News   Mar 28, 2024
 677     0 
News   Mar 28, 2024
 466     1 
News   Mar 28, 2024
 787     0 

VIA Rail

The stuff I've mentioned isn't to spend more on HFR. It's to kill the white elephant, and go to something like VIA Fast, with incremental upgrades, and new legislation.
Good luck waiting for a government which would be receptive for the tremendous financial and legislative efforts which would be required to transform your vague and flimsy vision into something feasible and viable and actual shovels in (and tracks on) the ground…

Have a good night and never stop dreaming!
 
Last edited:
If $10-12B is a "meagre budget", I'm not sure I want to know what your rail fantasies would actually cost.
Gosh, I knew that they'd increased it to $4 billion ... and there were some hints that it had increased to $6 billion.

I hadn't realized (or forgotten) it had doubled again. Maybe starting to get realistic then.

They already have. And we're on the cusp of procurement. So I'm not sure where you this idea that there's no institutional support for this.
My idea came from that suddenly the Ottawa bypass was being shown in official documents.
 
Last edited:
Gosh, I knew that they'd increased it to $4 billion ... and there were some hints that it had increased to $6 billion.

I hadn't realized it had doubled again. Maybe starting to get realistic then.

My idea came from that suddenly the Ottawa bypass was being shown in official documents.
We don't really know yet what 12 billion implies, other that it's an option that's fully electrified. Maybe it includes improvements to approaches to Montreal and Toronto...
 
Gosh, I knew that they'd increased it to $4 billion ... and there were some hints that it had increased to $6 billion.

I hadn't realized it had doubled again. Maybe starting to get realistic then.

The Minister himself said $6-12B when announcing they would launch procurement later in the year.


My idea came from that suddenly the Ottawa bypass was being shown in official documents

And what does that have to do with institutional support for the project? Adding a bypass in no way suggests that the CIB, VIA and TC are all planning to dump HFR and go back to VIA Fast. What was the thought process that led to you imagining that several government agencies would dump years and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of work down the drain, on a whim?
 
And what does that have to do with institutional support for the project?
Based on everything I know, 5-hour Montreal-Toronto travel times, even with frequent service, won't boost ridership much without significantly higher fare subsidies than today. Thus making me wonder if the sudden appearance of the by-pass is because of institutional concerns. Though if it only saves half-an-hour or less, as we discussed above, I still doubt it's enough.

Adding a bypass in no way suggests that the CIB, VIA and TC are all planning to dump HFR and go back to VIA Fast.
Of course not - it's a Go-No Go decision. But if they get a No Go (or can't get bidders that will operate within the budget), then they'll probably have to think up a different plan.

What was the thought process that led to you imagining that several government agencies would dump years and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of work down the drain, on a whim?
Because we've done it many times already on this particular project alone. How much did VIA 84 cost? How much did VIA 89 cost? How much did VIA Fast cost?

Though hundreds of millions? The 2019 announcement for $70 million wasn't for design, but to explore the possibility of HFR. Have they even done a preliminary design, let alone a 90% design?

And even the $70 million included other things, such as the track work in the Mount Royal tunnel to enable VIA trains to share with the REM. I'm hard pressed to think the current project is up to $100 million yet.
 
Because we've done it many times already on this particular project alone. How much did VIA 84 cost? How much did VIA 89 cost? How much did VIA Fast cost?

A lot less than what is being spent on HFR. None of those plans ever did the amount of work that VIA contracted for, with HFR. Let alone forming a multi-department project office with an eight figure budget.
I'm hard pressed to think the current project is up to $100 million yet.

I'm willing to bet they are close. They had budget allocations before 2019. And VIA seems to have at least spent some money internally. I would expect TC and maybe the CIB have also done so.

It's really interesting to see how much you're minimizing this project and even rooting for it to fail. Just for the sake of being able to say, "I told you so," on an internet forum.
 
Based on everything I know, 5-hour Montreal-Toronto travel times, even with frequent service, won't boost ridership much without significantly higher fare subsidies than today. Thus making me wonder if the sudden appearance of the by-pass is because of institutional concerns. Though if it only saves half-an-hour or less, as we discussed above, I still doubt it's enough.

I suspect it was put forward for political reasons, not economic ones.

The reality is, the alternative to HFR is to do nothing, not VIA Fast. Doing nothing will likely see a Montreal-Toronto travel time well over 6 hours (possibly 7 or 8) by 2040.
 
The reality is, the alternative to HFR is to do nothing, not VIA Fast. Doing nothing will likely see a Montreal-Toronto travel time well over 6 hours (possibly 7 or 8) by 2040.

Yep. Not many people seem to understand that the current situation is untenable end likely to get worse. Not only will VIA Corridor reliability get worse and scheduled trip times get longer, but the highways and airports are going to get more clogged too.
 
Yep. Not many people seem to understand that the current situation is untenable end likely to get worse. Not only will VIA Corridor reliability get worse and scheduled trip times get longer, but the highways and airports are going to get more clogged too.
I think everyone is missing the point. In order for us to become less dependent on the automobile, we need alternatives and when we will need to charge our electric cars at the ONROUTE for 40 minutes to go from Toronto to Montreal in a snow storm travelling by train will look more attractive.

Plus you will likely need to wait an hour in line for the people ahead of you to charge their cars.

I don't think there is any high speed rail service in the world that was build on private finds and runs a profit. Even the Japanese Shinkansen looses tons of money to operate into communities that don't break even.

So a few billion dollars to own their own infrastructure to run trains reliably and not at the mercy of host railways is a good investment.

Unless you want to run it like the Canadian and have people only take it for novelty reasons.
 
I think everyone is missing the point. In order for us to become less dependent on the automobile, we need alternatives and when we will need to charge our electric cars at the ONROUTE for 40 minutes to go from Toronto to Montreal in a snow storm travelling by train will look more attractive.

Plus you will likely need to wait an hour in line for the people ahead of you to charge their cars.

I'm really not worried about waiting 40 mins to charge an EV. Between increasing ranges, faster charging speeds and growing infrastructure, charging really won't be an issue a decade from now. Let alone two decades from now.

Traffic and air fare on the other hand....
 
I'm really not worried about waiting 40 mins to charge an EV. Between increasing ranges, faster charging speeds and growing infrastructure, charging really won't be an issue a decade from now. Let alone two decades from now.

Traffic and air fare on the other hand....
Think about this. Right now it takes about 5 Minutes to fill your car plus another 5 to pay inside.
During the summer there are lineups for this.

When you go to electric that becomes 40-50 minutes. How long do you think you will need to wait to charge your car?

That's not a concern for you?
 
Think about this. Right now it takes about 5 Minutes to fill your car plus another 5 to pay inside.
During the summer there are lineups for this.

When you go to electric that becomes 40-50 minutes. How long do you think you will need to wait to charge your car?

That's not a concern for you?
I've never stopped at an OnRoute for less than 15 minutes myself, and that's if I'm rushing. Usually takes closer to 1/2 hour anyways.

It's like time slows down in there for some reason ...
 
Think about this. Right now it takes about 5 Minutes to fill your car plus another 5 to pay inside.
During the summer there are lineups for this.

When you go to electric that becomes 40-50 minutes. How long do you think you will need to wait to charge your car?

That's not a concern for you?
You won't have to wait an hour to charge because the more people buy electric cars, the more chargers get installed. Unlike a gas station, EV charging isn't limited to a small portion of the service centre. When EVs fully replace internal combustion then the OnRoutes will probably have dozens or hundreds of charge ports. Charging and filling up on gas are completely different paradigms.
 

Back
Top