VIA Rail

[reaperexpress]

Presumably FECI made sure contracts were in place to ensure appropriate contracts were in place to ensure Brightline’s priority when FECR was sold. Something it appears as if the Canadian government didn’t ensure when they sold CN (or asked CP if they could take over their passenger rail services).

I suspect you're right and they made sure to secure agreements before the companies separated.

It would definitely be a much bigger challenge with CN which has been separate from the government for decades already, but it does at least demonstrate that it is theoretically possible for a freight railway and a passenger train operating company to come to a mutually beneficial agreement if they can somehow be convinced to think collaboratively.

Was it billions? I’m only aware of the one project since the privatization of CN, to triple track a small portion of the Kingston Sub, which has allowed an historic number of trains between Toronto and Ottawa (the “glory days” only had a couple trains a day).

That project was a billion dollars on its own, and from what I've heard, Via or the Feds pay CN to maintain the Kingston Subdivision at a 95mph standard rather than the lower speeds they'd design for if left to their own devices. I figure that 40 years of those payments is not a small sum.

 

[yrt+viva=1system]

Proposal deadline looms for high frequency rail bidders - Daily Commercial News

At close to 1,000 kilometres it’s the world’s largest train project, and in just a few months Canadians will begin to receive answers to some of the basic questions associated with the massive federal high-frequency rail project that will serve the Toront

canada.constructconnect.com

There has been no timetable established for commissioning of the trains, nor a budget, given that there is still so much be determined, Imbleau and Hampshire said. Hampshire said the best guess he could offer was that passengers would be riding HSR sometime in the 2030s.

“Can passenger railways be profitable? Yes, they can,” said Hampshire, citing examples. “We’ve got a project objective that the revenues must cover the operating costs, and preferably the long-run renewals costs.”

 

[micheal_can]

If it can be signed before the next election, it may have a chance of happening. We have up to 14 months for that to happen.

 

[kEiThZ]

They all do that. Chretien and the "Cadillac helicopters'; Ford and green energy projects, basic income pilot.

They all do that for 1-2 policies. This whole "burn it all down" routine is a new trend on the right that has taken off post-Trump. Expecting these guys to act just like Harper is naive at best.

Their ideology aside, there's simply no real political cost at all to cancelling. Would they even lose a single seat specifically because of cancelling HFR?

 

[nfitz]

Cancelling HFR is hardly a burn-it-all down policy (and no, I don't think there'd be any kickback).

Nothing new here. In 1984, when Mulroney took over, they killed the Liberals HSR plans. Provincially when Ford took over, he killed the Liberals HSR to London plans. When Harris took over, he killed Rae's TTC subway plans. When the NDP took over in 1990, they reversed the GO Transit expansion that had been done under Peterson (ironically to be later rolled back by Harris).

And it's not just partisan. When Premier Miller took over from Davis in 1984 - both Conservatives, first thing he did was kill Davis's GO's subway-like ALRT plan from Oshawa to Oakville. When Paul Martin took over from Jean Chretien, he quickly killed VIAFast, which would have reduced the Montreal to Toronto rail time to 3.5 hour via Ottawa (Toronto to Ottawa in 135 minutes), along with some new alignments from Kingston to Ottawa.

The burn-it-all done is a more recent twist - though one we haven't seen as much of in Canada - yet.

 

[Urban Sky]

Cancelling HFR is hardly a burn-it-all down policy (and no, I don't think there'd be any kickback).

Nothing new here. In 1984, when Mulroney took over, they killed the Liberals HSR plans. Provincially when Ford took over, he killed the Liberals HSR to London plans. When Harris took over, he killed Rae's TTC subway plans. When the NDP took over in 1990, they reversed the GO Transit expansion that had been done under Peterson (ironically to be later rolled back by Harris).

And it's not just partisan. When Premier Miller took over from Davis in 1984 - both Conservatives, first thing he did was kill Davis's GO's subway-like ALRT plan from Oshawa to Oakville. When Paul Martin took over from Jean Chretien, he quickly killed VIAFast, which would have reduced the Montreal to Toronto rail time to 3.5 hour via Ottawa (Toronto to Ottawa in 135 minutes), along with some new alignments from Kingston to Ottawa.

The burn-it-all done is a more recent twist - though one we haven't seen as much of in Canada - yet.

All the examples you cite would have involved massive financial commitments by the taxpayers, cancelling them was thus consistent with fiscal conservatism (and at least in the case of Wynne’s HSR “proposal”, there never was any sincerity of the outgoing government to actually follow through). If the business case of HxR is as good as most of us here seem to believe, then at least the HFR variant should be possible to build with minimal taxpayer money, thus removing most of the motivation for a conservative government to kill it…

 

[kEiThZ]

All the examples you cite would have involved massive financial commitments by the taxpayers, cancelling them was thus consistent with fiscal conservatism (and at least in the case of Wynne’s HSR “proposal”, there never was any sincerity of the outgoing government to actually follow through). If the business case of HxR is as good as most of us here seem to believe, then at least the HFR variant should be possible to build with minimal taxpayer money, thus removing most of the motivation for a conservative government to kill it…

You are assuming they care more about the fiscal impact than retribution. And yet, look at the campaign on the carbon tax which doesn't cost the federal government much and is not much of a net cost to the taxpayer overall. They will undo it because they are culturally allergic to action on climate change and because it's another low cost Trudeau policy they can reverse. Bonus. They can talk about how this plan was meant only for city dwellers and how they will serve all Canadians or whatever other cynical message they come up with.

We'll see what they do. But right now the best case scenario is that they allow the co-development phase to proceed. Beyond that? All bets are off. They can simply shelve the report. They can refuse to provide even a dollar of public financing (even if loans). They can give a study contract to one of the many Hyperloop grifters like the Government of Alberta did.

 

[Urban Sky]

You are assuming they care more about the fiscal impact than retribution. And yet, look at the campaign on the carbon tax which doesn't cost the federal government much and is not much of a net cost to the taxpayer overall. They will undo it because they are culturally allergic to action on climate change and because it's another low cost Trudeau policy they can reverse. Bonus. They can talk about how this plan was meant only for city dwellers and how they will serve all Canadians or whatever other cynical message they come up with.

Both, in the case of Wynne’s HSR election stunt and the Carbon Tax now, these policies were/are highly controversial amongst the Conservative’s core constituents and the Conservative’s campaign was/is very transparent about their intentions post-election-victory. Has PP publicly said anything critical about VIA (or HxR) since 2012, when VIA’s fiscal credibility was orders of magnitudes worse than today?

 

[smallspy]

Okay... but what does that have to do with this discussion? Nobody here is claiming that Brightline was built without government expenditure.

We are debating whether it is possible for a passenger train operating company to make an arrangement with a freight railway that enables them to reliably operate over their tracks.

My point was made as there are quite a few people who seem to continually hold up Brightline as some sort of panacea to what ills VIA. That it can be done by the private sector there, so it can be done here too.

I'm simply pointing out that Brightline is not nearly as "private" as they think.

Dan

 

[Urban Sky]

Are those people in the room with us now?

I believe you both agree that the Brightline model depended on very specific and extraordinary circumstances which are simply not realistically reproduceable anywhere on this side of the border. Similarly, I don’t think that the nuances between your positions warrant getting personal here…

 

[ARG1]

I was showing it as a second place as we have little going on.

If there is a city that's in "second place", that would be Vancouver. 2 Skytrain extensions on the books, with plenty of other projects being developed with a proper long term vision. The same could be arguably said about smaller cities like the 2 Albertan Cities.

 

[ARG1]

I have argued this on another thread but this is why the federal government is completely unfit to manage passenger rail expansion. I'm personally of the opinion that Metrolinx should either develop an intercity transport brand, or expand GO to take over all intra-Ontario corridor routes from VIA.

Nothing will ever get done if we have a federal government whose priorities swing violently from election cycle to election cycle developing our infrastructure. It's highly unlikely HFR will survive the coming CPC supermajority, particularly when viewing PP's past comments on passenger rail, and when considering that his government will beholden to the interests of western and rural voters who cannot comprehend that a rising tide lifts all boats.

You say that, meanwhile Alberta elected a hyper conservative premier, who also committed to developing and building a massive intercity network, with an HSR-lite line connecting Calgary to Edmonton. I feel like there are too many people in this country who look at conservatives, and just duct tape US republicans on their face without actually looking at their proposals and plans.

If it can be signed before the next election, it may have a chance of happening. We have up to 14 months for that to happen.

Like guys, literally in the last convention the party passed a motion to commit to funding HSR in this country:

From: https://cpcassets.conservative.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/23175001/990863517f7a575.pdf

Can we stop dooming and glooming for a second?

Via HFR is being built as a P3, that means not only is it not being fully funded by the public sector, but it has a SIGNIFICANT amount of private sector money backing the project, companies (the ones that the CPC as a party wants to be friendly towards) that would be really mad if all of the time and money they had spent developing these proposals go down the drain. In other words, the likelihood that the CPC will fully pull the plug on this project is very low.

 

[nfitz]

Like guys, literally in the last convention the party passed a motion to commit to funding HSR in this country:
View attachment 583294

Which I'd think doesn't bode well for HFR, unless the selected proposal is basically designed for HSR where possible.

... if all of the time and money they had spent developing these proposals go down the drain. In other words, the likelihood that the CPC will fully pull the plug on this project is very low.

Two-thirds of them are having it go down the drain. There was some compensation for proposals though.

 

[micheal_can]

Like guys, literally in the last convention the party passed a motion to commit to funding HSR in this country:
View attachment 583294

From: https://cpcassets.conservative.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/23175001/990863517f7a575.pdf

Can we stop dooming and glooming for a second?

Via HFR is being built as a P3, that means not only is it not being fully funded by the public sector, but it has a SIGNIFICANT amount of private sector money backing the project, companies (the ones that the CPC as a party wants to be friendly towards) that would be really mad if all of the time and money they had spent developing these proposals go down the drain. In other words, the likelihood that the CPC will fully pull the plug on this project is very low.

The doom and gloom is because I have learned what the CPC has done and if it does the same or worse, then it is realistic and not doom and gloom. I want to be proven wrong. I await that to happen.

 

[Urban Sky]

Which I'd think doesn't bode well for HFR, unless the selected proposal is basically designed for HSR where possible.

That’s why they asked each proponent for two different alignments (one for HFR and one for HSR): For those segments which overlap, you already build HSR-ready (so that you can later upgrade to HSR at minimal total cost) and the rest you build as cheap as possible (because it would eventually be bypassed when the upgrade to HSR comes.

Two-thirds of them are having it go down the drain. There was some compensation for proposals though.

HFR-TGF obtains the full rights to all proposals, which will allow them to mix-and-match the best elements and ideas from the 6 proposals (3xHFR and 3xHSR).

Honestly, I can’t think of how HFR-TGF could have made this procurement even more PP-proofed…