VIA Rail

[kEiThZ]

Personally, I wouldn't "nationalize" the entire national network, but only key corridors.

Does this make sense?

Great theoreticals. Here in reality, no such nationalization is being discussed, planned or considered. And I'd rather get shovels in the ground than spend a decade arguing over track ownership and nationalization.

Also, you're very much focused on passenger traffic and the Lakeshore. But that is not the primary concern of either the bureaucratic state or the politicians who run it. Given the economic impact of the railways, you won't find much of a constituency for nationalization by the federal government to benefit regional travel in just a portion of the country.

 

[ec_traindriver]

Great theoreticals. Here in reality, no such nationalization is being discussed, planned or considered. And I'd rather get shovels in the ground than spend a decade arguing over track ownership and nationalization.

Also, you're very much focused on passenger traffic and the Lakeshore. But that is not the primary concern of either the bureaucratic state or the politicians who run it. Given the economic impact of the railways, you won't find much of a constituency for nationalization by the federal government to benefit regional travel in just a portion of the country.

BTW, I am talking about the infrastructure only. Hence the "vertical separation" concept I introduced earlier.

CP, CN, GO, VIA, and shortlines would still run their businesses on a consolidated infrastructure under a single owner. The FEC and Brightline, in Florida, on the other hand, use a different approach: FEC retains full ownership of the infrastructure, but subcontract dispatching to a third-party agency, equally funded by FEC and Brightline.

 

[Darwinkgo]

It somewhat makes sense, I agree.

Personally, I wouldn't "nationalize" the entire national network, but only key corridors. Also, you have to consider that most of the freight trains now run on a network that has been shuttered in the name of their finances. How many daily freight trains run from the Windsor/Detroit to the Niagara Falls areas, needlessly congesting, for example, Bayview Junction? If there still were a direct line say, between Glencoe and Fort Erie, freight trains wouldn't pose any kind of problems on passenger trains en route from Toronto to the Southwestern Ontario area. The same could be said for the abandoned North Bay to Ottawa line(s) with trains now rerouted through the Belleville and Kingston Subs.

Does this make sense?

Sure it does make sense - if there was demand there, and if demand was interferring with line haul freight operations. We see with CP's freight traffic through Toronto that there is rather minimal demand connecting east of Toronto and west of Toronto even! It is more like airports and services in between with a focus on high demand services in between these days. The lines serving many industrial spurs are more like regional airlines, they feed the hubs. The occasional regional airlines feeding into the main network isn't an issue because there isn't the speed mismatch that happens with passenger rail, and those low demand services don't occupy 'prime slots'. Heck, the serving of local deliveries versus line haul is shown by the death of hump yards for CP in Canada.

The problem as others have identified is not capacity. It is capacity to readily accommodate higher speed passenger trains which consume way more network capacity than a freight train. If passenger trains were as slow as freight trains, it wouldn't be an issue at all. Removing a handful of freight trains doesn't solve this problem. You can either rebuild the network to accomodate both (this is what Alberta studied in the early 80s, entirely rebuilding and grade separating the CP line between Calgary and Edmonton with two tracks on concrete sleepers with both tracks able to accommodate 200kph travel with high speed crossovers every 10 km to allow coexistence of the 15-20 freight trips a day with a similar number of intercity rail trips) or you build a new corridor.

 

[roger1818]

I doubt electrification will happen except for eventual HSR. Even for metrolinx's projects I bet hydrogen catches up and gets adopted instead. It has gone from pretty hypothetical (gadget bahn), to commercial pilots in the mean time.

While hydrogen fuel cell vehicles might be more efficient than gas/diesel powered vehicles (and generate less carbon dioxide even if you steam reform natural gas to make the hydrogen), their well to wheel efficiency is still considerably lower than battery electric vehicles, which are still lower than powering the vehicle directly (from a catenary). There is likely a point for long distance trains, where the cost of installing catenary is too great and batteries aren't big enough, but that isn't likely the case for commuter or corridor intercity services.

There are two problems with Hydrogen. First of all you need to make the hydrogen gas, either by steam reforming natural gas (which produces CO2) or by electrolysis. Steam reforming is the cheaper of the two, but not only does the process require a significant amount of heat energy as an input, but the chemical energy of the hydrogen gas produced is lower than the chemical energy of the natural gas being transformed, so you might as well just burn the natural gas in the first place. In the end, the process is about 65% efficient. For electrolysis, a modern plant is about 80% efficient. ref Of course you need a green source of electricity, since a natural gas power plants are only up to 60% efficient.

Secondly you need to use a hydrogen fuel cell to convert that hydrogen back into electricity. Modern fuel cells are only about 60% efficient. ref If you combine the efficiency of electrolysis with that of a fuel cell, you get an electricity to electricity efficiency of only 48% (ignoring any transmission line loss to get the electricity to the hydrogen production facility or any energy needed to compress the hydrogen for storage). As a comparison, With a catenary, you are looking at an efficiency of more than 90%.

Batteries offer a significantly more efficient process, but have the disadvantage of adding a significant amount of weight. If that weight could be designed into the ballast of the locomotive, then that will help, but there will come a needed range whereby the weight of the battery will become to great, and you end up loosing efficiency due to the need to haul around the extra weight.

As I said, there might be a place for hydrogen fuel cells for long distance trains, whereby the cost of catenary outweighs the cost of wasted energy, but I don't see it for commuter or corridor services.

 

[ec_traindriver]

The problem as others have identified is not capacity. It is capacity to readily accommodate higher speed passenger trains which consume way more network capacity than a freight train. If passenger trains were as slow as freight trains, it wouldn't be an issue at all. Removing a handful of freight trains doesn't solve this problem. You can either rebuild the network to accomodate both (this is what Alberta studied in the early 80s, entirely rebuilding and grade separating the CP line between Calgary and Edmonton with two tracks on concrete sleepers with both tracks able to accommodate 200kph travel with high speed crossovers every 10 km to allow coexistence of the 15-20 freight trips a day with a similar number of intercity rail trips) or you build a new corridor.

Or you make freight trains go faster — but I recognize the technical difficulties that would arise from that decision.

Here, freight trains are expected to run (almost) as fast as passenger trains, when the infrastructure allows for that. More than the length, or the weight of such enormous trains, what really baffles me is how incredibly ineffective North American brakes are!

Here you can see a page from the national infrastructure timetable, an excerpt from the line I work on. Trento to Verona, southbound direction.

The four columns are the four speed-categories: freight trains run by speeds in the A-column, commuter trains by B-column speeds, intercity/high-speed trains by C-column speeds. P-column is for tilting trains only ("Pendolino"). Freight equipment is usually able to run 100 to 120 km/h, and very often do so.

 

[Darwinkgo]

BTW, I am talking about the infrastructure only. Hence the "vertical separation" concept I introduced earlier.

CP, CN, GO, VIA, and shortlines would still run their businesses on a consolidated infrastructure under a single owner. The FEC and Brightline, in Florida, on the other hand, use a different approach: FEC retains full ownership of the infrastructure, but subcontract dispatching to a third-party agency, equally funded by FEC and Brightline.

It comes back to: for Canada what crisis would this be trying to solve? We have competition to most destinations. We have profitable operations. We have low and dropping freight rates. We have more tonne-kms of freight by rail than the entire EU. We have the highest freight rail modal share in the world. We have freight operators that can apply their knowledge of freight operations in an integrated way to optimize the entire system including maintenance, instead of just optimizing operations.

The problem we have is that this spectacularly successful system isn't good at accommodating relatively (compared to freight) high speed passenger trains. As a government you seek a solution that doesn't cause more problems while costing the least.

Now, some see a problem and the solution is easy to them: blow up the system because it also happens to align with their world view that private corporations shouldn't hold critical infrastructure. Good old commanding heights of the economy and all that. That the solution would be free if we just forced the railways to do it.

What the government sees is world wide public network operators being quite bad in comparison in driving economies and implementing innovation in their freight networks. That the government has spent 50 years trying to get the government out of the freight business and has been successful. And that shaking that up without very good reason is a very bad idea for two very successful companies. And that an option like HFR is cheaper and better (most likely, we'll wait for the CIB reports) than trying to make everything work together.

 

[roger1818]

That is the key: at present. When embarking on a 10 year project with 50 year implications, we have to look at long terms. Even just running the electrical infrastructure over northern Ontario would be a crazy project (electrifiying corridors without populations means building out a suitable electric grid too). Our government has decided that hydrogen is where they want to play (the national hydrogen strategy). CP Rail is going for a FRA freight hydrogen demonstration. If they are even close to successful, it will destroy most electrification projects' economics.

But there are no plans to bring HFR to northern Ontario. The distances you are talking about for the trans continental routes are significantly different than they are on the Quebec City to Windsor corridor. I totally agree that hydrogen fuel cells may very well make more sense for long distance trains because of the infrastructure costs.

 

[Darwinkgo]

Spoiler

While hydrogen fuel cell vehicles might be more efficient than gas/diesel powered vehicles (and generate less carbon dioxide even if you steam reform natural gas to make the hydrogen), their well to wheel efficiency is still considerably lower than battery electric vehicles, which are still lower than powering the vehicle directly (from a catenary). There is likely a point for long distance trains, where the cost of installing catenary is too great and batteries aren't big enough, but that isn't likely the case for commuter or corridor intercity services.

There are two problems with Hydrogen. First of all you need to make the hydrogen gas, either by steam reforming natural gas (which produces CO2) or by electrolysis. Steam reforming is the cheaper of the two, but not only does the process require a significant amount of heat energy as an input, but the chemical energy of the hydrogen gas produced is lower than the chemical energy of the natural gas being transformed, so you might as well just burn the natural gas in the first place. In the end, the process is about 65% efficient. For electrolysis, a modern plant is about 80% efficient. ref Of course you need a green source of electricity, since a natural gas power plants are only up to 60% efficient.

Secondly you need to use a hydrogen fuel cell to convert that hydrogen back into electricity. Modern fuel cells are only about 60% efficient. ref If you combine the efficiency of electrolysis with that of a fuel cell, you get an electricity to electricity efficiency of only 48% (ignoring any transmission line loss to get the electricity to the hydrogen production facility or any energy needed to compress the hydrogen for storage). As a comparison, With a catenary, you are looking at an efficiency of more than 90%.

Batteries offer a significantly more efficient process, but have the disadvantage of adding a significant amount of weight. If that weight could be designed into the ballast of the locomotive, then that will help, but there will come a needed range whereby the weight of the battery will become to great, and you end up loosing efficiency due to the need to haul around the extra weight.

As I said, there might be a place for hydrogen fuel cells for long distance trains, whereby the cost of catenary outweighs the cost of wasted energy, but I don't see it for commuter or corridor services.

True, with current tech. But if we're going all in on hydrogen for long distance services (which we are), the marginal cost of hydrogen for less than optimal services will be way less just due to economies of scale. It will also be easier to implement, and cheaper on an incremental basis since the entire hydrogen ecosystem is being built anyways. Whether it is blue, green, or the weird extract hydrogen directly from hydrocarbons in the ground while leaving carbon in the ground, I don't care. It is that the government has decided to throw billions into the tech, and to carve out a Canadian niche in the tech. If it is a dead end we will know far before the electrification question for the corridor comes up. Do we think the corridor will be able to resist the easiest option when it comes along when the Chargers are ready to go even if CAT is more efficient from an energy use perspective? I really doubt it.

 

[Darwinkgo]

But there are no plans to bring HFR to northern Ontario. The distances you are talking about for the trans continental routes are significantly different than they are on the Quebec City to Windsor corridor. I totally agree that hydrogen fuel cells may very well make more sense for long distance trains because of the infrastructure costs.

The point is for those long distance trains the infrastructure which would be used to support hydrogen for marginal uses where you wouldn't build a dedicated ecosystem will already exist, so they'll be able to leverage existing infrastructure instead of building a dedicated one. Can't really look at the corridor in isolation, in the case of the energy system. Sure, hydrogen might be a bust. But it might also upend the entire mobile end user of energy market where batteries won't work universally. and we can't translate our extreme skepticism that accompanied efforts to force Metrolinx to go to Tier 4 engines along with belief that hydrogen is just a delaying tactic to electrification, to blind us to the possibility that when we are ready, an entirely new tech is available to us.

 

[ec_traindriver]

It comes back to: for Canada what crisis would this be trying to solve? We have competition to most destinations. We have profitable operations. We have low and dropping freight rates. We have more tonne-kms of freight by rail than the entire EU. We have the highest freight rail modal share in the world. We have freight operators that can apply their knowledge of freight operations in an integrated way to optimize the entire system including maintenance, instead of just optimizing operations.

The problem we have is that this spectacularly successful system isn't good at accommodating relatively (compared to freight) high speed passenger trains. As a government you seek a solution that doesn't cause more problems while costing the least.

Well, then if the Canadian railway system is so effective, why bothering with passenger transportation at all? Ditch all long-distance trains, just pump more billions in the highway system, or fatten up airlines even more. Things would come out just as fine, right?

Now, some see a problem and the solution is easy to them: blow up the system because it also happens to align with their world view that private corporations shouldn't hold critical infrastructure. Good old commanding heights of the economy and all that. That the solution would be free if we just forced the railways to do it.

I've never claimed such a solution to be free, nor to be easy.

BTW, one should not start talking about "world views", because in the capitalist nation you share a border with host railroads like BNSF treat Amtrak long-distance trains far better than the self-serving private corporations that delay train departures, say, from Vancouver by some 2 hours because they needed the mainline to get together their monsters-on-rails (#118).

Why does Amtrak manage to do so, and VIA gets constantly bullied? And does the answer necessarily require the so-called HFR treatment?

 

[Darwinkgo]

Well, then if the Canadian railway system is so effective, why bothering with passenger transportation at all? Ditch all long-distance trains, just pump more billions in the highway system, or fatten up airlines even more. Things would come out just as fine, right?

At one point the Canadian government's policy objective was to move airports far from cities because they were loud and going to get even louder because they were going to be serviced by super sonic airliners! The government flirted with STOL ports as an alternative to service urban point to point demand. VIA for most of its history has been an after thought, a transitional state, held onto because of nostalgia, politics, industrial policy (some building/rebuilding of rolling stock) and the financial implications of terminating staff and wrapping up operations (would cost more than just continuing things as they are in the short term). If HFR goes cash flow positive, subsidy free, I could see the government setting the objective of making all services subsidy free and killing those that can't do it soon after. If you split the majority of users away as a political constitutency from those whose main interest is to maintain the rest of the network you have an opening for a government who wants to kill it.

I've never claimed such a solution to be free, nor to be easy.

Others have, albeit before your entry.

BTW, one should not start talking about "world views", because in the capitalist nation you share a border with host railroads like BNSF treat Amtrak long-distance trains far better than the self-serving private corporations that delay train departures, say, from Vancouver by some 2 hours because they needed the mainline to get together their monsters-on-rails (#118).

Why does Amtrak manage to do so, and VIA gets constantly bullied? And does the answer necessarily require the so-called HFR treatment?

My last long distance Amtrak trip was delayed by 8 hours because of freight, whereas my last trip on the Canadian somehow was entirely on time, both departure and arrival. I can't say exactly the recent performance in Vancouver, but there has been a lot of investment in making the rail operations in the lower mainland more effective. TBH if we cared about the Canadian's on-time performance as a country, $500 million would go a long way to improving performance - but that would be doubling the subsidy per passenger to above $1000 for each passenger for a decade.

As for why Amtrak is more successful in its long distance operations, I'd point to two factors: the US Senate (and division of powers); and the maintenance of daily runs. Daily runs justify different levels of investment and consideration. The Senate and individual Senators wield tremendous power. A single senator has way more freedom of action than a Minister in a cabinet government like Canada has. If every time a railways asks for a policy change a Senator who can stop that change just happens to bring up Amtrak long distance on time performance, the Senator can cause a huge change in performance without actually writing anything into law. In Canada, the only person who would wield similar influence sits in the Prime Minister's Office, and I bet they have at most 30 minutes of dedicated thought time on VIA rail every 5 years unless there is a crisis going on, or a call needs to be made on a nearly fully baked idea (like HFR).

 

[crs1026]

Now, some see a problem and the solution is easy to them: blow up the system because it also happens to align with their world view that private corporations shouldn't hold critical infrastructure. Good old commanding heights of the economy and all that. That the solution would be free if we just forced the railways to do it.

What the government sees is world wide public network operators being quite bad in comparison in driving economies and implementing innovation in their freight networks. That the government has spent 50 years trying to get the government out of the freight business and has been successful. And that shaking that up without very good reason is a very bad idea for two very successful companies. And that an option like HFR is cheaper and better (most likely, we'll wait for the CIB reports) than trying to make everything work together.

I don’t recall anyone suggesting that someone “blow up the system”. Adjust the balance, perhaps. Nor did anyone suggest that government would get the change “for free”. The suggestion was that a fairer balance might require more of railways in transparency, accountability, and risk/reward fairness when passenger rail, or other needs such as line relocation, impacts those freight operations.

Moderate, fair and reasonable adjustments, yes.

- Paul

 

[kEiThZ]

BTW, I am talking about the infrastructure only. Hence the "vertical separation" concept I introduced earlier.

Again. Great in theory. But not happening in reality. We have no real tradition in this country of nationalizing assets solely to benefit one activity over the other.

 

[ec_traindriver]

If HFR goes cash flow positive, subsidy free, I could see the government setting the objective of making all services subsidy free and killing those that can't do it soon after. If you split the majority of users away as a political constitutency from those whose main interest is to maintain the rest of the network you have an opening for a government who wants to kill it.

That's a valid point, unfortunately.

I can't say exactly the recent performance in Vancouver, but there has been a lot of investment in making the rail operations in the lower mainland more effective. TBH if we cared about the Canadian's on-time performance as a country, $500 million would go a long way to improving performance - but that would be doubling the subsidy per passenger to above $1000 for each passenger for a decade.

Apparently, it is okay to heavily subsidize all other modes of transportation, or construction of relevant infrastructure, even if that doesn't turn a dime of profit. Road construction is always on the rise, after all.

As for why Amtrak is more successful in its long distance operations, I'd point to two factors: the US Senate (and division of powers); and the maintenance of daily runs.

Bingo!

 

[Darwinkgo]

Apparently, it is okay to heavily subsidize all other modes of transportation, or construction of relevant infrastructure, even if that doesn't turn a dime of profit. Road construction is always on the rise, after all.

In this case, Canada might be special! Last time looked at Canada, at least on the provincial and federal levels, taxation from auto use aligns quite well with spending on operating and investment - at least since our fiscal crunch in the early to mid-90s. (this is going to cause problems with electrification, but that is a 2030 problem not a today problem!) Canada is also one of the few countries to not subsidize air travel and investments in air infrastructure, since around the same period. HFR looks well aligned to join the other sectors as becoming subsidy free. Long distance travel is going to be an issue in Canada - even our bus operators have been failing bit by bit. The price of serving a large country.