VIA Rail

[micheal_can]

Transport Canada owns the majority of the land required to connect the GO Uxbridge Sub with CP Havelock Sub, anyway for the aborted Pickering Airport project.

If it were me, I'd only have stations at Kennedy/Eglinton, Pontypool (for only a few commuter-based trains with a bus connection to Lindsay), Peterborough, Perth and/or Smiths Falls, Fallowfield and Ottawa.

Why so few? I would add something near highways 407/7 in the Markham area plus Tweed and maybe Havelock. Having both Perth and Smiths Falls is almost a no brainer as well. Remember, this is HFR, not HSR or Express. You could have it where some stations are only served on some runs.

 

[kEiThZ]

Why so few? I would add something near highways 407/7 in the Markham area plus Tweed and maybe Havelock. Having both Perth and Smiths Falls is almost a no brainer as well. Remember, this is HFR, not HSR or Express.
You could have it where some stations are only served on some runs.

That would not be high frequency for that station at this point. I appreciate the discipline and restraint VIA is showing here. They need a GTA East station outside the 416. Much more than that is doubtful. Stations every 20km (distance from Perth to Smiths Falls) would result in slower service, for little gain in ridership (especially outside the Metros). Remember, every minute slower results in marketshare losses in the big metros. So the ridership gains from any new station enroute need to be weighed against those losses. Especially important for a project that is still shooting to break even or make money.

Skip-stop service also creates inconsistencies in service along the corridor. Instead of users expecting consistently spaced timings at each point, they now have to worry which station has service when. What's the point of spending billions simply to duplicate what exists to the south?

Instead of building more stations and running inconsistent schedules VIA needs to work with local services or build feeder services. Look at your example of Perth. A town of 6000 that is 20 km (17 min drive) from Smiths Falls. They would benefit more from a shuttle van connecting them to every single service at Smiths Falls than every second train stopping there to pick up maybe a dozen passengers.

 

[Bureaucromancer]

That would not be high frequency for that station at this point. I appreciate the discipline and restraint VIA is showing here. They need a GTA East station outside the 416. Much more than that is doubtful. Stations every 20km (distance from Perth to Smiths Falls) would result in slower service, for little gain in ridership (especially outside the Metros). Remember, every minute slower results in marketshare losses in the big metros. So the ridership gains from any new station enroute need to be weighed against those losses. Especially important for a project that is still shooting to break even or make money.

Skip-stop service also creates inconsistencies in service along the corridor. Instead of users expecting consistently spaced timings at each point, they now have to worry which station has service when. What's the point of spending billions simply to duplicate what exists to the south?

Instead of building more stations and running inconsistent schedules VIA needs to work with local services or build feeder services. Look at your example of Perth. A town of 6000 that is 20 km (17 min drive) from Smiths Falls. They would benefit more from a shuttle van connecting them to every single service at Smiths Falls than every second train stopping there to pick up maybe a dozen passengers.

Agree with everything here, except for Markham... The more I look at it the more I'd rather lose a Scarborough station for something wherever a connection can be made with 407 GO and Viva. Honestly it looks to me like there probably just have to be 4 GTAish stops, with something for Durham, Markham and Scarborough all essential for pretty big parts of the market that Lakeshore already serves fairly well.

 

[kEiThZ]

Agree with everything here, except for Markham... The more I look at it the more I'd rather lose a Scarborough station for something wherever a connection can be made with 407 GO and Viva. Honestly it looks to me like there probably just have to be 4 GTAish stops, with something for Durham, Markham and Scarborough all essential for pretty big parts of the market that Lakeshore already serves fairly well.

I don't think a 407 GO and VIVA connection would do as much as a Bloor-Danforth, GO Stouffville and Eglinton Crosstown connection. That said I think there's a case for both a Scarborough and a Markham station. Especially with the IT traffic between Ottawa and Markham. A train ride from Fallowfield to Markham in less than 2.5 hrs would be competitive with air for these business travelers.

A Durham North station is interesting. Between Markham, Scarborough and Oshawa stations, there doesn't seem to be much of the population that is more than a 20 min drive from a station. Would it draw enough ridership to be worthwhile? Hard to say....

 

[MisterF]

Does that corridor have enough capacity for RER and HFR? And/or room to add tracks if necessary?

I have no idea. But in general, with modern signalling you can get a lot of capacity out of a two-track rail line. A third track can be added in certain sections too.

Transport Canada owns the majority of the land required to connect the GO Uxbridge Sub with CP Havelock Sub, anyway for the aborted Pickering Airport project.

Good point, I hadn't thought of that. That definitely reduces land acquisition costs and private property impacts.

 

[crs1026]

I have no idea. But in general, with modern signalling you can get a lot of capacity out of a two-track rail line. A third track can be added in certain sections too.

That’s true, but some of that capacity is lost if you are intermingling trains with different performance and scheduling attributes.

It's 16 miles from Scarborough Jct to Major Mackenzie by rail. Track speed is 50 mph north of Agincourt, with a 25 mph slow order through Markham. I assume a 50 limit is possible south of Agincourt once construction ends. Maybe speed could be bumped higher once the current project ends, but it's pretty curvy from Milliken to Mount Joy.

At current scheduling, even under optimum timings an HFR departing Scarboro Jct will overtake the previous RER around Markham, assuming 15 min headways. So yes a third track will be needed, to overtake. The same dynamics will work in the other direction, and with 15 minute RER headways in 2 directions one can't overtake in double track without conflicting with the other direction. So you are probably needing an overtaking track in each direction. As noted, the 401 underpass is not expandable beyond 2 track, nor is the trench at Underwood.

Can't say it can't be done, but there will be $$$ and the result will require careful coordination of schedules. In particular, it would be challenging for VIA to coordinate westward trains with RER, since there will inevitably be some variability in actual performance over the course of a run from Ottawa. To my mind, it's not the kind of flexible, unencumbered operation that VIA is seeking.

It may not be cheap, but adding a third track alongside the CP might be preferable, since it would not conflict with other services and might be amenable to higher speeds than the Uxbridge route. The Uxbridge route might have looked preferable in the context of Peterboro GO and Stouffville GO intermingling, but RER at frequent headways wasn't on the table nor was hourly HFR.

- Paul

 

[micheal_can]

I wonder if the third track everyone talks about could be as simple as passing sidings. Those passing sidings are the stations.

 

[lenaitch]

I think one of the problems with engineering multiple services onto limited infrastructure is that everything may run fine, until it doesn't, then quickly collapses. Technology has only so much ability to deal with events like an equipment snag, longer station dwell, crossing incident, etc. until cascading problems push all the way back to Ottawa. Operating at the edge of the capacity of the infrastructure has risks. An incident on a current GO line can kill the service for an extended period. Buses can often be brought it to alleviate the situation to some degree. Not so easy where HFR trains start piling up in rural sidings.

 

[micheal_can]

I think one of the problems with engineering multiple services onto limited infrastructure is that everything may run fine, until it doesn't, then quickly collapses. Technology has only so much ability to deal with events like an equipment snag, longer station dwell, crossing incident, etc. until cascading problems push all the way back to Ottawa. Operating at the edge of the capacity of the infrastructure has risks. An incident on a current GO line can kill the service for an extended period. Buses can often be brought it to alleviate the situation to some degree. Not so easy where HFR trains start piling up in rural sidings.

That is why all lines should have some sort of connectivity. Maybe the train has to go around the city. Maybe it goes down another line. Think of it liek highways only having partial interchanges, or none at all. The EDRs get too be a challenge.

 

[kEiThZ]

I think one of the problems with engineering multiple services onto limited infrastructure is that everything may run fine, until it doesn't, then quickly collapses. Technology has only so much ability to deal with events like an equipment snag, longer station dwell, crossing incident, etc. until cascading problems push all the way back to Ottawa. Operating at the edge of the capacity of the infrastructure has risks. An incident on a current GO line can kill the service for an extended period. Buses can often be brought it to alleviate the situation to some degree. Not so easy where HFR trains start piling up in rural sidings.

Honestly this is why I'd rather they spend the $1B for Montreal-Quebec on twin tracking (and triple tracking where necessary) the whole Toronto-Otrawa-Montreal route.

 

[E•MO•TION]

Mildly interesting tidbit from CPTDB regarding The Ocean come November: https://cptdb.ca/topic/9584-via-rail-canada/?do=findComment&comment=896014

 

[robmausser]

I think one of the problems with engineering multiple services onto limited infrastructure is that everything may run fine, until it doesn't, then quickly collapses. Technology has only so much ability to deal with events like an equipment snag, longer station dwell, crossing incident, etc. until cascading problems push all the way back to Ottawa. Operating at the edge of the capacity of the infrastructure has risks. An incident on a current GO line can kill the service for an extended period. Buses can often be brought it to alleviate the situation to some degree. Not so easy where HFR trains start piling up in rural sidings.

I think it would make sense to have a backup way of getting into Toronto.

Like the kitchener VIA train does with the Barrie Line sometimes.

 

[crs1026]

I think one of the problems with engineering multiple services onto limited infrastructure is that everything may run fine, until it doesn't, then quickly collapses. Technology has only so much ability to deal with events like an equipment snag, longer station dwell, crossing incident, etc. until cascading problems push all the way back to Ottawa. Operating at the edge of the capacity of the infrastructure has risks. An incident on a current GO line can kill the service for an extended period. Buses can often be brought it to alleviate the situation to some degree. Not so easy where HFR trains start piling up in rural sidings.

I started looking for any mention of potential VIA service in the various TPAP and consultation documents for the grade separations and station improvements on the Uxbridge line. Can’t seem to find any mention of VIA. These are recent enough that if VIA had serious intentions of using this line, it needed to convey that to ML and ML needed to include diligence for that scenario in the TPAP, including the consultations.

If VIA were to come along later, after all those work projects are complete, and propose to overlay its new service on infrastructure when the concrete had just been poured, I personally would be pissed. Sure, VIA can redo the EA at its own expense, but it’s wasteful to build and rebuild infrastructure over and over. I suspect that the design work for the grade separations isn’t even done yet. One wonders if that would actually invalidate the current TPAP’s.

- Paul

 

[Bureaucromancer]

To add to the issues with using the GO corridors, I rather suspect that the complications of going up the valley are both overblown (especially given that VIA seems to intend single track) and will have a lot more to do with the parts shared with CP than the bridges.

 

[kEiThZ]

If VIA were to come along later, after all those work projects are complete, and propose to overlay its new service on infrastructure when the concrete had just been poured, I personally would be pissed. Sure, VIA can redo the EA at its own expense, but it’s wasteful to build and rebuild infrastructure over and over. I suspect that the design work for the grade separations isn’t even done yet. One wonders if that would actually invalidate the current TPAP’s.

Like VIA not saying anything about REM and the Mount Royal Tunnel at those regulatory hearings. I really hope that VIA and Metrolinx are talking too.