledger.com

Simply is terms of population served, the CP route (original 'Canadian' route through TBay) made the most sense but CP wanted no part of it. If they did move it south, VIA would likely have to re-create a service on CN to fulfill their remote service mandate (similar to current Sudbury-White River 'Superior'). There was some talk about wanting to do that after a number of lengthy CN derailment closures a few years back but I doubt it was much more than noise.

 

[Urban Sky]

^ Excellent analysis.

Thank you!

Just note that any time I share the article I'm sharing it for discussions purposes, not necessarily because I agree or disagree with it

I know, don't worry!
Unfortunately, the article is pretty representative of almost every single article I read in the LFP regarding passenger rail in it's overly negative and neither well-researched nor well-reasoned opinion of Canada's national railway operator...

Simply is terms of population served, the CP route (original 'Canadian' route through TBay) made the most sense but CP wanted no part of it. If they did move it south, VIA would likely have to re-create a service on CN to fulfill their remote service mandate (similar to current Sudbury-White River 'Superior'). There was some talk about wanting to do that after a number of lengthy CN derailment closures a few years back but I doubt it was much more than noise.

As the segment between White River, Thunder Bay and Winnipeg does not fall under the other two of VIA Rail's three mandates (regional service to communities without year-round road access or intercity service on a near-commercial basis), the only way to get the federal government to restore VIA service along Lake Superior is to reroute the Canadian (which is part of the transcontinental service mandated by the Confederation agreement of 1867).

However, and as you correctly noted, rerouting the Canadian onto the CP line east of Winnipeg would require to restore a regional service as it was provided between 1981 and January 1990 (when the Super-Continental was merged with the Canadian and jointly operated over the CP line east of Winnipeg). As I've noted back in January (see quote below) by simply extrapolating the per train-km operating costs of the Winnipeg-Churchill service, operating a thrice-weekly loco-and-coach-and-sleeper train over a distance of 1,499 km rather than a RDC service of the same frequency over a distance of 484 km would increase operating costs by the order of magnitude of almost $10 million and with neither creating any significant currently untapped ridership potential nor anything else of significance which would advance any of the three aforementioned VIA mandates:

So, what objections could Transport Canada have against swapping the Canadian onto CP and the "remote service" onto CN? Well, from VIA's Annual Reports and Timetables we can approximate the operating costs per train-km, which yields a range between $24 (Sudbury-White River) and $40 (Winnipeg-Churchill). Unfortunately, Winnipeg-Churchill is the most representative service for what Capreol-Winnipeg might require and extrapolating the $39.67 over 1499 km distance gives you an operating cost of $12.4 million, representing an increase of $8.8 million over the current Sudbury-White River service even when only assuming 2 frequencies year-round:

Compiled from: VIA Rail Annual Reports 2016 and 2017, as well as official VIA Rail timetables.
Note: 2016 chosen as reference year for “Winnipeg-Churchill”, given the partial closure between May 2017 and December 2018.

Despite all the conspiracy theorists, there might have been very rational reasons to choose the CN line over the CP line. That said, I met quite a few travellers on board my (so far unfortunately only) trip on the Canadian, which said that a rerouting to its old route along Lake Superior would certainly compel them to do a second "once-in-a-lifetime" trip on board the Canadian...

I'm not arguing against restoring passenger service along the Lake Superior (and I would be the first to travel on it!), but I don't see how it could be convincingly justified as being the responsibility of the federal over the provincial taxpayer...

 

[lenaitch]

Thank you!

I know, don't worry!
Unfortunately, the article is pretty representative of almost every single article I read in the LFP regarding passenger rail in it's overly negative and neither well-researched not well-reasoned opinion of Canada's national railway operator...


As the segment between White River, Thunder Bay and Winnipeg does not fall under the other two of VIA Rail's three mandates (regional service to communities without year-round road access or intercity service on a near-commercial basis), the only way to get the federal government to restore VIA service along Lake Superior is to reroute the Canadian (which is part of the transcontinental service mandated by the Confederation agreement of 1867).

However, and as you correctly noted, rerouting the Canadian onto the CP line east of Winnipeg would require to restore a regional service as it was provided between 1981 and January 1990 (when the Super-Continental was merged with the Canadian and jointly operated over the CP line east of Winnipeg). As I've noted back in January (see quote below) by simply extrapolating the per train-km operating costs of the Winnipeg-Churchill service, operating a thrice-weekly loco-and-coach-and-sleeper train over a distance of 1,499 km rather than a RDC service of the same frequency over a distance of 484 km would increase operating costs by the order of magnitude of almost $10 million and with neither creating any significant currently untapped ridership potential nor anything else of significance which would advance any of the three aforementioned VIA mandates:


I'm not arguing against restoring passenger service along the Lake Superior (and I would be the first to travel on it!), but I don't see how it could be convincingly justified as being the responsibility of the federal over the provincial taxpayer...

Re-routing the Canadian to CP is what I meant; sorry if any confusion (I would be eager to ride it too!)

I'm not fully clear on the terms of the various VIA mandates, but I would think meeting the regional/remote service mandate, versus 'advancing' it would be the driving consideration. Assuming a need to terminate at divisional points, and assuming a requirement to service remote communities that formerly had service, any regional service on CN would likely have to run between Sudbury and Winnipeg. Quite a haul for aged RDCs.

 

[mdrejhon]

Holy Thanksgiving Horn (literal horn shape!) -- look at the stupendous Toronto-Ottawa growth (red color).

Never in VIA history, not even pre-1990, we've had this much train service between Toronto-Ottawa.

We're already almost hourly all-day 2-way between Toronto and Ottawa.

And VIA prices are also cheaper than 1995 for the Toronto-Ottawa route.

If this isn't a convincing case for the easily 401-beating 3h15min VIA HFR upgrade for TOR-OTT, I don't know what is! Ridership tends to rise dramatically on rail routes that clearly beats even offpeak freeway speed -- taking barely 3h would do the job. With VIA might eventually need 15-min or 20-min AD2W to satiate just TOR-OTT demand. Enough ridership would boom in just 10-15 years on VIA HFR to justify potential 200kph HSR-Lite upgrade of certain sections of VIA HFR routing. Especially since VIA is getting Siemens Charger locomotives (125mph / 201kph), which brings optional HSR-Lite capability to VIA, if a route is chosen to be upgraded to sufficient spec.

HSR advocates may continually complain that HFR isn't HSR, but I really think we should get right at it and build VIA HFR as soon as possible, with a door-open path to future incremental HSR. The business case for HFR is really clear for Toronto-Ottawa.

 

[mdrejhon]

Now, what happened to Quebec? That's a dramatic ridership loss.
Was this caused by the shutdown for the construction of the REM LRT network -- which hurt VIA?

 

[Aylmer]

I believe that it was caused by the merging of most QC-MTL runs with MTL-OTT runs. There aren't fewer of them, but they'd now be classified as intER-provincial instead of intRA.

 

[Allandale25]

Holy Thanksgiving Horn (literal horn shape!) -- look at the stupendous Toronto-Ottawa growth (red color).

Never in VIA history, not even pre-1990, we've had this much train service between Toronto-Ottawa.

View attachment 209849
View attachment 209848

View attachment 209850

We're already almost hourly all-day 2-way between Toronto and Ottawa.

And VIA prices are also cheaper than 1995 for the Toronto-Ottawa route.

If this isn't a convincing case for the easily 401-beating 3h15min VIA HFR upgrade for TOR-OTT, I don't know what is! Ridership tends to rise dramatically on rail routes that clearly beats even offpeak freeway speed -- taking barely 3h would do the job. With VIA might eventually need 15-min or 20-min AD2W to satiate just TOR-OTT demand. Enough ridership would boom in just 10-15 years on VIA HFR to justify potential 200kph HSR-Lite upgrade of certain sections of VIA HFR routing. Especially since VIA is getting Siemens Charger locomotives (125mph / 201kph), which brings optional HSR-Lite capability to VIA, if a route is chosen to be upgraded to sufficient spec.

HSR advocates may continually complain that HFR isn't HSR, but I really think we should get right at it and build VIA HFR as soon as possible, with a door-open path to future incremental HSR. The business case for HFR is really clear for Toronto-Ottawa.

Where is that graphic from and is there legend for the different colours?

 

[mdrejhon]

Where is that graphic from and is there legend for the different colours?

Graph:
From UrbanSky's post here on the previous page of this thread. I simply screenshot-cropped the wow-section.

From the 1950s to the 1990s it was the pastime to fly YOW-YYZ if you wanted to visit Toronto from Ottawa. I still remember the old Aeroquay as I peered up at the brutalist waffle concrete on arrival in my parent's car.

Nowadays, even the car drive Toronto-Ottawa is preferable, and the trains are now also.nearly as fast as the security-addled airport experience.

P.S. To other millenial readers: Did you know that before the late 1990s, Ottawa didn't yet have a 4-lanes median-separated freeway to Toronto! Can you believe that? The 416 had not yet been built. There are adults today who doesn't know that the 416 still has the new-freeway smell.