VIA Rail

[ssiguy2]

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.

We will agree to disagree on whether any improvements should be via Kitchener or Aldershot, I totally disagree that getting CN/CP off the mainlines is a non-starter. Ottawa does not need them to get off the mainline thru the London/Woodstock section but rather grow a pair and force them to cooperate. The are currently 2 rail lines serving that section. The Northern and fastest is owned by CP and the southern route currently used by VIA thru Ing/Wood is owned by CN.

This is only a 40km stretch so Ottawa should be telling CN & CP that they can use one of the routes but not both as one must be for VIA only service. In a country where they have tens of thousands of km of track forcing them to share a 40km section of it should not be problematic and if it is then ANY improvements to any VIA routes is effectively dead.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

The elephant in the room -- Ottawa -- my home town of birth. The answers you get from an Ottawan versus Windsorite will be very different on what constitutes the 3 most important cities in Ontario.

Nearly all Ottawans tend to be unamious that Ottawa (capital of Canaduh) and Toronto (that gigantic metro) is in the top 3 most important Ontario cities. What constitutes the 3rd most important Ontario city, is, a matter of contentious debate with an Ottawan.

The thing is we Ottawans (and actually a lot of people outside of southern Ontario) conflate the whole of southern Ontario with Toronto. St Catherines = KW = Guelph = Mississauga = Hamilton = Oshawa = Toronto, not London though. But because it's kind of one big contiguous urban corridor to outsiders the whole blob is one big thing.

Our big neighbor is Montreal, but the two urban areas have enough of a gap between them they don't feel like they are touching each other.

 

[nephersir7]

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?

The REM construction has no impact on existing VIA services.

 

[mdrejhon]

The thing is we Ottawans (and actually a lot of people outside of southern Ontario) conflate the whole of southern Ontario with Toronto. St Catherines = KW = Guelph = Mississauga = Hamilton = Oshawa = Toronto, not London though. But because it's kind of one big contiguous urban corridor to outsiders the whole blob is one big thing.?

We need to hire a bunch of scientists to research and dissect this blob.

Most scientists probably agree that the blob probably includes Mississauga, but there's some debate on the peripherals of the GGH* genes such as St. Catharines or Kitchener. Maybe Brantford will be discovered (eureka) and perhaps there are some Barrie genes. Just need to make absolutely sure there's no disagreement what genetic makeup this blob exactly constitutes.

*GGH = Greater Golden Horseshoe

 

[crs1026]

We need to hire a bunch of scientists to research and dissect this blob.

Barrie-Lincoln-Orangeville-Bowmanville pretty much nails it.

An acronym is born.

- Paul

 

[White Pine]

I've always considered everything between Pickering and Burlington to be the Toronto "blob" lol. Hamilton and St. Catharine's are exempt.

 

[Urban Sky]

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.

You would have to run a regional service from Capreol all the way to Winnipeg, which in the current schedule takes 27 hours. RDCs don't have any sleeping accommodations (even for on-train staff), which means you would either have to layover (like the Skeena does in Prince George) or replace the on-train staff half-way. However, given the length of the journey (7 hours more net travel time than on the Skeena!) and the possible scale of delays, you would have to layover for 8-12 hours or switch on-train staff twice, which can realistically only happen in Hornepayne and Sioux Lookout, but let me know if you could find any accommodation in Hornepayne which can be reached without someone picking up and driving you to the station because I didn't. Also, such a service would be completely useless, as someone traveling from, say, Gogoma to Winnipeg would now have to pay two nights of hotel stays on top of the train ticket.

Therefore, I will refer you to the full exchange we already had here back in January:

This was mused about a few years ago after a couple of back-to-back closures of the CN line in northern Ontario due to major derailments. CP seems to have shown little interest in the past and I don't know if there is reason to believe their position has changed. If the Canadian did shift to CP, they might have to replicate a version of The Superior to serve then-isolated communities on the CN, although I'm admittedly not familiar with the details of VIA's 'remote service mandate'.

[...]

Having said all of that, I would ride to Thunder Bay just for the experience.

I believe it is reasonable to assume that a service would be required to operate which is comparable to what VIA operated between November 1981 and January 1990, when the Super Continental was jointly operated with the Canadian between Sudbury and Winnipeg:

Source: official VIA Rail timetable (effective 1989-04-30, p.48)

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...

 

[felix123]

View attachment 207976
I'm really hoping that VIA replaces the carbon paper system they have now for buying food and drinks on trains with this. Also, I have a feeling that the crew onboard trains aren't going to be happy about this since they probably aren't going to earn as much in tips anymore.

P.S. VIA is using paper straws now.

Also hoping that they've modernized payments on board. And the tipping thing was just weird.

 

[dowlingm]

I wonder if a Capreol-Winnipeg service might cover the ground a bit quicker than the existing - are there sidings along that part of the route which Canadian currently has to hold short of because it is too long to use them? As for equipment, isn't part of the reason RDCs are used at the moment due to ease of turning at White River - not as much of an issue to use locohaul stock on the CN run I would think.

 

[gweed123]

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.

The weekend before they opened the first section of the 416 to vehicular traffic in 1996 (417 to Century Rd), they opened it up to pedestrians, cyclists, and rollerbladers. I remember going cycling on it with my Dad when I was 10. It's still pretty cool that the first time I ever travelled that section of freeway was on a bike, not in a car.

 

[jje1000]

Ugh, so what's the earliest time that Ottawa can advance HFR?

I presume after the election by the next budget?

 

[smallspy]

I wonder if a Capreol-Winnipeg service might cover the ground a bit quicker than the existing - are there sidings along that part of the route which Canadian currently has to hold short of because it is too long to use them?

There are no sidings anywhere between Toronto and Winnipeg that can not hold a maximum-length Canadian.

As for equipment, isn't part of the reason RDCs are used at the moment due to ease of turning at White River - not as much of an issue to use locohaul stock on the CN run I would think.

There is a wye at the south end of the White River yard directly opposite the station building. VIA has used it from time-to-time when they've needed to turn the RDCs.

Dan

 

[dowlingm]

There is a wye at the south end of the White River yard directly opposite the station building. VIA has used it from time-to-time when they've needed to turn the RDCs.

I remember the wye coming up when there was some discussion about White River switching to locohaul and there was some concern that it might be too short to turn a locohaul trainset (thus "ease of turning" above). Thanks for the info on the sidings - I guess 27 hours (or thereabouts) is as good as it gets without upgrades or more sidings to cut down dwell time.

 

[kEiThZ]

Ugh, so what's the earliest time that Ottawa can advance HFR?

I presume after the election by the next budget?

Nope. They need to finish that super long study they have going on which runs till 2022.

And then we hope they actually proceed with the project instead of yet another study. There's also all the political machinations to consider. If the Conservatives get elected, they want to scrap the Infrastructure Bank which is helping undertake this study. If the Liberals are in a minority, would they even bother with any projects on VIA, when they might funds more immediately to buy votes? I'm not even sure a Liberal-NDP coalition would prioritize HFR to the point of firming up funding and launching procurement.

 

[robmausser]

Nope. They need to finish that super long study they have going on which runs till 2022.

And then we hope they actually proceed with the project instead of yet another study. There's also all the political machinations to consider. If the Conservatives get elected, they want to scrap the Infrastructure Bank which is helping undertake this study. If the Liberals are in a minority, would they even bother with any projects on VIA, when they might funds more immediately to buy votes? I'm not even sure a Liberal-NDP coalition would prioritize HFR to the point of firming up funding and launching procurement.