roger1818
Senior Member
The RFQ was apparently released in 2018 and a cycling plan from that year (May 2018) was thankfully already posted a few months ago:
This cycling plan clearly shows a total of only 10 revenue Renaissance cars in service (8 Economy plus 2 Business) at any time of the week and if you compare the suitcase symbol (indicating checked baggage service) on Quebec-Montreal-Ottawa services in the PDF timetables between June 2015 and March 2020, you will notice that the Renaissance cycling shown below has been virtually unchanged over the last half-decade:
View attachment 292484
Therefore, unless you insist that there must be more than one spare set to back up for these two measly Renaissance sets, the total seat count you calculated shrinks by 720 seats (i.e. 15 Renaissance cars) from 9,536 to 8,816 seats...
Thanks for the information. I wasn't trying to insist anything, but was strictly relying on numbers VIA officially released, originally in their 2017 Corporate, and then later modified in their 2019 and 2020 presentations at the NGEC annual meetings. Not being an insider, I have no idea what VIA is actually doing, but one possibility is they used some creative accounting to allow them to enlarge the useable fleet by replacing equipment they aren't actively using.
I'm not aware of any serviceable Renaissance cars being currently located outside of Montreal, just like I'm not aware of any Renaissance trainsets having been in revenue service since train 24 arrived into Montreal on March 17 (i.e. the day the first Covid schedule came into effect) or of a second Renaissance trainset being in Corridor service after the blockades brought all Corridor operations to a standstill in mid-February (which, again, doesn’t exactly support the theory that most of the 30 Renaissance cars @roger1818 included in his seat counts are actually serviceable).
As I said, I am just reporting what VIA is publishing.
With Business class having less seats per row than Economy class and with a cab car in the fleet, the minimum number of coach configurations would still be 3 (unless you configure the cab car as the only Business class car).
Which is what I said.
If you don't have different Economy or Business non-cab car types, you would be forced to have accessible facilities (accessible washroom and two wheelchair spaces) as well as galleys in every single car, which would result in a lower seat count...
That makes sense. It is a bit of a trade-off. I guess the requirements/expectations for onboard facilities have chanced more recently.