VIA Rail

[Urban Sky]

Hi everyone. I'm new to the forum and to the discussion.

Welcome to Urban Toronto and I hope that now that we have separated Transport Policy discussions from VIA Rail discussions, we will be able to keep both threads more focused...!

I will briefly attempt to address some of the points you've raised:

One of such points relates to the fact that VIA publicly stated that HFR is imperative if we want to eliminate congestion and conflicts with CN. It's now late December 2020 and we haven't seen — yet! — a detailed account of the route selected for the Corridor.

The lack of details available to the public frustrates nobody more than myself, but I struggle to see how you could publish exact routings as long as relying on private investors remains on the table, as it would mean second-guessing what compromise between achievable travel time and capital costs a private investor would be willing to accept. Once you release a map which shows a station in X and a bypass around Y, these routing options might come impossible to change, regardless of how negatively they might affect the IRR of the project. Therefore, it might be much less harmful to first hammer down the rough cost envelope (and its distribution between the various investors) before asking the public for input on the particularities of the route, stations and target schedules...

At present, and given the data available to the public, their claim remains unsubstantiated: VIA trains would still need to access Union Station in Toronto, would still need to pass through Metrolinx/GO territory (possibly via Bala Sub), would need to run on CP Belleville Sub and avoid CP Toronto Yard before getting on the (renewed/rebuilt) Havelock Sub. The same map also seems to suggest a route from Montréal to Québec via the Mount Royal Tunnel, which — AFAIK — will be used exclusively by the REM.

First, a Toronto-Montreal currently operates the first 33 km over Metrolinx territory and the remaining 506 km over CN's transcontinental main route. Conversely, HFR (assuming that it would follow the route used by historic Toronto-Havelock services) would leave Metrolinx territory already after 8.5 km (of which the last 4 km have been disused for the last 30 years) at Leaside, then share an existing freight corridor (not necessarily: the tracks!) for 13.5 km until Agincourt and then again for another 21 km (between Glen Tay and Smiths Falls) and for the final 67 km (between De Beaujeu and Montreal's Gare Centrale, if we believe the map in that Globe and Mail article). This would mean that VIA would own approximately 470 out of the 580 km between Toronto and Montreal, thus increasing its ownership share of that corridor from currently zero to over 80%.

Second, if you look up recent satellite footage of CP's North Toronto Yard, you might notice that avoiding it has become much less difficult to achieve compared to only 10 years ago...

Third, if MTRL-QBEC was absolutely vital to HFR it would have been included into its first phase from Day 1 and not after energetic lobbying of political and business leaders in Quebec. In the best case, the political leaders in Quebec and Ottawa grant a funding envelope and auxiliary legislation which allows HFR to continue beyond Montreal towards Quebec City or the province of Quebec misses out on this unique chance to reverse its decades-long decline in its share of VIA's Corridor train-mileage as HFR will expand towards Windsor instead.

My problem with this approach is that HFR has the same problems as other HSR (mega)projects: it doesn't follow an incremental approach.

An traditional incremental approach was last attempted when triple-tracking parts of the Kingston Subdivision, but costs exploded and benefits evaporated in a way which is why I would call investing any more money without significant transportation policy changes as a "pay and pray" strategy...

From an infrastructure point of view, building an entirely new line between two cities requires an enormous amount of time. Peterborough to Smiths Falls is approximately 200 km as the crow flies. We can easily compare it to the Rome–Naples HSR (204.6 km), which opened in sections between December 19th, 2005, and December 13th, 2009. Work on the line officially commenced in 1994 and, leaving aside the infamous Italian bureaucracy and various technical problems, the line opened to traffic 11 years later. When it was opened to traffic, the line used provisory interconnections to the conventional network, so it took 4 more years to complete the whole project.

Assuming that enthusiastic Canadian contractors were able to build the Peterborough–Smiths Falls section in a third of that time, construction would still take 5 years with VIA still struggling on the Kingston Sub. If the contract were to be awarded on January 1st, 2021, and that won't be the case, we wouldn't see any kind of improvement whatsoever at least until early 2026. And that assuming nothing goes wrong.

I agree that if we were to attempt anything as ambitious as constructing a HSR corridor with 12 tunnels of a total length of 27 km (13% of total distance) in Canada, it would take just as long. However, rebuilding the trackbed and restoring the tracks on a ROW which already existed a few decades ago is orders of magnitudes simpler than the degree of legal battles, environmental assessments (EA), property acquisitions, geological analysis and earthwork required for a greenfield HSR development.

No, I don't think HFR to be the best solution for passenger traffic on the Corridor.

Me neither, but I don't see any alternative which has any chance of getting approved, funded, constructed and opened within the next decade. Every year we delay the go-ahead on a project which is as close to shovel-ready we've never come before just in hope for finding a better project, is a year lost for any efforts to get intercity passenger rail out of the tiny niche it currently occupies in this country...

Apparently, we have a different understanding of what incremental development means: if you have to build a line basically from scratch, that's an "abrupt" development. It means that it would take years to get to the result without experiencing anything in the meantime.

The HFR proposal is incremental in a sense that it takes the parts of the infrastructure VIA already owns (e.g. between De Beaujeu and Smiths Falls) and strings it together with underused or disused ROWs to create a rail corridor which is as independent from host railroads as possible given a constrained budget...

I wouldn't be overlooking the technical difficulties of that. Sure enough, said corridor would allow only 110 mi/h operations, but the differences end there. The undertakings required to build any rail corridor are basically the same, no matter the target speed.

I have bad news if you expect to be able to clean the existing trail and put the rails back, just like that. In this case, there's almost nothing to be rejuvenated! You would literally mean to bulldoze, take away the existing rail bed, build a new one complete of drainage and the like — unless you wish the ROW to be washed out completely the moment it starts raining seriously — and only then you can think about ballast, tracks, signals...

From an engineering point of view, again, there's not much difference to an HSR project. It's just a cheaper one.

The most recent HSR Study broke down the construction costs into 13 different items (A-M), of which 9 (A-I) refer to the actual construction of the line. Of these 9 construction-related items, one (Power Supply) is basically inapplicable to HFR (beyond fuel plants at the maintenance and layover facilities) and for 4 (A-D) of these 9 items, the planning, engineering and construction requirements are orders of magnitude lower for HFR with its (pre-)existing alignment and 110 mph speed limit than they are for a greenfield HSR line:

Compiled from: Ecotrain Study (2011, deliverable 6 - Part 1 of 2)
Note: re-post from #7,381

(Post continues below)

 

[Urban Sky]

(Post continued from above)

Seems like I've run out of space and time, but just to address one more point:

Well, if the main preoccupation is to connect Toronto to Ottawa and Montréal only, HFR is great. You should go for it! But VIA, or anyone for that matter, shouldn't sell it as a measure to solve mobility on the Corridor. It's just a cheap HSR, you've proved my point.

Peterborough (121 721) and Trois-Rivières aside (156 042), the new line runs in the middle of nowhere, and I don't see any good reason why they should be preferred to Drummondville (96 118), Kingston (161 175), Belleville (103 472), Trenton/Quinte West (43 577), Cobourg/Northumberland County (85 598), and Bowmanville/Clarington (92 013).

But if the HFR really proves successful, and the majority of trains get diverted on the new line, leaving barely one or two trains/day on the Kingston Sub, then the Corridor will have a negative balance in terms of potential ridership. Leaving the big three aside, the catchment area diminishes by more than 300 000 units.

But again, if the objective is to connect Toronto to Ottawa and Montréal only, I rest my case!

The entire purpose of HFR is to separate end-to-end markets (i.e. between TRTO, OTTW and MTRL) from the intermediary markets (from/to/between places like CBRG, BLVL, KGON, BRKV and CWLL), in order to provide both markets with a more targeted service offering. Just to underline how bad the timetable between these 8 stations is, out of the 54 possible O-D pairs, only 18 are commutable (arbitrarily defined as allowing a round-trip with an arrival time between 8:00 and 10:00 at the destination and a departure time between 16:00 and 18:00) and 5 don't allow any same-day round trips at all:

Departure Station	Commutable destinations	Non-commutable destinations	No same-day round trips possible
Montreal (MTRL)	OTTW, KGON	CWLL, BRKV, BLVL, CBRG, TRTO
Ottawa (OTTW)	MTRL, BRKV, KGON, BLVL, CBRG	TRTO
Cornwall (CWLL)	KGON	MTRL, BRKV, BLVL, TRTO	CBRG
Brockville (BRKV)	CBRG	OTTW, KGON, BLVL, TRTO	MTRL, CWLL
Kingston (KGON)	BLVL, CBRG, TRTO	MTRL, OTTW, CWLL, BRKV
Belleville (BLVL)	KGON, TRTO	OTTW, CWLL, BRKV, CBRG	MTRL
Cobourg (CBRG)	KGON, TRTO	OTTW, CWLL, BRKV, BLVL	MTRL
Toronto (TRTO)	KGON, BLVL	MTRL, OTTW, CWLL, BRKV, CBRG

Indeed, the direct consequence of having to operate mostly limited-stop trains (to keep the end-to-end travel times somewhat acceptable) is that it is not possible to commute by train between neighboring population centers like Belleville and Cobourg or Brockville and Kingston:

Compiled from: official VIA Rail timetable (effective 2019-06-02, updated as of 2020-03-08)

With so much orange, red or even dark gray in above matrix, I vehemently agree with @kEiThZ that the nominal number of frequencies scheduled between Toronto and Kingston and their fastest travel times are very poor indicators for assessing the service quality of the current (pre-Covid) timetable...


***


That's all I have time for tonight, but I'll try to address some more points you've raised over the holidays, but until then, I wish @everyone here happy holidays with your respective families and loved ones!

 

[kEiThZ]

This is why I dislike the focus on Kingston. Because it inevitably devolves to discussions about service between Kingston and the larger cities. There's no discussion at all about travel between neighbouring cities, the kind of trips for which there's a huge natural market.
.
The current situation forces all kinds of compromises from VIA. Because of concerns about end to end travel times, they have to cut intermediate stops. Because of travel to major metros, seats maybe empty for half a train's journey, reducing sales potential. Train times are entirely optimized around travel between the major metros, which means they are almost entirely impractical for anybody who is schedule sensitive at an intermediate stop.

 

[kEiThZ]

Good grief. If I weren’t on mobile I would scroll back and cut and paste the @kEiThZ posts from ~2017 turning into 2019 with no headway made on HFR. If it weren’t for YDS going to the mat, this thing would be dead and buried. Never has a government dithered for so long over such a small step forward. If you believe Ottawa is clearing the path for HFR, well.....

I've never hidden my political frustration with them not launching HFR or at least their preliminary studies earlier. But what we're discussing here isn't the launch of HFR. We're now on to something bordering on concern trolling. Specifically that HFR will result in cuts to other services so therefore we should avoid or go slow on HFR. That line of thinking is nuts.

The pessimism is not about HfR as a project, it’s about the strong signals Ottawa is sending that this is, well, maybe on, some day, no rush.

Could have fooled me. The last couple of pages has entirely focused on the possible woes of the Lakeshore communities post-HFR.

So, put it to 1 train every 2 days like the rest of the network.

Those grapes must be really sour.....

Using Kingston as a hub makes some sense.

I have never said otherwise.

There is talks in London for commuter service.

Talks matter far less than funding. And to date you won't see any plans from GO to extend to London. The only improved service London will get, is an extension of HFR, if and when that comes to pass.

 

[crs1026]

I've never hidden my political frustration with them not launching HFR or at least their preliminary studies earlier. But what we're discussing here isn't the launch of HFR. We're now on to something bordering on concern trolling. Specifically that HFR will result in cuts to other services so therefore we should avoid or go slow on HFR. That line of thinking is nuts.

I don’t think we have crossed the line into trolling. But some of us certainly haven’t backed down over impacts that are unprovable but somewhere between credible and acknowledged, which are material to supporting or opposing HFR. If this forum is interested in critical thinking, then one can’t simply gush over HFR‘s good points and dismiss every possible Con as irrelevant or small potatoes.

If one reads back through the years of this thread, the HFR proposal began with skepticism over whether the line was even technically feasible, and whether its minimal envelope fit the work required. @UrbanSky has been incredibly helpful in speaking to that. The premise that HFR can run in the black has also been discussed and accepted. The challenge of the Mount Royal tunnel have been discussed, but not allowed to naysay the whole plan. That is great, one continues to kick the tires on other details...it’s ok to challenge things and not to assume on faith.

I don’t see Kingston as a hill for HFR to die on, but it does illustrate some of the flimsier assumptions and less pleasant truths that are being avoided in sub-HFR places. So it’s a good hill for a substantial encounter.

VIA is not Metrolinx, but it too is vulnerable to letting rhetoric gloss over valid concerns. Placing so much credence on Kingston becoming a hub, for example. Aa single placemat graphic rolled out to a local politician, without any supporting proof of intent, or any confidence that decisionmaking is advancing, is not proof of concept or a commitment to act. It’s a deflection.

I would expect HFR to be packaged within a business case summary that would articulate a strategy to build service all the way from Windsor to Quebec City, and the timing of this. As much as I don’t trust a word Metrolinx utters, their RER Business Case document is a model of what Ottawa should be doing with Passenger Rail.

I am reminded that YDS rolled out an enhanced service plan a few years back for Windsor-Sarnia-Stratford-Toronto. That initiative has vanished.... despite being given much more profile than a single meeting with a single Mayor. Similarly, the promising start that was offered when VIA broached its 2008 triple tracking plan has been abandoned. So yes one has the right to be skeptical of promises from VIA. Lots of things in VIA’s broader environment may override all their hard work.

Am I taking HFR for granted and asking for more? Yes. Call me greedy, or call me impatient. There are things Ottawa could be doing to improve sub-HFR service, and isn’t. If you can rest easy knowing HfR is coming, great, but some of us see further needs.

As described, HFR will likely pave the way for two business proposals - one to extend HFr westwards, the second to invest further to move the initial HFR network towards HSR. Will these be advanced sequentially or concurrent? How many years for each? In a perfect world, HFR enthusiam will be contagious, and everyone will be begging for more investment. I’m not so sure that will happen in one go. And, while I’m sure that new separated passenger lines will be pursued wherever they can, the elephant in the room is still with us: no scenario gives VIA its own end-to-end infrastructure. The sharing thing will always be with us. Why is it a topic not to be addressed?

Today’s paper has an article about Canada’s submarine Navy, which hasn’t been to sea in years. Muddling around while promising better soon is the Canadian way. Pedantically reminding the optimists that time’s ticking is part of the ying-yang of the Canadian way of getting things done.

- Paul

 

[Darwinkgo]

I am reminded that YDS rolled out an enhanced service plan a few years back for Windsor-Sarnia-Stratford-Toronto. That initiative has vanished.... despite being given much more profile than a single meeting with a single Mayor.

It did certainly contributed maybe a bit to the Harper government’s election prospects. A brilliant piece of micro targeting that contributed to C wins except for 1 in London, 1 in Guelph, and Windsor’s 2 NDP bastions that cost them almost nothing. So yeah. Skepticism warranted!

 

[kEiThZ]

If this forum is interested in critical thinking, then one can’t simply gush over HFR‘s good points and dismiss every possible Con as irrelevant or small potatoes.

I agree. But we've moved from making up real downsides and pitfalls to strange hypotheticals.

The sharing thing will always be with us. Why is it a topic not to be addressed?

Address it. But it's quite the stretch to insist on hinging all future plans on a strategy of expropriation.

I would expect HFR to be packaged within a business case summary that would articulate a strategy to build service all the way from Windsor to Quebec City, and the
As much as I don’t trust a word Metrolinx utters, their RER Business Case document is a model of what Ottawa should be doing with Passenger Rail.

I expect substantially more detail from the JPO with a budget of $70M and a multi-year effort. Whether they'll be allowed to publish all their work is a different question. But I suspect they've done way more work than Metrolinx ever did for a BCA.

 

[MisterF]

I am going to suggest that a huge part of that ridership is simply the demand from Kingston being a university, garrison and retirement town that is also roughly equidistant to three major metros. Since Kingston is going to much of a cut in total trains serving it, there should not be much impact in a change in the number of trains. And more demand generated by a better schedule.

I think a large part of what we're seeing with Kingston is the F part of HFR in action and something that's been shown at the local, regional, and intercity level: frequency matters. Via Rail, Kingston Transit and Brampton Transit have all seen major ridership gains in the last decade through frequency improvements, in Kingston's case with very little population growth. GO Transit is starting to see the benefits of all day service, and one of the secrets to the TTC's ridership compared to most other North American transit systems is frequency. YRT, by contrast, has weak service and stagnant ridership.

It's not just Kingston, smaller towns along that line have higher Via ridership than you'd guess going by their size alone. While I agree that the obsession with Kingston is a little much considering its small size, I hope that the lakeshore communities continue to have frequent service post-HFR and that service is improved since it won't be catering to the big cities anymore.

 

[kEiThZ]

I think a large part of what we're seeing with Kingston is the F part of HFR in action and something that's been shown at the local, regional, and intercity level: frequency matters. Via Rail, Kingston Transit and Brampton Transit have all seen major ridership gains in the last decade through frequency improvements,

Anybody who has seen bus platooning with their bus route will understand that scheduling matters as much as frequency. There's no point having a dozen departures a day if most of them are clustered around 1-2 peaks in the day.

On the issue of frequency, Kingston isn't actually losing much from today. If what the Mayor posted is true, they are losing two trains per day, and getting a better tailored schedule in return. What nobody seems to want to discuss is frequency improvements for other communities en route. Presumably, what has been accomplished at Kingston, could be repeated at Belleville and Cobourg with the improved frequencies and schedules originating out of Kingston.

While I agree that the obsession with Kingston is a little much considering its small size, I hope that the lakeshore communities continue to have frequent service post-HFR and that service is improved since it won't be catering to the big cities anymore.

As long as VIA delivers the rumoured 12 departures each way from Toronto to Kingston and 6 each to Ottawa and Montreal, they'll all be substantially better off than today where service to them is treated as an obligation en route between the major metros.

It would be more concerning if the proposed service levels are substantially lower than today, or the Kingston hub doesn't materialize.

 

[Allandale25]

I don’t think we have crossed the line into trolling. But some of us certainly haven’t backed down over impacts that are unprovable but somewhere between credible and acknowledged, which are material to supporting or opposing HFR. If this forum is interested in critical thinking, then one can’t simply gush over HFR‘s good points and dismiss every possible Con as irrelevant or small potatoes.

If one reads back through the years of this thread, the HFR proposal began with skepticism over whether the line was even technically feasible, and whether its minimal envelope fit the work required. @UrbanSky has been incredibly helpful in speaking to that. The premise that HFR can run in the black has also been discussed and accepted. The challenge of the Mount Royal tunnel have been discussed, but not allowed to naysay the whole plan. That is great, one continues to kick the tires on other details...it’s ok to challenge things and not to assume on faith.

I don’t see Kingston as a hill for HFR to die on, but it does illustrate some of the flimsier assumptions and less pleasant truths that are being avoided in sub-HFR places. So it’s a good hill for a substantial encounter.

VIA is not Metrolinx, but it too is vulnerable to letting rhetoric gloss over valid concerns. Placing so much credence on Kingston becoming a hub, for example. Aa single placemat graphic rolled out to a local politician, without any supporting proof of intent, or any confidence that decisionmaking is advancing, is not proof of concept or a commitment to act. It’s a deflection.

I would expect HFR to be packaged within a business case summary that would articulate a strategy to build service all the way from Windsor to Quebec City, and the timing of this. As much as I don’t trust a word Metrolinx utters, their RER Business Case document is a model of what Ottawa should be doing with Passenger Rail.

I am reminded that YDS rolled out an enhanced service plan a few years back for Windsor-Sarnia-Stratford-Toronto. That initiative has vanished.... despite being given much more profile than a single meeting with a single Mayor. Similarly, the promising start that was offered when VIA broached its 2008 triple tracking plan has been abandoned. So yes one has the right to be skeptical of promises from VIA. Lots of things in VIA’s broader environment may override all their hard work.

Am I taking HFR for granted and asking for more? Yes. Call me greedy, or call me impatient. There are things Ottawa could be doing to improve sub-HFR service, and isn’t. If you can rest easy knowing HfR is coming, great, but some of us see further needs.

As described, HFR will likely pave the way for two business proposals - one to extend HFr westwards, the second to invest further to move the initial HFR network towards HSR. Will these be advanced sequentially or concurrent? How many years for each? In a perfect world, HFR enthusiam will be contagious, and everyone will be begging for more investment. I’m not so sure that will happen in one go. And, while I’m sure that new separated passenger lines will be pursued wherever they can, the elephant in the room is still with us: no scenario gives VIA its own end-to-end infrastructure. The sharing thing will always be with us. Why is it a topic not to be addressed?

Today’s paper has an article about Canada’s submarine Navy, which hasn’t been to sea in years. Muddling around while promising better soon is the Canadian way. Pedantically reminding the optimists that time’s ticking is part of the ying-yang of the Canadian way of getting things done.

- Paul

This is why I really hope the JPO HFR material becomes public. It would really help provide some specifics for the conversation here, which has really picked up in recent years. Even if HFR doesn't get funding/shoveles in the ground (which I hope does happen), given the public money provided to the JPO it would be great to see the data/maps/reports.

Hopefully the material would be the most extensive and detailed to date compared to any of the previous HSR reports over the years.

 

[crs1026]

As long as VIA delivers the rumoured 12 departures each way from Toronto to Kingston and 6 each to Ottawa and Montreal, they'll all be substantially better off than today where service to them is treated as an obligation en route between the major metros.

A rather important point...and why we may have been at odds all along ... did YDS say 12 Departures each way? or 12 trains total in the corridor?

I had read the proposal to mean 12 trains total.

If it’s 12 trains each way, if immediate and not “some day”, then I have some serious backpedalling to do, that’s a really good service... but I honestly read the various tweets and posts to say half of that.

- Paul

 

[kEiThZ]

Kingston would go from 17 trains westbound to 12 trains. That's a 30% cut. I can't imagine the Mayor would be supportive if this was actually 6 trains (a 65% cut). Likewise, interpreting the 6 trains to Ottawa and Montreal, as single trips to yield 3 round trips would be quite the cut in service.

I am doubtful the Lakeshore can support this much service. But we'll see.

 

[robmausser]

I've never hidden my political frustration with them not launching HFR or at least their preliminary studies earlier.

Honestly I wouldn't doubt the delay in the fact that this HFR plan has proven to be more complicated and difficult from an engineering perspective than anticipated.

A lot of its parts, from using the CP Don Branch to get into Toronto, which Metrolinx has now wanted to use for storing GO trains and stated the bridge over the brickworks would need a lot of work to refurbish, a currently used rail trail that would have to be re-converted into a rail line, bypassing some small towns or appropriating property that is currently on the old abandoned rail corridors, old bridges that need replacement, the Mont Royal Tunnel being used by REM now, CP rail lines and corridors that need purchasing or access agreements etc.

I'm sure theres lots of "alternative options" that need to be explored, like building a connection to the Stouffville line instead of the CP Don Branch, routing around Mont Royal, and new headaches that need to be resolved around these "solutions".

I'm still supportive over this idea, since I really think any type of service and reliability increase on the current CN corridor is a total non-starter. Its just going to be more difficult than originally planned. But VIA having their own dedicated tracks is huge. Thats a game changer.

 

[Bordercollie]

The original GO transit plan for operations to Peterborough included building a bi-pass through Agincourt yard. But they would need to don branch to get there. Could they not just remove the old bridge and install a new steel bridge on the existing pillars?

Or use the Stouffville line and build a connecting track where it meets the Belleville sub. You would need to expropriate a building to make it work.

 

[crs1026]

Kingston would go from 17 trains westbound to 12 trains. That's a 30% cut. I can't imagine the Mayor would be supportive if this was actually 6 trains (a 65% cut). Likewise, interpreting the 6 trains to Ottawa and Montreal, as single trips to yield 3 round trips would be quite the cut in service.

I am doubtful the Lakeshore can support this much service. But we'll see.

As red faced as I am about not reading these charts this way, I think you can see the reasoning that took my brain there. If the through T-O-M revenue is (hypothetically) more than 50% of all revenue gained in the corridor, then post HFR I would predict that with that traffic removed the subsidy for this route would be reduced by the same proportion. That would drive a reduction in trains more than 30% from today.
Even if VIA sincerely intends to repattern the service along the hub model, it may not be able to retain the funding to do so at this level of service.
If the new service model causes an uptick in revenue, as it may, all may be well.... but I’m not assuming anything.
6 Kingston trains each way, plus the hourly Ottawa HFR’s, is a more intense use of the line east of Coteau than before. I can’t help wondering what CN’s threshold for tolerating passenger in this section might be.
West of Brockville, twelve trains each way is not so much of a reduction to assume less impact from conflict with freight, hub pattern or not. I wonder about both the pure operability and the likelihood of greater cooperation from CN.
I’m encouraged by the prospect of a 12ish train schedule, but some of the good arguments for moving HFR off this line cut both ways.

- Paul