VIA Rail

[kEiThZ]

I do tend to agree. I just wouldn't be surprised if the decision is made to electrify HFR. That would most likely be a political decision, not an economic one though.

That may happen. But it would be a poor decision. Especially when the same amount could get them to London or help the Feds build the Pearson Transit Hub/Union Station West. Or even help build a more robust HFR corridor. Let's not forget that this is currently rumoured to be a single track line with minimal straightening or grade separation. It's basically Ottawa's Trillium Line scaled to intercity service.

Not the worst decision in the world to electrify. But not really a great one either.

 

[roger1818]

Mostly because they might not need them if funding comes through for BEMUs.

Again, we're all looking at all these discussions through the lens of VIA as they are today. But the Charger/Venture fleet won't be fully delivered till 2024 (2025-2026 for VIA). So 15 years from that is the late 2030s. That is a long ways away. In that time, assuming HFR is built and hopefully even extended, VIA will be a substantially different entity. GO will have hopefully finished the RER buildout and may even be considering service and electrification partly or fully on the HFR corridor to Peterborough. Battery tech may be so good that BEMUs capable of doing 300 km at 200 kph will be available. At that point, it becomes logical for VIA to consider whether a midlife update makes sense or they would be better off selling the whole Charger/Venture fleet to some developing country and get a brand new BEMU fleet. We'll also have a much higher carbon tax at that point, improving the business case for moving away from diesel substantially.

So a long winded answer to say VIA would sell them to a developing country that doesn't have any carbon emission standards.

They are going to plan for a lot more configurations than they will actually use. And none of us will know how that works out till the fleet is in service.

Maybe, but I don't think they will have trains with more business cars than economy cars.

There's also the potential HFR order which will then have them ordering different sets of cars to rebalance the fleet for HFR, the Kingston hub and service to Southwestern Ontario.

Yes, I did say that.

I see them taking all the new fleets with the Long config. And then deploying Extra Long on TOM HFR, Short on Montreal-Quebec HFR and Kingston hub, and Long on the Southwestern Ontario routes.

The extra long train needs two extra economy cars and the short frees up one business car, so to build 1 extra long train and 1 short train you need 3 trains and end up with a train with 3 business cars and only 1 economy (cab) car.

I get what you're thinking with the percentages of business seats. But that's not exactly how it works. The market for business travelers is somewhat independent to the market for economy travelers. It's not that they'll have 20% or 30% of J class bookings on a given route but that maybe the route will consistently support 1.5 cars worth of business pax.

I don't think you do get it. The trainset layout they are buying contains a higher percentage of business coaches (and seats) than any other layout they plan to use. That means they will have too many business coaches and not enough economy coaches. Even worse, since the extra long trainset uses two economy 1A coaches (and two economy 1B coaches) and all other train layouts use economy 1A coaches, the only way to build an extra long trainset is to steal a coach from another trainset (and either park it or have an oddball trainset with more business than economy coaches).

Now this can be fixed by having some business 3B coaches converted to economy 1A (and a few 1B) coaches either in this order or the next one.

Lastly, I don't think VIA has planned this far, but airlines to offer upgrades to frequent flyers and that helps retain loyalty. Having a little bit more business capacity would let VIA occasionally bump up frequent users as a reward.

Sure, but that doesn't really solve anything with regards to coach deployment.

One thing I did notice is I can't find a current reference to the new fleet having a total of 9120 seats (though one reference claims that the current corridor fleet has 9120 seats, but my math says more). It is possible that VIA has changed the order and is converting some of the business coaches into economy coaches to allow them to build the predicted number of each layout of trainsets they need. This would be good as it would result in an increased number of seats overall.

 

[Urban Sky]

And Happy New Year to everyone. I agree with you and apologise for my part in any of the off topic discussions in this thread. I will try to keep my posts on the topic of VIA rail in the future. To keep this post on topic.

No worries, I'm fully aware that it's easier to keep not-just-slightly-past-the-actual-topic discussions away from a thread if a more pertinent thread exists and is known, which is why I created these two new threads!

One other question about the new fleet. VIA has ordered 32 new trainsets (with the option to buy more), but they currently have 40 locomotives assigned to the corridor (19 F40s and 21 P42s). I know some locomotives are wasted by trains having one at each end but do they have 8 trains like that? On top of that, the new fleet has capacity for 9120 passengers (6336 economy and 2784 business), but doing the math on the existing corridor fleet, they currently have capacity for 9536 passengers (7160 economy and 2376 business). This is a significant reduction in overall capacity (and especially in economy capacity, but an increase in business capacity). Is this because VIA believes they can increase efficiency by using bi-directional trains?

Here is my math on the existing corridor fleet:

Type	Number	Capacity	Total Capacity
LRC Economy	71	68	4828
LRC Business	26	44	1144
LRC Total	97		5972
HEP II Economy	23	68	1564
HEP II Business	10	56	560
HEP II Total	33		2124
Ren. Economy	16	48	768
Ren. Business	14	48	672
Ren. Total	30		1440
Econ. Total	110	65.1	7160
Bus. Total	50	47.5	2376
Total	160		9536

The problem is not your math, but your assumptions: With the HEP II Business fleet being converted to LRC interiors, the Business seat count should be 120 seats lower. The bigger discrepancy, however, is the Renaissance fleet, which was already down to two Corridor cycles (serving 20-37 and 24-29 the following day) before CoVid hit. Even if we assume that there are 3 consists in total (2 in service, 1 in maintenance), the active Corridor Renaissance fleet would be only 12 Economy cars and 3 Business cars (IIRC, the Renaissance Corridor sets were extended to 4 Economy cars a few years ago), thus 720 seats (192 Economy and 528 Business) less. I'll let you do the math, but I'm confident that it will show that the new fleet will increase the available number of seats available in the Corridor fleet, even before taking things like a higher utilization rate (e.g. car-miles per year) into account...

It’s interesting to see VIA retaining its own maintenance operation in-house. Overseas, one sees plenty of new maintenance facilities with the equipment builder’s name on the wall, often custom built for the specific trainset model. I’m not arguing for that, but it’s interesting that VIA and Siemens didn’t go there.

- Paul

To the best of my knowledge, designing (at least of the specifications of) the new maintenance facilities (within the premises of MMC and TMC) to accommodate the new fleet is part of the Fleet Renewal contract, which was awarded to Siemens, even though the construction of these new maintenance facilities is currently tendered through an RFP and the maintenance itself will indeed be performed by VIA employees:

The scope of work for the project includes:

- A combination of constructing new buildings and making facility infrastructure upgrades at both centres, including architectural, civil, structural, mechanical, electrical and communication engineering systems.

- Supplying and installing train set maintenance equipment to support the new and existing fleets.

The first train set of the new Corridor fleet is expected to be commissioned into revenue service in 2022.

Over its 30-year expected life, the new fleet will be maintained in Canada by qualified VIA Rail employees at VIA Rail's Montreal and Toronto Maintenance Centers. Maintenance activities will be supported by a 15-year Technical Services and Spares Supply Agreement (TSSSA) valued at $23,7 million per year.

 

[kEiThZ]

So a long winded answer to say VIA would sell them to a developing country that doesn't have any carbon emission stafards.

Not what I said. But sure, if you feel feisty over a disposal method and want to ignore the actual point, go with that.....

I don't think you do get it. The trainset layout they are buying contains a higher percentage of business coaches (and seats) than any other layout they plan to use. That means they will have too many business coaches and not enough economy coaches. Even worse, since the extra long trainset uses two economy 1A coaches (and two economy 1B coaches) and all other train layouts use economy 1A coaches, the only way to build an extra long trainset is to steal a coach from another trainset (and either park it or have an oddball trainset with more business than economy coaches).

Now this can be fixed by having some business 3B coaches converted to economy 1A (and a few 1B) coaches either in this order or the next one.

Implicit in your post is the assumption that coaches can't be easily reconfigured at depot. And that they must be sidelined if they don't fit a consist configuration on a PowerPoint slide. I don't think that's how things work in the real world. The coaches are configurable. And should be particularly easy between subtypes in the same category. (Economy 1B to 4A).

Maybe, but I don't think they will have trains with more business cars than economy cars.

Not that they would. But if demand warranted it, they absolutely should. That's how economics works. Acela in the US is an example of this. All business class service.

 

[roger1818]

The problem is not your math, but your assumptions: With the HEP II Business fleet being converted to LRC interiors, the Business seat count should be 120 seats lower.

Thanks. Your posts are always a breath of fresh air. I got my information from VIA's webpage on the Galley business car. I guess this page needs to be updated.

The bigger discrepancy, however, is the Renaissance fleet, which was already down to two Corridor cycles (serving 20-37 and 24-29 the following day) before CoVid hit. Even if we assume that there are 3 consists in total (2 in service, 1 in maintenance), the active Corridor Renaissance fleet would be only 12 Economy cars and 3 Business cars (IIRC, the Renaissance Corridor sets were extended to 4 Economy cars a few years ago), thus 720 seats (192 Economy and 528 Business) less.

Interesting. I got the total of 30 Renaissance cars from the 2017 Corporate Plan I previously linked (and got the Bus and Econ numbers by assuming that all 14 Renaissance Business cars are used on the Corridor). I was then confused that the 2020 (as well as the 2019) NGEC fleet update (that I also linked to) reduced that number to 23, but then added 7 HEP I cars to the fleet to compensate. Now you are saying that number has been further reduced to 15? What fleet size/mix did VIA use when they calculated their current "Total Capacity" of 9120 seats in the 2019 NGEC fleet update?

It sure will be good to get the Renaissance fleet out of service on the corridor. I guess they were better than nothing, allowing VIA to shoestring service for a bit longer, but the new fleet will be a breath of fresh air and will allow VIA

I'll let you do the math, but I'm confident that it will show that the new fleet will increase the available number of seats available in the Corridor fleet, even before taking things like a higher utilization rate (e.g. car-miles per year) into account...

I'll have to get back to you on the math, but we need to look at the size of the fleet at the time the new fleet was requested, not the size of the diminished fleet since then due to equipment becoming inoperable. Even more important is the what size of fleet VIA needs to meet future demand. The extra trains for HFR will be great, but even without HFR, VIA would need to grow its corridor fleet.

 

[kEiThZ]

Man. All of you planners at VIA should be happy about the massive improvement in fleet commonality.

What's the disposal plan for the existing fleet? Has that been published anywhere? Are they trying to sell any of these or just scrapping them?

 

[Bordercollie]

Are those Ren cars still parked at TMC?

With the reduction in service are they still using Rens in the corridor? It's mostly LRC from my experience.

 

[SFO-YYZ]

Lastly, I don't think VIA has planned this far, but airlines to offer upgrades to frequent flyers and that helps retain loyalty. Having a little bit more business capacity would let VIA occasionally bump up frequent users as a reward.

I like the idea of giving out future upgrades to frequent VIA users. However, not sure how attractive it is given that most corporate travel programs already stipulate that employees book business class on all intercity rail travel (both VIA and Amtrak). I've worked on enough corporate consulting projects across Canada and NA to know that this is pretty standard practice.

There may be a market for travelers of smaller or midsized businesses for the above, as they are usually more price sensitive.

 

[Darwinkgo]

People like to feel valued. I'd extend the offer though: very frequent users should be able to gift upgrades to friends and family. Let them be your rail evangelists.

 

[roger1818]

Not what I said. But sure, if you feel feisty over a disposal method and want to ignore the actual point, go with that.....

Isn't it? Here is the flow of conversation. It started with you saying:

What VIA plans for and what is the depreciation timeframe are two different things though. VIA can plan to use them for 30 years, with the locos having substantially reduced economic values after 15 years. Basically, the point at which they need a midlife overhaul is the best time to try and sell them. Get someone else to pay for the overhaul and a good time for VIA to buy the latest and greatest.

To which I asked the question:

Who would VIA sell them to? If the conditions have changed such that VIA needs to replace them with some type of fully electric locomotive, I don't know how much market there will be for used diesel-electric locomotives. Even if there is a market, they would be getting pennies on the dollar.

You quoted the part in bold and replied with:

Mostly because they might not need them if funding comes through for BEMUs.

Again, we're all looking at all these discussions through the lens of VIA as they are today. But the Charger/Venture fleet won't be fully delivered till 2024 (2025-2026 for VIA). So 15 years from that is the late 2030s. That is a long ways away. In that time, assuming HFR is built and hopefully even extended, VIA will be a substantially different entity. GO will have hopefully finished the RER buildout and may even be considering service and electrification partly or fully on the HFR corridor to Peterborough. Battery tech may be so good that BEMUs capable of doing 300 km at 200 kph will be available. At that point, it becomes logical for VIA to consider whether a midlife update makes sense or they would be better off selling the whole Charger/Venture fleet to some developing country and get a brand new BEMU fleet, or even just sell the locos and get an electric tractor (like the ACS-64). We'll also have a much higher carbon tax at that point, improving the business case for moving away from diesel substantially.

Most of that reply (other than the part in bold) has nothing to do with the question you were supposedly trying to answer ("Who would VIA sell them to?" or in other words, who would buy them). The rest is trying to justify why the new fleet would become useless (which I had kind of said, though only about the Chargers) but you chose to ignore (and delete) that part of my post.

The point is, if battery technology improves so much and carbon taxes become so great that the entire new fleet (not just the locomotives) are obsolete and useless to VIA Rail and need to be sold, the same would be true for any potential customer of the new fleet, unless they were looking for a bargain and didn't care about carbon emissions.

Implicit in your post is the assumption that coaches can't be easily reconfigured at depot. And that they must be sidelined if they don't fit a consist configuration on a PowerPoint slide. I don't think that's how things work in the real world. The coaches are configurable.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "reconfigured." I agree they can build trainsets in configurations that are different from the ones listed in the PowerPoint slide. There are likely reasons they chose the configurations they listed.

However, If you are trying to say that they can easily reconfigure business class coach with approximately 44 seat into an economy coach with approximately 66 seats, I disagree. I expect the business class seats are wider to allow passengers to be spaced further apart, so they would need to remove all of the seats and replace them with economy seats. Not a type of reconfiguration that can be quickly and easily done in the depot. It could be done in a refurbishment phase, but I don't expect that to happen for 15 years. It would be better to have the correct number of each type of coach built that they expect they will need.

They might be able to use a business class coach as some type of economy plus coach (the seating configuration of business class without the service) but given that economy class on trains is much more comfortable than economy class on airplanes, I don't know how much demand there would be for that type of service, especially if only a few trains had it.

And should be particularly easy between subtypes in the same category. (Economy 1B to 4A).

I totally disagree with you that it would be easy to convert a cab car (Economy 4A) into an extra economy car on a train (or vise versa). The cab cars will likely have a standard (Janney variant) coupler at one end of the coach and a semi-permanent coupler at the other, so unless you coupled 2 cab cars together nose to nose, you can't insert them into the middle of the train.

Not that they would. But if demand warranted it, they absolutely should. That's how economics works. Acela in the US is an example of this. All business class service.

That would only be feasible once we have HSR in parallel with HFR. The HSR trains would be a premium product and the HFT trains would be more economical. This is not something that we should be planning for before we even have HFR.

 

[roger1818]

Man. All of you planners at VIA should be happy about the massive improvement in fleet commonality.

I agree. I remember once I had a ticket on a train that was supposed to be using LRC coaches, but VIA decided to change it to a Renaissance train, which has a different seat configuration. Those of us with electronic tickets received notifications about our seat change, but those with paper tickets didn't. This caused a huge amount of confusion onboard, since the seats many people had on their ticket didn't exist so they would take a seat that was assigned to someone else. Things eventually got sorted out, but I beleive it did cause some delay.

For that reason, I don't quite get why they need 5 different coach configurations. I get that the business class coaches will have a different configuration than the economy coaches and the cab economy coach will be slightly different again, but why do they need 2 configurations of business coaches (one with 43 and one with 44 seats) and a second (non-cab) economy coach configuration (with 66 instead of 67 seats (a cab has 65))? I know they won't be reconfiguring trains often, but when they do, having fewer types of coaches would make it easier to follow a uniform standard, to ensure that the reservation system books everyone into a seat that exists.

What's the disposal plan for the existing fleet? Has that been published anywhere? Are they trying to sell any of these or just scrapping them?

I haven't heard anything official, but I expect that most of the Renaissance coaches will be scrapped (a few might be kept as spares for the Ocean and some might go to museums).

I am not sure about the LRCs. They are nearing the end of their useful life, but they do have a few years left in them. They could be kept for emergency spares or for trialing new services.

As for the HEP coaches, I gather they were to be refurbished, but they ran into issues. I expect they will eventually either go to museums or be scrapped.

 

[roger1818]

I like the idea of giving out future upgrades to frequent VIA users. However, not sure how attractive it is given that most corporate travel programs already stipulate that employees book business class on all intercity rail travel (both VIA and Amtrak). I've worked on enough corporate consulting projects across Canada and NA to know that this is pretty standard practice.

There may be a market for travelers of smaller or midsized businesses for the above, as they are usually more price sensitive.

Is that really all that common a policy? I have never seen it with any of the companies I have worked for (though granted most were small companies).

People like to feel valued. I'd extend the offer though: very frequent users should be able to gift upgrades to friends and family. Let them be your rail evangelists.

Agreed. It might also encourage them to use the train for personal travel more often, especially if you didn't need to buy a full fare ticket like you often do with the airlines.

 

[kEiThZ]

The point is, if battery technology improves so much and carbon taxes become so great that the entire new fleet (not just the locomotives) are obsolete and useless to VIA Rail and need to be sold, the same would be true for any potential customer of the new fleet, unless they were looking for a bargain and didn't care about carbon emissions.

Hardly. It's still a high capital cost to buy a whole new fleet. A cost that a lot of poorer jurisdictions might not be able to afford or justify at the traffic levels they have on some lines. There's a reason a lot of older rolling stock does end up in the developing world. And yes, if you're in the developing world, you probably aren't likely to care prioritize emissions as much as providing service.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "reconfigured." I agree they can build trainsets in configurations that are different from the ones listed in the PowerPoint slide. There are likely reasons they chose the configurations they listed.

I mean depot level reconfiguration. Unless there's specific fittings for business class coaches, the only difference is the the floor plan of the seating area. The attachment points for seating, tables, window covers, etc will all be fairly standard and reconfigurable. If these aren't reconfigurable within a few days at depot, VIA is doing something wrong.

I totally disagree with you that it would be easy to convert a cab car (Economy 4A) into an extra economy car on a train (or vise versa).

You're right. I mean to say between similar cars 1A to 1B. Etc.

That would only be feasible once we have HSR in parallel with HFR. The HSR trains would be a premium product and the HFT trains would be more economical. This is not something that we should be planning for before we even have HFR.

Hardly. Like I said the markets for business travel and economy travel tend to be independent. The only reason we perceive them as linked is because we put both sets of passengers on one train. There's no reason VIA couldn't run business only service. The only question is one of market for such a service. They have to enough customers to justify that.

In any event, going back to my original point, it's good that VIA is growing business class starting offering. Their current setup of one business class car is probably a little too low. When HFR comes, they will need even more business class seating. Especially if HFR is competitive with air.

 

[kEiThZ]

I like the idea of giving out future upgrades to frequent VIA users. However, not sure how attractive it is given that most corporate travel programs already stipulate that employees book business class on all intercity rail travel (both VIA and Amtrak). I've worked on enough corporate consulting projects across Canada and NA to know that this is pretty standard practice.

There may be a market for travelers of smaller or midsized businesses for the above, as they are usually more price sensitive.

I think of it the same way as air. Lots of business travelers rack up points and upgrades and then use them on family when they travel together or the odd trip where they don't have J paid for.

In any event, the flexibility does give VIA options. And that's a good thing.

Is that really all that common a policy?

Fairly common. Mostly in lieu of airfare. Especially if you're on per diem. The business class rail fare basically works out cheaper than economy airfare and the included meal saves one meal allowance.

 

[nfitz]

Especially if you're on per diem. The business class rail fare basically works out cheaper than economy airfare and the included meal saves one meal allowance.

I've certainly never had an employer tell me I should be taking business class for rail. It's never even crossed my mind ...

They are certainly very explicit about not taking business class for air travel, without a million people above you signing off on it ... I'm not sure why VIA would be different. Sure, you get the meal on longer runs, but you can buy the meal anyhow, for less than the cost of the upgrade.