VIA Rail

[crs1026]

Roads are the equivalent of rail tracks, not the engines and rail cars. I’m all for subsidizing roads and rail tracks to all towns in Canada, but not the passenger vehicles that use them. The roads you refer to are used by private citizens and corporations operating for profit bus routes. Why can’t we apply the same standard to rail? IDK why we didn’t build a road alongside the tracks to Churchill, it seems the ideal opportunity.

There is an engineering reason, and there is an economic reason.
The width of a roadway is much greater than a railway, and the cost per mile of constructing a road especially over the terrain up north (Permafrost after all) that can support trucks and buses is huge.
The conomic reason is that highways and railways don't sit there and just offer their use to all comers They have to be maintained, and someone has to pay for everything involved in maintaining and operating. Again, maintaining and operating the railway track will cost less, even if the operator is subsidised. There is a subsidy to trucks and buses, it's just better hidden.

- Paul

 

[MisterF]

Roads are the equivalent of rail tracks, not the engines and rail cars. I’m all for subsidizing roads and rail tracks to all towns in Canada, but not the passenger vehicles that use them. The roads you refer to are used by private citizens and corporations operating for profit bus routes. Why can’t we apply the same standard to rail? IDK why we didn’t build a road alongside the tracks to Churchill, it seems the ideal opportunity.

For a comparison, the road from Inuvik to Toktuyuktuk was built over a shorter distance (137 km vs ~250 km for a road to Churchill) through similar Arctic terrain and cost $300 million. So a reasonable estimate for your proposal would be in the $500 million range plus something like $3 million per year for maintenance. The Churchill train has been budgeted an annual subsidy of $4.3 million, which presumably includes freight trains and maintenance. So the potential savings of not running passenger trains anymore would probably never pay for the construction cost.

But it's not that simple. If a road were built the government would have to pay to maintain the road and the tracks. So costs would go up, not down.

The existing road isn't even paved past Thompson, which is around 500 km from Churchill. Who wants to drive that far on a gravel road? And driving is inherently more dangerous and unreliable than rail, especially in the remote north.

To sum up, building a road would be more expensive for inferior infrastructure and service. Sounds like a pretty bad deal to me.

 

[Jeff Morgan]

Just saw this. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1577974191

 

[Allandale25]

Thread of 36 tweets.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1214542142762127362

 

[kEiThZ]

Thread of 36 tweets.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1214542142762127362

The posts were absolutely phenomenal analysis. And really shows how much traffic runs between the major metros. Shows how increasing frequencies boosted ridership. Helps make the case for HFR.

 

[Urban Sky]

Happy new year, everyone!

I had to stop replying to the various discussions I follow on forums like this, in order to focus on my family during the most important days of the year, but here I'm back again, so here I am now writing the seventh part of a post I started 6 weeks ago:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6


(Replies to points previously made)


#6 About VIA's mandate and
#7 About finding viable intercity corridors outside the Quebec-Windsor Corridor

I cannot remember which one it was, but it showed that the leg that goes Toronto - Ottawa had lower ridership than Toronto - Montreal. I am not digging through 400 pages if you cannot follow along.

Let me be very serious here: I am highly aware that as a VIA employee, I have privileged access to information which is commercially sensitive and therefore not available to most other members in this forum and that sharing this kind of information with you here could be detrimental to my access to such information. Therefore, I can assure you that I correctly recall that I never provided any ridership (or revenue) figures on a per-route basis to any member in this group and especially not in any of my 500+ posts in this forum without having anyone dig through the 430 pages of this discussion. So can you please confirm that we are clear here?

The italicized paragraph Is irrelevant as a daily service is not aimed at them, but those that may take a bus or plane or car.

As I had just explained to you, frequency (thus allowing: flexibility) matters for intercity travelers, which means that having a departure once a day is not sufficient, as you need to offer a departure at the right time of the day...

First, I wish you would be more measured in your responses. I specifically said in my post that I as not arguing for any specific pair that I listed, but rather a service model under which such services would be evaluated.

I think you are a very knowledgeable poster, but you do let your passion get the better of you, you want to win arguments you aren't even having!

That said, I think you're too quick dismissive of some city pairs. Again, its not that I'm advocating for them, but rather than I think they merit careful study to consider what options may be appropriate; and that there is at least some need to be fulfilled in some manner by public transport (it may well be a bus); but its a need not being met today.

I'm discussing these routes under the light of VIA's current mandate and I believe that I've sufficiently demonstrated why unfortunately none of the beyond-the-Corridor routes seems to be justifiable from that perspective. Therefore, if you insist on discussing these routes nevertheless, I suggest that you first propose an alternative/additional mandate which would be more receptive for such routes...


#9 About expanding transcontinental VIA services

Let's say you need to get from Thunder Bay to Toronto. You can use a variety of methods If you are in a place like Oba, which, even driving would be a challenge.

Oba has a population of 20 people and is accessible by road via Hearst and Hornepayne, so if Oba isn't s place which is adequately served by a twice-weekly train service, then what place in this country is?

By having a reliable train, you could potentially take it, especially for shopping trips or for medical reasons. You do know that there are some medical reasons that may make flying more of a challenge, and a bus is too rough of a ride.

I don't see why traveling in a Highway bus (we are not talking about School buses) in one of the center rows (i.e. as far away from the axles as possible) would be less rough than driving in a car and travel by car would also be required to reach the rail station (if there was any rail service)...

The Bold paragraph Actually sounds like you understand that VIA could do almost anything as long as they show it protects the interest of the taxpayer. I would think serving the large cities outside of the Corridor could be argued as protecting the interest of the taxpayers.

The problem being that you are not the only taxpayer in this country and that most other taxpayers expect to see at least some level of value-for-money analysis before throwing more money at one of its crown corporations...

Let me ask a different question. Let's say you keep the Canadian as is; for tourists. Let's also say you have daily service between Vancouver and Winnipeg, severing [sic!] both the southern (CP) and northern (CN) routes, what would make sense for a daily between Winnipeg and Toronto?

VCVR-EDMO-WNPG (CN), VCVR-Calgary-WNPG (CP) and WNPG-SUDB-TRTO (CP) have a combined route length of 6,883 km (2523, 2371 and 1989 km, respectively), which would mean that you would add almost 100,000 train-km every week and just over 5 million train-km every year and result in an increase of VIA's current mileage by almost one-half. Even when making the optimistic assumption that such a service would not loose more money per train-km ($16.49 in 2018, see table below) than VIA's current Corridor services, this bare-bone service would require a subsidy of $82.8 million, thus increasing VIA's deficit by no less than 30%:

Compiled from: VIA Rail Annual Report 2018 with train-mileage figures I presented in post #5,996

But what if we ran buses instead? Sadly, we know that the national network of intercity buses was not profitable and I unfortunately couldn't locate any figures which would allow to estimate Greyhound's deficit per bus-km. Nevertheless, we do have sufficient data do this for Ontario Northland (ON) and if I've correctly compiled the frequencies from the current schedules published on the Ontario Northland website, they operate 3.8 million bus-km and 156 thousand train-km on the Polar Bear Express:

Compiled from: schedules published on Ontario Northland website and distances obtained with Google Maps

As imperfect as this data is (most notably: the most recent Annual Report covers the 12 months up to June 30, 2018 while the current timetables appear to have taken effect in November 2019), both documents taken together suggests that Ontario Northland's costs of operating buses is only between $3 and $4 per bus-km (depending on whether we include only operational expenses or also all other expense categories) and the deficit is just under $1:

Compiled from: table posted above this one and Ontario Northland's 2017-2018 Annual Report (p. 34)


I hate travelling by coach (i.e. intercity bus) at least as much as everyone else here, but from a taxpayer perspective, they are dramatically preferable over rural rail services...

 

[Urban Sky]

Since I ran out of characters again, some extra points, though probably the last, as I should probably return to a more practical and organic posting style than this massive post of seven (now: eight) parts...:


#13 About how to coerce CN and CP into playing "nice"

Imagine if your corporation profited due to a government program that saw the construction of the First Canadian Transcontinental Railway.

Imagine if you pulled up double track sections to make more profits for your shareholders.

Imagine if you now get told how to run your business or the government nationalizes it Oh, wait, that last one hasn't happened - yet.

The government paid for the CP mainline. I would argue that CP should be working more with the government due to that.

You can't approach CN 15 years after its privatization and tell its shareholders to accept changes to the terms on which CN was privatized and which will massively reduce the value of the assets they own without triggering international lawsuits which will dramatically degrade your Nations standing in the business world. Similarly, you can't approach CP's shareholders with new demands 131 years after the transcontinental line was completed...

There are bottlenecks at the ports and some main yards throughout Canada on both CN and CP lines. This is partly due to the lack of double track to allow more trains to be scheduled. Of course, there are many other reasons for it too. Both mainlines from Coast to Coast (Montreal for CP) could and should be double track. With that, they could both move more freight and make more money, which means more profits. Instead they want to cut costs to make more money.

The government could make a law that all schedule passenger trains have priority over freight. That would of course be challenged in court, but if it succeeded, they would have to do something or loose lots of money due to having to run much shorter trains.

Have a look at how much taxpayers in Europe pay in public rail infrastructure expenditure for their highly-functional passenger rail networks:

Source: Umsteiger (Newspaper of Germany's equivalent of Transport Action Canada), Issue #117 (September-December 2017, p.6)

In short, Germany (a country with very decent passenger and freight rail services, but decade-long and ongoing under-investment in its rail infrastructure) has invested 64 Euros ($93) per capita in public funds in 2016 into its passenger rail network and Switzerland (a country considered the gold standard for passenger and freight rail service and infrastructure) has even invested 378 Euros ($551), which would be equivalent to $3.27 billion (Germany) or $19.37 billion (Switzerland) of taxpayer money invested into the Canadian rail network. Unfortunately, there is no short-cut to building an efficient and performant rail network which circumvents using tons of your own (i.e. taxpayers') money...


#14 About whether electrification predates HSR in Japan (and elsewhere)

I'll say it again...

One of the most short-sighted project ever.

Best to build true HSR in today's dollars than in 20 years dollars.

Given that you don't seem to be exactly receptive to reasoning, I would be shocked if this was the last time you dumped the same opinion on us, but the only thing which insisting on HSR achieves is that Paul Langan will have yet another fruitless HSR study (by his count: the 23rd such study) to list and upload into his collection of HSR studies...

We dont even have electrification on any of our lines you are talking about HSR. You think countries that have HSR just built HSR?

Japan did...

Just to prove that @Adjei is right and you are wrong:

Beginning in the 1950s, the electrification of trunk lines began to progress. Electrification of Tōkaidō Main Line was completed in 1956, the San'yō Main Line in 1964, and the Tōhoku Main Line in 1968. In 1954, the government decided to abolish steam haulage, and most were decommissioned by 1976. Many trains were converted from locomotive-hauled services to electric or diesel multiple units. The "New Performance Trains" (新性能電車, Shin-seinō densha), such as 101 series EMU developed in 1957, symbolize the phenomenon.

The 1960s saw great improvement in the economy, including the railways. The Tōkaidō Shinkansen, the first modern high-speed rail line, opened in 1964. Many limited express trains and overnight trains started to cross the nation, marking the golden age of railways.

History of rail transport in Japan - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Therefore, probably the only country which skipped electrification before building HSR was Saudi-Arabia...

[End]

 

[kEiThZ]

I think Paul Langan is going to come off as even more of a kook when HFR is rolling and loads of people are using VIA. I wish guys like Greg Gormick got out in front of him with the media.

The problem with these debates is the constant hectoring about what we should do vs. what we can do. Should we skip ahead to HSR? Probably. Can we? No. We're a country where announcing a $12-15 billion project to better connect Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal would fly like a lead balloon. So we have to accept a substantially compromised plan which amounts to a giant proof of concept. The concept being that Canadians will actually use a more frequent and slightly faster service.

I'm just hoping that the final corridor built lends itself to steady upgrading with capital investment and that we don't have to start over completely when we build HSR.

 

[rbt]

I'm just hoping that the final corridor built lends itself to steady upgrading with capital investment and that we don't have to start over completely when we build HSR.

Agreed. The trick is that while HFR is growing ridership to the point where government will find it beneficial to act, VIA needs to plan improvements (eliminate curves, etc.) and get zoning or easements into place to protect the corridor.

We regularly plan highway corridors 30+ years before they're built; no reason we cannot do that here too.

 

[Allandale25]

Facebook

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[crs1026]

I'm just hoping that the final corridor built lends itself to steady upgrading with capital investment and that we don't have to start over completely when we build HSR.

This certainly seems like a project that could justify a steady but modest budget for capital upgrades on a year over year basis after opening - for incremental improvements. Assuming the ridership develops as expected, and I'm sure it will, the ROI on these would probably be quite positive.

A really astute government would begin the land banking now for whatever comes next.

One thing that struck me in that set of tweets by @Johny Renton that we should keep in mind is the combined ridership of Cobourg, Belleville, and especially Kingston. The first two might not matter for HSR, but Kingston is clearly a key destination. I'm still anxious about potential erosion of service to these points, but we will see.

- Paul

 

[kEiThZ]

This certainly seems like a project that could justify a steady but modest budget for capital upgrades on a year over year basis after opening - for incremental improvements. Assuming the ridership develops as expected, and I'm sure it will, the ROI on these would probably be quite positive.

Really depends on how the HFR corridor is built. Will they acquire enough land to add a second track? Is it possible to even straighten out tracks in some places, with terrain what it is? Lots of questions.

I know VIA has plenty of smarts. And they'd be foolish not to have a long term capital plan with ROI assessed (even if roughly) for much of the proposed investment. If this thing succeeds as many of us here think it would, there would be a strong case to be made for some kind of steady annual investment (say $1B per year) on upgrades that enable faster speeds and extensions. I can imagine spending 15 years and $15 billion after launch and effectively getting at least 200 kph HSR from Quebec City to Windsor.

But what follows, very much depends on what we start with. I can see HFR succeeding and then we still end up needing to build a whole new corridor from Peterborough to Smiths Falls, costing several billion and that whole discussion getting stalled for years because it's "just an upgrade".

 

[tmlittle]

I think Paul Langan is going to come off as even more of a kook when HFR is rolling and loads of people are using VIA. I wish guys like Greg Gormick got out in front of him with the media.

The problem with these debates is the constant hectoring about what we should do vs. what we can do. Should we skip ahead to HSR? Probably. Can we? No. We're a country where announcing a $12-15 billion project to better connect Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal would fly like a lead balloon. So we have to accept a substantially compromised plan which amounts to a giant proof of concept. The concept being that Canadians will actually use a more frequent and slightly faster service.

I'm just hoping that the final corridor built lends itself to steady upgrading with capital investment and that we don't have to start over completely when we build HSR.

Gormick has been pretty kooky about HFR in his own right, though nowhere close to Langan's level, and I'm someone who's read his Southwest Lynx document and totally agrees with his assessment and recommendations. I do sympathize with how jaded he seems about the provincial and federal governments though.

Really depends on how the HFR corridor is built. Will they acquire enough land to add a second track? Is it possible to even straighten out tracks in some places, with terrain what it is? Lots of questions.

I know VIA has plenty of smarts. And they'd be foolish not to have a long term capital plan with ROI assessed (even if roughly) for much of the proposed investment. If this thing succeeds as many of us here think it would, there would be a strong case to be made for some kind of steady annual investment (say $1B per year) on upgrades that enable faster speeds and extensions. I can imagine spending 15 years and $15 billion after launch and effectively getting at least 200 kph HSR from Quebec City to Windsor.

But what follows, very much depends on what we start with. I can see HFR succeeding and then we still end up needing to build a whole new corridor from Peterborough to Smiths Falls, costing several billion and that whole discussion getting stalled for years because it's "just an upgrade".

HSR would almost certainly skip most of the small communities served by HFR anyway, and even if the ROW wasn't used for HSR, the general terrain around there isn't great and would probably require a lot more engineering work than going closer to the lake. On the other hand, expropriation might be significantly cheaper further north.

 

[Urban Sky]

About Gormick vs. Langan

I think Paul Langan is going to come off as even more of a kook when HFR is rolling and loads of people are using VIA. I wish guys like Greg Gormick got out in front of him with the media.

I'm inclined to state that as much as they despise each other, their interests align as to that HFR must be stopped: Paul Langan opposes HFR because he (very foolishly) believes that there will be only one big rail infrastructure project which will ever receive funding and that he must make sure that it will be full-scale HSR, whereas Greg Gormick opposes HFR because he understands painfully well that VIA successfully implementing HFR would undermine his narrative that intercity passenger rail in this country is dying and thus obviate his business model, which is selling reports which outline strategies of how to save VIA. Therefore, they most probably see each other as useful idiots right now...

Gormick has been pretty kooky about HFR in his own right, though nowhere close to Langan's level, and I'm someone who's read his Southwest Lynx document and totally agrees with his assessment and recommendations. I do sympathize with how jaded he seems about the provincial and federal governments though.

Without a doubt, Gormick is one of the most prolific railroad historians in this country, but in my personal appreciation, any of his analyses of the current situation is clouded by his cynicism and barely veiled contempt for VIA Rail. I've read the entire Southwest Lynx proposal yesterday and his incorrect narrative of a "constant decline of intercity passenger rail" is exemplified by the following table:

Source: Southwest Lynx Proposal (2018, p.13)

When describing above table, Greg Gormick claims that "VIA restricts the amount of information it makes public, and full costing and performance data tend to be outdated, so the most complete overview of its Southwestern Ontario operation now dates back five years", even though all but three metrics can be found in any Annual Report since 2013:

Source: VIA Rail Annual Report 2018 (p.9)

Of these three missing metrics, two can easily be calculated from other metrics provided:

• Passenger miles: Shortfall divided by Subsidy per Passenger mile = 135,050,000 in 2018 ($27,010,000 / $0.20), up from 114,848,000 in 2013 ($62,328,010 / $0.50)
• Cost recovery: Revenues divided by Costs = 66.9% in 2018 ($54,593,000 / $81,603,000), up from 41.6% in 2013 ($44,389,604 / $106,717,613)

The final metric (train miles) can be calculated by consulting a VIA timetable and obtaining the distances by either measuring them in Google Earth or consulting a pre-2008 VIA timetable:

Compiled from: official VIA Rail timetables

Given that the timetable only changed once since December 2012, we can quickly determine the scheduled annual train mileage for every year since 2013, as follows:

• 2013 and 2014: 1,558,863 km (29,896 km * 365 / 7)
• 2015: 1,562,144 km ( [1,558,863 * (365 - 66) + 1,577,009 * 66)] / 365)
• 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019: 1,577,09 km (30,244 km * 365 / 7)

As you can see in this full table, every single KPI improved significantly since 2013 and some KPIs (especially the ones relating to costs and subsidies) are now closer to where they were in 1988 than in 2013:

Compiled from: VIA Rail annual reports 2013-2018 and official VIA Rail timetables

To Greg Gormick's credit, the release of his Southwest Lynx report pre-dated that of VIA's 2018 Annual Report, but as I've shown above, he could have easily created the table with 2016 rather than 2013 values and then quickly update them with the figures from the 2017 Annual Report, which was published on May 7, 2018, and thus still prior to his release in "June 2018" (according to the cover page of the return; note that the file name suggests that the report was published on June 27, 2018). Nevertheless, comparing a cost-recovery rate of 66.8% a per-passenger subsidy figure of $8.85 in 1988 with respective figures of 59.5% and $32.80 in 2016 would have painted a much less alarmist picture than with figures of 41.6% and $57.79 in 2013. But I guess that it simply depends on your personal narrative whether you frame VIA's performance since the late-1980s as one of a constant decline or as one where a brutal cut effectively halved its network and service in 1990, followed first by 18 years of moderate growth, then 6 years (2008-2014) of medium decline and finally 4 years (and counting!) of strong growth (at a rate and to levels which had never been seen since at least the 1990 cuts):

Note: both diagrams were originally posted in Post #5,346

By the way, has anyone else noticed how much Greg Gormick praises the Siemens Chargers throughout his report (see quote below, taken from page 44, emphasis mine)?

Using Siemens HPR diesel-electric trainsets derived from successful European equipment modified to meet North American safety standards, the Brightline service will operate at up to 200 km/h on a frequent, evenly-spaced “clock face” schedule and connect with Amtrak passenger trains and feeder buses, the Miami and Orlando commuter rail systems, and urban transit services along its route.

The first phase of Brightline between West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale went into revenue service on January 13, 2018, and the extension to Miami followed on May 19. One of its greatest values in terms of advancing the case for other HPR services is through the selection of its Siemens motive power and rolling stock. This is the first off-the-shelf HPR equipment ever produced in North America.

Similar 200-km/h Charger diesel locomotives are already being used on several state-supported Amtrak routes in California, the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest. The rolling stock has also been ordered for use on the California and Midwest routes. Its immediate availability has a strong bearing on the SouthwestLynx proposal, as do the other working examples of HPR now in service or soon to be launched across the U.S.

Yet, rather than praising VIA for making what he clearly regards as a highly appropriate choice for HPR corridors like HFR or Southwest Lynx (and which he could have framed as VIA finally following his advise, even though you can safely assume that his opinion was highly irrelevant in this decision or any other decision made by VIA's management since at least when YDS took over in 2014), VIA's decision to procure its new fleet from exactly the same product line seems to have made him more bitter, cynical and even outright toxic about VIA than ever. Apparently, seeing that the solutions you have been demanding for years are finally getting implemented is a very scary development for someone who seems to have made a comfortable living off lamenting the stagnation and inaction of the past decades...

 

[littlewill1166]

Honestly, I'm surprised about how low the per passenger subsidy is in Southwestern Ontario given that the fares are lower for a similar distance traveled (Toronto to London/Kingston), how the load factor falls significantly after London station (for trains continuing to Windsor), and the number of students using passes on those trains.
.