VIA Rail

[KevinT]

Having the odd milk run stop may be little succor to having your doors rattled off by the through trains.

My friend's house backs onto the CP MacTier sub in Bolton, and you can't even tell when a train is going by if you aren't paying attention, and those are all freights. I highly doubt anyone along this RoW is going to be having their doors rattled off...

 

[Bordercollie]

I use to live 500m from the Bala sub and you could hear the freight trains going bye at night. Go trains not so much. But if there was any track maintenance you knew about it for sure.

 

[kEiThZ]

Keep in mind that we aren't talking about slow rumbling freight or GO trains. We're talking about trains going through at 177 kph. It's bound to be louder, but shorter in duration. It's also bound to be frequent. 2-4x per hour all day. Public acceptance isn't going to be smooth in many places.

All reasons why it's annoying as hell that this is dragging on instead of getting started. Those fights can't even begin till the RFP is out.

 

[Urban Sky]

All reasons why it's annoying as hell that this is dragging on instead of getting started. Those fights can't even begin till the RFP is out.

Yesterday‘s editorial in the Globe and Mail shares your pain:

Four decisions Justin Trudeau has to stop avoiding​

[…]

High-frequency rail

Here’s one of those things the government seems to be deciding all the time, without ever deciding.

The Liberal government keeps making approving noises about high-frequency rail, but it still needs to make a go or no-go decision on the multibillion-dollar project to build new tracks for the Quebec City-Windsor corridor, at a cost of $4-billion to $6-billion.

That would be a strategic decision about the future of passenger rail, which comes second to freight service when it comes to deciding who gets to use railway tracks.

Via Rail has been backing the idea for years, but Justin Trudeau’s Liberals – and before them, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives – have been unwilling to set a direction for passenger rail. In 2016, when Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals had been in power for just months, then-auditor general Michael Ferguson complained in a report that the federal government had repeatedly ignored Via’s efforts to set a long-term strategic direction.

Since then, the Liberals have talked a lot about high-frequency rail. There has been planning and preprocurement spending. The government has repeatedly promised to launch a procurement process, but hasn’t yet. And what is still needed is the big yes-or-no commitment.

 

[Bordercollie]

Keep in mind that we aren't talking about slow rumbling freight or GO trains. We're talking about trains going through at 177 kph. It's bound to be louder, but shorter in duration. It's also bound to be frequent. 2-4x per hour all day. Public acceptance isn't going to be smooth in many places.

All reasons why it's annoying as hell that this is dragging on instead of getting started. Those fights can't even begin till the RFP is out.

The new locomotives are supposed to be quieter, and better track insulation can dampen some of the noise.

They are much quieter than a 150 car freight train with 4 locomotives and a DPU

 

[crs1026]

^At one of the ML consultations for the Davenport Diamond, opposed residents brought a cowbell which they rang every 7.5 minutes during the meeting. It was a pretty effective demonstration that while train noise may not be loud (as measured by their experts’ calculations) the pure frequency was an irritant. I thought it was a pretty compelling rebuttal of ML’s claim that a high frequency rail service can be “quiet”.

You can be sure that a horn and bell and rail noise every 30 minutes will be jangling to residents in places where today there is silence.

It didn’t stop us from building past railways, or highways, but it needs to be on the table. Per @kEiThZ ’s comments - we have been told there will be “consultaions” - I’m not sure this government has the appetite for rooms full of angry constituents, even if they are a small minority and there is a case for sacrifice in the greater good. If you think ML is evasive, let’s see how Ottawa handles this one.

- Paul

 

[lenaitch]

I use to live 500m from the Bala sub and you could hear the freight trains going bye at night. Go trains not so much. But if there was any track maintenance you knew about it for sure.

Indeed. As a shift worker, I used to live about 125m from a signalized crossing of the CP Mactier sub. After about 3 days I never heard a thing. A good point is made of shorter and lighter, but more frequent, trains. As well, the impact of crossing signal ,requirements which are at least partially driven by speed, may have an impact. In some areas, both private and municipal roads now cross or even follow the old ROW. I haven't done an extensive satellite search but in some villages it seems buildings have encroached onto or very close to the old ROW.

 

[MisterF]

I can't see Via trains going through a village like Tweed at 177 km/h. The built form is too tight for that. More likely it would be like the newly rebuilt line through Guelph and would need to slow down. There aren't a lot of towns where trains would have to slow down on the HFR route.

The places where a Via train goes through an urban community at speed have crossings farther apart, buildings farther from the tracks, etc. Cobourg for example, or most of the Lakeshore line in Toronto. If you live near the tracks in one of these areas the Via trains are barely noticeable.

 

[nfitz]

is there any recent history of public transit from Brantford to Paris?

How is there no VIA station in Paris - population 12,000 (and growing!) - while Ingersoll is the same population and gets service. Meanwhile St. Marys is only 7,300, Glencoe is 5,700, Wyoming is 7,600.

Even the oft-mentioned Smith Falls only has 8,800 (and shrinking since the early 1960s). Let alone the tiny villages along 7 which many assume will get some HFR service (Sharbot Lake is only 1,400!).

Looks like CN cut service sometime after 1967 - when the population was less than 6,500!

All those years living around there, and I never realised!

 

[christiesplits]

How is there no VIA station in Paris - population 12,000 (and growing!) - while Ingersoll is the same population and gets service. Meanwhile St. Marys is only 7,300, Glencoe is 5,700, Wyoming is 7,600.

Even the oft-mentioned Smith Falls only has 8,800 (and shrinking since the early 1960s). Let alone the tiny villages along 7 which many assume will get some HFR service (Sharbot Lake is only 1,400!).

Looks like CN cut service sometime after 1967 - when the population was less than 6,500!

All those years living around there, and I never realised!

I know VIA cut a lot of stations along that line in the 90s. Dundas (Hamilton) was one of them.

 

[Northern Light]

How is there no VIA station in Paris - population 12,000 (and growing!) - while Ingersoll is the same population and gets service. Meanwhile St. Marys is only 7,300, Glencoe is 5,700, Wyoming is 7,600.

Even the oft-mentioned Smith Falls only has 8,800 (and shrinking since the early 1960s). Let alone the tiny villages along 7 which many assume will get some HFR service (Sharbot Lake is only 1,400!).

Looks like CN cut service sometime after 1967 - when the population was less than 6,500!

All those years living around there, and I never realised!

Paris is only 11km from Brantford.

That would be quite close for VIA stations.

That's not to say one shouldn't be considered, but its not as if there isn't VIA service nearby.

Edit to add: This was the train station - credit embedded in image

From this link: https://images.ourontario.ca/brant/63837/data

The image description:

I'm assuming that 1968 is when the last train called in Paris..........

 

[cplchanb]

Paris is only 11km from Brantford.

That would be quite close for VIA stations.

That's not to say one shouldn't be considered, but its not as if there isn't VIA service nearby.

I think it can definitely be considered as part of an all stop service. The express service can bypass it.

 

[Urban Sky]

How is there no VIA station in Paris - population 12,000 (and growing!) - while Ingersoll is the same population and gets service. Meanwhile St. Marys is only 7,300, Glencoe is 5,700, Wyoming is 7,600.

Even the oft-mentioned Smith Falls only has 8,800 (and shrinking since the early 1960s). Let alone the tiny villages along 7 which many assume will get some HFR service (Sharbot Lake is only 1,400!).

Looks like CN cut service sometime after 1967 - when the population was less than 6,500!

All those years living around there, and I never realised!

Paris is only 11km from Brantford.

That would be quite close for VIA stations.

That's not to say one shouldn't be considered, but its not as if there isn't VIA service nearby.

Edit to add: This was the train station - credit embedded in image

View attachment 374174

From this link: https://images.ourontario.ca/brant/63837/data

The image description:

View attachment 374175

I'm assuming that 1968 is when the last train called in Paris..........

The stop in Paris (last served by only one train pair per day: SARN@06:30=>Paris@08:34=>TRTO@09:59, TRTO@19:10=>Paris@20:41=>WDON@23:35 and Sundays also: WDON@18:00=>Paris@21:00=>TRTO@22:40) indeed disappeared with the April 1968 schedule.

In terms of distance between two subsequent stations along VIA's Corridor services, Cobourg & Port Hope is the only station pair between non-suburban stations which is closer than Brantford and Paris would be:

#10: BLVL-TRNJ: 12.1 miles (19.5 km)
#9: MTRL-DORV: 11.5 miles (18.5 km)
#8: OTTW-FALL: 9.5 miles (15.3 km)
#7: WDST-INGR: 9.4 miles (15.1 km)
#6: BRMP-GEOG: 8.1 miles (13.0 km)
#5: BRTF-Paris: 7.2 miles (11.6 km)
#4: CBRG-PHOP: 6.7 miles (10.8 km)
#3: MALT-BRMP: 6.0 miles (9.7 km)
#2: SLAM-MTRL: 3.8 miles (6.1 km)
#1: SFOY-CHNY: 3.2 miles (5.2 km)

Note: station pairs in italics may be considered as suburban (i.e. within the same CMA)

I know VIA cut a lot of stations along that line in the 90s. Dundas (Hamilton) was one of them.

As I've shown in this short operational history last month, the respective VIA stations in Hamilton, Dundas and Burlington were consolidated in May 1992 into one new station (newly opened and operated by GO) in Aldershot...

 

[roger1818]

I was wondering when was the last time VIA built a new corridor station in a community where one hasn't been for decades if ever (rather than rebuilding or relocating an existing station). On the top of my head (though I could be proven wrong), Fallowfield is the most recent (it opened in 2002), and is, as @Urban Sky said, is 15 km from the Ottawa Train Station. Even if you only look at the population of "South Nepean" (the station serves most of western Ottawa, including the larger community of Kanata), according to this document, it already had a population of 54,950 in 2006 (about 4 times the population of Paris), and it now has an estimated population of 92,920.

 

[ShonTron]

Fallowfield is the only real new station added since VIA’s founding. More were closed, even on the corridor. (Prescott, Watford, Maxville).

A few stations were moved: Aldershot, of course, but also Smiths Falls (to better operate trains across CP’s mainline) and Edmonton (as CN abandoned the downtown route).

New station buildings replaced older CN stations in Windsor, Oshawa, Oakville, Belleville, and London, but the station itself never moved. In a few smaller towns, small shelters replaced buildings (Strathroy, Ingersoll, Grimsby).

Paris wouldn’t be a terrible stop for a commuter-focused weekday train, but is otherwise pretty close to Brantford, and there is on-demand transit connecting the two: Brant eRide will drop customers anywhere within the City of Brantford, particularly the hospital, downtown transit terminal, and the VIA station.