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VIA Rail

roger1818 said:
That brings up an interesting point. Crossing gates aren't sufficient for 200 km/h service, you need full separation. If many of the crossings on the Trois-Rivières Sub don't have gates, then rather than paying to install them, use that cost as a down payment towards grade separation. I know that is significantly more expensive, but why waste money on building new gates, if in the long term VIA will want grade separation?
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I would expect that VIA would want to replace the entire crossing circuitry and lighting at every crossing. Most of what’s there probably dates from several decades back, and may not meet current standards for light intensity, lens diameter, etc - let alone current microprocessor electronics and data capability (eg cameras). So it’s more than just slapping a set of gates on the existing appliances.

A single overpass can run $40M whereas a new gate installation might run $1M. At that differential, VIA doesn’t have a lot of room to add grade separation.

The Trois Rivieres line has a whack of private farm crossings, too… I wonder what will become of all those.

But I agree with you - the Smiths Falls Sub already has grade separations done or under way, and it would be the perfect place to raise speeds.

- Paul
 
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kEiThZ said:
I don't get why anybody expects more than the travel times the Globe and Mail had a few years back. The "up to 200 kph" doesn't change anything. That's just the nameplate top speed of a Charger/Venture trainset. So unless the government is committing to substantially more investment, we should expect more than what was long rumoured.

Personally, I have always argued, they shouldn't electrify this time and just spend $6-7B to get a corridor that yields decent travel time, getting Toronto-Ottawa under 3 hrs and Toronto-Montreal under 4 hrs.
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I think that that should be the goal as well. Get the travel times down using non-electrified dedicated track, mostly on existing ROWs. Spend the money on grade separations and bypasses of curvy sections of the existing ROW, which would yield a series of incremental gains.

It may even be worth it to re-lay the track between Peterborough and Smiths Falls almost entirely on the existing ROW (with only a few bypasses like around Sharbot Lake), and then tender re-alignments as a separate project, as those will need to go through land acquisitions, etc. Get the service up and running, and then make even more incremental improvements.

Basically taking a page out of GO's book. Start with the service, make strategic investments to shave a few minutes off here, add capacity for an extra run here, and eventually you'll have a pretty damn good line.
 
EnviroTO said:
Right now VIA takes 2h from Montreal to Brockville direct. If they get Montreal-Ottawa-Brockville to run in 2 hours then there is a huge operational efficiency realized.
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298 km through Alexandria, compared to 204 km through Cornwall ... Cornwall is going to be much faster. Historically they've done it in 105 minutes.

EnviroTO said:
Montreal to Ottawa seems like it should be possible in around 1h (travelling 187km).
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How - historically it's nearly 20 minutes just to get to Dorval (35 minutes currently). So 40 minutes to go go 168 km - including the stop in Ottawa?
 
crs1026 said:
I would expect that VIA would want to replace the entire crossing circuitry and lighting at every crossing. Most of what’s there probably dates from several decades back, and may not meet current standards for light intensity, lens diameter, etc - let alone current microprocessor electronics and data capability (eg cameras). So it’s more than just slapping a set of gates on the existing appliances.

A single overpass can run $40M whereas a new gate installation might run $1M. At that differential, VIA doesn’t have a lot of room to add grade separation.

The Trois Rivieres line has a whack of private farm crossings, too… I wonder what will become of all those.

But I agree with you - the Smiths Falls Sub already has grade separations done or under way, and it would be the perfect place to raise speeds.

- Paul
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The Chatham Sub has crossings without crossing arms at 90mph.
 
nfitz said:
How - historically it's nearly 20 minutes just to get to Dorval (35 minutes currently). So 40 minutes to go go 168 km - including the stop in Ottawa?
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It's the kind of travel time estimates you get from people who don't grasp the difference between maximum and average speed. To compare: the Ecotrain Study estimated a travel time of 1:11 hours for their F-200 scenario (0:57 for E-300) and that still required a level of infrastructure works which escalated per-km capital costs to several times what we've ever seen mentioned for HFR...
 
Urban Sky said:
It's the kind of travel time estimates you get from people who don't grasp the difference between maximum and average speed. To compare: the Ecotrain Study estimated a travel time of 1:11 hours for their F-200 scenario (0:57 for E-300) and that still required a level of infrastructure works which escalated per-km capital costs to several times what we've ever seen mentioned for HFR...
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Any idea what it would take to get Ottawa-Montreal down to 1:15 hrs?

I would think there's return in increasing speed here. Benefits Toronto-Montreal travelers while also vastly boosting the commutability of Ottawa-Montreal.

I had always guessed it might be something like a billion....
 
Urban Sky said:
It's the kind of travel time estimates you get from people who don't grasp the difference between maximum and average speed. To compare: the Ecotrain Study estimated a travel time of 1:11 hours for their F-200 scenario (0:57 for E-300) and that still required a level of infrastructure works which escalated per-km capital costs to several times what we've ever seen mentioned for HFR...
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I think we need to walk before we can run. Even with this investment 80% of the corridor trains will still have on time issues. So it's a good start but more needs to be done to increase frequency and reduce travel times. But also make it more convenient and be able to travel at times to make it more attractive to take the train.
Hopefully service will get back to normal soon allowing us to use the train more.
 
nfitz said:
298 km through Alexandria, compared to 204 km through Cornwall ... Cornwall is going to be much faster. Historically they've done it in 105 minutes.
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Historically yes, but right now they don't. My point is about directing HFR investment to the Montreal-Ottawa-Peterborough-Toronto corridor and how by speeding up Montreal-Ottawa-Smith Falls they could immediately have trains that go Montreal to Toronto pass through Ottawa with no change in schedule thereby increasing the frequency in the corridor without negatively impacting the timetables that exist today.

nfitz said:
How - historically it's nearly 20 minutes just to get to Dorval (35 minutes currently). So 40 minutes to go go 168 km - including the stop in Ottawa?
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Serve Dorval on non-express trains, separate the VIA tracks from the CN tracks by shifting CN slightly south and diving under the St Laurent sub junction. Hopefully there are investments that could be made to allow the train to average a speed higher than 60km/h from Centrale to Dorval but the key is not stopping and improving line speed. Going 187km at an average speed of 170km/h gets you to Ottawa in about 66min. If it was via a reinstated Vankleek Hill route the distance is 175km and has less sharp curves, but it would likely be more valuable to smooth out the curves on the existing route. Stop for 20min in Ottawa. Travel to Smith Falls in 24min (66km at 170km/h), to Brockville in 23min (45km at 120km/h) . That is a total 66+20+24+23=133min (2h13). Currently this takes 2 hours direct so it is within reach to almost make a detour to Ottawa today with tracks designed for 200km/h on a absolutely non-direct route. The fact that today VIA trains from Montreal to Brockville covers the 204km in 1h59 (average 102km/h), and Montreal-Ottawa-Brockville is 298km and the speed of the train could be more than 50% faster on average means the detour need not take much more time.

However, the real point is that the HFR investment can be made in the Smith Falls to Montreal corridor and make an immediate impact. It is a route key to any solution being proposed, it currently sees service, and getting a train to its destination faster frees it for a return trip back.
 
As usual just a little press release with no actual details. Have we ever seen something somewhat substantial on this project released publicly?
 
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