VIA Rail

[mdrejhon]

There are several stopping plans of multiple HSR lines worldwide often as a quid-pro-quo.

Most of the trains could be express
A small portion of the the trains would have a stop or two added, to accomodate cities. Sometimes different stopping plans are added for different sets of cities, to prevent slowing down HSR. So one stop per direction per day for Brampton, but for a different train one stop per day for Guelph, etc. It depends on how it's all formatted, how much passing tracks there are, and how much pad there are between the trains, etc.

As long as the economics work out and the stop doesn't damage the economic viability, it can mean the difference between Brampton letting HSR go through their city or not. It wouldn't be VIA milkrun level, but something fair. In some countries there are also the slower high speed trains that have lower fares because they run at say, 250kph max during their sprints rather than 300kph, and have more stops added. Those trains can often fill up because of the lower fares (sometimes the fares are not too much low).

Not saying, this is what makes sense here -- but this really needs to be said that there are often compromises that need to be made. The speed limit through Brampton would probably be limited, so the stopping-and-resuming won't too severely delay, say, one, two or three trains per day.

There are HSR lines that makes one or two stop per direction per day (peaks) within a smaller city, as a way of throwing a bone to these cities to let them have half-hourly HSR zoom through. (give or take).

That's a tiny bone, but that can tip the scale to letting HSR happen.

"limited stops" is correct.
Small market is correct.
But neither means Brampton gets 0 stops 365 days a year!

The above can be applied to the Guelph Bypass in theory. As a compromise for Guelph letting us build the bypass, only one a day could go through instead to do the Guelph stop. That said.

That said, the tracks and grade separation through there definitely needs to be improved, for eventual Kitchener electrification (RER), as an alternate compromise. Getting Guelph on all day two way RER service (hourly-ish) plus one separate train which could also double as a Kitchener-Guelph shuttle (30 min back and fourth)

 

[1overcosc]

Cab companies will hate this idea..

Cabbies are surprisingly quiet here in Kingston.

I was honestly expecting cabbies to speak out against all the major improvements to public transit that have been rolled out in the past few years. The massive increases in ridership have almost certainly cost them rides. Yet not a peep out of them. Even Uber (launched in Kingston last year) doesn't seem to be bugging them that much.

 

[SaugeenJunction]

HFR mentioned, studies funded in 2016 budget.

"IMPROVING RAIL SERVICE: For nearly 40 years, VIA Rail Canada Inc. has provided passenger rail services connecting communities across the country. VIA Rail carried 3.8 million passengers in 2015, across a 12,500-kilometre rail network serving 450 cities and towns that extends from Prince Rupert, British Columbia to Halifax, Nova Scotia. The vast majority of passengers (over 90 per cent) travelled within the high-density Windsor-Quebec City corridor. VIA Rail faces significant capital investment requirements going forward. Budget 2016 proposes to provide $7.7 million in 2016–17 on a cash basis to VIA Rail to support technical studies and other pre-procurement activities related to the renewal of VIA Rail’s fleet, for safety upgrades at grade crossings on tracks owned by VIA Rail, and for investments in improved security at VIA Rail stations. VIA Rail has developed a proposal for a high-frequency rail service within the Windsor-Quebec City corridor that could see VIA Rail operate on dedicated tracks exclusive to its services. This could permit increased service frequencies, improved on-time performance and reduced trip times. Budget 2016 proposes to provide $3.3 million over three years to Transport Canada to support an in-depth assessment of VIA Rail’s high-frequency rail proposal." (p.107)

Budget PDF here

 

[ottbike]

HFR mentioned, studies funded in 2016 budget.

• Budget 2016 proposes to provide $7.7 million in 2016–17 on a cash basis to VIA Rail to support technical studies and other pre-procurement activities related to the renewal of VIA Rail’s fleet
• Budget 2016 proposes to provide $3.3 million over three years to Transport Canada to support an in-depth assessment of VIA Rail’s high-frequency rail proposal." (p.107)

Stay tuned in a year or two when Via is ready to purchase rolling stock and start HFR construction. This is a good first budget, but the real funding should come in budget 2017 or budget 2018.

 

[SaugeenJunction]

Stay tuned in a year or two when Via is ready to purchase rolling stock and start HFR construction. This is a good first budget, but the real funding should come in budget 2017 or budget 2018.

Yeah it seemed like VIA was jumping the gun a little bit on the rolling stock funding. I'd only assume VIA would start consultations on HFR sooner than later - they seem eager to get moving on it. Also Marc Garneau, the Minister of Transport is a frequent user of VIA and a fan of the service. Hopefully this also helps the HFR cause.

 

[Urban Sky]

Reclaiming unneeded double track is Railroading 101 level business strategy. At low train frequency, double track is a luxury whose capital cost far exceeds any operational gain. If VIA disappeared, CN could remove two-thirds of the second track without affecting operations on that line. The economics of doing so are deafening. Every market analyst would be on their case if they didn't. [...]

Meh, it's not that long a stretch. Railroads are not that hard to build in open terrain, even through Canadian Shield. A few swamps, yes, and some rock blasting/drilling. Precious few people, and most of it is not prime cottage country. The biggest unknown is what mitigation to natural impacts is required. Considering the amount of support for twinning Highway 7 all the way from Tweed to Ottawa - a much more expensive proposition - the rail option ought to be a much easier sell.

You'd better sell your CP shares then before they bankrupt over their Winchester subdivision - an entirely double-tracked line (Dorval - Smith Falls) with no TSA payments extracted from passenger railroads (if we ignore AMT's Vaudreuil-Hudson line, which only uses a very short segment) - irresponsible waste of money, according to your railroading expertise. Also, since road construction and VIA Rail are not eligible for the same funding options, a price tag which is deemed acceptable for a road project might not appeal enough for a rail project. Besides, I don't really have an idea what the Gananoque Bypass would cost, but I'd guess it would be considerably more than the $500 million figure Greg Gormick pulled out of only he knows where, given that it would work out at a lower per-mile cost than his $150 million quote for restoring the Brantford Bypass.

I'm not sure why you're bringing up the United States, and specifically their two most densely populated corridors. The US has 9 times our population, which means it has 9 times as many potential rail corridors as we do. If we have a handful of routes, they have dozens. So no, it's no more difficult to upgrade the Toronto-Montreal route than it would be to upgrade any one of the many comparable corridors in the States.

No, they're not anomalies, they're well within the range of densities where high speed rail is feasible. France was the first European nation with high speed rail and Spain has the densest network by population. Those two countries are perfectly valid evidence that HSR can work in areas less densely populated than Germany and Japan.

Of course, if we're talking about Via's high frequency rail plan, then we can also look at parts of the world that are much less densely populated and already have that type of service.

If there actually is one thing which is completely arbitrary to derive from population figures, it is the number of potential HSR corridors. Vietnam has about 5 times the population of Chile (90 vs 18 million), but that doesn't change the fact that both are remarkably narrow countries, which have their main cities lined up on one Corridor along their respective coasts.

To determine whether we should count Spain as a success, we need to agree on performance criteria, and I believe that passenger ridership levels and the growth herein should be the benchmarks (to be sure: on a per-capita basis, since we want to make meaningful comparisons between countries of differing scales). Out of the 9 European countries, which had HSR infrastructure in 2013 (i.e. the most recent year for which the 2015 Statistical Yearbook of the European Commission had all figures), Spain had both, the by far highest HSR-density and the worst per-capita ridership in that year, while only Italy had shown worse (actually: negative) passenger growth in the preceding decade:

Also financially, HSR has been a disaster for Spain, with all of its main corridors being unable to fully recover either their financial or social costs (and in the case of the Northern Corridor: not even able to at least recover its operating costs):

Note: an earlier version of this table showed the years of construction or opening, which caused some confusion.

Furthermore, the unsustainable boom in HSR construction (and of other, largely superfluous infrastructure) has been attributed as having significantly contributed to the countries' deep troubles in the recent debt crisis.

So let's ignore the last few posts and let me answer this


With, "no, I was not talking about Hamilton, I was talking about Brampton."

Shouldn't we move this whole "Brampton vs Hamilton" and "GO RER vs HSR" discussion to the High Speed Rail: London - Kitchener-Waterloo - Pearson Airport - Toronto thread, where exactly these questions have been discussed repeatedly and extensively?

[...]
What are the frequencies of the HSR? Hourly? Let's assume 1/2 hourly.
What is the trip time from Pearson to London? 2 hours? Let's assume 1 1/2 hours.
[...]

I still maintain my calculations that reducing the travel times between Toronto and Kitchener to 48 minutes and Toronto-Kitchener-London to 97 minutes is feasible with the current alignment upgraded to a design speed of 160 km/h. Unless this is helplessly overoptimistic, what exactly is the need to go for HSR? Because for now, it just looks like been born from the misconception that HSR means "any rail service which is faster than VIA" (as we've seen previously, it is not even necessarily faster than VIA at all)...

 

[crs1026]

More study ????

The thing about this budget is, there is little or no room for Ottawa to go looking for more money to spend in the next couple of years if other good project ideas turn up.

I interpret this funding to mean there is no plan to get a VIA project going. We can file this study when it arrives, next to all the others over the years.

- Paul

 

[Euphoria]

We build the separate passenger rail right of way in sections, capable of carrying HSR over time. Our speeds will improve for any train set. Once it's electrified with high speed train sets, it's done. That might take time, but we can start, and build in accordance with funding levels.

 

[kEiThZ]

If they were serious this would have been a 1-year study. Three years? Paul is right. This is can kicking.

 

[MisterF]

If there actually is one thing which is completely arbitrary to derive from population figures, it is the number of potential HSR corridors. Vietnam has about 5 times the population of Chile (90 vs 18 million), but that doesn't change the fact that both are remarkably narrow countries, which have their main cities lined up on one Corridor along their respective coasts.

The Windsor-Quebec corridor is similar in that it's very linear.

Also financially, HSR has been a disaster for Spain, with all of its main corridors being unable to fully recover either their financial or social costs (and in the case of the Northern Corridor: not even able to at least recover its operating costs):

Well if the Spanish HSR system has been a financial disaster, I take it you're ready to declare our freeway system a disaster too? Because intercity freeways don't make a profit, let alone pay back their capital costs.

There's a good argument to be made that Spain is overbuilding its HSR system. But that doesn't change the fact that the corridor between their two biggest cities (equivalent to Toronto-Montreal) has been a major success. If I'm reading that chart correctly, that line made a profit of €3.5 billion in the 5 years leading up to 2008, not including social costs/benefits. Which is odd considering that line wasn't even completed until 2008, so those numbers show performance before the line was even finished. Ridership has risen considerably since. HSR lines don't pay for themselves overnight, it can take a decade or more. The Madrid-Barcelona line is only 8 years old and, based on the pre-completion revenues you posted, it will pay for itself. The other lines are more questionable.

Furthermore, the unsustainable boom in HSR construction (and of other, largely superfluous infrastructure) has been attributed as having significantly contributed to the countries' deep troubles in the recent debt crisis.

Spain's recent financial crisis was mostly caused by a real estate bubble, not excessive infrastructure spending. Extra government spending was an effect of the bubble, not the cause of the crash. But if, as that article argues, excessive infrastructure spending is threatening the country's recovery, that's as much a problem with freeways and airports as with rail.

Because for now, it just looks like been born from the misconception that HSR means "any rail service which is faster than VIA" (as we've seen previously, it is not even necessarily faster than VIA at all)...

Conventional speed rail lines on other continents are, of course, not necessarily faster than Via. But they are two things that Via isn't: reliable and frequent. Those are the things that Via is trying to address.

That being said, European and Asian rail networks have lots of lines that operate in the 200+ km/h range. That's not what's typically thought of as high speed, but it's still faster than just about anything in North America.

 

[gweed123]

If they were serious this would have been a 1-year study. Three years? Paul is right. This is can kicking.

There's nothing stopping them from providing some recommendations before the 3 year study is completed. The rolling stock and whether to electrify vs not may take some time, but I think we'll see some specific project proposals come up for funding before that 3 year window closes.

 

[ShonTron]

More study ????

The thing about this budget is, there is little or no room for Ottawa to go looking for more money to spend in the next couple of years if other good project ideas turn up.

I interpret this funding to mean there is no plan to get a VIA project going. We can file this study when it arrives, next to all the others over the years.

- Paul

This Rick Mercer video will never get old:

 

[kEiThZ]

There's nothing stopping them from providing some recommendations before the 3 year study is completed. The rolling stock and whether to electrify vs not may take some time, but I think we'll see some specific project proposals come up for funding before that 3 year window closes.

There's nothing stopping them from accelerating the study and getting it done in 18 months. But they've picked 3 years for a reason. And I suspect it has to do with them putting off investment in VIA.

I will bet money that electrification is out. And that just before the next election, you'll see Bombardier get a contract for new rolling stock. So, best case scenario? Diesel HFR by 2022.

 

[kEiThZ]

This Rick Mercer video will never get old:

It's also closer to the truth than anything the government does....

 

[gweed123]

There's nothing stopping them from accelerating the study and getting it done in 18 months. But they've picked 3 years for a reason. And I suspect it has to do with them putting off investment in VIA.

I will bet money that electrification is out. And that just before the next election, you'll see Bombardier get a contract for new rolling stock. So, best case scenario? Diesel HFR by 2022.

I don't know, electrification fits in quite well with the Liberals' GHG reduction mantra. I guess I'm just a bit more optimistic about this.