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VIA Rail

Quick reminder that if we agree that all VIA/HFR/HSR services would serve Union Station as their sole downtown Toronto terminal for any foreseeable future, then discussing any potential future use Summerhill Station (especially by GO/OnXpress) is off-topic in this thread…
 
Woodbridge_Heights said:
Blasphemy!
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Yeah, I also don’t think that highlighting the fact that cars and trains may compete for the same scarce resources is a promising strategy to gather public support for intercity passenger rail, but there are also many practical reasons why rail is usally a very poor fit for Highway medians, unless the rail line and Highway get planned at the same time:

pedestrianobservations.com

Putting Rail Lines in Highway Medians

North Americans are in love with trains that go in highway medians. A large fraction of urban rail construction since World War Two, both light rail and full metro, has used highway medians as chea…
pedestrianobservations.com pedestrianobservations.com
 
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Ward8 said:
-If reasonably priced ~3hr HSR existed I would have also taken those 3 trips, but would have added 3-5 extra trips to Montreal. I would likely add more trips to other destinations due to the speed advantage over cars.
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What is your definition of reasonably priced? I would suspect that an HSR ticket would be about double what a VIA ticket costs today. For those who currently fly between Toronto-Ottawa/Montreal, HSR will be an attractive option, but for those who drive, it will likely be too expensive.
 
Urban Sky said:
Yeah, I also don’t think that highlighting the fact that cars and trains may compete for the same scarce resources is a promising strategy to gather public support for intercity passenger rail, but there are also many practical reasons why rail is usally a very poor fit for Highway medians, unless the rail line and Highway get planned at the same time:

pedestrianobservations.com

Putting Rail Lines in Highway Medians

North Americans are in love with trains that go in highway medians. A large fraction of urban rail construction since World War Two, both light rail and full metro, has used highway medians as chea…
pedestrianobservations.com pedestrianobservations.com
Click to expand...
Ya, different geometries aside, with a lane being (apologies for old school units) 12' wide and a typical rail car about 10', I'm sure both TC and the MTO would be thrilled with the safety margins. The fact that the NYCC is about 2km and the Pearson terminals about 3km away from the 401 might come into play.
 
lenaitch said:
Ya, different geometries aside, with a lane being (apologies for old school units) 12' wide and a typical rail car about 10', I'm sure both TC and the MTO would be thrilled with the safety margins. The fact that the NYCC is about 2km and the Pearson terminals about 3km away from the 401 might come into play.
Click to expand...

In places where the yellow "centre" line is an inch or two from the Jersey barrier that separates the two sides of the highway, then this would be an issue. In most cases there is a 10 foot shoulder between the yellow line and the Jersey barrier, which would add to the safety margin. The bigger problem is convincing people that the rail service added will remove more cars from the highway than the lanes removed could handle (which it easily could, if the service frequency is high enough).

I do agree that running along a highway is bad for rail transit systems doesn't, as you end up having stations close to the highway, which limits TOD opportunities. For intercity rail, where the station spacing is much larger, using the highway ROW can work, as the stations are few and far between, and diverting the track away from the highway for those stations is easier. Also, with intercity rail, people are less likely to live within waling distance of the station, so TOD is less of a thing with it, and the stations are more reliant on good transit service along with decent parking.
 
4 busses a day...

I was at the open house for the Northlander today in North Bay. I asked them about expanding service outside of the Northlander route along other ROW not owned by the province and the existing 4 buses between Toronto and North Bay is the minimum they need to see to justify rail.

If Via were to ever expands beyond what they have now, my guess is it would be a similar metric.
 
Unlike Ontario Northland, VIA Rail does not operate any buses. What routes VIA serves (i.e., by rail) is soley derived from its mandate and there is absolutely no link between how many buses happen to operate along a given corridor and whether or not VIA will start running trains along that same corridor…

If I may now volunteer a suggestion for a more appropriate place to continue this fascinating discussion: https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threa...ide-the-quebec-windsor-corridor.32058/page-10
 
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