VIA Rail

[Northern Light]

Quite frankly I am getting a bit annoyed by discussions being increasingly driven by how someone might get from Kapuskasing to Timbuktu.

The way I see it, we have a decade of underinvestment in transit in Toronto because the folks who live in these places we are supposed to care about gifted us Mike Harris. These same folks routinely vote for governments federally that underfund VIA at the federal level, to the point that we don't even have decent inter-city service in a corridor with two thirds of the country's population. And now we're supposed to care that bus services that haven't run for a year aren't being reinstated?

I have juicier words for this. But the mods seem to be really sensitive to salty language.

I really don't care if these towns lose service. They can step up locally and fund shuttle buses if they want. They don't need Greyhound for that. Maybe they'll finally come around to actually investing in public transport and support integration with a much better VIA. Though, I think we'll just end up seeing more pickup traffic on the 400 series instead....

Uhhh, Kapuskasing consistently votes NDP, as, for that matter, does the majority of Northern Ontario. (North Bay and sometimes the Sault are exceptions)

The path to Conservative victory is the 905 and central and (rural) eastern Ontario.

But for clarity, without the suburban GTA.....the Conservatives are going nowhere.

While I certainly think many voters in rural areas vote in a way that may not serve their own interests and certainly doesn't align with urban interests..............

Its important to understand that doesn't apply to all rural voters.

Its also important to note that some of those rural voters would vote differently if they had been properly connected to urban communities via rail/bus.

The first round of savage cuts to VIA by the way came during the government of Pierre Trudeau, he slashed VIA by 40%.

While Mulroney's cuts were even worse.............another round of cuts happened during the brief tenure of Liberal PM Martin as well.

There's really more nuance in these things than your post suggests.

 

[reaperexpress]

I made the map by mapping out Greyhound’s January 19, 2020 schedules (you can still find them on Greyhound's website if you want to double check). I tried to show significant differences in routing without getting into the weeds with tiny route variations. Sometimes the different routes have different schedules, and sometimes they are on the same schedule. For example, the Ottawa-Monteral Express, Northshore, and Southshore routes are on three different schedule (nos. 780, 781, and 782 respectively), where as the 2 different routes to Kingston are on a single schedule (no. 786).

Thanks for that link! Would have been helpful when I was marking those maps. I think the discrepancy was that I was looking for buses which ran at least one time per day, whereas many of the routes actually only ran a couple times per week. For example the Ottawa-Cornwall service only operated on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, Pembroke-Peterborough on Fridays and Sundays, Ottawa-Montreal northshore on Fridays and Sundays, etc.

 

[kEiThZ]

Be careful what you ask for. Swapping out Greyhound in favour of Megabus might be sufficient to kill the case for HFR stopping in Tweed, and Kaladar, and Perth. Same with St Marys. Hate to tell ya, but people in those communities vote. And make noise. Having a good bus service on Highway 7 might actually help VIA stay out of the weeds.

Megabus ain't go be stopping at those towns either.

I've actually long maintained that feeder bus service should be run from these towns to train stations. By VIA (a la Amtrak model) or the towns themselves (local transit) model. A system which relies on a Toronto-Ottawa bus to connect Tweed to Peterborough is pretty bizarre when you think about it.

Uhhh, Kapuskasing consistently votes NDP,

And Timbuktu isn't in Canada. I think it was clear I was using a metaphor.

There's really more nuance in these things than your post suggests

Is there? How about that ridiculous councillor in Southwestern Ontario who campaigned against the Toronto-Kitchener-London HSR? They now want publicly funded bus services to their hamlets.

I am sick of cities in this country being held hostage to rural interests. And now that the GTA, Hamilton and Ottawa have the vote share to be drive the agenda in this province, I hope these rural interests are given exactly the priority they deserve.

 

[Frank_Lee]

An interesting podcast for those here: https://podcasts.google.com/search/chartered cities. The last episode is focused on cost differences of rail transit infrastructure around the world. The commentator, Alon Levy, is a bit of a know-it-all, but overall it's very informative on many of the topics that are being covered on this board.

 

[roger1818]

Thanks for that link! Would have been helpful when I was marking those maps.

You can thank @Urban Sky. He shared it on SSP a few months ago.

I think the discrepancy was that I was looking for buses which ran at least one time per day, whereas many of the routes actually only ran a couple times per week. For example the Ottawa-Cornwall service only operated on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, Pembroke-Peterborough on Fridays and Sundays, Ottawa-Montreal northshore on Fridays and Sundays, etc.

That makes sense. Properly I should have changed the thickness of the lines based on the frequency of service, but I didn't really look at how frequent the route was.

 

[Allandale25]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1394324748017053696

 

[cplchanb]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1394324748017053696

looks like the livery is completely different from the concept, with only a sliver of the back end remaining. TBH it just looks disjointed and out of place with this grey canvas stretching the length of the loco, especially since they are marketing this as a complete train set vs a loco and wagons. .
Perhaps the PR team wanted to emphasize the VIA name and didnt want it to blend into the yellow and black. Or they just ran out of money on the paint....lol

 

[SFO-YYZ]

looks like the livery is completely different from the concept, with only a sliver of the back end remaining. TBH it just looks disjointed and out of place with this grey canvas stretchingt the length of the loco.
Perhaps the PR team wanted to emphasize the VIA name and didnt want it to blend into the yellow and black. Or they just ran out of money on the paint....lol

Actually prefer the dark grey. Looks far more sleek than the original concept. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say.

Also, notice the subtle addition of the coach car paint scheme towards the back of the locomotive, hence creating the impression that the loco and all passenger coaches are part of a "single" unit or train set.

 

[EnviroTO]

I will wait until I see the whole trainset to have an opinion. The look of the engine should match the design of the cab car... but I can't imagine how all that grey with a big logo will look on the cab car with windows.

 

[cplchanb]

I will wait until I see the whole trainset to have an opinion. The look of the engine should match the design of the cab car... but I can't imagine how all that grey with a big logo will look on the cab car with windows.

you can clearly see at 0:15 that the grey slab is real.

 

[EnviroTO]

you can clearly see at 0:15 that the grey slab is real.

I'm more curious about the other end of the trainset. The trains are going to have a cab at each end, but one end is a locomotive, and the other is a cab car carrying passengers.

 

[roger1818]

I will wait until I see the whole trainset to have an opinion. The look of the engine should match the design of the cab car... but I can't imagine how all that grey with a big logo will look on the cab car with windows.

I don't see why the cab car needs to look identical to the locomotive. For one thing, as you say, the cab car will have windows, which will change the aesthetic significantly. Also, the locomotive, even with its Tier 4 rating, will emit pollution and will thus get grimy, so its paint scheme should hide that.

 

[EnviroTO]

I don't see why the cab car needs to look identical to the locomotive. For one thing, as you say, the cab car will have windows, which will change the aesthetic significantly. Also, the locomotive, even with its Tier 4 rating, will emit pollution and will thus get grimy, so its paint scheme should hide that.

I agree it will not be identical... but I the train should look like the livery is cohesive. The cabs on each end are going to be identical in shape... they will need to transition from the paint job they have chosen at the front of the engine to the three stripe livery they have on the passenger cars in some way, so it is hard to see if it is a good design without seeing the finished product.

Personally I hate the new Amtrak livery and fit. They made no effort to have the engine shape transition to the passenger car shape (so the passenger cars stick out wider than the engine) and the transition from grey nose to striped coach looks like it was whipped together by someone that didn't know what they are doing. Compare Google images of Amtrak Acela LB Steel (which in my opinion look great) versus Next Generation of Acela Amtrak (which looks ill conceived to me).

The same poor fit can occur here and really until the final product is revealed it could look equally disjointed.

 

[cplchanb]

I agree it will not be identical... but I the train should look like the livery is cohesive. The cabs on each end are going to be identical in shape... they will need to transition from the paint job they have chosen at the front of the engine to the three stripe livery they have on the passenger cars in some way, so it is hard to see if it is a good design without seeing the finished product.

Personally I hate the new Amtrak livery and fit. They made no effort to have the engine shape transition to the passenger car shape (so the passenger cars stick out wider than the engine) and the transition from grey nose to striped coach looks like it was whipped together by someone that didn't know what they are doing. Compare Google images of Amtrak Acela LB Steel (which in my opinion look great) versus Next Generation of Acela Amtrak (which looks ill conceived to me).

The same poor fit can occur here and really until the final product is revealed it could look equally disjointed.

Oddly enough the orignal concept renders show a perfectly streamlined train with the same shape throughout... wonder why they deviated?? cost saving??

 

[crs1026]

^I would not stress too much about the scheme. It may iterate, just as past schemes have.

The “Love the way” scheme has only been with us since 2017. The previous “Flyer” scheme dates from around 2000. The original F40 scheme evolved several times before those units were rebuilt and repainted into the yellow stripes.

Along the way, we saw Home Hardware, Coors Light, Budweiser, Kool-Aid, Telus, Operation Lifesaver, Spiderman... have I missed any?

- Paul