VIA Rail

[micheal_can]

With HFR taking the more northerly route, I'd assume that cellular coverage might get even worse. I wonder if Starlink could provide enough bandwidth for the whole train at a reasonable cost, improving the trip connectivity's even more.

Or, maybe the big 3 telcos upgrade that area. Win for all.

 

[lenaitch]

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

If Ontario had its druthers I swear they would prefer its employees hitchhike. Several years ago I had to travel to the UK on the government tab. The cheapest airfare/accom. we could source was a 'show package' where we got passes to an array of two London theatre productions. We were under a blood oath not to discuss this with anyone lest the beancounters find out. The fact that it was the cheapest was irrelevant. When the expenditure ultimately comes out of your own budget, common sense would dictate that local managers be left to manage it within broad guidelines, but rules must be followed.

 

[roger1818]

With HFR taking the more northerly route, I'd assume that cellular coverage might get even worse.

It actually isn't that bad. Don't forget that much of the Havelock Sub parallels Hwy.7. If you have a look at the Canadian Cellular Towers Map (pick either Bell or Rogers), sure there aren't as many towers as there are along the 401, but there are still plenty. The service along the Havelock Sub is arguably as good if not better than it is along the VIA owned track east and west of Ottawa.

 

[kEiThZ]

So you think there are times of the day that there won't be any demand for economy passengers and if there is, they won't mind waiting a few hours for the next train?

At a given price point? Absolutely. Business travelers always tend to be more schedule sensitive than economy passengers who tend to be price sensitive. The challenge for VIA is that to provide a solid service to business travelers they need to offer high frequency and size the business class offering for peak, while accepting that they may have less business demand off-peak. Since economy pax tend to be price sensitive, they can simply demand shift using pricing. The surplus business capacity can be used as awards off-peak. All of this is exactly what airlines do today.

Growing business class is one thing. Shrinking economy class is another.

They aren't shrinking economy. The small (~5%) in nominal economy seat count is really not enough to label as "shrinking". Simply running one more train a day over today's schedule would make up for any "shortage". And that's assuming such a shortage is true, which as @Urban Sky has alluded to, is not really grounded in actual service reality.

At the end of the day the only relevant metric is how many revenue seat-miles VIA offers and the utilization/fill rate on those.

 

[kEiThZ]

With HFR taking the more northerly route, I'd assume that cellular coverage might get even worse. I wonder if Starlink could provide enough bandwidth for the whole train at a reasonable cost, improving the trip connectivity's even more.

It's not running through the Arctic.

It pretty much parallels Hwy 7 for a large portion. Or at least within range of towers serving Hwy 7.

 

[sacred]

It's not running through the Arctic.

It pretty much parallels Hwy 7 for a large portion. Or at least within range of towers serving Hwy 7.

My experience with VIA wifi when traveling from Montreal to Toronto is occasional drops in service that make me have to stop what I'm working on and switch to cellular (or just wait).

 

[roger1818]

My experience with VIA wifi when traveling from Montreal to Toronto is occasional drops in service that make me have to stop what I'm working on and switch to cellular (or just wait).

But. your original post was about cellular service, not WiFi.

With HFR taking the more northerly route, I'd assume that cellular coverage might get even worse. I wonder if Starlink could provide enough bandwidth for the whole train at a reasonable cost, improving the trip connectivity's even more.

 

[nfitz]

To be clear, I'm not suggesting there's any company that mandates business class on VIA. Just that some will allow it, in lieu of airfare.

Ah, I see where you are coming from. I thought you meant they made you travel VIA business class instead of VIA economy class! Which just boggled my mind.

 

[roger1818]

At a given price point? Absolutely. Business travelers always tend to be more schedule sensitive than economy passengers who tend to be price sensitive. The challenge for VIA is that to provide a solid service to business travelers they need to offer high frequency and size the business class offering for peak, while accepting that they may have less business demand off-peak. Since economy pax tend to be price sensitive, they can simply demand shift using pricing.

As we discussed earlier, not all business travelers use business class, so trains with no economy coaches would be problematic for them, unless frequency of service is very high (much higher than HFR). Also, economy class passengers might be more value oriented than schedule oriented but, if they have to wait several hours for a train, they might drive instead. I just fail to see the advantage for VIA having trains with no economy coaches on them for the foreseeable future.

It also won't be as easy for VIA to reconfigure trains with the new fleet. They won't be able to add or remove coaches in the middle of the day. While I don't thin this is a bad thing, they need to make sure the trainsets are in versatile configurations that can be used later in the day. A train with only business class coaches has limited use.

The surplus business capacity can be used as awards off-peak. All of this is exactly what airlines do today.

But most airplanes have more economy class seats than business class seats. I cant think of any major airlines that have flights with no economy seats.

They aren't shrinking economy. The small (~5%) in nominal economy seat count is really not enough to label as "shrinking". Simply running one more train a day over today's schedule would make up for any "shortage". And that's assuming such a shortage is true, which as @Urban Sky has alluded to, is not really grounded in actual service reality.

That may be true, but unless VIA has some of the business coaches changed into economy coaches, I still think the order has too many business coaches in it.

At the end of the day the only relevant metric is how many revenue seat-miles VIA offers and the utilization/fill rate on those.

I agree. The top priority is they need to fill seats.

 

[sacred]

But. your original post was about cellular service, not WiFi.

How does VIA provide wifi on a moving train? A long wire? \s
VIA provides a map of where the signal is weak: https://www.viarail.ca/en/travel-information/board-services/free-wifi

 

[micheal_can]

How does VIA provide wifi on a moving train? A long wire? \s
VIA provides a map of where the signal is weak: https://www.viarail.ca/en/travel-information/board-services/free-wifi

The same way buses do... they are connected to a cell or satellite link.

 

[kEiThZ]

I cant think of any major airlines that have flights with no economy seats.

That's because they don't usually label them under the headline brand. There's British Airways all business service from London City:

Business class | Travel classes | British Airways

Fly Club World with British Airways, the longhaul business-class service with premium levels of comfort and service to make every journey unforgettable.

www.britishairways.com

BA even had the Open Skies airline which operated as all business at one point. There's La Compagnie in Paris today. And there's small carriers that basically run all J services, both as independent corporate shuttles and on behalf of the majors. Privatair is an example of such a carrier. Far more common is companies running their own bizjets on regular shuttle service. In short, if there's demand, somebody will fill it.

A train with only business class coaches has limited use.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that VIA would or needs to do this. But I would hope that if they saw the demand, they wouldn't shy away from it. I can certainly see how a subfleet of 2-3 all business class trains can be used to boost business class offerings at peak, if necessary. Could even let them reduce business class seating on their other trains.

That may be true, but unless VIA has some of the business coaches changed into economy coaches, I still think the order has too many business coaches in it.

Based on what? You'd have to have the kind of access that @Urban Sky has to VIA's yield management model to know whether they have too much business class seating. I trust VIA has the data and modeling to back up their fleet sizing decisions.

Personally, I think their business class is undersized today. Which is exactly why fares are so high. Increasing the number of business class seats should let them drop business class fares allowing them to be way more competitive with the airlines.

 

[kEiThZ]

My experience with VIA wifi when traveling from Montreal to Toronto is occasional drops in service that make me have to stop what I'm working on and switch to cellular (or just wait).

Oh the wifi most definitely has gaps. But that doesn't say anything about coverage for the Havelock sub. And heck, if VIA gets enough traffic, it might even be possible to convince Bellus and/or Rogers to cover the corridor.

 

[nfitz]

Based on what? You'd have to have the kind of access that @Urban Sky has to VIA's yield management model to know whether they have too much business class seating. I trust VIA has the data and modeling to back up their fleet sizing decisions.

Even if they are out, there's nothing to stop them selling some business class seats on economy. I've certainly been pushed to Business Class with economy tickets on British Airways before .. (which blew my mind away, as I was travelling with two pre-teens ... so I already had tons of extra space). I'm always sandwiched in Economy travelling solo.

Oh the wifi most definitely has gaps. But that doesn't say anything about coverage for the Havelock sub. And heck, if VIA gets enough traffic, it might even be possible to convince Bellus and/or Rogers to cover the corridor.

And yet the 150 years of rail service to Kitchener hasn't pushed Rogers to cover that corridor properly yet ...

Can't they just stick a Starlink antenna on the top of the train, and feed the wifi?

 

[sacred]

And yet the 150 years of rail service to Kitchener hasn't pushed Rogers to cover that corridor properly yet ...

Can't they just stick a Starlink antenna on the top of the train, and feed the wifi?

Yay! Someone got the point
Getting this right early on in HFR could be critical.