VIA Rail

[micheal_can]

Which government would have subsidized VIA? The Mulroony PC's who were interested in cutting the deficit, divesting themselves of what crown corporations remained (requiring them to compete in an open market), and free trade? The Chretien Liberals who, also, were concerned with cutting the deficit? The Harper PC's who wished to give no one a handout? or the Trudeau Liberals? At no time was subsidizing VIA a priority in the public eye, and so bringing it up would have been a chore.

Also while your comparison to the airline industry (and the subsidies it receives) is reasonable. We have to remember that air travel does carry with it the issue of National identity that rail travel does not. Our goverments will protect a "Canadian" national airline much more than it will protect railway for reasons that should be clear.

The bigger issue is that politicians while tout cutting taxes as being a good thing, but the never admit to cutting services. They also have no problem propping up industries that look good to prop uo; auto manufacturing, oil, shipping, mining, and airlines, but heaven forbid they also spend the needed money to keep Via, or the military relevant. I served in the RCN on ships that were 50 years old. That is insane when they throw money at an airline who uses mainly new jets.

Maybe the government needs to write into law that in the event of any bailout/subsidy/loan/grant that a private corporation gets, their shareholders loose all bonuses and all of the top executives must take a 50% pay cut. In other words, make it hurt them to take it, but it is there if they really are desperate.

Now you're getting it.

HFR will provide a massive increase in passenger rail capacity between 3 of the 6 largest metros in the country.

And hopefully, just like the Japanese, Koreans and Europeans, as we start filling up the HFR trains, the case for upgrades (or a new line) to high speed rail standards will get better. I expect that 10 years after the line opens, it will be substantially upgraded to near HSR standards and competitive with air. All we'll need is 3-5 years of data to show how popular it is to start the discussion.

I have always gotten it. I just think the government needs to push the freight operators harder. They may own the lines, but we Canadians paid for them.

 

[roger1818]

I have always gotten it. I just think the government needs to push the freight operators harder.

Is it good for the economy (or environment) to reduce the amount of freight shipped by rail (and increase the amount shipped by truck)?

 

[jayme2016]

Once the line is running and if it turns out to be popular, it becomes much more political palatable to put together a package of upgrades that speeds up the line. Spend $2-4B more on some strategic upgrades and they'll probably be able to get Toronto-Montreal down to 4 hrs and Toronto-Ottawa down to 2.5 hrs. That would make Toronto-Ottawa fully competitive and Toronto-Montreal substantially competitive with air. And that's work that can be mostly complete within one term and win substantial plaudits for the party doing it.

All we need is for HFR to launch and for it to be more successful than the skeptical politicians think it will be. Catch them by surprise and it'll completely flip their political calculus on investing in intercity rail. If that happens and HFR is bringing in good money, the argument for upgrades and extensions becomes very easy. Some political party can simply spend a few billion to speed up the service and call it "high speed" even if it takes 4 hrs from Toronto to Montreal.

If they can get it down to 2.5 hours that would be a game changer.

 

[micheal_can]

Is it good for the economy (or environment) to reduce the amount of freight shipped by rail (and increase the amount shipped by truck)?

Reducing the freight is not the goal. The goal is that both coexist and keep their schedules. That means that double tracking the mainlines should be a priority. If double track is not enough, then add more. In short, expand both freight and passenger rail.

Probably not. But is it good for the economy to cede so much control to CP and CN rather than have a regulator manage freight and passenger traffic demand correctly as in Network Rail and similar types of models abroad?

^^^^^ This!^^^^^

 

[Darwinkgo]

They should probably start the planning for an HFR extension to the West and maybe do a serious study of HFR type service for Calgary-Edmonton.

The province has already done it, and so did VIA in the 80s. Every time they do an analysis it is found to be more economical to go straight to HSR. Incremental options aren't possible. The cheapest upgrade requires an entire rebuild of the CPR to two tracks with frequent high speed crossovers with many grade separations. Once you're spending that much, the operational profit the operator makes from going to true HSR on a brand new corridor pays for more than the differential capital cost. In a low interest rate environment, it is likely the project would be freestanding or nearly so - it would pay for itself.

 

[Darwinkgo]

Reducing the freight is not the goal. The goal is that both coexist and keep their schedules. That means that double tracking the mainlines should be a priority. If double track is not enough, then add more. In short, expand both freight and passenger rail.

Expanding freight capacity had a Harper era program in the west - the Pacific Gateway. Funding the non-rail elements of rail de-bottlenecking projects to increase throughput. I suspect in the next 20 years the government will run into a wall with CN and CP - they will both need major network upgrades, but the only way to add capacity will be extensive double and triple tracking that the railroads themselves can't afford since it will add a lot more capacity than the freight railroads can use. So there will be additional capacity for passenger rail! Whether capacity is needed over northern Ontario though, I am not so sure.

 

[micheal_can]

Expanding freight capacity had a Harper era program in the west - the Pacific Gateway. Funding the non-rail elements of rail de-bottlenecking projects to increase throughput. I suspect in the next 20 years the government will run into a wall with CN and CP - they will both need major network upgrades, but the only way to add capacity will be extensive double and triple tracking that the railroads themselves can't afford since it will add a lot more capacity than the freight railroads can use. So there will be additional capacity for passenger rail! Whether capacity is needed over northern Ontario though, I am not so sure.

My biggest concern is BC. The Fraser Valley and the spiral Tunnels aren't easily double tracked. Here in ON, it would be ideal if all routes that are served by freight and passenger could be expanded to permit all traffic to remain on time.

 

[kEiThZ]

If they can get it down to 2.5 hours that would be a game changer.

It would be a gamechanger. So would the price tag. That's high speed rail and a decade ago that was going to cost $12 billion. Probably closer to $15 billion today.

I'll be happy if by 2035, they can have cumulatively spent $7-8 billion on the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal portion. That would get Toronto-Montreal to 4 hrs.

 

[roger1818]

It would be a gamechanger. So would the price tag. That's high speed rail and a decade ago that was going to cost $12 billion. Probably closer to $15 billion today.

I'll be happy if by 2035, they can have cumulatively spent $7-8 billion on the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal portion. That would get Toronto-Montreal to 4 hrs.

The one thing people forget is that ticket prices increase with speed. The mantra "faster than flying, cheaper than driving" sounds great, but it is a myth. I would rather see VIA take thousands of cars off of the road than a dozen flights out of the air.

 

[kEiThZ]

That is insane when they throw money at an airline who uses mainly new jets.

You haven't a clue. Aviation isn't subsidized in Canada. In fact, it's a huge moneymaker for the federal government. Hundreds of millions annually in ground rent from the largest airports. Fuel taxes for more general revenue. And navigation fees, security charges and airport improvement fees so that the whole system pays for itself. This is why the Feds don't care about intercity rail. Why move passengers from a sector that gets them revenue to one that requires subsidies?

I have always gotten it. I just think the government needs to push the freight operators harder. They may own the lines, but we Canadians paid for them

And "we Canadians" were fully compensated with the sale of those assets. You can't sell something and retroactively impose obligations. Imagine selling your car to a friend and then insisting that he let you use it every Friday at exactly 7pm, after you have cashed his cheque.

Also, our freight operators are incredible. They carry more freight by rail than all the European freight rail operators combined. Canada has the fifth largest freight rail network (by tonne-km carried) in the world. The only countries ahead of us are China, Russia, India and the US. That's something we should be proud of, as Canadians.

 

[crs1026]

The one thing people forget is that ticket prices increase with speed. The mantra "faster than flying, cheaper than driving" sounds great, but it is a myth. I would rather see VIA take thousands of cars off of the road than a dozen flights out of the air.

If frequency rises, there will be many more seats to sell. Prices will find their optimum point. VIA will no doubt continue to use demand management so there will be bargains at times and higher prices when demand is higher.

In the short term, HFR appears to be headed for reliability and frequency rather than greatly enhanced speed (no matter how much I opine here on UT!) so one would expect prices to reflect that reality.

- Paul

 

[Urban Sky]

Passenger Rail service is not uniformly dying in Canada. Yes, long-distance VIA services have been on life-support since the late 70's, and many intercity routes are tenuous due to the awkward financial/commercial relationship between CN and VIA, but passenger rail has been experiencing incredible growth in Southern Ontario, primarily in the form of commuter rail, but also to a lesser extent in the Toronto-Ottawa VIA service.

The GO Expansion program is an absolutely enormous project that will bring frequent electrified service to the central portions of the GO network, and all-day express service to more distant destinations such as Kitchener, Niagara Falls and Barrie. This is not just talk, this has already been underway for a decade and the results are starting to show. I have been summarizing commuter rail schedules for the past 5 years, and between January 2015 and January 2020 the number of weekly GO train trips more than doubled from 1486 to 3472. In January 2015, only the Lakeshore lines had all-day service, with service every 30 minutes. By January 2020 there was all-day service on the Lakeshore Lines (every 15 minutes midday and every 30 minutes other times), UP Express (every 15 minutes), Kitchener line (every 60 minutes), Barrie Line (every 60 minutes) and Stouffville line (every 60 minutes). Every one of these service expansions was made possible thanks to railway expansions. Some have been huge projects, such as the Georgetown South project which completely grade-separated the Kitchener corridor east of Pearson airport and doubled the width of the infrastructure to support 4 tracks (widening to 8 tracks as the Milton and Barrie lines join in). While others have been comparatively modest, such as the projects to add double-track segments on the Barrie and Stouffville lines.

Just to quantify where the Corridor stands in a historical comparison with the last 70 years, the scheduled timetable volume has caught up to the April 1989 timetable (i.e. the last timetable before the January 1990 cuts) in November 2017 (166,871 vs. 166,661 km per week) and remained (until CoVid-19 hit) higher than most of the 1960s and 1970s:

Compiled from: official CN, CP and VIA timetables

If we look only at the "Corridor East" (i.e. east of Toronto), then the 136,627 km scheduled per week between November 2017 (when the 10th frequency was introduced between Toronto and Ottawa) and December 2019 (when train 69 was terminated already in Toronto instead of Aldershot) was only ever exceeded in April 1955 (137,660 km), April 1956 (137,120 km) and April 1958 (138,824 km):

Compiled from: official CN, CP and VIA timetables

Probably not. But is it good for the economy to cede so much control to CP and CN rather than have a regulator manage freight and passenger traffic demand correctly as in Network Rail and similar types of models abroad?

Regulating the infrastructure owners has undoubtedly its advantages, but it comes at a cost. At the beginning of this year, I posted a table (see below) with how much the governments (i.e. the taxpayers) invest into their rail infrastructure per capita in Europe. In the case of the United Kingdom (a country of 65.4 million), that was 151 Euros per capita in 2016, thus 9.87 billion Euros or $13.9 billion per year. Provided sufficient political will, it is relatively easy to interfere into CN's and CP's dispatching control. However, one should be aware that that sovereignty over their own infrastructure is what so far motivated CN and CP to mostly refrain from asking the government to chip into its capital expenditure projects. I repeat myself, but regulation is entirely possible - provided the taxpayer is willing to pay the price...

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

Expanding freight capacity had a Harper era program in the west - the Pacific Gateway. Funding the non-rail elements of rail de-bottlenecking projects to increase throughput. I suspect in the next 20 years the government will run into a wall with CN and CP - they will both need major network upgrades, but the only way to add capacity will be extensive double and triple tracking that the railroads themselves can't afford since it will add a lot more capacity than the freight railroads can use. So there will be additional capacity for passenger rail! Whether capacity is needed over northern Ontario though, I am not so sure.

I'm confident that the current infrastructure upgrades along CN's transcontinental main corridors in Western Canada will benefit passenger trains (i.e. the Canadian and the Skeena) and it's a lucky coincidence that the extreme delays suffered by all trains out west have forced CN to pay for massive capacity expansions, which will increase the fluidity of freight and passenger traffic alike, without taxpayer involvement. However, in order for Canada to through in its weight in the global effort to fight climate change, the government will have to release funding and incentives to make rail cheaper compared to its competing modes...

Also, our freight operators are incredible. They carry more freight by rail than all the European freight rail operators combined. Canada has the fifth largest freight rail network (by tonne-km carried) in the world. The only countries ahead of us are China, Russia, India and the US. That's something we should be proud of, as Canadians.

This is a point which can't be reiterated enough: the rail network in North America is by no means pathetic - it's in its way just as highly efficient and performant as in Europe and just as lopsided towards one side of rail transportation (passengers in the case of Europe, freight in the case of North America)!

 

[kEiThZ]

The province has already done it, and so did VIA in the 80s.

When I say study it, I mean something akin to the Joint Project Office, VIA and the CIB struck up for HFR. They need to study it, pick a course of action and deliver. If it costs $5B so be it. It's the second most important economic corridor in the country.

 

[kEiThZ]

In the short term, HFR appears to be headed for reliability and frequency rather than greatly enhanced speed (no matter how much I opine here on UT!) so one would expect prices to reflect that reality.

I'm a little more pessimistic on Toronto-Montreal ridership than most, but all the other segments doing well will hopefully make the case for investment.

And to be honest, I'd be just fine with a cheaper to use system that did Toronto-Montreal in 4 hrs (in due course after some upgrades), than an expensive full blown HSR system that cut it down to 2.5 hrs. If subsequent upgrades get Toronto-Ottawa to 2.5 hrs and Toronto-Montreal to 4 hrs and there's Western extensions that get Toronto-Kitchener to 1 hr and Toronto-London to 2 hrs, with hourly hourly (or semi-hourly hopefully) departures and reasonably priced tickets, ridership will skyrocket.

This is a point which can't be reiterated enough: the rail network in North America is by no means pathetic - it's in its way just as highly efficient and performant as in Europe and just as lopsided towards one side of rail transportation (passengers in the case of Europe, freight in the case of North America)!

I'd go further. I would argue that since our population is highly concentrated in a handful of corridors, it's much easier for us to invest in a handful of rail projects and get substantial ridership, while also having substantial freight rail networks. Europeans and Asians can't really do that.

 

[micheal_can]

You haven't a clue. Aviation isn't subsidized in Canada. In fact, it's a huge moneymaker for the federal government. Hundreds of millions annually in ground rent from the largest airports. Fuel taxes for more general revenue. And navigation fees, security charges and airport improvement fees so that the whole system pays for itself. This is why the Feds don't care about intercity rail. Why move passengers from a sector that gets them revenue to one that requires subsidies?

Aviation is subsidized, but in indirect ways. For example, the governments have bailed out Air Canada in the 2008 recession. The government is bailing out airports all over Canada. That is the act I have a problem with when we see much of the Via network shuttered.

And "we Canadians" were fully compensated with the sale of those assets. You can't sell something and retroactively impose obligations. Imagine selling your car to a friend and then insisting that he let you use it every Friday at exactly 7pm, after you have cashed his cheque.

Also, our freight operators are incredible. They carry more freight by rail than all the European freight rail operators combined. Canada has the fifth largest freight rail network (by tonne-km carried) in the world. The only countries ahead of us are China, Russia, India and the US. That's something we should be proud of, as Canadians.

We did not sell the CP transcontinental. We gave the money to the corporation. They have not given it back to us. With inflation and interest accumulating for about 140 years it would be in the Trillions.

I am proud of how much we do with our rail, however we do so little with it with regards to passenger rail.