Reecemartin
Active Member
Canada is *probably* getting a new intercity rail line, but it’s not exactly high speed rail. We talk about how we got here, and why we aren’t overjoyed in our latest video:
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VIA Rail
- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
roger1818
Active Member
You can find most (if not all) of VIA's past schedules here (I beleive they were collected by @Urban Sky). The last update before COVID is this one.
lenaitch
Senior Member
Or find employment.
OntarioOnTheMove
New Member
Peterborough County council urges federal transport minister to back Via Rail high-frequency project - Peterborough | Globalnews.ca
Peterborough County council voted to send a letter calling on federal transport minister Omar Alghabra to back the $4.4-billion Via Rail High-Frequency line proposal.
globalnews.ca
micheal_can
Senior Member
First off, out of keeping my own sanity I have blocked urban sky. With me, in the past, he does not know how to discuss anything unless you agree with him.
I own a snowblower, and a plow, and a bunch of shovels. My neighbour has these too. His plow broke down and we had a significant snowfall. I plowed some of his driveway to help him out. That is what neighbours do.
I live near 2 Via train lines. I don't expect hourly service on them. I expect better than 12 hours late. Just imagine Corridor trains being 12 hours late, consistently. Or being that percentage late consistently. There would be come a point where it would become irrelevant. That is what everything outside the Corridor has become.
Two changes would need to be made to make Via outside the Corridor relevant again.
First, it needs to be on time more often. If that means a schedule change that allows the 12 hours to become a normal thing, then so be it.
Second, it needs to be a daily service. If it cannot do that, it will never seen as meaningful transportation.
You talk about Timmins to the Soo. You can't get there from here. Timmins does not have rail into the city, or a station location. That''s all gone. If I understand what you mean though, you want to take the ACR line? Good idea. Why not do a circular, both directions? Start in North Bay, go up to Hearst, down to Soo, then over to Sudbury, an back to North Bay. Throw in the return of almost daily to Toronto and I would be quite happy. Not only would I, but around 300,000 residents along those lines would be too.
I own a snowblower, and a plow, and a bunch of shovels. My neighbour has these too. His plow broke down and we had a significant snowfall. I plowed some of his driveway to help him out. That is what neighbours do.
I live near 2 Via train lines. I don't expect hourly service on them. I expect better than 12 hours late. Just imagine Corridor trains being 12 hours late, consistently. Or being that percentage late consistently. There would be come a point where it would become irrelevant. That is what everything outside the Corridor has become.
Two changes would need to be made to make Via outside the Corridor relevant again.
First, it needs to be on time more often. If that means a schedule change that allows the 12 hours to become a normal thing, then so be it.
Second, it needs to be a daily service. If it cannot do that, it will never seen as meaningful transportation.
You talk about Timmins to the Soo. You can't get there from here. Timmins does not have rail into the city, or a station location. That''s all gone. If I understand what you mean though, you want to take the ACR line? Good idea. Why not do a circular, both directions? Start in North Bay, go up to Hearst, down to Soo, then over to Sudbury, an back to North Bay. Throw in the return of almost daily to Toronto and I would be quite happy. Not only would I, but around 300,000 residents along those lines would be too.
I live in a house on the lake, and got it for under $500k. I hunt, fish, snowmobile, etc. Not many places along the Corridor suits my needs or wants. If I could take a train to Toronto for the weekend, I would. Having passenger rail close by isn't a deciding factor in my life. Never has been and never will be. Doesn't mean it shouldn't exist and be better.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
I have created a new thread called Lack of meaningful Passenger Rail service outside the Quebec-Windsor Corridor and responded to you there, as the present discussion does not belong into this thread for at least four reasons:
1) Not all these corridors were historically served by VIA (or CN and CP in pre-VIA days). For instance, Ontario Northland and the Algoma Central Railroad operated passenger rail service in Ontario, while BC Rail operated in British Columbia.
2) VIA is not the only current operator of intercity passenger rail service in Canada. For instance, Ontario Northland still operates the Polar Bear Express, the Keewatin Railway Company operates in Northern Manitoba and Tshiuetin Rail Transportation operates through Northern Quebec and Labrador.
3) The operation of at-least-daily passenger rail services outside densely populated areas (the so-called "Regional services"), were eliminated from VIA's mandate with the January 1990 cuts*, meaning that VIA would not be able to restore daily non-corridor passenger rail service even if it wanted.
4) VIA is not the only operator which could operate daily non-corridor passenger rail services, as any level of government can contract whatever operator they deem suitable.
* Due to a lawsuit by the BC government, service on Vancouver Island was spared from its termination unlike all other "Regional services". Nevertheless, the lawsuit was eventually dismissed and service was terminated when the tracks had become unsafe to operate on.
Nevertheless, my argument can be summarized as follows:
Similarly, repeatedly complaining in this thread about the total lack of daily public transport in the Greater Sudbury Area while refusing to count intercity bus service as part of a public transport service would be equivalent to me whining every month about the lack of any Metro service in Montreal, just because I refuse to count any vehicle operating with rubber tire as a rail service.
Therefore, I invite everyone who has previously sent me private messages with subject lines like "How do you endure @Micheal_can?" or has expressed his exasperation about how @micheal_can keeps dragging the discussions in the respective "VIA Rail" threads of Urban Toronto and Skyscraper Page towards the source of his eternal misery and join me in reporting any posts which repeat (or respond to) the ever-same complaints about the lack of at-least-daily passenger rail in Sudbury or anywhere else outside the Corridor by using the "Report" function to kindly ask our helpful UT team to move it into a more appropriate thread.
@AlvinofDiaspar, would it be possible to kindly move the following posts into the new thread Lack of meaningful Passenger Rail service outside the Quebec-Windsor Corridor?
#9,089
#9,090
#9,091
#9,092
#9,093
#9,094
#9,095 (Actually, you can delete this post of mine, as moving this discussion would obviate the very reason for that post)
#9,096
#9,097
#9,098
#9,099
#9,100
#9,101
#9,102
#9,103
#9,104
#9,105
#9,106
#9,107
#9,109
#9,112
#9,114
***
Now, if we could return to discussions which actually relate to the topic of this thread...
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Allandale25
Senior Member
Bordercollie
Senior Member
These are only for the corridor.
roger1818
Active Member
No. The one I linked to is a full schedule (which also includes the corridor). You just need to scroll past the corridor schedules.
Bordercollie
Senior Member
Takes like 8 Hours to get from Sudbury to Toronto? I'm sure that's padded. You should be able to do it in 6.
Sudbury Jct.*04:49
Parry Sound(CN Station /Gare CN)4208:42
Washago4210:59
Toronto, ONET / HE(Union Station / Gare Union)AR14:29
roger1818
Active Member
Yup. In 2019 VIA padded the schedule and increased the travel time between Toronto and Vancouver from 3 to 4 days to improve on time performance.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
The fastest scheduled travel time I could find between Sudbury and Toronto was exactly 6:00 hours (back in April 1978, which was the last schedule before VIA abandoned the CP routing between both cities):
However, the question is not how fast you could be, but what travel time (and frequency!) CN would be willing to provide you and how it would compare with the actual travel time...
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TerryJohnson
New Member
Once life gets back to normal, post a few pictures of the business class meals and drinks on VIA on social media. Unless your friends are happy to fork out 10x more for business class air fares, they might be intrigued!
At my previous company I introduced a simple travel perk policy: Take the train and we'll pay for business class, which is comparable in price to flying economy or paying mileage anyway.
SFO-YYZ
Active Member
Good for you. This is pretty standard travel policy across the board for most of the TO-based (private sector) corporations. In my current company, the policy is to reimburse all travel on VIA business class for all employee travel, and Acela first class when traveling in the Northeast corridor (we even mandate that employees must book business or first when traveling by rail). It's just so much cheaper in that there's less price variations with Amtrak and Acela esp for last min bookings.
kEiThZ
Superstar
This is some poor analysis that substantially ignores political reality. HSR has now been discussed in some form for nearly a half century. Nobody can find a way to finance that much. So how much longer do folks want to wait before we get shovels in the ground?
It'll be way easier to lobby for improvements to HFR than lobbying for new HSR.