kEiThZ
Superstar
There's a distinct willingness with this group to slaughter sacred cows. Just look at how they are willing to go after the CBC. No previous politician has done that. I don't think VIA will be exempt from this instinct.
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VIA Rail
- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
There's a distinct willingness with this group to slaughter sacred cows. Just look at how they are willing to go after the CBC. No previous politician has done that. I don't think VIA will be exempt from this instinct.
kEiThZ
Superstar
This is also a conservative party whose leader says they can't commit to meeting NATO targets for defence spending because of the budget. That's for an issue that matters to many more conservatives and is in all their policy and campaign documents.
generalcanada
Senior Member
Is that true? the "private funding" is just front-loading and financing the project over the 10 year construction timeline. In a normal p3 project money gets paid in stages.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
The Conservative’s criticisms of the CBC are well documented and none of them seem to apply to private investors queuing to invest billions to modernize our intercity passenger rail networks. If you have anything beyond conspiracy theories to back up your claims, you shouldn’t have any trouble answering my previous question which was directed at you:
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micheal_can
Senior Member
This ignores the idea that only HSR was mentioned. I can see the argument get made that it will be either HSR or nothing. This is one of those times where taking their platform as the whole truth may be warranted. He said "ax the tax", so it isn't hard to expect the carbon tax to be cut. He said "defund the CBC" so we can expect the amount the government gives the cBC to be cut. If he has said that he will fund HSR, then why, if we believe the rest to be true, will he fund the HFR? What this really means is: will the TOM see HSR? I am hopeful it might happen. That would be a good thing.
ARG1
Senior Member
I recommend you actually read the last few pages of this thread, I know its difficult, but its worth actually knowing about the project we're discussing. I recommend this post by UrbanSky:
There's a reason many of us call this project 'HxR', since whether this will be HFR or HSR is not set in stone.
nfitz
Superstar
With the alignment through Peterborough and the Canadian Shield, a lot of it is going to be set in stone!
micheal_can
Senior Member
I have.
I know what we call it. AFAIK, none of us are going to be decision makers, so we can label it what we want. The question is whether the CPC will like the label used and fund it. I know some of the bidders have both HSR and HFR. The challenge is whether they get picked. The other challenge will be whether once they are decided, what is chosen after election day aligns with the CPC views. For example, if the contract is awarded to an HFR will the CPC change the contract to HSR or cancel it all together. Right now, that is speculation.
ARG1
Senior Member
"We don't like the fact that the project is called HFR, therefore we will fully restart procurement and waste money by demanding new RFPs for an HSR that will likely be identical to what was received for the HSR portion of HFR RFPs". Is that what you're implying? I don't have to explain why that's completely nuts.
Here's a more realistic scenario: The CPC comes in and rebrands the project. That's it, the end.
micheal_can
Senior Member
That is one realist scenario. Another is they cancel it and it dies till they leave office. Think that can't happen? Line 5 would like to speak to you.
Who really knows what they will do. They may be the party that ushers in a renaissance in intercity passenger rail. They may be the one who puts the final nail in the coffin. I don't think anyone here would be willing to say with certainty what will happen. A crazier thing would be if we see another government much like now where the CPC are not in charge. Then all of this conjecture goes out the window and we have HFR at worst.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
As much as I admire your patient explanations, most of us regular contributors here have already assigned a well-deserved space for @micheal_can on our respective “Ignore” lists, for various reasons you are apparenty already in the progress of discovering. However, unfortunately, that only blocks his posts, not the (parts of) comments which reply to him and we are still forced to see (while sometimes unhiding his comments to understand the context for your posts).
For the sake of our sanity, may I ask you (and anyone else) fearless enough of engaging @micheal_can, to move such discussions to either of the following threads, which mostly only exist for no other reason than distracting @micheal_can from spamming this thread and thus making any focused discussion impossible? (Unfortunately, not everyone here can tame the urge to debunk his nonsense, myself included until far too recently.)
Lack of meaningful Passenger Rail service outside the Quebec-Windsor Corridor
Google is your friend - Paul I was hoping for the actual subdivision acquisition costs. Where those pieces refer to sums expended, it is in signalling and track improvement not what consideration went CN’s way.
Ontario Northland/Northern Ontario Transportation
Where else can they expand to? Considering that part of the line is not on ONR tracks, I look where there is potential ridership. Here are my thoughts: 1) A Toronto -Sudbury line. It could even use the Mactier sub south of where the one way directional agreement with CN and CP are. 2) A SSM -...
General railway discussions
https://www.sootoday.com/local-news/agawa-canyon-tour-train-has-a-new-500-a-seat-vip-section-9166676?utm_source=Villager&utm_campaign=Content&utm_medium=Twitter Interesting. Value-added is always good. It seems the car came up from Wisconsin & Southern which is owned by Watco which bought the...
Many thanks in advance and please keep up the good posts!
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Akshitha12345
New Member
Spam
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C_Johnson_1995
Active Member
The important part of that Alberta plan is that it is PROVINCIAL. Note that VIA and the federal government didn't have anything to do with it. Sure, conservatives here do have some differences to Americans, however the federal conservatives are cut from a different cloth because they can't use rail as an appeal to populism and grievances against other provinces and the federal government. Instead, the only winning formula is to cut and devolve responsibility. That plan reinforced my belief that VIA is useless and ought to be done away with, even if most of that map should just be served with busses instead of trains.
When it comes to the party resolution in support of HSR, party convention resolutions are worth less than nothing and are ignored almost every time with few exceptions. The only thing that will matter is the party platform come the next election and the comments from the incoming prime minister do not inspire confidence.
While HFR will have significant private backing, it will still be funded in large part by government. When we are talking about spending 10s of billions of dollars on a project, there is no way a CPC government will be able to stomach it. They would sooner buy every man, woman, and child in Canada a Hummer H1 while axing the tax.
But at the end of the day, all this is just speculation. We won't know until it happens, but I think it is probably best to prepare for the worst.
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ARG1
Senior Member
My point to bring up Alberta is a counter to your point of "his government will beholden to the interests of western and rural voters who cannot comprehend that a rising tide lifts all boats". Alberta is about as western and as rural as it gets, and much of the CPC's talking points and politics are centered around that province's interests. So, when the province that closely matches the politics of the CPC elects a CONSERVATIVE premier that is highly support of rail expansion, it represents a good sign in which direction the party will look as a core principle.
This is before I bring up that the CPC needs to get some votes in Ontario and Quebec to win, voters (if you judge by Doug Ford's continued success) are highly interested in transportation and infrastructure expansion within their province. Something like continuing the support of HSR will be crucial to note lose the next election.
They're a good litmus test to understand what the core doners and political backers want. Keep in mind, these are the people that are responsible for a good chunk of the party's annual income, as well as responsible for choosing the party leader. Understanding what the party doners want is extremely crucial in predicting what the government will do, doubly so in regards to the CPC who very much operate at the whim of the doner.
C_Johnson_1995
Active Member
Again, it's provincial. You will likely never see that replicated on the federal level because as long as the premiers are handling transit populism, the federal government has no reason to touch the issue.
The Ontario PCs and the CPC are vastly different parties. They (the CPC) are going to get those votes regardless of what they do. The next election will be purely reactionary to votes to get the Liberals out. There isn't an incentive to act out a long term project with the ability to go overbudget or have any other controversy attached to it when they can score easy political points by 'axing taxes' and cutting 'wasteful Liberal follies' like what HFR is likely perceived to be.
At this point, nobody here is going to convince anyone else the other way. We can just agree to disagree because we will only see who's right next year. I'm just not sure what this party has done to inspire any level of confidence. Ultimately though, the blame lays squarely with the Liberals by not sufficiently advancing the project if it ends up being canceled.