Bordercollie
Senior Member
Are you implying that you are more qualified to make that judgement than the engineers tasked on this project?
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VIA Rail
- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
crs1026
Senior Member
It doesn’t require a PEng stamp to state the obvious….. building through the Canadian Shield is particularly pricey.
CP’s Belleville Subdivision was built for the exact reason that CP found it too expensive to upgrade the Havelock Sub from its as-built standard (which remains its spec) to the “high-speed” standard……. of 1916. Other than land costs, the cost of building to modern HSR standards through the Canadian Shield remains daunting.
- Paul
LemonCondo
Active Member
Never said it was easy.
It would take an Olympian effort...
nfitz
Superstar
Which engineers have been tasked to do high-speed rail from Perth to Havelock? Did I miss something?
What's the design speed? I was surprised to hear that the design speed is 400 km/hr for the new line from London to Birmingham, even though they are only planning to operate it at 330 to 360 km/hr for now.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
Considering how much scope creep the CIB has already allowed onto HFR since taking over, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are already studying classic HSR…
nfitz
Superstar
True - but I thought classic HSR was 225 km/hr ... and 200 km/hr before that. I don't think the early Toronto-Montreal studies were even 300 km/hr operating, let alone what you see these days on new lines.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
I simply meant “classic HSR” to distinguish it from slower “conventional rail” (0-160/177 km/h) and “Higher-Speed Rail” (160/177-200 km/h) services. China seems to have restored 350 km/h fast services between Beijing and Shanghai, but the UIC database doesn’t seem to show any other lines with a Vmax of 350 km/h, which leads me to believe that that is the only train on this planet with a higher operating speed than the 320 km/h with which I’ve travelled two on the Frankfurt/Stuttgart-Paris ICE/TGV service over the LGV Est two weeks ago…
nfitz
Superstar
Those are the operating speeds though. What are the design speeds for the alignments? As I noted above, it's apparently 400 km/hr for the London to Birmingham line (High Speed 2). Though I thought that some of the trains on HS2 were going to run faster than 350 km/hr.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
Sorry, I forgot to link the UIC database, but HS2 seems to be missing, for whatever reason:
nfitz
Superstar
England is missing entirely - despite having run at 300 km/hr for a couple of decades.
Looking at the detail a lot of the lines, many are only 200 km/hr (for example Finland is entirely 200 km/hr except for one short piece that is 220 km/hr) - so even the summary for the UK is incorrect, as there's been 200 km/hr high-speed service there on many lines for near 50-years! I'm not sure I'd take that PDF too seriously.
kEiThZ
Superstar
Seems to me they are going hard after 177 kph everywhere along the line. On one of the redacted ATIP documents I saw they mentioned the first train from Toronto reaching Montreal by 9am. Given that Union doesn't open till 0530, that's a pretty quick ride. Even if we assume that's using a bias, that's an average block speed of 130-140 kph. So basically something approaching today's Acela average speeds. Is that classic HSR?
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Urban Sky
Senior Member
We already know that they aim at a travel time of no more than 4:13 hours, which means that an arrival time before 9am would become feasible, despite Union opening only at 0530 currently (which can of course be changed in the future):
Given that the main constraint in upgrading rail infrastructure is construction cost and the main determinant of construction cost is design speed, I find definitions for HSR which are derived from average speed as way less useful as those based on design speed. In the terminology of the FRA, 0-79 mph is "conventional rail", 80-110 mph is "Emerging HSR", 111-125 mph is "HSR Regional", 126-150 mph is either "Mixed" or "Dedicated HSR" and anything beyond 150 mph is "HSR Express". Let's ignore the 80 mph threshold, but the applicable limits thresholds for HFR/HSR seem to be 100 mph (beyond which you need Track Classes which so far have not been publicly defined by Transport Canada), 110 mph (beyond which the construction and operation of level crossings is prohibited), 125 mph (beyond which the FRA bans level crossings, even if "impenetrable barriers" are applied and 150 mph (beyond which track sharing with freight trains is forbidden).
Mostly agreed, except that in terms of construction costs (and thus economic and political feasibility) a design speed of 160 km/h and 200 km/h are orders of magnitudes apart: Up to 177 km/h (110 mph), level crossings are generally possible, whereas FRA regulations require "impenetrable barriers" for all level crossings in the 178-200 km/h (111-125 mph) band, while (as I already posted in in July and December) Transport Canada's Grade Crossing Regulations already explicitly prohibit the construction of any level crossing beyond 177 km/h (110 mph).
Note: repost from #2,807
Source: FRA (2011, p.20)
If you refer to above table, the dilemma is as follows:
For all above reasons, investing in any infrastructure to reach speeds beyond 177 km/h only makes sense if you make sure that the investment is HSR-ready, i.e. compatible with a later upgrade to 300 km/h. For exactly that reason, I would strongly object upgrading any rail segments beyond 177 km/h, unless they overlap with Ecotrain's E-300 alignment and as far as I see that is only the case for parts of the Trois-Rivières Subdivision, Montreal-De Beujeu, Casselman West-Ottawa-Smiths Falls North and Port Hope West-Toronto.
- Everything until 177 km/h (110 mph, Tiers 0/IA/IB) is relatively straightforward,
- Level crossings: whereas TC regulations outright ban them beyond 177 km/h (110 mph), FRA regulations allow a work-around in the 178-200 km/h (111-125 mph) band (Tier IC), but the necessary investments into "impenetrable barriers" under FRA regulations will become useless the moment you upgrade beyond 200 km/h (125 mph).
- Corridor-sharing with freight is still allowed beyond 200 km/h (125 mph), but only until 240 km/h (150 mph, Tier II), so moving beyond that speed requires a dedicated HSR Corridor which again renders prior investment useless.
- Track alignment: according to the Ecotrain Study, 200 km/h requires a minimum radius of 2,500 meters (2,000 meters with tilting trains), whereas 300 km/h requires a minimum radius of 6,000 meters. Investments in less generous track realignments therefore risks becoming useless when design speed is increased towards 300 km/h.
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Now, is a travel time of approximately 2:45 hours feasible with a maximum speed of 110 mph? If you look at the existing/disused alignment, even 3:00 hours seem to be a stretch:
Long story short, I simulated travel times between 3:50 and 3:55 for 5 inches of total superelevation, between 3:12 and 3:19 for 8 inches of superelevation and between 2:59 and 3:06, which suggests that the (previously or currently) existing alignment of the Havelock route might at least theoretically allow a travel time of 3:15:
Compiled from: own calculations with geographical and track alignment data approximated with the help of Google Earth
We will of course need to add some more of the "real-world factors" you mention, but I will of course share my spreadsheet with my calculations with you and @crs1026 in the next few days so that you can add a few more constraints and fix some of the shortcomings, such as:
Afterwards, you will also be able to estimate how much realignments are needed to get the travel time back to 3:15...
- The acceleration and deceleration capabilities of the electrical trainset I had selected for my Master Thesis (and thus also for this exercise) may exaggerate the capabilities of VIAs future (fuel-operated) fleet
- Local speed limits (in addition to those imposed by track geometry) might apply when traversing built-up areas such as around Ottawa, Peterborough and Toronto
- Tracks shared with freight traffic might permit only lower levels of superelevation than those which will be dedicated to passenger trains
However, apart from relatively short segments like the descent from Manvers to Dranoel or the passage through Peterborough or Tweed, it seems like Agincourt-Kaladar and Perth-Richmond could be upgraded to a continuous speed of 110 mph with relatively modest realignment - though I would directly aim for realigning 150 mph, which would provide long stretches which could just be reused by any HSR proposal with minimal travel time losses over bypassing it with a completely greenfield alignment:
You really have to get your head around the fundamentals of cost-benefit analysis, which is calculating the Net Present Value and dividing the incremental benefits of a project by its incremental costs, as the more you re-align the existing/former ROW, the less will be the incremental benefit of upgrading later to HSR (as it's most important component is "travel time saved"), while the incremental cost will be basically the same (as you will hardly be able to justify the extra expense to design HFR with a minimum radius in excess of 4 km, like what would be required for speeds of 300 km/h and more). At the same time, I would expect politicians in Kingston to change their attitude from supportive to hostile if they start to sense that HFR is making the creation of a HSR route serving their city less rather than more likely. The challenge is therefore to design HFR in a way that keeps the capital requirements (and thus the travel time savings) minimal, but opens up the avenue for a cost-effective upgrade towards HSR. Given that quite a few curves seem to already have a radius of 3000 meters (which would allow 155 mph or 249 km/h at a superelevation of 10 inches), designing any realignments required for HFR with the same radius could ensure that they can be eventually reused by HSR:
In the end, that's how HSR was built in Germany: upgrade existing alignments where they are straight enough to allow 200-250 km/h (an approach called "Ausbaustrecke" and used for Hannover-Berlin, Hamburg-Berlin-Leipzig and Köln-Aachen) and build greenfield HSR alignments for 250-300 km/h (called "Neubaustrecke") wherever existing alignments are too winding to achieve speeds which would be acceptable for HSR (e.g. Hannover-Würzburg, Köln-Frankfurt and Halle/Leipzig-Erfurt-Bamberg)...
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nfitz
Superstar
We don't "know" that. That's based on you calculations, which assume various assumptions.
I'd be surprised if they can achieve that running through the shield. And I assume they've also now figured that out, which is why they might be pushing for a faster speed and pondering an Ottawa bypass.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
Feel free to suggest alternative ways of how to interpret the RFEOI showing a table prescribing the expected minimum travel time savings they expect compared with the average travel times and a different table specifying the average travel times for the same corridors:
Considering how abnormal and evolving the current schedule still is more than two years into the pandemic, it makes intuitively sense to me to base yourself on the 2019 (i.e. the last pre-covid) schedule…
There certainly is an amount of realignments which makes a travel time of 4h13s feasible (especially if an Ottawa Bypass is in the cards), but it represents exactly the kind of scope creep the initial HFR proposal painstakingly tried to avoid, as a lesson learnt from the failure of previous HSR initiatives…
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kEiThZ
Superstar
I'm a bit confused. Wouldn't they have 3.5 hrs to get from Toronto to Montreal? You're inferred 4:13 travel time would make for some really crazy departure times. So I wonder if it's 4:13 regularly and the morning and evening expresses use the bypass to get down to 3.5 hrs?
I have no experience on this. But I'm wondering if an express, very limited stop train, using a bypass, can get from Toronto to Montreal in 3.5 hrs? If we assume a design speed of 110 mph, that would require achieving an average of about 80% of design speed. Is that doable if they only have 4 stops en route (Scarborough, Peterborough, Smiths Falls, Dorval)?