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VIA Rail

littlewill1166 said:
If you do the math, the revenue generated by VIA from business class in the Montreal to Quebec City corridor is roughly equivilant to economy class once you account for the differences in seat density and differences in service. Yet the decreased seat density in business inhibits the ability for VIA to maximise the total passenger capacity of its corridor fleet. I'll edit this post once I have time to clean up my charts.
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You are making some big assumptions. Namely that economy class ridership can go substantially at a reasonable rate of recovery. And a corollary assumption that business and economy seats are traded in a zero-sum trade.

Your first assumption ignores the fact that there is a profit maximization point. Adding seats beyond this point would see fares fall and profits fall faster. As a subsidized service it certainly is very relevant to them that profit is maximized. This won't change unless their owner (the federal government) is willing to extend further subsidies.

Your second assumption is based on a point of view taken from commercial aviation. Guessing you're an avgeek? On a plane there's finite space. And so you think that every business class seat comes at the expense of an economy seat. In reality, the limit of trains is the number of cars that can be pulled, which results in discrete combinations of layouts. Several of which, VIA posted in that slide deck and we'll probably see on different segments and time slots. And since these trains can pull more coaches, what's driving their nominal setup of two business coaches? The market for business class seats, which is actually independent of the market for Economy seats.

At this point, you probably think I'm full of it, right? But again I refer back to those corporate travel policies. The alternative to Via 1 in many corporate travel policies isn't VIA economy. It's Economy airfare.

VIA understands this. And I'd bet money they have data that they have undersupplied business seats all these years. If HFR happens, I wouldn't be surprised to see business making up half the cars on any HFR train.
 
That looks much nicer than when I used to take the overnight sleeper train from Northern Ontario
 
kEiThZ said:
At this point, you probably think I'm full of it, right? But again I refer back to those corporate travel policies. The alternative to Via 1 in many corporate travel policies isn't VIA economy. It's Economy airfare.

VIA understands this. And I'd bet money they have data that they have undersupplied business seats all these years. If HFR happens, I wouldn't be surprised to see business making up half the cars on any HFR train.
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I'm sure they have the data. Business Class is something that VIA excells at.

Actually, I'm always surprised at who else travels Business Class on VIA. Business travellers, certainly, but a huge number of others as well. Recreational young folks for example.... there is a darn good volume of people who enjoy weekends away in the T-O-M-Q travel area. Business Class is not just a Monday to Friday proposition. It's not that much more expensive to be out of sight for liesure travellers, and many people - including myself - enjoy the better amenities.

- Paul
 
kEiThZ said:
Not sure if they can be coupled with existing sleepers. But these are the same passenger cars that OBB has ordered for their Nightjet service. And their interior was superbly designed by Priestmangoode. I wish VIA could afford to get a custom interior from Priestmangoode.
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Doing the added engineering to create a sleeping car equivalent for the Siemens product would be a chunk of change. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it is more complicated than say reconfiguring a B-777 interior from three-class to freight and back to super economy.

Window spacings may not be compatible, HVAC and electricals have to be considered, plumbing is a big challenge. And, there is a whole lot of accessibility, safety, fire, and crash survivability stuff to noodle on.

Both single and double deck Amtrak sleepers are modular, and were designed to be stripped out quickly and reconfigured. So it certainly can be done. But it would be huge new money that isn't justified in the course of reequipping the Corridor fleet. When the time comes to reequip the long distance fleet, a different product might be preferable. Personally I would be happy to see VIA keep its eye on the ball with the HFR project and not try to do both things simultaneously.

- Paul
 
PinkLucy said:
That looks much nicer than when I used to take the overnight sleeper train from Northern Ontario
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I'm a huge fan of Priestmangoode. I have not seen a designer that does better aircraft or train interiors. I suspect there's not much budget for VIA to get that kind of service though....

crs1026 said:
I'm sure they have the data. Business Class is something that VIA excells at.

Actually, I'm always surprised at who else travels Business Class on VIA. Business travellers, certainly, but a huge number of others as well. Recreational young folks for example.... there is a darn good volume of people who enjoy weekends away in the T-O-M-Q travel area. Business Class is not just a Monday to Friday proposition. It's not that much more expensive to be out of sight for liesure travellers, and many people - including myself - enjoy the better amenities.

- Paul
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People think Economy is expensive... VIA 1 is way too expensive. And usually reasonably full. Stands to tell me they can add seats and cut the fares a bit. Hopefully steal a tad more from airlines.

crs1026 said:
Doing the added engineering to create a sleeping car equivalent for the Siemens product would be a chunk of change.
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I've always wondered if they could just flat out buy the design from Priestmangoode and OBB. It's not like trains designed to run in the Austrian Alps would have challenges in our climate.
 
kEiThZ said:
I've always wondered if they could just flat out buy the design from Priestmangoode and OBB. It's not like trains designed to run in the Austrian Alps would have challenges in our climate.
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One would have to take the VIA spec and see if the OBB spec is close enough, or if there are showstoppers. Just spitballing, but issues might be distance related (capacity of holding tanks, for instance) and another might be interior amenities or space parameters. Air brakes? HEP? Entertainment systems?

The moment a change is made, there's reengineering to do.

It's a lot closer to warship and fighter plane procurement than it may seem, or ought to be. "Off the shelf" does not exist, any more than an Australian F-18 is a carbon copy of a CF-18. And somebody is always tempted to "improve" something, or rewrite the mission.

I have no doubt that the OBB procurement was diligent and bought a quality vehicle. I would not have any fear of riding on their trains. But if they were designed using different engineering codes etc, then the design would have to be validated against Canadian codes and Transport Canada regulations. That could, in the extreme, be a complete redo of the engineering calculations. Transport Canada will insist on it.

- Paul
 
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crs1026 said:
It's not that much more expensive to be out of sight for liesure travellers, and many people - including myself - enjoy the better amenities.
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This is very true. With advance booking I've seen the business/economy price difference be small enough that it saves me money to travel business and count on the meal.

As far as sleeper service goes, its amusing to dream about and MIGHT have a market, but what really bothers me is that no railway seems to be intent on implementing airline level lie flat, possibly even pod like, seating. Trains are perfect for this sort of arrangement, and it seems like the ideal niche for enabling overnight service that people would actually use for business travel while not requiring the level of expense associated with full sleeper service.

With regard to true long-haul equipement, it seems to me like SuperLiner style cars would be much more of a drop-in Budd replacement than adopting something European. On paper Amtrak is looking for a Superliner replacement in the second half of this decade and it seems to me like VIA would have a lot to gain by signing on to that program for western services and relegating the Budds to the Maritimes.
 
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Bureaucromancer said:
but what really bothers me is that no railway seems to be intent on implementing airline level lie flat, possibly even pod like, seating.
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In 1988 I took VIA from Toronto to Calgary. My seat didn’t even recline as it had a cabin partition behind it. I slept in the empty luggage shelf.
 
Bureaucromancer said:
what really bothers me is that no railway seems to be intent on implementing airline level lie flat, possibly even pod like, seating.
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I've been saying this for years in this thread!

Even with Corridor service, it can still be a long ride. A typical Toronto-Montreal trip today and a Toronto-Quebec City trip with HFR are nearly as long as a trans-Atlantic trip. Since Corridor trains run daytime only maybe lie-flat is overkill, but I wish they went with pod seating. VIA's seats are already pretty comfortable. A slightly roomier seat in VIA 1 isn't much of differentiator. Pods would be. Or least staggered seats in shells to increase privacy.

Trains like the Ocean are perfect for airline like lie-flat pods.
 
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