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VIA Rail

ssiguy2 said:
Today Biden announced his new $2 trillion infrastructure plan and Amtrak plays a big part. It proposes many new routes and one that sticks out is a new route from Detroit to Toronto.

I think such a route finally connecting the 2 cities and places further west like Chicago would greatly increase traffic on the SWO lines which are already heavily used to the point of being the least subsidised corridor in the entire system on a per-passenger level.
Click to expand...

Enhanced service to Toronto is also proposed in the NYC-Buffalo-Niagara segment (Empire Corridor) but that isn't defined.

Apparently a further announcement will be coming shortly ahead of the 're-authorization' bill for Amtrak's operating budget.

***

New and enhanced services to Montreal are also in the plan; and enhanced services to Vancouver.

I thought the logical home of a discussion about this might the the General Railway thread.

That's where I posted on this.

That said, since, I'm here, I'll share the map.

1617313362601.png

 
crs1026 said:
A few strokes of the Parliamentary pen, and a reasonable level of investment, and there might be a will to play nice, if the money is appropriate.
Click to expand...

Easier said than done. Especially against CN lobbying.

ssiguy2 said:
Today Biden announced his new $2 trillion infrastructure plan and Amtrak plays a big part.
Click to expand...

I'm really excited for the proposal. But let's just wait to see what survives Congress before popping the champagne.
 
crs1026 said:
As reported here (edit - and here)- Amtrak, CSX, and NS seem to have found reason to play nice... but Amtrak has a bit more government clout behind it.
Click to expand...

A bit off topic, but, for those who are interested, there is a really interesting talk by Daniel L. Plaugher, Executive Director, Virginians for High Speed Rail about this (the actual presentation is only about 23 minutes long and the rest is Q&A, though the whole thing is worth watching). They are basically building HFR from Washington to Richmond, VA (and on to Raleigh) by buying dedicated track and increasing the frequency of service. Speed will only be marginally increased to be competitive with driving.

I wish we had a similar advocacy group that was willing to take a staged approach like this and realize that the best way to HSR is to first build the fundamentals.

 
crs1026 said:
And you presumably expect CN to agree to similar terms for the Coteau-Montreal and Montreal-Drummondville-Charny elements of HFR? (And maybe Mascouche-Ballantyne-Montreal, if the tunnel can't be made to work) And where does HFR sit if CN can't commit to anything better than the current level of reliability?

We are actually agreeing on most of this - whatever Lakeshore service remains post-HFR will exist at CN's mercy. So will HFR. So either we find a new arrangement, or that service slowly perishes as CN grows its business and conflicts with freight grow.

A few strokes of the Parliamentary pen, and a reasonable level of investment, and there might be a will to play nice, if the money is appropriate.

As reported here (edit - and here)- Amtrak, CSX, and NS seem to have found reason to play nice... but Amtrak has a bit more government clout behind it.

- Paul
Click to expand...
Coteau to Montreal is something like 60 km, a fraction of the length of the corridor. Dealing with CN for 60 km is a huge improvement over dealing with them for 500.

The line through Drummondville isn't part of the HFR plan.

If "a few strokes of the Parliamentary pen" were as easy as you imply it would have happened a long time ago.
 
ssiguy2 said:
Today Biden announced his new $2 trillion infrastructure plan and Amtrak plays a big part. It proposes many new routes and one that sticks out is a new route from Detroit to Toronto.

I think such a route finally connecting the 2 cities and places further west like Chicago would greatly increase traffic on the SWO lines which are already heavily used to the point of being the least subsidised corridor in the entire system on a per-passenger level.
Click to expand...
Show me shovels in the ground otherwise this didn't happen.

I remember living in DC back in 2009 when Biden (as VP) also announced a similar HSR expansion for Amtrak corridors (around $100 billion investment) - we all know how far HSR progressed in the U.S. since then.
 
SFO-YYZ said:
Show me shovels in the ground otherwise this didn't happen.

I remember living in DC back in 2009 when Biden (as VP) also announced a similar HSR expansion for Amtrak corridors (around $100 billion investment) - we all know how far HSR progressed in the U.S. since then.
Click to expand...
People keep comparing airtravel to rail travel and they miss the stops in-between.

Yes you can fly from Toronto to Kingston or London, but does it fly hourly?

Is it as cost effective? How do you get from Airport to your final destination? The benefit of the train is that it's from downtown to downtown (not so much with Kingston, but the airport isn't exactly downtown either).

What if you want to go from Belleville to Brockville? Are you going to drive to Kingston and the fly to Ottawa and then rent a car?

Stop thinking that all trips start and end in Toronto, Ottawa or Montreal.
 
roger1818 said:
I wish we had a similar advocacy group that was willing to take a staged approach like this and realize that the best way to HSR is to first build the fundamentals.
Click to expand...
Only HSR Canada takes the all-or-nothing E300+ track. Other passenger advocacy organizations favour High Performance Rail now, to build up frequency and ridership.

There are both public and internal discussions of whether the HFR proposal represents the best version of that approach, and unfortunately we have less public data on HFR to inform those debates than our US counterparts usually receive from Amtrak and state DoTs.
 
Bordercollie said:
People keep comparing airtravel to rail travel and they miss the stops in-between.

Yes you can fly from Toronto to Kingston or London, but does it fly hourly?

Is it as cost effective? How do you get from Airport to your final destination? The benefit of the train is that it's from downtown to downtown (not so much with Kingston, but the airport isn't exactly downtown either).

What if you want to go from Belleville to Brockville? Are you going to drive to Kingston and the fly to Ottawa and then rent a car?

Stop thinking that all trips start and end in Toronto, Ottawa or Montreal.
Click to expand...
Wait, I was referring to Biden's 2010/2011 HSR funding announcements for Amtrak, what does this have to do with air travel?

All I said with regards to this $2.3 trillion transportation plan - was that I wouldn't put too much stock into it until we see actual shovels in the ground. This isn't the first time Biden talked about HSR or rail expansions, and just because Joe used to take the Acela between Delaware and DC doesn't mean he will actually walk the talk, unless we see something much more concrete and substantial from this administration. For example, how much of the $2.3 trillion is specifically dedicated towards passenger rail (vs. airports, highways, and other money-sucking transportation spends), how much are one-time capital announcements vs. ongoing boost to Amtrak's operating budget. None of that is clear at the moment, and all of this still needs pass the GOP-controlled Senate which may water down a lot of things in the final version.

In his 2010 announcement, Biden as VP specifically said he wanted to invest in 13 HSR projects around the country, including the California and Florida Miami-Tampa corridor. 11 years have gone by, and none of the 13 projects sponsored back then is even close to completion (most never took off in the first place...), with the exception of Florida Brightline which had nothing to do with the Amtrak projects and only came to fruition thanks to private investment. This was the Biden/Obama funding plan back in 2010 for HSR: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.go...nnounce-8-billion-high-speed-rail-projects-ac

Later in 2011, Biden made another $55 billion HSR funding announcement. http://edition.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/02/08/biden.rail.network/index.html

Once again, like Ontario/Canada, U.S. feds have a track record of announcing ambitious HSR proposals in the past, and like Ontario/Canada, there's also a time-honored track record of things becoming "much ado about nothing".
 
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SFO-YYZ said:
This isn't the first time Biden talked about HSR or rail expansions, and just because Joe used to take the Acela between Delaware and DC doesn't mean he will actually walk the talk,
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Biden would.

But it's not his choice. Congress appropriates funding. Not the executive.
 
Didn't some of the HSR federal funding announced during the Obama administration end up in California high speed rail budgets. I think the challenge in the US is typically the state governments, oval office, senate, and house are rarely on the same page. Even when the federal government passes something to make funds available the states will decline the free money to be argumentative.
 
^Some of the projects have been around for long enough to have won federal funding in the Obama era, but were stillborn because individual states voted against authorizing their portion of the funding. I haven’t seen enough of the fine print to know if the Biden plan changes the cost sharing formula. If it doesn’t, those same recalcitrant states may still block the projects.

Still, I am optimistic that some will get funded. I can’t see Congress shooting down the whole plan, but competing modes won’t be shy about fighting for the biggest possible share of the spend.

- Paul
 
crs1026 said:
^Some of the projects have been around for long enough to have won federal funding in the Obama era, but were stillborn because individual states voted against authorizing their portion of the funding. I haven’t seen enough of the fine print to know if the Biden plan changes the cost sharing formula. If it doesn’t, those same recalcitrant states may still block the projects.
Click to expand...

It's a fun thought experiment to picture the feds using the unclaimed money to reduce the amount of state funding required on projects that went ahead. That would send a message, although I'm sure you'd hear the other states howling then.

If only Hamilton or Waterloo had gotten Brampton's light rail allocation...
 
windsorstar.com

Amtrak ramps up pursuit of Detroit to Toronto rail passenger service

U.S. rail passenger provider Amtrak is continuing a push and feeling more hopeful of seeing a new Detroit to Toronto direct connection in the wake of President Joe Biden’s $US80-billion commitment to rail service under his $2-trillion infrastructure plan released this week.
windsorstar.com windsorstar.com
 
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