VIA Rail

[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.

 

[CapitalSeven]

Federal goverment has mostly been fine with VIA One/Business for everyone, as it is usually less expensive than flying. There may or may not be others with that position.

 

[kEiThZ]

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

You not having an employer who tells you to do something, doesn't mean the practice isn't common elsewhere.

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.

Mostly because business class on a train is about the same or cheaper than air fare. With the added benefit of saving one meal allowance. This is why they allow it. Most employers are only all to happy to spend less on travel if that's what you want. If VIA One turns out more expensive, you're probably taking the plane.

It's equally the norm in Europe for most business travel on rail to be on First Class (which confusingly is below Business/Executive Class but above Economy).

Post-HFR as business travel on VIA picks up substantially, we'll see new norms emerge on such travel.

Federal goverment has mostly been fine with VIA One/Business for everyone, as it is usually less expensive than flying. There may or may not be others with that position.

It's more than the feds. But rail travel is just way less common in the private sector.

 

[crs1026]

It's more than the feds. But rail travel is just way less common in the private sector.

The Province of Ontario’s travel expense policy is online. It restricts business class travel by rail to exceptional circumstances and requires prior approval at a ver high level.

My recollection is that Business Class used to be OK but this was trimmed back after one of the high publicity AG findings some years back. I recall taking Business Class back in the mid 90’s, but all my business travel post-2000 was in coach.

- Paul

 

[roger1818]

You not having an employer who tells you to do something, doesn't mean the practice isn't common elsewhere.

Nor does you having an employer who tells you to do something.

It's more than the feds. But rail travel is just way less common in the private sector.

Bingo! There may be some employers in the private sector who have policies around rail travel, but from my experience most (at least in high tech) treat the train like flying. For fun, I just doubled checked my company's travel policy (they are based in downtown Montreal) and for transportation they list "Air Transportation," "Personal Vehicle," and "Car Rental." I have never had a problem expensing train tickets (even full fare economy ones) but have never tried expensing business class.

 

[smallspy]

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.

They can. I've "bought" tickets for friends and family many times using my points.

Dan