Why is commuter/regional rail so bad in Canada?

[Electrify]

Not really sure what you are saying .....I wasn't actually "telling" anyone anything....I was asking what percentage/share of regular short/mid haul users have metropasses (anectdotally in my small sample size it is a lot) because if it his a high percentage then increasing the number of those short/mid haul users is not, as the poster I responded to suggested, going to significantly increase revenue.

Sorry, didn't mean to come off as snarky. Let me see if I can better explain myself.

When you have a rotation of passengers, it means that funds are coming in. These funds can be either in the form of cash, use of prepaid fare media (tokens, tickets, smartcards), or period passes. In terms of the latter, it is comparable to prepaid fares since you are essentially paying for your rides upfront, with the bonus perk that even rides taken afterwards will also be covered. The TTC has their passes priced very high compared to tickets and tokens, to ensure that as few extra rides are taken as possible.

The way most systems are setup is to create as many opportunities as possible to rotate passengers. While it does create the benefit of increased accessibility, it also slows the service down considerably, making it unappealing for long distance trips. Further more numerous studies show that having stops placed closer than 300m apart is simply wasting the passengers' time.

This creates a system where for longer city wide travel the TTC is simply inefficient, especially if you have access to alternative modes of transportation. Therefore we largely end up with two groups: those who take it longer distances because they have no other choice, and those who take it more locally to work and other errands, but do so with a monthly pass. There are obviously more types of riders, but one group which gets cut out are those who may take transit to work exclusively and would like to take it more often for shorter errands, but they don't want to get dinged an extra token. In the past I have fallen squarely in this group. In fact there were times where I would drop a token only to go a few blocks, simply because it is cheaper than buying a period pass.

While I don't have the numbers in front of me, the thing the creative accountants can't seem to figure out is that those people who are only taking it a short distance are costing the system far less than those who take transit from one end of the city to the other. Sure charge a monthly pass to break even after 60 rides, but how many of those extra 20 trips are of long distance compared to going to the corner store and back? Finally we need to ask ourselves what is transit's goal: if it is to make money, then give it over to the private sector. If it is a public good, then it should be about getting you to your destination as quickly and efficiently as possible, even if it requires more subsidies.

 

[diminutive]

Minibuses are uneconomical. For every minibus, you are paying driver salaries/benefits and vehicle insurance/maintenance for an entirely different fleet.

Also, Instead of one six-car train every hour or two that will get you between Kitchener and Toronto in an hour as well as points in-between, you now have 20 minibuses making point-to-point service getting stuck on the 401.

How much would such direct, transfer-less service cost? Will people pay twice the amount for it?

I think you’re underestimating the economics of minibuses. Everywhere on Earth these kinds of vehicles proliferate, even in cities with well developed mass transit networks and (there are thousands of these things in NYC, or even the company shuttles in the Bay Area).

Minibuses could serve regional travel markets we don’t even think about currently, and in ways we don’t imagine right now. For instance, using GPS and smartphones, a minibus could pick up its passengers from their homes or work, limiting access times, and drop them off at home on the way back.

You’re also assuming the train will double its current speed, since currently it takes about 2hrs.

People can be overly defensive about trains. I’m not trying to say regional rail will never, ever, make sense. My point is more that people need to take access times seriously. It’s great to imagine these rocket trains which connect far flung towns quickly but if the passenger is then faced with a daunting trip on a half-hourly bus it’s not very useful.

As a side note, the number of people riding the Ossington Bus or the ION LRT is a red herring. They serve completely different markets than regional rail.

Obviously they serve completely different markets but I don’t think it’s a red herring. Why should the government go out of its way to help a relatively small quantity of extreme-commuters when local transit systems serve far more people far more economically? Any cost-benefit calculation implicitly has to consider the number of people who benefit from something. It’s the same reason it’s silly to spend tends of billions on high speed rail in Canada huge chunks of most cities don’t even have regular bus service.

 

[diminutive]

Well of course ridership falls off once you get outside the urban area, the population falls off as well. So does highway traffic. But that didn't stop highways from being built to places like Barrie, Kitchener and Peterborough and there's still demand for travel to these places. Regional rail isn't about 12 car diesel trains running out to outlying cities in rush hour, it's about smaller trains on a schedule regular enough for people to rely on. It accommodates commuters and anyone else who needs to travel. The way GO runs trains to a city like Kitchener ignores everyone but rush hour commuters who run on a specific schedule. That severely limits potential ridership. I think you underestimate how many potential riders are people outside that group.

It's not just population, though. Ajax is half the size of Kitchener but sends 20x as many people to work in Toronto (and has 5x as many people from Toronto work in it). Obviously to a certain extent any new transit capacity will induce some demand but we're working from small numbers here.

Yes, electrification and faster, 200 km/h trains would work wonders for regional rail. It wouldn't require a huge increase in money to do, it would just require reallocating where we spend our transportation money. Last year the province spent $1.9 billion on capital highway projects in southern Ontario. Reallocating some of that to regional rail would work wonders for improving service and growing ridership. By the way, express buses have the same problems with dispersed population as trains do. Even in Waterloo, students live all over the city so an express bus from the campus wouldn't be any more convenient for students than a high speed rail line.

The more access points you have in an area, all things being equal, the lower access times will be. It's true that not all students live on campus, but surely you'd agree that having services to/from both Kitchener Stn AND UW would reduce access times for some people as compared to having only one stop? Presumably, people could also structure their trips so that they would leave after class, too.

Someone from Australia would find your arguments rather foreign and strange. They have all the limitations you're describing yet every significant population centre is connected to the rail system. The same is happening in Israel (thanks for bringing that up by the way, I had no idea that they were expanding their rail system so much. They're essentially building a modern regional/intercity rail system from scratch, and quite successfully.). Even the United States, which has sprawl that we can barely comprehend, is restoring service to towns that lost it decades ago and they're making their trains faster and more frequent. Ridership and revenues have been steadily increasing. Every obstacle we're talking about, other places are overcoming. It's really no wonder, we've been stacking the deck in favour of driving for so long that we've trained ourselves to think that nothing else is possible. That's just not the case.

The Australian regional railways are certainly a neat case. There are these ~1,000km railway networks extending from (relatively) modest urban areas like Melbourne, which is unthinkable in North America. Despite the fact the networks are so big, however, the overall passenger levels seem modest. V/Line only serves ~14million passengers per year! GO Trains serve well over 45 million passengers, on half the track. Looking more into V/Line, there's an operating subsidy of 18AUD/passenger! That would be impossible in Ontario.

Even within Melbourne, the Melbourne suburban rail service served over 220 million passengers annually. Makes the regional service seem trivial.

 

[MisterF]

It's not just population, though. Ajax is half the size of Kitchener but sends 20x as many people to work in Toronto (and has 5x as many people from Toronto work in it). Obviously to a certain extent any new transit capacity will induce some demand but we're working from small numbers here.

Ajax is a lot closer than Kitchener and it's connected to Union by a train that runs every half an hour. Of course it has more commuters. But that doesn't mean there isn't plenty of demand for better rail to Kitchener. Again you're severely underestimating the non-commuter traffic. The 401 to Kitchener is busy all day long, including hourly off-peak service from both GO and Greyhound.

The more access points you have in an area, all things being equal, the lower access times will be. It's true that not all students live on campus, but surely you'd agree that having services to/from both Kitchener Stn AND UW would reduce access times for some people as compared to having only one stop? Presumably, people could also structure their trips so that they would leave after class, too.

It might interest you to know that Greyhound and GO both have direct service to the Waterloo campus. But those services are no substitute for a 200 km/h rail line, which would be extremely accessible thanks to the Ion LRT and the new transit hub on King.

The Australian regional railways are certainly a neat case. There are these ~1,000km railway networks extending from (relatively) modest urban areas like Melbourne, which is unthinkable in North America. Despite the fact the networks are so big, however, the overall passenger levels seem modest. V/Line only serves ~14million passengers per year! GO Trains serve well over 45 million passengers, on half the track. Looking more into V/Line, there's an operating subsidy of 18AUD/passenger! That would be impossible in Ontario.

Even within Melbourne, the Melbourne suburban rail service served over 220 million passengers annually. Makes the regional service seem trivial.

Actually the Melbourne suburban trains are more like GO Transit as they cover similar areas. They provide much better mobility around the urban area and, as you've shown, better ridership. GO ridership could get into the hundreds of millions if it were as developed as the Melbourne system.

V/Line goes a lot farther from the city and isn't comparable to GO at all. Most lines are in the 250-350 km range and terminate at some pretty small towns. Our equivalent of V/Line would be trains to places like Lindsay, North Bay and Owen Sound. V/Line has more than triple the ridership of the entire VIA Rail system, all centred around one city. You might scoff at an $18 subsidy, but we spend just as much on highways. While they have regular rail service to Swan Hill, we're building a freeway to Sudbury. I'd say the rail line is a better use of resources.

 

[howl]

. . . . While they have regular rail service to Swan Hill, we're building a freeway to Sudbury. I'd say the rail line is a better use of resources.

Then Sudbury would have to build a much more robust local transit system to get people from the rail station to wherever they want to go in the region.

 

[diminutive]

Ajax is a lot closer than Kitchener and it's connected to Union by a train that runs every half an hour. Of course it has more commuters. But that doesn't mean there isn't plenty of demand for better rail to Kitchener. Again you're severely underestimating the non-commuter traffic. The 401 to Kitchener is busy all day long, including hourly off-peak service from both GO and Greyhound.

Right, Ajax is closer than Kitchener. That's the point, not that population drops off or anything. People in Kitchener (or London, or Brantford, or Welland, or...) are more or less self-selecting to not want to travel regularly to Toronto. If being able to quickly access Toronto/GTA was important to them they wouldn't live so far away, and vice versa.

Yes, undoubtedly, if we somehow doubled regional rail speeds in the region and improved frequency more people would choose to use rail travel. That's just obvious. I think if you actually looked at census numbers you'd see how rare these trips are, though. You can't simply rely on "if you build it, they will come" to ignore how thin these travel markets are to begin with.

Actually the Melbourne suburban trains are more like GO Transit as they cover similar areas. They provide much better mobility around the urban area and, as you've shown, better ridership. GO ridership could get into the hundreds of millions if it were as developed as the Melbourne system.

V/Line goes a lot farther from the city and isn't comparable to GO at all. Most lines are in the 250-350 km range and terminate at some pretty small towns. Our equivalent of V/Line would be trains to places like Lindsay, North Bay and Owen Sound. V/Line has more than triple the ridership of the entire VIA Rail system, all centred around one city. You might scoff at an $18 subsidy, but we spend just as much on highways. While they have regular rail service to Swan Hill, we're building a freeway to Sudbury. I'd say the rail line is a better use of resources.

Yes, in fairness the comparison is slightly skewed in a number of ways. Melbourne suburban trains also cover a similar market to the TTC subway.

Nonetheless, even just looking at Victoria, V/Line ridership is a very small fraction of services within the Melbourne commuter-shed.

We used to have a passenger train to North Bay and nobody took it!

I also don't think highway operating subsidies would amount to 18$/passenger... Even if they did, the proper solution is to introduce road pricing, not a new form of subsidized transit.

Then Sudbury would have to build a much more robust local transit system to get people from the rail station to wherever they want to go in the region.

Paradoxical as it sounds, improving local transit would be a better use of money even for 'regional' travellers since it would decrease access times.

 

[mpd618]

Right, Ajax is closer than Kitchener. That's the point, not that population drops off or anything. People in Kitchener (or London, or Brantford, or Welland, or...) are more or less self-selecting to not want to travel regularly to Toronto. If being able to quickly access Toronto/GTA was important to them they wouldn't live so far away, and vice versa.

Yes, undoubtedly, if we somehow doubled regional rail speeds in the region and improved frequency more people would choose to use rail travel. That's just obvious. I think if you actually looked at census numbers you'd see how rare these trips are, though. You can't simply rely on "if you build it, they will come" to ignore how thin these travel markets are to begin with.

We are talking about primarily an intercity travel market, not a daily commuter travel market. People travel from Toronto to New York for all kinds of reasons (not on a daily basis). Census numbers will tell you all about commutes, but they won't tell you about travel to visit friends, for occasional business meetings, for recreation, and so on.

That said, commuting is also a factor, in the other direction. Municipalities along the Kitchener line together with Communitech recently put together a business case for two-way GO train service to bring people from Toronto to Kitchener-Waterloo and Guelph.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

We are talking about primarily an intercity travel market, not a daily commuter travel market. People travel from Toronto to New York for all kinds of reasons (not on a daily basis). Census numbers will tell you all about commutes, but they won't tell you about travel to visit friends, for occasional business meetings, for recreation, and so on.

That said, commuting is also a factor, in the other direction. Municipalities along the Kitchener line together with Communitech recently put together a business case for two-way GO train service to bring people from Toronto to Kitchener-Waterloo and Guelph.

I originally started the thread with the intention of talking about the commuter off peak market, just to be clear.

 

[ehlow]

We are talking about primarily an intercity travel market, not a daily commuter travel market. People travel from Toronto to New York for all kinds of reasons (not on a daily basis). Census numbers will tell you all about commutes, but they won't tell you about travel to visit friends, for occasional business meetings, for recreation, and so on.

That said, commuting is also a factor, in the other direction. Municipalities along the Kitchener line together with Communitech recently put together a business case for two-way GO train service to bring people from Toronto to Kitchener-Waterloo and Guelph.

While I agree with the Communitech report, it's interesting that they keep using Silicon Valley-San Francisco as an example since my impression is that many if not most of the tech workers living in SF and commuting to some office park in the valley are taking private shuttle buses, not the public train service.

 

[mpd618]

While I agree with the Communitech report, it's interesting that they keep using Silicon Valley-San Francisco as an example since my impression is that many if not most of the tech workers living in SF and commuting to some office park in the valley are taking private shuttle buses, not the public train service.

Seems like Connecticut is a better comparison transit-wise.

 

[ehlow]

Seems like Connecticut is a better comparison transit-wise.

Agreed, the description of the Connecticut-NYC train fits the possible Toronto-KW comparison more, and it's clear why that model works better than the SF-Valley situation.

If the Waterloo LRT was built and good GO service was implemented, it would make Toronto to KW commutes much more viable or visa versa, unlike SF-Valley where the office parks are too far from the Caltrain for it to be convenient.

 

[diminutive]

We are talking about primarily an intercity travel market, not a daily commuter travel market. People travel from Toronto to New York for all kinds of reasons (not on a daily basis). Census numbers will tell you all about commutes, but they won't tell you about travel to visit friends, for occasional business meetings, for recreation, and so on.

That said, commuting is also a factor, in the other direction. Municipalities along the Kitchener line together with Communitech recently put together a business case for two-way GO train service to bring people from Toronto to Kitchener-Waterloo and Guelph.

I understand that but when you loose the daily commuter market ridership falls of a cliff. That's been my entire point, that non-commuter travel markets are usually too thin in Ontario to support most rail services.

That "business case" is extremely flimsy. Most of it reads like a promo for how innovate the KW region is and is strewn with buzzwords like "technology supercluster." Not just a cluster, a SUPERCLUSTER! When the cited evidence suggested minimal ridership, the study introduced a bunch of assumptions modelled on, guess what, commuter rail modal shares. So, implicit to this model is the assumption that this thing will function as a commuter service.

Also, in terms of their benefits matrix, their "value of time" calculations seem ridiculous. They admit the service wouldn't save any time at all for most users, but that time on the train is "productive." So they're just crediting all train travellers with 45mins of "saved" time each way, even if there are no time savings at all. I appreciate that many people prefer the travel quality of trains over automobiles, and this should be considered, but it's ludicrous to claim that time on a train is time saved. And this ends up accounting for nearly half of all total benefits!

 

[TOareaFan]

I understand that but when you loose the daily commuter market ridership falls of a cliff. That's been my entire point, that non-commuter travel markets are usually too thin in Ontario to support most rail services.

That "business case" is extremely flimsy. Most of it reads like a promo for how innovate the KW region is and is strewn with buzzwords like "technology supercluster." Not just a cluster, a SUPERCLUSTER! When the cited evidence suggested minimal ridership, the study introduced a bunch of assumptions modelled on, guess what, commuter rail modal shares. So, implicit to this model is the assumption that this thing will function as a commuter service.

the whole report reads as a very anecdotal sort of thing. "People have jobs in KW....people live in KW...People have jobs in Toronto...people live in Toronto...some don't work in the city they live in...ipso facto ergo, there will be a massive demand for rail service between KW and Toronto".

I happen to work for a company that has about 250 employees in Kitchener and around 300 in Toronto....guess what has happened...most of our employees that work in Kitchener live somewhere in the KW/Cambridge/Guelph area.......our employees in Toronto live, for the most part, in the GTA. In the fairly rare ocassion when someone changes job location between the two main offices, our experience has been that they move.

Also, in terms of their benefits matrix, their "value of time" calculations seem ridiculous. They admit the service wouldn't save any time at all for most users, but that time on the train is "productive." So they're just crediting all train travellers with 45mins of "saved" time each way, even if there are no time savings at all. I appreciate that many people prefer the travel quality of trains over automobiles, and this should be considered, but it's ludicrous to claim that time on a train is time saved. And this ends up accounting for nearly half of all total benefits!

As with anything....if you put in the right assumptions you can get the right results....in this case 45 minutes in a car is time/productivity lost.....45 minutes in a train is time/productivity gained. Next you are on a GO train.....look around...yes there are some people working.....but the (vast) majority are chatting/doing sudoko/playing games/sleeping......45 minutes commuting, it turns out, is 45 minutes commuting.....my guess, the same few who use the time on the train "productively" would be on their (bluetooth speakered) phones in the car making buisiness calls.

 

[innsertnamehere]

the majority of people on a GO train are doing something that they cannot do in a car. Sleeping, etc. I for one know that I get enough sleep on the GO train that I often sleep very little at home. Because I spend so much time every day sleeping on the GO train instead of driving, I have more time at home to do what I want and I over-all get more sleep. Its better use of your time. In a car, you can do 1 thing, driving. On transit, you can do anything that is possible while being seated. whether that means work, sleep, watching some TV, etc., they are all gains in personal or work time that vastly improve your quality of life compared to spending the same amount of time in a car staring straight ahead.

 

[mpd618]

That "business case" is extremely flimsy. Most of it reads like a promo for how innovate the KW region is and is strewn with buzzwords like "technology supercluster." Not just a cluster, a SUPERCLUSTER! When the cited evidence suggested minimal ridership, the study introduced a bunch of assumptions modelled on, guess what, commuter rail modal shares. So, implicit to this model is the assumption that this thing will function as a commuter service.

That's right. Their business case, in a nutshell, is that commuter rail from Toronto to KW will allow sufficiently more economic growth in Ontario as a whole that taxes from that growth will cover the incremental investment needed. It is an economic development argument that has a lot to do with the rapidly growing KW tech sector's difficulty bringing in enough talent.

My own claim is that there is sufficient intercity travel demand between KW and Toronto to warrant more and better rail service, not just during commuter hours.

Also, in terms of their benefits matrix, their "value of time" calculations seem ridiculous. They admit the service wouldn't save any time at all for most users, but that time on the train is "productive." So they're just crediting all train travellers with 45mins of "saved" time each way, even if there are no time savings at all. I appreciate that many people prefer the travel quality of trains over automobiles, and this should be considered, but it's ludicrous to claim that time on a train is time saved. And this ends up accounting for nearly half of all total benefits!

I've done long commutes and I've travelled by long GO train ride to Toronto. I have certainly found plenty of productive time on board the train, and consider it easily analogous to time saved.

As with anything....if you put in the right assumptions you can get the right results....in this case 45 minutes in a car is time/productivity lost.....45 minutes in a train is time/productivity gained. Next you are on a GO train.....look around...yes there are some people working.....but the (vast) majority are chatting/doing sudoko/playing games/sleeping......45 minutes commuting, it turns out, is 45 minutes commuting.....my guess, the same few who use the time on the train "productively" would be on their (bluetooth speakered) phones in the car making buisiness calls.

The KW / Communitech business case is very much about the tech sector. There is very little productive a software engineer (for example) can do while driving.