VIA Rail

[crs1026]

If it were done, my guess is that there would be new legislation to ensure that it can be successful without seeing the rail carriers charge an exorbitant amount for access. We could even see the rail carriers be part of the consortium that runs it. Who wouldn't want free government money, especially to use their own stuff?

One needs to differentiate between capital investment and operating subsidy. Capital investment is the big ticket part of the public investment in passenger rail, not operating subsidies.

So far, we have a very poor model for infusing public capital into a private system. The railways do not necessarily welcome "gifts" of capital to increase their track capacity - because fundamentally a capitalist business tries to reduce its capital base relative to its revenue, not expand it. Sure, there may occasionally be a freebie or a win-win (as when ML double tracked sections of the Halton Sub, removing historic single track choke points for freight traffic) - but a private rail operator will generally figure out how to operate around current limitations rather than welcome a bigger, more capitalised infrastructure to do the same work.

The railways do not really "charge" for capital investment, it's more a matter that they convince government that the desired service can't be operated without that investment. And then government decides if it can justify making the investment, especially considering the financing costs as apply to government. That's a whole different proposition than how two businesses might agree to each raise and invest capital and share the profits. And then government waives or ignores the direct rate of return on whatever capital they pony up (the ROI is more of a calculation of general social benefit than a dividend collected each quarter). Whereas from the railways' viewpoint, the capital that government "gives" them to invest (and becomes part of the assets on their balance sheet) ought to earn the same ROI as all their other investments. How all that is worked out in compensation is what makes the (confidential) agreements between VIA and landlord railways so complicated. I find it odd that there isn't a public accounting of how much of the railways' accumulated assets are public money invested .... and what the depreciation of these is. It seems simpler to just gift the capital and brush this under the rug.

Under current rules, railways insist on control of much capital spending, as it impacts their operations..... but don't have any accountability to spend the money wisely or expeditiously. It will be interesting to see how HxR addresses this, since all of the proposals will of necessity require tenancy at some point along the line. Nobody is going to drive a new rail line into Toronto or Montreal. (Which, incidentally, government does do to build new transit and new highways...but we saw how quickly government backed away when Oxford County objected to a HSR proposal that was mostly only fictional in the first place). Much public investment in commuter, regional, and national passenger rail might flow much more easily if there were a more explicit, enforceable set of rules around this.

Reality is, we have no idea what will happen to Via in the next 5 years. We can want to believe what politicians say, or we can prepare for one of many realistic scenarios.

Which is why the most interesting discussion here is about things that the parties might realistically achieve, mostly within existing parameters and systems.... and changing the laws and regulatory system only to a degree that is publicly sellable and mutually beneficial to the parties involved. Thinking up places to run trains just to feel good about it is just a fantasy discussion. Fantasy discussions are fine, but not the core value of this forum imho.

- Paul

 

[micheal_can]

Which is why the most interesting discussion here is about things that the parties might realistically achieve, mostly within existing parameters and systems.... and changing the laws and regulatory system only to a degree that is publicly sellable and mutually beneficial to the parties involved. Thinking up places to run trains just to feel good about it is just a fantasy discussion. Fantasy discussions are fine, but not the core value of this forum imho.

- Paul

The problem is that there is a lot of speculation on what will happen after the next election. If we look at various PC and CPC governments of the past and present We see that privatization is not unrealistic. Honestly,without the HxR contract signed,who knows what will happen to Via. Hopefully it is no worse than what we have now.

 

[lenaitch]

I find it odd that there isn't a public accounting of how much of the railways' accumulated assets are public money invested

I'm not sure how realistic that would be, even considering that government accounting is largely a voodoo science. Governments 'invest' in all sorts of things, from railway infrastructure to municipal roads to libraries. If the private sector or other level of government disposes of an asset either at a loss or wild profit, how would that be reported by the 'granting' level of government.

Better to write the cheque, take the photo op, claim success, and move on.

 

[Bordercollie]

The post from a few days ago claiming that service standards had fallen in business class was still on my mind so I timed things out on my business class trip last night.

1730 priority and business pre-boarding
1745 emergency window run through and ticket scan
1748 depart Ottawa
1755 menu selection was confirmed as a Premier perk.
1805 drink cart (Fallowfield)
1855 dinner (Smiths Falls)
1920 dinner cleanup and drink cart (Brockville)
2025 drink cart
~2100 cleanup
~2200 cleanup (Oshawa)

Any time an attendant swings by for cleanup you can request another drink or item if you like. We were also given the snack mix prior to initial drink cart and theobroma chocolates post-dinner. Attendants relocated someone in the car to a different seat for whatever reason. Car was 70% full as there were two business cars (Car 1 & 2) on this trip. WiFi is much improved on the new trainsets but still dips occasionally in spots with poor reception (b/w Brockville & Smiths Falls, b/w Cobourg & Oshawa especially). Did not get up to 160kph on this trip. Arrived on-time at Toronto Union.

Departing Ottawa Tremblay Station
View attachment 594278

Smiths Falls Station
View attachment 594279

Meatball, potatoes, veggies dinner. Much better than the ginger beef I had a few weeks ago!
View attachment 594280

The sun looks softer this time of year. Nice sunset on this trip.
View attachment 594282

Which means that once all new trains are in service, schedule modifications for faster travel times are a possibility.

 

[Allandale25]

MPs call on Ottawa for clear cost estimate of proposed passenger rail project between Toronto, Quebec City

The Conservative Party says more information around costs is necessary, while the NDP criticizes the government’s decision to rely on a public-private partnership with ties to Via Rail

www.theglobeandmail.com

Article below. Committee's page with the report is here and the Committee report and supplementary reports by the opposition are here (HTML and PDF)

MPs call on Ottawa for clear cost estimate of proposed passenger rail project between Toronto, Quebec City​

Bill Curry Deputy Ottawa Bureau Chief
Ottawa
Published 1 hour ago


The House of Commons transport committee is calling on Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez to provide a clear cost breakdown of the proposed high-frequency passenger rail project between Toronto and Quebec City, including how much more it would cost to switch to a high-speed option.

The Conservative Party, which is well ahead in public opinion polls, also provided its first detailed analysis of the project, concluding in a supplementary report that more costing information is needed before the party can take a clear position.
The project would include stops in Trois-Rivières, Montreal, Ottawa and Peterborough, Ont. It would run parallel and to the north of the tracks currently used by Via Rail. The current route is primarily owned by CN Rail, which gives priority to slower freight traffic. Via Rail would continue to serve communities on that route.

Three preselected consortiums submitted private bids to the federal government earlier this year, outlining their plans to build and operate the proposed new passenger rail line. Each of the bids was required to present two options: one using traditional passenger trains and a second that includes at least some high-speed rail segments.

Ottawa is expected to announce a winner before the end of the year. The federal government has approved hundreds of millions of dollars in studies, but cabinet has not yet given the final green light to the project and its cost is unknown.
The committee report is the result of hearing from 33 witnesses over 10 meetings about the project.

Uncertainty over the cost is a major focus of the all-party committee report.

Among its 18 recommendations is a call for the Transport Minister to table a report within six months with a budget and a timetable for completing the project, including an analysis of the incremental cost between high-frequency rail and high-speed rail.

Former transport minister Omar Alghabra has previously speculated that the project could cost between $6-billion and $12-billion, but Martin Imbleau, the head of VIA HFR, the Crown corporation leading the project, told MPs last year that previous estimates “are probably not adequate anymore.” He has declined to speculate on an updated price tag.

The committee report does not take a clear position on whether the project should be fully high speed, which is more expensive because of the requirement to build bridges along the line to avoid at-grade crossings where the line intersects with roads.

Via is currently replacing its aging trains with new Siemens Venture trainsets, which can travel at a speed of up to 200 kilometres an hour – but the current class of track limits top speeds to 160 kilometres an hour.
High-speed trains in Europe can travel 300 kilometres an hour or more.

The report does call on the government to “look to countries with successful publicly operated high-speed rail systems, such as Spain, Switzerland, Austria and Germany, to inform the procurement and operations model of the HFR project.”
The committee also recommends that the project leadership work with Amtrak, the American passenger rail provider, as well as regional and provincial transportation services, to improve connections and enhance tourism.
In its supplementary report, the Conservative Party expressed concern about a lack of transparency.

“At this stage the true cost of this project is unknown, critical consultations with municipal and Indigenous governments have not taken place and decisions on routing have not yet been determined or shared with Canadians. The VIA HFR project is still in the development phase and as a result it is impossible to accurately determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that will be posed by the final project at this time,” the party said.
In a separate supplementary report, the NDP criticized the government’s decision to rely on a new public-private partnership with ties to Via Rail to build and operate the line, rather than leaving the project in the hands of Via’s existing corporate structure.

“For a project as big and costly to the Canadian taxpayer as HFR, transparency and accountability are essential to ensuring the viability of the project,” the NDP said. “But handing planning, development and operation of the project over to private corporations comes with significant risks.”

Laurent de Casanove, a spokesperson for the Transport Minister, said the project “will bring many benefits to Canadians” and added that the government is making sure taxpayers’ money is spent wisely.
“We’ll have more to share on this important initiative in due course.”

 

[roger1818]

MPs call on Ottawa for clear cost estimate of proposed passenger rail project between Toronto, Quebec City

The Conservative Party says more information around costs is necessary, while the NDP criticizes the government’s decision to rely on a public-private partnership with ties to Via Rail

www.theglobeandmail.com

Article below. Committee's page with the report is here and the Committee report and supplementary reports by the opposition are here (HTML and PDF)

The cost would be massively impacted by which bid is chosen and if it is HFR or HSR. The previously speculated cost between $6-billion and $12-billion would have been for HFR only. If HSR is selected, the cost could balloon to something near $100-billion for full HSR, depending how long the HSR segments are.

 

[Urban Sky]

The cost would be massively impacted by which bid is chosen and if it is HFR or HSR. The previously speculated cost between $6-billion and $12-billion would have been for HFR only. If HSR is selected, the cost could balloon to something near $100-billion for full HSR, depending how long the HSR segments are.

Ecotrain Study had QT300 at $15.7 billion. Increase that by twice the official CPI increase (i.e., 82.12% instead of 41.06%) and you arrive by 28.6 billion, so $30 billion might be a realistic price tag for a HSR scenario, but that obviously excludes any mitigating measures to compensate for the loss of the Mont-Royal tunnel…

 

[cplchanb]

Ecotrain Study had QT300 at $15.7 billion. Increase that by twice the official CPI increase (i.e., 82.12% instead of 41.06%) and you arrive by 28.6 billion, so $30 billion might be a realistic price tag for a HSR scenario, but that obviously excludes any mitigating measures to compensate for the loss of the Mont-Royal tunnel…

just curious, why on earth does it cost so much more to build the same or less vs overseas. Lack of project efficiency? Much higher wages? Extreme cost of materials?

IIRC in switzerland it cost them only $11B to go 35 miles through a mountain. theyre just doing relatively simple on grade trackwork with grade separations. Id bet if we were to tunnel 35 miles it would cost us 5 times as much probably for 1/2 the distance...

 

[roger1818]

Ecotrain Study had QT300 at $15.7 billion. Increase that by twice the official CPI increase (i.e., 82.12% instead of 41.06%) and you arrive by 28.6 billion, so $30 billion might be a realistic price tag for a HSR scenario, but that obviously excludes any mitigating measures to compensate for the loss of the Mont-Royal tunnel…

That estimate in the Ecotrain study seems low to me. If you assume that each grade separation costs about $500-million and there are like over 100 grade separations required for HSR, that would be over $50-billion in grade separations alone. Maybe on greenfield segments, this could be cheaper, but that adds other costs.

 

[cplchanb]

That estimate in the Ecotrain study seems low to me. If you assume that each grade separation costs about $500-million and there are like over 100 grade separations required for HSR, that would be over $50-billion in grade separations alone. Maybe on greenfield segments, this could be cheaper, but that adds other costs.

I wonder if at that point it would be more economical to just build HFR on a viaduct like all other HSR outside of NA.

 

[Urban Sky]

just curious, why on earth does it cost so much more to build the same or less vs overseas. Lack of project efficiency? Much higher wages? Extreme cost of materials?

IIRC in switzerland it cost them only $11B to go 35 miles through a mountain. theyre just doing relatively simple on grade trackwork with grade separations. Id bet if we were to tunnel 35 miles it would cost us 5 times as much probably for 1/2 the distance...

$28.6bn / 530mi = $54mn/mi
$11bn / 35mi = $314mn/mi (i.e., 5.8 times as much)

Granted, you don’t need expensive tunneling here in Canada, but you still need to mostly built an entirely new right-of-way, as the minimum radius at 320 km/h is between 5 (at an insanely ambitious equilibrium superelevation of 10 inches) and 16 km (at a more reasonable 3 inches), so this being only 6 times cheaper than tunneling in Switzerland seems plausible to me.

Anyways, you can find here a large database of cost examples which you can play around with to obtain equivalent figures from elsewhere in the world:

High Speed Rail

We are working on two high-speed rail projects that examine intercity passenger rail at different scales. First, we developed five key recommendations to speed up high-speed rail project delivery in the United States. This report proposes five concrete recommendations related to governance...

transitcosts.com

That estimate in the Ecotrain study seems low to me. If you assume that each grade separation costs about $500-million and there are like over 100 grade separations required for HSR, that would be over $50-billion in grade separations alone. Maybe on greenfield segments, this could be cheaper, but that adds other costs.

$500 million would be more than the infamous price tag for triple-tracking 70 km of the Kingston Sub ($318.5 million some 15 years ago). Even $50 million per grade separation sounds excessive (except if we are talking about full-blown four-lane highways, which tend to be already grade-separated)…

 

[crs1026]

That estimate in the Ecotrain study seems low to me. If you assume that each grade separation costs about $500-million and there are like over 100 grade separations required for HSR, that would be over $50-billion in grade separations alone. Maybe on greenfield segments, this could be cheaper, but that adds other costs.

That per separation price may be a bit high - certainly some approach that number, but that’s because they involve major highways in fairly tight and urban locations. For high end HSR, the number of separations is high because of the number of low volume minor crossings out in the countryside.

That nitpick aside, I agree that a full HSR would greatly inflate the cost of the project. So far, that desire seems strongest in Quebec which is not the greatest roi segment. That seems to be more about wanting nice things than actual need or cost-benefit.
The more vanilla project, closer to what VIA initially proposed, sure seems a lot more affordable.

- Paul

 

[Urban Sky]

That nitpick aside, I agree that a full HSR would greatly inflate the cost of the project. So far, that desire seems strongest in Quebec which is not the greatest roi segment. That seems to be more about wanting nice things than actual need or cost-benefit.
The more vanilla project, closer to what VIA initially proposed, sure seems a lot more affordable.

- Paul

Going to full HSR only makes sense where the current alignment (assuming the Havelock Sub routing) does not support even HFR speeds. With the Trois-Rivières, Alexandria, Smiths Falls and even (at least West of Tweed) Havelock Subdivisions being mostly straight, this only leaves us with the Smiths Falls-Bonarlaw segment, where I would feel inclined to build a HSR segment via Kingston to avoid the Canadian Shield and to make Kingston a transfer point between Express and Local services:


Everything else should allow acceptable speeds with very little needs for greenfield HSR segments (maybe around Peterborough?)…

 

[lenaitch]

Going to full HSR only makes sense where the current alignment (assuming the Havelock Sub routing) does not support even HFR speeds. With the Trois-Rivières, Alexandria, Smiths Falls and even (at least West of Tweed) Havelock Subdivisions being mostly straight, this only leaves us with the Smiths Falls-Bonarlaw segment, where I would feel inclined to build a HSR segment via Kingston to avoid the Canadian Shield and to make Kingston a transfer point between Express and Local services:
View attachment 597108

Everything else should allow acceptable speeds with very little needs for greenfield HSR segments (maybe around Peterborough?)…

By cutting south towards Kingston, you don't really "avoid" the Pre-Cambrian ('Canadian') Shield as much as you minimize it. The Frontenac Axis ('Frontenac Arch') extends the Shield into upstate New York, but it does narrow closer to Lake Ontario.

(best image I could find)

 

[crs1026]

Going to full HSR only makes sense where the current alignment (assuming the Havelock Sub routing) does not support even HFR speeds. With the Trois-Rivières, Alexandria, Smiths Falls and even (at least West of Tweed) Havelock Subdivisions being mostly straight, this only leaves us with the Smiths Falls-Bonarlaw segment, where I would feel inclined to build a HSR segment via Kingston to avoid the Canadian Shield and to make Kingston a transfer point between Express and Local services:
View attachment 597108

Everything else should allow acceptable speeds with very little needs for greenfield HSR segments (maybe around Peterborough?)…

Interesting idea.

It amazes me how, - after debating HxR for how many years now ? - there are still possibilities and options that come up that haven't been debated to death.

I really like this suggestion, my one comment would be: politically imposed mandate aside, I wonder what would the cost of the westernmost segment of your Toronto-Peterboro-Bonarlaw-Bellevilleish rehab and new construction scope be versus just twinning the CN line along the Lakeshore from Oshawa to Belleville, at either HFR or HSR spec, and how would travel times compare ?

And, since the lines would cross.... what would the cost comparison be to just building the Peterboro line to current freight capacity and giving it to CPKC in exchange for their Belleville Sub west of the crossing point, and upgrading that to HFR? (This is mostly a straw man, since the Peterboro line is too curvy and hilly to ever interest CPKC....but it pushes the point at how reluctant we are to ask the freight railways to vary their operation as part of the search for the best passenger infrastructure)

We are so close to finding out the expert proposals, based on expert data, so I won't go further.... it will sure be enlightening for us spectators to find out what real engineers and accountants find most attractive.

- Paul