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VIA Rail

Urban-Sky! Are you following this discussion today? I believe I put the question to you some weeks back as to "track" (which can be plural in English usage) or "tracks". To which you responded (gist) "it will be a *single* track with passing loops". That's important, as it renders a large aspect of the Peterborough route (which doesn't have to be utilized all the way to Ottawa to connect) and the Lakeshore route debate moot. MD (and some others) have been alluding to the Metrolinx references, MD has produced them in this and other topic strings...and there's still a lot on the table which needs to be rationalized.

It may even be possible for *both* routes to come into play in various guises.
 
It's starting to smell like collaboration was already happening behind the scenes between Metrolinx and VIA.

Both AMT and Metrolinx electrification is 25kV, and VIA being 25kV is a shoo-in.
If this gets approved.... We'll have a unified TOM electric network by ~2025. With RER, HFR and AMT expansions overlapping into each other. They have gotta attempt to go to a unified catenary standard to minimize different pantographs needed, so we aren't stuck with a two-pantograph-and-maybe-a-third-rail situation that parts of Europe is...

My concern is.... single track????? Are you sure? (given track is sometimes used plural) Are there double-tracking provisions? Metrolinx said 15-minute 2-way capability to Ottawa, so that is defacto double-track, or at least provisions for double track.

If single-track, then they better get their train-meets damn precise....or else.

At least freight trains won't be running under the catenary, even if it's in the same corridor, since it's the policy of CN/CP not to run trains under the wires. I'm pretty sure they're happy to lease the corridor land for an electric ROW if the "terms are appealing" -- and I think it could easily fit in the $4bn budget.

If it's corridor sharing (e.g. like the Metrolinx track parallel to CN track towards Oshawa) then it will need some damn good improved "HFR priority" clauses, so we avoid the situation we got from the earlier $1bn reno of VIA (including monies spent through Kitchener). The Kitchener triple tracking was good overall infrastructure that helped VIA, but is currently being more milked by freight than by VIA.
 
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steveintoronto said:
Urban-Sky! Are you following this discussion today? I believe I put the question to you some weeks back as to "track" (which can be plural in English usage) or "tracks". To which you responded (gist) "it will be a *single* track with passing loops". That's important, as it renders a large aspect of the Peterborough route (which doesn't have to be utilized all the way to Ottawa to connect) and the Lakeshore route debate moot. MD (and some others) have been alluding to the Metrolinx references, MD has produced them in this and other topic strings...and there's still a lot on the table which needs to be rationalized.

It may even be possible for *both* routes to come into play in various guises.
Click to expand...
This is all I can say to this discussion (for now):

  • CN (and all other railroads) own the land adjacent to the railroads. The third track installed along the Kingston subdivision therefore belongs to CN, which also controls the dispatching over all three tracks, including the tracks which were paid by the government through VIA's capital expenditure budget.
  • Partial triple-tracking was the prerequisite to get at least some additional frequencies, but on-time performance has remained unchanged (or deteriorated even further, if anything).
  • VIA already owns a single-tracked line between Coteau-Ottawa-Smith Falls-Brockville, where frequent sidings allow an on-time performance which is far superior to what VIA can currently achieve on the vast majority of its network where it does not control dispatching.
  • "VIA will invest primarily in its own rail infrastructure and continue to pursue strategic infrastructure acquisitions in the Corridor as part of its long-term vision. Investment in track infrastructure will support the addition of train frequencies and reduce operational hurdles impacting trip times and on-time performance. Investments in third party infrastructure will only be made when necessary, provided there are guarantees of expected benefits. As demonstrated in the recent past, however, these guarantees will be difficult to obtain as market conditions evolve and freight traffic continues to grow. This in turn supports the notion of continuing to evaluate the relevance of operating on a dedicated passenger rail infrastructure." (VIA Rail 2015-2019 Corporate Plan Summary, p.3-4)
 
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Allandale25 said:
Do we have any sense of when the route options would be announced? Are we looking at mid-2016? Also, whatever happened to the $400M that the Province and Feds were going to invest to bring passenger rail back to Peterborough? Was it contingent on further studies? Are those studies done? Would the Province and new Federal government even want to use that $400M for this or is the thinking that they'd rather use that money elsewhere? I doubt it's been put into a separate and dedicated fund.
Click to expand...

Short answer: no, no, and no.

The Peterborough proposal was the work of two Conservative MP's, one of whom has passed away, and the other has gone to jail. There was never any money. More to the point, the proposal would have required some infrastructure to route the trains off the Havelock Sub and onto the GO Uxbridge Sub....that's right, right where some combination of RER, Smarttrack, and maybe a subway extension are being planned. And not one word has been uttered in the entire course of all that voluminous civic and provincial planning and debate about preserving the junction for the Peterborough service.

Despite its wonderful plumage, that idea is dead as the proverbial Norwegian Blue.

- Paul
 
mdrejhon said:
My concern is.... single track????? Are you sure? (given track is sometimes used plural) Are there double-tracking provisions? Metrolinx said 15-minute 2-way capability to Ottawa, so that is defacto double-track, or at least provisions for double track.

If single-track, then they better get their train-meets damn precise....or else.
Click to expand...

Lots of other points in there, just quoting this for now. A lot depends on the nature of "HFR" and how it will manifest in its primary iteration. You're making excellent points MD as are others, but the vacuum of information lends itself to all sorts of 'possibilities'. A lot of that is intentional, the hype factor is being played...too bad the news pundits couldn't be a little less shallow on reporting it. Dammit, they have the phone numbers of the major players, this forum is asking a hell of a lot better questions than the media is.
 
nfitz said:
I'm not sure why the surprise. The VIA design for Quebec-Windsor in the 1980s for faster speeds than we are talking now, included a lot of single track. And a lot of passing points. It's been done elsewhere -http://www.railjournal.com/index.php/high-speed/spain-plans-single-track-high-speed-lines-to-cut-costs.html
Click to expand...
Good points; if they own the track and have a state of art system installed (Let me guess: CTC + CBTC like Metrolinx plans for GO RER), the train meets will be manageable for hourly service. Our resident VIA employee (Urban Sky) did assert they have good timetable reliability on their owned single track already. I believe them!

If average real-world ends up 2h45min at first until nursed into longer sidings and double track, we could live with that, it's now faster than car even taking into account of transit connections.

Urban Sky said:
Investments in third party infrastructure will only be made when necessary, provided there are guarantees of expected benefits. As demonstrated in the recent past, however, these guarantees will be difficult to obtain as market conditions evolve and freight traffic continues to grow. This in turn supports the notion of continuing to evaluate the relevance of operating on a dedicated passenger rail infrastructure." (VIA Rail 2015-2019 Corporate Plan Summary, p.3-4)
Click to expand...
Indeed, the question is... Can they pull off 2.5 hours Toronto-Ottawa on just $4bn?

Can they pull off a Metrolinx-style arrangement of building a corridor adjacent to CN/CP corridor -- like the Pickering section?

Electrification may actually make it easier to repel the freight trains.

As we know, their policy is to not run freight under catenary (though I imagine this may change -- like at crossing points). There's a lot of things that need to be solved, lots of oily scrap metal being transported in bucket cars without tarp covers. This presents huge arcing risk under catenary, lest wind or load shifting bounces a light metal bar, floaty metal foil, or springy scrap wire a little closer to the catenary (while also shaking up some metal dust to make air a little more conductive)... and ZAP!, a 1-to-2-meter 25,000-volt electric bolt jumps from the wire into the air, completing the circuit from wire to freight train, potentially tripping a switching station circuit breaker...

...killing the peak-hour GO service *and* creating a small fire on that freight train car...

It just has to happen once a year to be a massive business problem for CN/CP. New operating rules becomes needed, including freight bucket covers probably now becoming mandatory, verifying proper functioning grounding on all freight cars to harmlessly redirect (hopefully rare) arcing incidents, and other little details like this, before freight trains are allowed under catenary.

CN/CP may just not bother, to keep costs low.

TL;DR: That +$1bn VIA electrification could be a very good passenger-over-freight priority guarantee by itself!
 
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If the Peterborough route was chosen (and that's a big if), it would have a pretty big impact on Metrolinx infrastructure and service patterns, both positive and negative. The positive is that Metrolinx would have a ready-made electrified corridor to run GO service to Peterborough. The downside is that it would put further constraints on either the Stouffville line (for which the RER math is tough already given the size of the corridor), or the Richmond Hill line (for which the alignment through the Don Valley is problematic).

Honestly, the Richmond Hill corridor would be my preference, since that would chip away at the potential bottleneck on Lakeshore East, leaving it almost exclusively for GO. If Metrolinx could get VIA to pay for a lot of the Don Valley upgrades, the northern portion of the RH line would be relatively easy to work with, leaving Milton as the only non-RER corridor.

Also, entering Toronto via the Don Valley would be one of the most impressive vistas for intercity rail in the world. I know that's a vain reason to support something, but it's a pretty positive intangible.
 
Hmmm.... One way or another, it is good that Metrolinx has a lot to offer VIA, in this case.

If all of this happens by the end of 2020s, I'm (pleasantly) surprised I'll be able to ride electric rail (rapid transit + commuter + intercity) from my home all the way to my many major Ottawa hometown destinations in my lifetime. Hamilton LRT to GO RER to VIA HFR to Ottawa Confederation LRT.
 
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nfitz said:
I'm not sure why the surprise. The VIA design for Quebec-Windsor in the 1980s for faster speeds than we are talking now, included a lot of single track. And a lot of passing points. It's been done elsewhere -http://www.railjournal.com/index.php/high-speed/spain-plans-single-track-high-speed-lines-to-cut-costs.html
Click to expand...

Spain also has the luxury of a robust HSR system already, and their major destinations aren't arranged along a single corridor like Tor-Ott-Mtl. Single tracking our busiest and most profitable rail line would be shortsighted I think.
 
mdrejhon said:
[...] Electrification may actually make it easier to repel the freight trains.

As we know, their policy is to not run freight under catenary (though I imagine this may change -- like at crossing points). There's a lot of things that need to be solved, lots of oily scrap metal being transported in bucket cars without tarp covers. This presents huge arcing risk under catenary, lest wind or load shifting bounces a light metal bar, floaty metal foil, or springy scrap wire a little closer to the catenary (while also shaking up some metal dust to make air a little more conductive)... and ZAP!, a 1-to-2-meter 25,000-volt electric bolt jumps from the wire into the air, completing the circuit from wire to freight train, potentially tripping a switching station circuit breaker... [...]

TL;DR: That +$1bn VIA electrification could be a very good passenger-over-freight priority guarantee by itself!
Click to expand...
So, VIA would just install overhead wires one dark night and wait for CN to declare that since they can't safely operate underneath catenary wires, they decided to voluntarily concede the Kingston subdivision to VIA Rail?
 
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gweed123 said:
If the Peterborough route was chosen (and that's a big if), it would have a pretty big impact on Metrolinx infrastructure and service patterns, both positive and negative. The positive is that Metrolinx would have a ready-made electrified corridor to run GO service to Peterborough. The downside is that it would put further constraints on either the Stouffville line (for which the RER math is tough already given the size of the corridor), or the Richmond Hill line (for which the alignment through the Don Valley is problematic).

Honestly, the Richmond Hill corridor would be my preference, since that would chip away at the potential bottleneck on Lakeshore East, leaving it almost exclusively for GO. If Metrolinx could get VIA to pay for a lot of the Don Valley upgrades, the northern portion of the RH line would be relatively easy to work with, leaving Milton as the only non-RER corridor.

Also, entering Toronto via the Don Valley would be one of the most impressive vistas for intercity rail in the world. I know that's a vain reason to support something, but it's a pretty positive intangible.
Click to expand...

The Richmond Hill route would use the CP Don Branch which was bought by Metrolinx, and is not actually part of the Richmond Hill Go Line, and currently not used at alll.
 
robmausser said:
The Richmond Hill route would use the CP Don Branch which was bought by Metrolinx, and is not actually part of the Richmond Hill Go Line, and currently not used at alll.
Click to expand...

It would still need to be upgraded in order to carry Richmond Hill RER and VIA traffic though. Yes, it's not technically part of the RH line now, but it would serve the same purpose. I'm just saying that there would need to be some sort of upgrade along that general Don Valley corridor.
 
Richmond Hill RER "Trojan Horse" courtesy Trudeau?

Alternatively, it could also just instead be a Bowmanville RER "Trojan Horse" too.
...if it goes via the more-probable LSE routing.

Let's picture this...
...Ontario earlier promised full GO electrification
...Found it cost too much at $19 billion, chopped some of it to $13.5bn
(and bumped the beyond-Brampton electrification into the Ontario HSR study)
...Feds and Ontario now in cahoots with each other,
...Feds/VIA will help complete some of their Ontario's eastward electrification under HFR.
...Bombardier gets a stealth $1bn rescue...via generous EMU purchases for both Metrolinx and VIA.
...Everyone happy, and electorate gets shiny new fast commuter/intercity service.

Bam? Connecting the dots.
 
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nfitz said:
I'm not sure why the surprise. The VIA design for Quebec-Windsor in the 1980s for faster speeds than we are talking now, included a lot of single track. And a lot of passing points. It's been done elsewhere -http://www.railjournal.com/index.php/high-speed/spain-plans-single-track-high-speed-lines-to-cut-costs.html
Click to expand...

Those are shorter lines. Definitely, if you have a short segment with some passing track at either end, and if you can run trains fast enough, you don't have anything passing en route. So single track works.

For Toronto-Ottawa, if you accept the 2:30 running time and take HFR at its monicker, you'd potentially have hourly trains meeting each other every half hour. That's a meet at one end and four en route. You'd need say 20 miles of double track at each end and four 20-mile passing sections. That's 120 miles of double track for a 250 mile line.

Short sidings are going to add waiting time and 2:30 is pretty ambitious unless you increase track speed further, which costs money. The passing sections have to be long enough that both trains can keep up speed, even given small variations in schedule adherence.

The current Ottawa-Montreal single track service works because timings are slower, trains aren't that frequent, and some of the meets happen east of Coteau on double track. Speed the line up and step up towards hourly service, and single track won't work as well.

- Paul
 
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