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VIA Rail

gibsonm said:
Running more EV’s, using more polluting lithium batteries, is now the answer to fixing rail in the busiest corridor of the country? This incremental approach doesn’t add up to much if train trips are still going to take well over 4 hours between Toronto and Montreal. It’s a weak plan. I’ll continue to drive.
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Climate change is something that we all bear responsibility for and play a role in addressing. Government decisions are a big part, but we can't just sit back and expect the government to do everything for us. If you're refusing to make any changes to your behaviour even when alternatives are available just because the alternatives aren't sufficiently flawless, it isn't just the government with a weak plan.
 
Nouvellecosse said:
Climate change is something that we all bear responsibility for and play a role in addressing. Government decisions are a big part, but we can't just sit back and expect the government to do everything for us. If you're refusing to make any changes to your behaviour even when alternatives are available just because the alternatives aren't sufficiently flawless, it isn't just the government with a weak plan.
Click to expand...
I don’t accept your assumptions or the government’s about climate change. I’m simply stating that the government will have a harder time reaching its climate goals without a viable rail system. Yes HFR is helpful, but our trains are woefully slow and dated. Bypasses and straightening should help. Getting off the freight corridors should help, but even though going through Peterborough and accessing disused stretches of line will help, you’re still using slow trains that will continue to slow down too often to reach top speeds for very long. If the most we can hope to reduce travel time between Toronto and Montreal in 10 years is 30 minutes, then no, this is not a great plan. Put in the billions and do it right. Make people actually consider trains instead of planes or autos. This plan doesn’t go far enough fast enough.
 
innsertnamehere said:
I understand why it was added - the one weak point of the original HFR plan was always Toronto-Montreal travel times, which would be barely better than today if routed through Ottawa.
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gibsonm said:
I don’t accept your assumptions or the government’s about climate change. I’m simply stating that the government will have a harder time reaching its climate goals without a viable rail system. Yes HFR is helpful, but our trains are woefully slow and dated. Bypasses and straightening should help. Getting off the freight corridors should help, but even though going through Peterborough and accessing disused stretches of line will help, you’re still using slow trains that will continue to slow down too often to reach top speeds for very long. If the most we can hope to reduce travel time between Toronto and Montreal in 10 years is 30 minutes, then no, this is not a great plan. Put in the billions and do it right. Make people actually consider trains instead of planes or autos. This plan doesn’t go far enough fast enough.
Click to expand...
Just to put things into perspective:

Toronto is the largest metropolitan center in Canada (5.9 million in 2016) and Montreal the second-largest (4.1 million), whereas Berlin is the largest city in (and capital of) Germany (3.5 million in 2015) and Munich is its third-largest city (1.5 million).

When measuring a straight line (euclidean distance - or "as the crow flies"), Toronto's Union Station and Montreal's Gare Centrale are 504.5 km apart, whereas the respective main stations (Hauptbahnhof in German) of Berlin and Munich are 504.2 km apart.

In 1977, when VIA took over the passenger rail services of CN and CP, the fastest scheduled train between Toronto and Montreal was 4:30h, whereas between Berlin and Munich it was ... *drumroll* ... 8:45h (yes, almost twice as much!).

In 1989, when the Berlin wall fell, it was still 4:30h between Toronto and Montreal, but even 9:43h (i.e. more than twice as much!) between Berlin and Munich.

In 1992, when the collapsed GDR had been absorbed by the Federal Republic of Germany, the fastest travel time between Toronto and Montreal had fallen to 3:59h and (thanks to some urgent repairs on the dramatically under-maintained rail network in the former GDR) to 8:47h between Berlin and Munich.

In 2006, the fastest travel time between Toronto and Montreal increased to 4:15h, whereas it decreased to 5:49h between Berlin and Munich (thanks to the opening of the North-South mainline with its tunnel underneath Berlin - thus avoiding the detour via Berlin-Schönefeld Airport - and of various High Speed Lines just in time for the FIFA World Cup 2006, which upgraded speeds on 77.4 km to 300 km/h and on another 194.4 km to 200 km/h).

Finally, in December 2017, the fastest travel time between Toronto and Montreal increased further to 4:49h and was overtaken (for the first time!) by Berlin-Munich, which decreased to 3:58h, thanks to the opening of the final (but most crucial) piece of the Berlin-Nuremberg HSR axis: the 107 km long HSL Erfurt-Ebensfeld.

This means that Germany had to first invest a total of $22.7 billion in 2021 dollars (€3.6 billion by 2006 for Nuremberg-Munich and €10 billion by 2017 for Berlin-Nuremberg) to upgrade 73% of the route to at least 200 km/h and 40% even to 300 km/h, until they finally beat (by only a heartbeat!) what Toronto-Montreal had achieved for a few days during the ill-fated first passenger service trials of the Turbo Train in 1968/69 and then in regular revenue service with the LRC trains between October 1992 and May 1999 and again between May 2000 and May 2005.

So, why did Germany have to invest so much money to match the travel time which Canada achieved (over virtually the same - euclidean - distance!) almost exactly 50 years before? It's because the Kingston Subdivision is so incredibly direct: 539 km length between two points 504.5 km apart equals a detour of just 7% compared to the straight line, whereas the fastest route between Berlin and Munich (via Halle-Erfurt-Nuremberg-Ingolstadt) is still 622.0 km long, which equals a detour of 23% (compared to the straight line of 504.2 km) and is in fact only 11 km shorter than the 633 km which #51 covers between Montreal and Toronto as the only remaining M-O-T train:

1625915726183.png

Compiled from: timetable data obtained from official VIA schedules and the Fernbahn.de timetable database, as well as infrastructure data obtained from DB Netze.
Notes: above break down of speed limits refers to the design speed of the respective segments (a bit like Canada's track classes impose certain speed limits), while ignoring any more local speed limits (e.g. for tight curves). Also, the 80.8 km of 200 km/h infrastructure shown for the years 1977-2005 opened between Donauwörth, Augsburg and Munich between 1965 and 1977; however, equipment capable of reaching at least 200 km/h rather than just 140-160 km/h only seems to have been used from 1994 onwards. Finally, the fastest travel time has been found between München Hauptbahnhof and either Berlin Zoologischer Garten (for years 1977-1991 and 1993), Berlin Ostbahnhof (for years 1992 and 1994-2005, confusingly called "Hauptbahnhof" between 1987 and 1998) and the new Berlin Hauptbahnhof (for all years since its opening in 2006).

***

Why do I write all of this? Because the tragic of Canada's passenger rail sector is that whereas Germany continuously improved the travel time between Berlin and Munich (less than 9 hours by 1992, less than 8 by 1994, 7 by 2000, 6 by 2006 and less than 4 by 2018), we are paralyzed in this country, because at some point, the track was cleared from all other passenger and freight trains, so that one measly train per day (and direction) could achieve the travel time of 3:59h (or at least on paper, as more than the absolute minimum in track switches would make this travel time infeasible).

Therefore, no, the biggest liability of HFR (or any attempt to fix the Corridor at a price tag which doesn't instantly kill the project) is not the targeted travel time between Toronto and Montreal (even today's 4:49h is almost an hour faster than what was ever achieved between Berlin and Munich before the 108 km long and 300 km/h fast HSL Erfurt-Ebensfeld opened in December 2017), it's the historical coincidence that that distance has at some point been covered at just under 4 hours.

In other words: we can't have faster train service now because we once had even faster train service (even if it was just one train per day). If HFR fails and we'll still have just a pathetic 6 trains per day between this country's two largest cities in 10 and 15 years' time, then it will be mostly because of that 3:59h. I'm afraid that we will never achieve a service standard which is remotely comparable with what similar corridors in Europe receive, unless we stop compulsively talking about that stupid figure. It doesn't have the slightest effect on the benefits which any improvement to the current passenger rail services would bring...
 
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Urban Sky said:
In other words: we can't have faster train service now because we once had even faster train service (even if it was just one train per day). If HFR fails and we'll still have just a pathetic 6 trains per day between this country's two largest cities in 10 and 15 years' time, then it will be mostly because of that 3:59h. I'm afraid that we will never achieve a service standard which is remotely comparable with what similar corridors in Europe receive, unless we stop compulsively talking about that stupid figure. It doesn't have the slightest effect on the benefits which any improvement to the current passenger rail services would bring...
Click to expand...

You make an interesting comparison, and I take your point about retaining perspective… but I think you are sweeping a bunch of Canadian business history under the carpet.

That 3:59 was not happenstance or a temporary windfall. It was a designed standard that was meant to be maintained, and reflected planned investment by a Crown corporation not only in trainsets but also in track and stations and signalling.. It was also part of a service plan that included 4:59 Rapidos and local trains. It waas awfully popular…VIA’s almost hourly 3-car-train service has not really improved modal share over those less frequent 15-car Rapidos of past years. The value of speed (real or perceived) as a strategic lever is clear.

What has changed is that we no longer manage infrastructure by empowering Crown corporations to spend such sums practically invisibly. The CN of the 1960’’s was typical of many national institutions (Bell, Air Canada, Quebec and Ontario Hydro, and even ONTC come to mind) which were entrusted with a loose mandate to pursue social goals but often ran huge deficits in the process. The 3:59 was such an investment - not driven by formal public policy, but the product of a loose self imposed social contract, and recognised by citizens of the day as something bought and paid for.

More recently, CN was shifted to a private sector model (resolving the inequity of a private business bound by the rules of profit loss competing with a fatter crown corporation that could pass its deficits back to Ottawa). One could argue that in the process of absolving CN of its social obligations , the 3:59 standard was redacted.

Certainly, no one has directed CN to make the investment required to retain 3:59. As freight trains have changed, the capability to fit 3:59 into the mix has been lost. And in asking CN to add as many VIA trains as now run, CN is quite justified in seeking a tradeoff between frequency and speed. Had the standard been enforced, much more taxpayer money would have been spent… and perhaps it would have become obvious much sooner that freight and passenger each needed their own tracks.

So yeah, in my senior’s view, I do feel cheated . And I find it disappointing that no one either in Ottawa or at VIA remember or cares. ( Meaning no disrespect, I sense you reflect VIA’s general indifference towards travel time....which I get in the sense that VIA can do little to change the status quo....but still....).

”Shrink to greatness” is always a suspect business strategy.

- Paul
 
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crs1026 said:
You make an interesting comparison, and I take your point about retaining perspective… but I think you are sweeping a bunch of Canadian business history under the carpet.

That 3:59 was not happenstance or a temporary windfall. It was a designed standard that was meant to be maintained, and reflected planned investment by a Crown corporation not only in trainsets but also in track and stations and signalling.. It was also part of a service plan that included 4:59 Rapidos and local trains. It waas awfully popular…VIA’s almost hourly 3-car-train service has not really improved modal share over those less frequent 15-car Rapidos of past years. The value of speed (real or perceived) as a strategic lever is clear.

What has changed is that we no longer manage infrastructure by empowering Crown corporations to spend such sums practically invisibly. The CN of the 1960’’s was typical of many national institutions (Bell, Air Canada, Quebec and Ontario Hydro, and even ONTC come to mind) which were entrusted with a loose mandate to pursue social goals but often ran huge deficits in the process. The 3:59 was such an investment - not driven by formal public policy, but the product of a loose self imposed social contract, and recognised by citizens of the day as something bought and paid for.

More recently, CN was shifted to a private sector model (resolving the inequity of a private business bound by the rules of profit loss competing with a fatter crown corporation that could pass its deficits back to Ottawa). One could argue that in the process of absolving CN of its social obligations , the 3:59 standard was redacted.

Certainly, no one has directed CN to make the investment required to retain 3:59. As freight trains have changed, the capability to fit 3:59 into the mix has been lost. And in asking CN to add as many VIA trains as now run, CN is quite justified in seeking a tradeoff between frequency and speed. Had the standard been enforced, much more taxpayer money would have been spent… and perhaps it would have become obvious much sooner that freight and passenger each needed their own tracks.

So yeah, in my senior’s view, I do feel cheated . And I find it disappointing that no one either in Ottawa or at VIA remember or cares. ( Meaning no disrespect, I sense you reflect VIA’s general indifference towards travel time....which I get in the sense that VIA can do little to change the status quo....but still....).

”Shrink to greatness” is always a suspect business strategy.

- Paul
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You folks very much seem to be talking at cross purposes here. Nothing of what you say seems to be inconsistent. The travelling public and the railfans read about trips taking under 4 hours and lament current standards or even even any proposed upgrades as being totally inadequate and likely to be failures. At the same time, there is a failure to recall the tremendous costs incurred in pursuit of the high engineering standards required of those original goals, as well as the very different economic context of Canada in the 1960s. It seems these can both be true.

The reliability and frequency, from what I can tell, will be the clinchers for HFR being a success, not the speed. I know plenty of non-driving people my age who stopped taking Via after one or another trip with disastrous delays, and I think that anecdotal experience probably extends to a very large number of people. The number of people getting driver's licenses is gradually decreasing. Covid and working from home will slow and maybe temporarily reverse that, but many in my generation are not particularly interested in (or able to) to pursue the car centric mobility that everyone aspired to in the 1960s. I'm also from the city in BC that at one time had the highest rate of per capita car ownership in the country, by the way, so I'm not speaking as born and bred urbanite.
 
gibsonm said:
I don’t accept your assumptions or the government’s about climate change. I’m simply stating that the government will have a harder time reaching its climate goals without a viable rail system. Yes HFR is helpful, but our trains are woefully slow and dated. Bypasses and straightening should help. Getting off the freight corridors should help, but even though going through Peterborough and accessing disused stretches of line will help, you’re still using slow trains that will continue to slow down too often to reach top speeds for very long. If the most we can hope to reduce travel time between Toronto and Montreal in 10 years is 30 minutes, then no, this is not a great plan. Put in the billions and do it right. Make people actually consider trains instead of planes or autos. This plan doesn’t go far enough fast enough.
Click to expand...
I don't have an issue with your criticism of the proposal (or criticism of the proposal in general) as we're all entitled to our own opinions. I just get frustrated when I encounter people who, despite the gravity of the challenge we face, seem to be unwilling to make any concessions or put forth any personal effort whatsoever toward solving it. But I realize I should avoid sounding judgemental as that doesn't tend to be productive and it isn't fair on an individual level without knowing a person's individual circumstances.

In terms of the overall proposal, the vast majority of rail passenger kms in Europe are provided by non HSR, so I think it's pretty clear that high rail usage can be achieved under the right circumstances by providing good service at conventional speeds. Good service can be measured in a variety of ways and should include travel time, yes, but also frequency, reliability, price, comfort, etc. I think the crux of it is that it isn't a practical strategy for a government wishing to reduce carbon emissions to stick solely to the "carrots" approach by spending obscene amounts of cash on individual big ticket projects in an attempt to lure every carbon indifferent motorist and air passenger onto trains as funds need to be spread across the full domain of society. There needs to be a balance of carrots and sticks which both offers rail as a reasonable (though not necessarily bedazzled) alternative, while imposing disincentives such as carbon taxes, road tolls, and ticket surcharges on competing modes. I don't support sticks without carrots (pushing people off polluting modes without offering an alternative) but I also reject carrots without sticks because it's just not that effective.

And let's not forgot that the HFR project isn't just about emissions reduction. I'd argue that a major priority should simply be providing a better passenger experience to VIA's existing customer base. As several people have mentioned, offering increased reliability and additional scheduling flexibility are both big improvements regardless of any reduction in journey time or lack thereof.
 
The first Shinkansen series, series 0, could only go 210 km/h (only 10 km/h faster that the Siemens Charger + Venture trainset VIA is getting). They built the tracks it ran on to be passenger only because freight was slowing things down. Today that same line runs at 285 km/h. It isn't the fastest of the JR lines but it is more than adequate.

It's my hope and belief that the operating speed and times at opening are only the beginning because when they own the infrastructure they have the ability to improve it. If they can make the trips faster than the alternatives and convenient for timings and frequency then the ridership would be enough to politically sell future improvements. Today there is nothing to incrementally improve because VIA doesn't own most of the track it runs on.
 
As it is right now it almost takes the same amount of time to fly from Toronto to Ottawa or Montreal if you consider the time it takes to travel to the airport and wait, and then from the airport to downtown.

Especially in bad weather. And this is only assuming that the train is on time.

If you can improve the speed and ensure ontime departure and arrival then you can compete with flying.

Driving on the other hand is only going get worse.
 
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