VIA Rail

[kEiThZ]

Got to love how you completely ignore my arguments against biofuels, come up with one of your own and dismiss your own argument as irrelevant with a general one day in the future we might have a solution for it. It doesn't matter when the carbon was removed from the atmosphere but that we are putting copious quantities of CO2 back into the atmosphere. Were we to not burn the plant matter, and compost it instead, the carbon would be remain locked up in the ground for a very long time.

As for the argument that "using carbon stored in a plant is not an issue" because we all do it every day, there is a huge difference in magnitude. "The average human exhales about 2.3 pounds [1.04 kg] of carbon dioxide on an average day " As a comparison, a VIA Rail train from Toronto to Montreal generates 14.76 kg of CO2 per seat. That means that the train (per passenger) is emitting significantly more CO2 per passenger than the people who are ridding on it are exhaling, and that is using one of the most efficient modes of transport.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the carbon cycle and how it pertains to climate change. Whether you breathe 2 lbs or 200 lbs, is irrelevant, as long as you aren't adding net GHG to the atmosphere. Under a scenario where VIA can source 100% clean biofuels, presumably no new GHGs would be added. Though, personally, I think reducing emissions net (by moving drivers and flyers over) is a bigger issue than worrying about VIA's emissions.

Can you provide references to those figures? Also you can't compare liters of diesel to liters of gasoline as diesel is more energy dense and produces more CO2 (and other pollutants) per liter (3.00715 Kg of CO2 equivalent per Liter of diesel No. 2. vs. 2.500 Kg of CO2 equivalent per Liter of gasoline).

Here's some nice stats on emissions of typical Corridor city-pair trips themselves:

Compare the train with the car and the plane

Discover the benefits of train travel over driving, including downtown arrivals, more work time and more relaxation time.

www.viarail.ca

Using the 541 km Toronto-Montreal trip of 14.76 kg CO2, and your 3.00715 kg of CO2 per L of diesel, that works out to ~4.91L of fuel for that trip for one passenger. Or about 0.91L/100 pax-km. And that's with VIA's current fleet. The new fleet, with Tier 4, will be even more efficient.

Trains are insanely efficient. Planes are actually moderately efficient. It's gasoline and diesel cars that are inefficient. So moving those passenger kms over that should be priority. Once the trains are being compared to a substantially electrified private automotive fleet, the discussion on train emissions might be more relevant. But we're a long way from that. Easily a decade. Probably two. Which is why I argue that would be a good time to electrify. 15-20 years is usually when fleet renewals or replacements are done.

I suspect the Canadian government will pay for electrification using stimulus money and will have the CIB fund the remainder of HFR, but that is just a guess.

Might be possible. But there's zero indication of anything like that given that all public discussions we've seen has treated electrification as an optional add-on and all the talk has been of the somebody financing the whole project. Recall all that talk about some outside investor funding the whole thing. The only thing I imagine the Feds paying for is the rolling stock since the Charger options would have to be exercised sooner than later.

HFR will require the purchase new trainsets

Which is exactly why VIA secured options for 18 additional trainsets in their contract with Siemens. Would be bizarre to pay for additional options (delivery slots aren't normally free) and then not use them because they wanted to secure a whole other fleet.

and the Chargers purchased for the new fleet can be used on existing routes.

The entire Charger fleet (including the options for HFR) is meant to be employed on the Corridor routes, as per my understanding. There wasn't mention of other use cases in their qualification documents. But Urban Sky can correct me if I'm wrong. I just don't see the fleet being redeployed especially since the coaches are being configured for Corridor operations too.

One could have a counter argument that if we are planning to electrify VIA anyway, why not do it before cars have been substantially electrified and not throw away the HFR Chargers half way through their lifecycle.

Replacing locos after 15-20 years isn't that unusual. Keeping them running for 40 years is only really a Canadian thing. But also, this point of view ignores the value of not redeploying the electrification costs towards an extension. How many cars would be taken off the road over 20 years with that $2B extending HFR to Kitchener or even London, vs. emissions saved from electrification.

If you use the argument that we shouldn't do it now because the technology might be better in the future might be better, you will never do anything. The timeline for battery powered intercity trains being feasible is uncertain at the moment.

I am not arguing for a perpetual delay. I'm suggesting making use of the options VIA has and focusing the capital dollars on getting the best network they can. And saving electrification for the fleet replacement. But it certainly would be beneficial if batteries advance sufficiently in 20 years that stringing catenary the entire length might not be necessary. But even if that doesn't happen, electrification just becomes part of a larger capital project that replaces the fleet, at that point.

 

[ec_traindriver]

Im curious to know what you DO think is the best solution, with the full knowledge that CN and CP are at a stalemate with allowing anymore service on their mainline corridors to the south (the current VIA corridor services) and refuse to allow priority to VIA trains, and also refuse electrification in their corridors and refuse to allow any tracks to be laid in their corridors that they are not contracted to build themselves, but with VIA paying for it, at sometimes 800% inflated cost as indicated by an Ontario Auditor General, and want to maintain exclusive rights to use these new lines with their freight trains.

Well, my bias is strong with the European (and, partially, Australian) model of vertical separation between infrastructure owner/manager and train operators. If that seems a foreign concept, it has already been proposed by Charles P. Zlatkovich in his 1976 thesis "A proposal for the development of an interstate rail system".

I don't know how much that is going to cost, because AFAIK the idea has never been presented to the public before and there has never been a cost-benefit analysis.

This is a very basic scheme of how this works in Italy:

My understanding is that since railways tend to be natural monopolies, it would be far more beneficial if there were a single monopolist — much like the highway/road system. Following a multi-year program, the Government would take ownership of the infrastructure of the rail infrastructure in the whole corridor, and act like an "impartial referee" awarding the different competing train operator companies the respective train paths.

I'm open to questions — not so much to insults.

 

[robmausser]

Well, my bias is strong with the European (and, partially, Australian) model of vertical separation between infrastructure owner/manager and train operators. If that seems a foreign concept, it has already been proposed by Charles P. Zlatkovich in his 1976 thesis "A proposal for the development of an interstate rail system".

I don't know how much that is going to cost, because AFAIK the idea has never been presented to the public before and there has never been a cost-benefit analysis.

View attachment 290299

This is a very basic scheme of how this works in Italy:

View attachment 290300

My understanding is that since railways tend to be natural monopolies, it would be far more beneficial if there were a single monopolist — much like the highway/road system. Following a multi-year program, the Government would take ownership of the infrastructure of the rail infrastructure in the whole corridor, and act like an "impartial referee" awarding the different competing train operator companies the respective train paths.

I'm open to questions — not so much to insults.

No problem about insults because I didnt insult you anywhere so we are good on that front!

I appreciate your knowledge of European standards but i'd only say to get educated on how it works in Canada because its quite different here and not only will that not change any time soon it would be a monumental task to do so.

 

[ec_traindriver]

No problem about insults because I didnt insult you anywhere so we are good on that front!

Nothing personal, of course. That was a general remark: when I bring up that kind of reasoning elsewhere I get easily called out a communist. So, not knowing the platform I jumped on the defensive. My bad.

I appreciate your knowledge of European standards but i'd only say to get educated on how it works in Canada because its quite different here and not only will that not change any time soon it would be a monumental task to do so.

ARTC (Australia) works in the same way, and I believe that the railway industry there is somewhat similar to the Canadian one. They've started from a similar starting point in the late 1990s.

 

[Darwinkgo]

I doubt electrification will happen except for eventual HSR. Even for metrolinx's projects I bet hydrogen catches up and gets adopted instead. It has gone from pretty hypothetical (gadget bahn), to commercial pilots in the mean time.

 

[ec_traindriver]

I doubt electrification will happen except for eventual HSR. Even for metrolinx's projects I bet hydrogen catches up and gets adopted instead. It has gone from pretty hypothetical (gadget bahn), to commercial pilots in the mean time.

Hydrogen shares the same technical limitations that other fossil fuels have: it needs to be stored and, at present, the best performing multiple units have autonomies rarely exceeding 100 km. Besides, foreign hydrogen vehicles are much lighter than North American ones, therefore they have much greater efficiency.

Technically, electrification doesn't present infrastructural constraints either, as shown in this picture of the NEC.

 

[Darwinkgo]

ARTC (Australia) works in the same way, and I believe that the railway industry there is somewhat similar to the Canadian one. They've started from a similar starting point in the late 1990s.

The big issue is systems to set up the split in many countries has come as a result of crisis: railways not making enough revenue to cover the maintenance of the networks. In Australia the problem was different states having incompatible systems, plus a economic problems on their state networks.

Canada is unique in some respects. We have two railways that run to most major destinations. Both have transparent finances, and due to competition their rates are constrained from the worst of monopolistic tendencies. Even where they don't compete directly, they cannot get away with over charging since there are directly comparable alternatives.

Where only one network has developed, there are very different policy questions at play that lead you to the split of infrastructure and train operators to try to ensure as much competition as possible. This is not necessary in Canada.

 

[Darwinkgo]

Hydrogen shares the same technical limitations that other fossil fuels have: it needs to be stored and, at present, the best performing multiple units have autonomies rarely exceeding 100 km. Besides, foreign hydrogen vehicles are much lighter than North American ones, therefore they have much greater efficiency.

Technically, electrification doesn't present infrastructural constraints either, as shown in this picture of the NEC.

That is the key: at present. When embarking on a 10 year project with 50 year implications, we have to look at long terms. Even just running the electrical infrastructure over northern Ontario would be a crazy project (electrifiying corridors without populations means building out a suitable electric grid too). Our government has decided that hydrogen is where they want to play (the national hydrogen strategy). CP Rail is going for a FRA freight hydrogen demonstration. If they are even close to successful, it will destroy most electrification projects' economics.

 

[ec_traindriver]

The big issue is systems to set up the split in many countries has come as a result of crisis: railways not making enough revenue to cover the maintenance of the networks. In Australia the problem was different states having incompatible systems, plus a economic problems on their state networks.

Canada is unique in some respects. We have two railways that run to most major destinations. Both have transparent finances, and due to competition their rates are constrained from the worst of monopolistic tendencies. Even where they don't compete directly, they cannot get away with over charging since there are directly comparable alternatives.

Where only one network has developed, there are very different policy questions at play that lead you to the split of infrastructure and train operators to try to ensure as much competition as possible. This is not necessary in Canada.

It somewhat makes sense, I agree.

Personally, I wouldn't "nationalize" the entire national network, but only key corridors. Also, you have to consider that most of the freight trains now run on a network that has been shuttered in the name of their finances. How many daily freight trains run from the Windsor/Detroit to the Niagara Falls areas, needlessly congesting, for example, Bayview Junction? If there still were a direct line say, between Glencoe and Fort Erie, freight trains wouldn't pose any kind of problems on passenger trains en route from Toronto to the Southwestern Ontario area. The same could be said for the abandoned North Bay to Ottawa line(s) with trains now rerouted through the Belleville and Kingston Subs.

Does this make sense?

 

[kEiThZ]

I doubt electrification will happen except for eventual HSR. Even for metrolinx's projects I bet hydrogen catches up and gets adopted instead. It has gone from pretty hypothetical (gadget bahn), to commercial pilots in the mean time.

It's going be a long time before hydrogen can handle a 400 km trip at higher speed. And even longer before they can beat out the capabilities of BEMUs. Strap on 3-4 battery packs from a Tesla Model S to each coach and you have an EMU that can do Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal without breaking a sweat. All that's needed are battery packs that can cover Peterborough-Smiths Falls. There will be a decent enough business case to put up catenary for most of the rest of the network.

 

[kEiThZ]

Personally, I wouldn't "nationalize" the entire national network, but only key corridors.

Does this make sense?

Great theoreticals. Here in reality, no such nationalization is being discussed, planned or considered. And I'd rather get shovels in the ground than spend a decade arguing over track ownership and nationalization.

Also, you're very much focused on passenger traffic and the Lakeshore. But that is not the primary concern of either the bureaucratic state or the politicians who run it. Given the economic impact of the railways, you won't find much of a constituency for nationalization by the federal government to benefit regional travel in just a portion of the country.

 

[ec_traindriver]

Great theoreticals. Here in reality, no such nationalization is being discussed, planned or considered. And I'd rather get shovels in the ground than spend a decade arguing over track ownership and nationalization.

Also, you're very much focused on passenger traffic and the Lakeshore. But that is not the primary concern of either the bureaucratic state or the politicians who run it. Given the economic impact of the railways, you won't find much of a constituency for nationalization by the federal government to benefit regional travel in just a portion of the country.

BTW, I am talking about the infrastructure only. Hence the "vertical separation" concept I introduced earlier.

CP, CN, GO, VIA, and shortlines would still run their businesses on a consolidated infrastructure under a single owner. The FEC and Brightline, in Florida, on the other hand, use a different approach: FEC retains full ownership of the infrastructure, but subcontract dispatching to a third-party agency, equally funded by FEC and Brightline.

 

[Darwinkgo]

It somewhat makes sense, I agree.

Personally, I wouldn't "nationalize" the entire national network, but only key corridors. Also, you have to consider that most of the freight trains now run on a network that has been shuttered in the name of their finances. How many daily freight trains run from the Windsor/Detroit to the Niagara Falls areas, needlessly congesting, for example, Bayview Junction? If there still were a direct line say, between Glencoe and Fort Erie, freight trains wouldn't pose any kind of problems on passenger trains en route from Toronto to the Southwestern Ontario area. The same could be said for the abandoned North Bay to Ottawa line(s) with trains now rerouted through the Belleville and Kingston Subs.

Does this make sense?

Sure it does make sense - if there was demand there, and if demand was interferring with line haul freight operations. We see with CP's freight traffic through Toronto that there is rather minimal demand connecting east of Toronto and west of Toronto even! It is more like airports and services in between with a focus on high demand services in between these days. The lines serving many industrial spurs are more like regional airlines, they feed the hubs. The occasional regional airlines feeding into the main network isn't an issue because there isn't the speed mismatch that happens with passenger rail, and those low demand services don't occupy 'prime slots'. Heck, the serving of local deliveries versus line haul is shown by the death of hump yards for CP in Canada.

The problem as others have identified is not capacity. It is capacity to readily accommodate higher speed passenger trains which consume way more network capacity than a freight train. If passenger trains were as slow as freight trains, it wouldn't be an issue at all. Removing a handful of freight trains doesn't solve this problem. You can either rebuild the network to accomodate both (this is what Alberta studied in the early 80s, entirely rebuilding and grade separating the CP line between Calgary and Edmonton with two tracks on concrete sleepers with both tracks able to accommodate 200kph travel with high speed crossovers every 10 km to allow coexistence of the 15-20 freight trips a day with a similar number of intercity rail trips) or you build a new corridor.

 

[roger1818]

I doubt electrification will happen except for eventual HSR. Even for metrolinx's projects I bet hydrogen catches up and gets adopted instead. It has gone from pretty hypothetical (gadget bahn), to commercial pilots in the mean time.

While hydrogen fuel cell vehicles might be more efficient than gas/diesel powered vehicles (and generate less carbon dioxide even if you steam reform natural gas to make the hydrogen), their well to wheel efficiency is still considerably lower than battery electric vehicles, which are still lower than powering the vehicle directly (from a catenary). There is likely a point for long distance trains, where the cost of installing catenary is too great and batteries aren't big enough, but that isn't likely the case for commuter or corridor intercity services.

There are two problems with Hydrogen. First of all you need to make the hydrogen gas, either by steam reforming natural gas (which produces CO2) or by electrolysis. Steam reforming is the cheaper of the two, but not only does the process require a significant amount of heat energy as an input, but the chemical energy of the hydrogen gas produced is lower than the chemical energy of the natural gas being transformed, so you might as well just burn the natural gas in the first place. In the end, the process is about 65% efficient. For electrolysis, a modern plant is about 80% efficient. ref Of course you need a green source of electricity, since a natural gas power plants are only up to 60% efficient.

Secondly you need to use a hydrogen fuel cell to convert that hydrogen back into electricity. Modern fuel cells are only about 60% efficient. ref If you combine the efficiency of electrolysis with that of a fuel cell, you get an electricity to electricity efficiency of only 48% (ignoring any transmission line loss to get the electricity to the hydrogen production facility or any energy needed to compress the hydrogen for storage). As a comparison, With a catenary, you are looking at an efficiency of more than 90%.

Batteries offer a significantly more efficient process, but have the disadvantage of adding a significant amount of weight. If that weight could be designed into the ballast of the locomotive, then that will help, but there will come a needed range whereby the weight of the battery will become to great, and you end up loosing efficiency due to the need to haul around the extra weight.

As I said, there might be a place for hydrogen fuel cells for long distance trains, whereby the cost of catenary outweighs the cost of wasted energy, but I don't see it for commuter or corridor services.

 

[ec_traindriver]

The problem as others have identified is not capacity. It is capacity to readily accommodate higher speed passenger trains which consume way more network capacity than a freight train. If passenger trains were as slow as freight trains, it wouldn't be an issue at all. Removing a handful of freight trains doesn't solve this problem. You can either rebuild the network to accomodate both (this is what Alberta studied in the early 80s, entirely rebuilding and grade separating the CP line between Calgary and Edmonton with two tracks on concrete sleepers with both tracks able to accommodate 200kph travel with high speed crossovers every 10 km to allow coexistence of the 15-20 freight trips a day with a similar number of intercity rail trips) or you build a new corridor.

Or you make freight trains go faster — but I recognize the technical difficulties that would arise from that decision.

Here, freight trains are expected to run (almost) as fast as passenger trains, when the infrastructure allows for that. More than the length, or the weight of such enormous trains, what really baffles me is how incredibly ineffective North American brakes are!

Here you can see a page from the national infrastructure timetable, an excerpt from the line I work on. Trento to Verona, southbound direction.

The four columns are the four speed-categories: freight trains run by speeds in the A-column, commuter trains by B-column speeds, intercity/high-speed trains by C-column speeds. P-column is for tilting trains only ("Pendolino"). Freight equipment is usually able to run 100 to 120 km/h, and very often do so.