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VIA Rail
- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
cplchanb
Senior Member
Like how much more expressions do they need??? They have the plans and the studies have been done over and over again. Time to launch the actual procurement process instead of this pre pre pre procurement.
Darwinkgo
Active Member
This is the normal procurement project for this type of thing. They're really complicated contracts, and the processes take a long time.
Allandale25
Senior Member
Via Rail silent on full return of Sudbury - White River train line
Northern Ontario tourism operators say Via Rail is reneging on its promise to return a passenger line between Sudbury and White River back to its full schedule.
Bordercollie
Senior Member
Could be an issue with securing track time. Or trying to preserve cash. The same thing is happening in the corridor.Via Rail silent on full return of Sudbury - White River train line
Northern Ontario tourism operators say Via Rail is reneging on its promise to return a passenger line between Sudbury and White River back to its full schedule.northernontario.ctvnews.ca
Have they been doing any work on the Budd cars while the service was reduced?
TerryJohnson
New Member
You make some good arguments, but is this incapacity/incompetence common for governments in general, or just common for the US/UK/Canadian governments and SOEs since the Reagan/Thatcher/Mulroney era?
With bidding consortia, its highly likely that the best outcome won't be available, because rather than selecting the best option in each area, the owner must choose from the available combinations. For example with GO Expansion if Alstom has the best equipment offering but SNCF the best operating plan that isn't one of the choices. It's also not clear how paying DB or SNCF to hire managers, planners and crews from the same talent pool that was already available to Metrolinx creates new value.
Not skimping in capital and construction quality is a very good reason to do design-build-maintain for linear infrastructure, as envisaged for the new alignments in HFR 1.0. However, throwing rolling stock into the mix certainly hasn't helped the Ottawa LRT, and it seems as though far too many of the external revenue factors and drivers would be just as much beyond the control of anyone managing this on VIA's behalf as they are beyond VIA's control now, resulting in some risks that are very hard to accurately price - and when you have those the public either pays a large risk premium up front or pays later when the low-bidding consortium defaults and the public purse picks up the pieces.
These are also things that SNCF and DB do not seem to face quite so many major challenges with in their domestic markets, and the Siemens/OeBB RailJet/Brightline success stories upon which the new VIA and Amtrak corridor fleets are based don't involve the contracting out of operations. Meanwhile Amtrak, VIA and pre-privatization BR are continually hamstrung in operating and planning by short-term political decision making. That in turn contributes to not being able to recruit, develop and maintain talent, because good people get fed up with that nonsense and move on.... and that seems to be where HFR 1.0 has now ended up. How much of the team the YDS built is still at VIA after four years of Ottawa prevarication?
The current governance structure of VIA is not fit for purpose. What are European railway SOEs doing differently at the governance level that empowers them to be successful? It takes more than just a better level of funding.
Terry Johnson
kEiThZ
Superstar
Unfortunately that deal makes it less likely to see acceleration of any ambition. They'll leave this whole thing on the back burner till the Liberals can run on it again in 2025. At that it'll be a political football with the CPC crying that we can't afford it and the NDP complaining about "privatization".
The timeline says it all.
Darwinkgo
Active Member
In general. Socialist, centrist, right wing, they all do it. Maintenance is hard to justify to voters. Some of the biggest P3 users were/are left wing French and Italian governments.
Each optimize. Then the top two or three go into 'competitive dialog', basically working through each to optimize further.
And you point out a key benefit: the government who is offering a P3 has to lay out all the performance characteristics that are minimum service standards, and identify ones where higher performance earns a higher point score. Instead of conventional contracting where you trust on the government to have done an internal optimization upfront.
Ottawa unfortunately doesn't operate the LRT, so there are misaligned incentives. If going around curves at speed is causing damage, an integrated P3 would reoptimize and decide to either take the performance payment penalty (going slower), make capital upgrades at their own expense to fulfill original specs, or find another solution. Instead, you have operators whose union wants the P3 to fail likely not being the most flexible of workforce.
They are known risks, and they can price those risks. Then the government can decide eyes open whether to go ahead or not. And that is the point, profit motive is there to try to price as accurately as possible. Whereas a government might balk at paying consultants to figure out these risks, each consortium gets to. In effect, the government gets multiple teams to price the risk, for free or close to free.
You know what would be good for developing a talent base: a 30 year contract.
Canada runs 6.48 million tonnes of cargo on average over each km of rail. France? 1.18 million. Germany 1.74 million, UK 0.6 million.
Frank_Lee
Active Member
It's pretty clear from Alon Levy's work that there's more than just Freight vs Passenger conflict here.
robmausser
Senior Member
I'm always conflicted by this. I hate that our passenger rail is hampered by freight, but at the same time I'm glad we ship so much by rail. We need to do even more of it, and electrify the freight networks.
Darwinkgo
Active Member
Alon doesn't think P3s are a good way to deliver transit. Full stop. Not familiar with much from him other than his tendency to draw fantasy maps and provide high level cost analysis.
Frank_Lee
Active Member
My interpretation of his main findings thus far are basically:
1. State capacity matters. Government doesn't actually need to do the construction itself, but they need to have the internal expertise to be involved in design, and closely supervise construction, otherwise they get taken for a ride.
2. Operational expertise =\= Construction expertise. Some agencies are good at one but not the other.
3. Relentlessly pursue standardisation of infrastructure: use off the shelf designs for everything possible and avoid reinventing the wheel.
4. Operational improvements are cheaper than infrastructure improvements.
All puns intended.
Allandale25
Senior Member
I don't think this has been posted here before:
From the fed's buy and sell website.
Table of contents:
From the fed's buy and sell website.
Table of contents:
rbt
Senior Member
This is a good point.
Take the VIVA capital expenditures and buy Ontario Savings Bonds with them for $52M/year in interest.
IIRC, TTC charges York Region about $150/hour for bus capital + operations on extended routes. That's 60 buses for 18 hour/day operations which in mixed traffic speeds (15km/h) is still a bus every 2 to 3 minutes from 6am to midnight.
It would be interesting to see what the GTA model spit out as better for ridership. 10 to 20 minute frequencies at 30km/h or 2 minute frequencies @ 15/km/h.
That said, VIA doesn't really have that option. If they tried to dramatically improve frequencies the freight companies would say no. VIA needs authority over the track they run on; York Region already had full authority over the roadways.
ManyQuestions
Active Member
All are good points but I think the first one is the most important key to understanding why so many North American transit projects go off the rails. This can be seen in the now classic example of the suboptimal design decisions forced onto the Ottawa LRT and even in the ongoing saga of the Washington metro system's recent difficulties with operating a frequent service without derailments. Buying off the shelf parts and systems won't keep a project on track if the buyer doesn't know what they need.
All puns intended.
