VIA Rail

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by GoTrans

Water infrastructure is good only in the southern Canada, it is not good in the hundreds of native communities. Transit is only beginning to get to pass the adequate to the good level in most large urban centres. Roads are good to the detriment of few if any improvements to rail service, freight or passenger. My question is that do you consider rail and transit improvements vanity projects? Please define vanity projects.

Vanity projects are projects that are over scaled compared to the needed function with some sort of political objective. Sometimes rail and transit projects are vanity projects (high speed rail projects to lightly populated destinations in often fit into this category).

A preference for one transportation mode over another is not a sign of poor infrastructure, it is a choice made by governments.

Water in indigenous communities is a complicated issue, but I understand often has less to do with the infrastructure itself than with operation and maintenance of the infrastructure.

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

You think China will help us rebuild?

The lunacy of hoping that WW3 (as if there would be much left after that conflict) will somehow help us build a tunnel speaks volumes.

Hooray for the Marshall Plan to clean up nuclear fallout!

Of potential infrastructure projects that this country needs desperately, a new tunnel in Montreal is pretty low on that list.

[Floppa]

Originally Posted by thewave46

The lunacy of hoping that WW3 (as if there would be much left after that conflict) will somehow help us build a tunnel speaks volumes.

Hooray for the Marshall Plan to clean up nuclear fallout!

Of potential infrastructure projects that this country needs desperately, a new tunnel in Montreal is pretty low on that list.

And what do you say is a priority?

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by Floppa

And what do you say is a priority?

What do I say is a priority? The biggest infrastructure project this country needs are much more local than national in nature.

A program to properly fund water treatment operator positions and maintenance of water systems on reserves. (vid had a great post regarding the problems with on-reserve water treatment).

A strategy to deal with our aging population and the healthcare demands they are imposing. No - not acute care hospital beds, but long-term spaces. How do we deal with the challenges of our aging population?

Public transit infrastructure within our largest metropolitan areas where most Canadians live and work. This actually is getting some attention; we're on a public transit spending binge to make up for lost time.

Dealing with our long-term fiscal rot and debt accumulation at the provincial and federal levels. Particularly in the last couple of years.

Inflation in home prices and costs beyond the rate wages are rising.

With regards to VIA:

VIA isn't really a concern for most Canadians for day-to-day life, nor do I think a tunnel through Montreal should be a big focus at this juncture when their trains sit on sidings, going nowhere for hours.

If I've a criticism I've repeated of VIA, it's that it has no mission, no focus. It is trying to be everything to everybody with no budget, so it's nothing to anybody. Its owner has to decide what VIA wants to be. However, its owner doesn't seem to regard it with anything but disinterest. Which is bad, because it will soon require significant capital injection and government might just throw in the towel if the politics don't support that.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by GoTrans

Water infrastructure is good only in the southern Canada, it is not good in the hundreds of native communities. Transit is only beginning to get to pass the adequate to the good level in most large urban centres. Roads are good to the detriment of few if any improvements to rail service, freight or passenger. My question is that do you consider rail and transit improvements vanity projects? Please define vanity projects.

Treating water to a drinkable standard is surprisingly challenging. Not only is there the challenge of removing dissolved organic compounds and heavy metals at source, but ensuring that that water maintains that quality as it is distributed throughout the network of pipes. If you ever grew up in a house on a well, you have to apply common sense that is just slightly above what you would want to apply when visiting a developing country: you can use the water to bathe and wash dishes, but don't drink straight from the tap.

This might sound callous, but an isolated FN reserve of 300 people that's only accessible by bushplane might as well be a house on a well. You're not going to have a full time chemist living on site doing daily water checks, nor licensed technicians operating and monitoring the plant for variable conditions of water intake, nor a crew of workers who go out and install and monitor new water mains. Smaller towns and villages can do this because the county or region will send someone out to do these jobs, or there are private consulting firms that can advise on water quality and engineering that can drive up from the nearest city in a few hours.

[hipster duck]

A vanity project is dependent on cost vs. benefits.

I'd say that the tunnel under Mont Royal was underused when it was only used by the Deux-Montagnes line, but was built over 100 years ago, so all the accounting was already 'water under the bridge', so to speak.

It made complete sense to convert the existing tunnel for REM use rather than build an entirely new tunnel parallel to it. The western REM through Mont Royal will probably transport, what, 100,000 passengers a day? The current Quebec City-Montreal VIA route probably transports 500 passengers a day and even with HFR, I'd optimistically say that it could transport 2,000 passengers a day. AFAIK, HFR to Ottawa and Toronto isn't contingent on a tunnel. Given that REM seems to be the direction Montreal is going in terms of regional rail, and the Mont Royal tunnel will suffice for those purposes for the foreseeable future, you'd basically have to spend the billions of dollars blasting a second tunnel beneath Mont Royal and doing a complicated integration into Central station under Montreal's downtown office towers to serve those 2,000 VIA passengers. That's a vanity project.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

This might sound callous, but an isolated FN reserve of 300 people that's only accessible by bushplane might as well be a house on a well.

What's always been a bit confusing to me is the suggestion that a municipal style water supply is the norm or appropriate in these cases. In my experience municipal water didn't extend very far out of town. For a number of years I grew up in a house with a hand-dug well, in an old rural area that had become exurban. I was curious so I googled and found this:

Approximately 46% of Nova Scotians rely primarily on groundwater from dug or drilled wells for their private supply. Private well owners are responsible for ensuring that their wells are constructed to provincial standards and for testing their water regularly to confirm that it is free of any natural or man-made impurities.

Normally in a village or hamlet in NS everyone's on a well. There is no centralized water supply.

[Urban_Sky]

Originally Posted by thewave46

If I've a criticism I've repeated of VIA, it's that it has no mission, no focus. It is trying to be everything to everybody with no budget, so it's nothing to anybody. Its owner has to decide what VIA wants to be. However, its owner doesn't seem to regard it with anything but disinterest. Which is bad, because it will soon require significant capital injection and government might just throw in the towel if the politics don't support that.

Contrary to popular belie, VIA has a relatively clear mandate: to provide intercity transportation where it can do so on a near-commercial basis (e.g. in the Quebec-Windsor corridor, where it recovered approximately 130% of its direct costs in 2017 and 2018), to provide a transcontinental service at low cost to the taxpayer and to provide essential rail services to remote communities served by services it inherited from either CN or CP.

Given that VIA's direct revenues exceed its direct costs (thanks to its Corridor services), I fail to see how its non-corridor service obligations prevent it from growing its corridor services and the substantial increases in Corridor train mileage between 2014 and 2019 are testament of its ability to grow its services within the constraints imposed by its host railroads...

Originally Posted by hipster duck

A vanity project is dependent on cost vs. benefits.

I'd say that the tunnel under Mont Royal was underused when it was only used by the Deux-Montagnes line, but was built over 100 years ago, so all the accounting was already 'water under the bridge', so to speak.

It made complete sense to convert the existing tunnel for REM use rather than build an entirely new tunnel parallel to it. The western REM through Mont Royal will probably transport, what, 100,000 passengers a day? The current Quebec City-Montreal VIA route probably transports 500 passengers a day and even with HFR, I'd optimistically say that it could transport 2,000 passengers a day. AFAIK, HFR to Ottawa and Toronto isn't contingent on a tunnel. Given that REM seems to be the direction Montreal is going in terms of regional rail, and the Mont Royal tunnel will suffice for those purposes for the foreseeable future, you'd basically have to spend the billions of dollars blasting a second tunnel beneath Mont Royal and doing a complicated integration into Central station under Montreal's downtown office towers to serve those 2,000 VIA passengers. That's a vanity project.

The problem with REM is not that it uses the existing Mont-Royal tunnel. The problem is that it is purposely built in a way which prevents its usage by any competing service. Everyone remotely interested in this project should have grasped this by now...

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by Urban_Sky

Contrary to popular belief, VIA has a relatively clear mandate: to provide intercity transportation where it can do so on a near-commercial basis (e.g. in the Quebec-Windsor corridor, where it recovered approximately 130% of its direct costs in 2017 and 2018), to provide a transcontinental service at low cost to the taxpayer and to provide essential rail services to remote communities served by services it inherited from either CN or CP.

Given that VIA's direct revenues exceed its direct costs (thanks to its Corridor services), I fail to see how its non-corridor service obligations prevent it from growing its corridor services and the substantial increases in Corridor train mileage between 2014 and 2019 are testament of its ability to grow its services within the constraints imposed by its host railroads...

I'm not an accountant by far, but my non-expert reading of VIA's financial statements for 2019 seem to indicate revenues of $410m versus expenses of $820m. I don't have a breakdown of their individual routes, though.

I still am of the opinion that the three differing mandates (not just one) listed is simply not compatible with VIA's limited support (both financial and political) within government.

So, we're back at square one. I digress on the matter though.

Cheers!

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Floppa

This country is a joke. Whether it's Indiginous reconcilliation, addressing systemic racism, dealing with anti-vaxxer Russian trolls or building any kind of infrastructure we're really not much better than the most backwater Republican state.

I would say we are a swing state. Backwater republican areas are horrible.

Originally Posted by acottawa

Water in indigenous communities is a complicated issue, but I understand often has less to do with the infrastructure itself than with operation and maintenance of the infrastructure.

Actually, it is not. The C-17 Globemaster could fly in a skid, about the size of a minivan that can produce safe clean water. The military has many in storage from Afghanistan. It really is that simple. It would be simpler than adding a southern Canadian route on Via.

Originally Posted by thewave46

What do I say is a priority? The biggest infrastructure project this country needs are much more local than national in nature.

A program to properly fund water treatment operator positions and maintenance of water systems on reserves. (vid had a great post regarding the problems with on-reserve water treatment).

A strategy to deal with our aging population and the healthcare demands they are imposing. No - not acute care hospital beds, but long-term spaces. How do we deal with the challenges of our aging population?

Public transit infrastructure within our largest metropolitan areas where most Canadians live and work. This actually is getting some attention; we're on a public transit spending binge to make up for lost time.

Dealing with our long-term fiscal rot and debt accumulation at the provincial and federal levels. Particularly in the last couple of years.

Inflation in home prices and costs beyond the rate wages are rising.

With regards to VIA:

VIA isn't really a concern for most Canadians for day-to-day life, nor do I think a tunnel through Montreal should be a big focus at this juncture when their trains sit on sidings, going nowhere for hours.

If I've a criticism I've repeated of VIA, it's that it has no mission, no focus. It is trying to be everything to everybody with no budget, so it's nothing to anybody. Its owner has to decide what VIA wants to be. However, its owner doesn't seem to regard it with anything but disinterest. Which is bad, because it will soon require significant capital injection and government might just throw in the towel if the politics don't support that.

The problem is everyone wants everything for free. People also don't want to ever pay taxes on anything, ever. How do you deal with that when we need more?

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Treating water to a drinkable standard is surprisingly challenging. Not only is there the challenge of removing dissolved organic compounds and heavy metals at source, but ensuring that that water maintains that quality as it is distributed throughout the network of pipes. If you ever grew up in a house on a well, you have to apply common sense that is just slightly above what you would want to apply when visiting a developing country: you can use the water to bathe and wash dishes, but don't drink straight from the tap.

This might sound callous, but an isolated FN reserve of 300 people that's only accessible by bushplane might as well be a house on a well. You're not going to have a full time chemist living on site doing daily water checks, nor licensed technicians operating and monitoring the plant for variable conditions of water intake, nor a crew of workers who go out and install and monitor new water mains. Smaller towns and villages can do this because the county or region will send someone out to do these jobs, or there are private consulting firms that can advise on water quality and engineering that can drive up from the nearest city in a few hours.

The military could set up something quick and easy that takes little training to keep it running. They could fly someone in once a month to maintain it. They could train locals to run it safely. There isn't the will to do it. Jut like there really isn't the will to expand Via outside of the Corridor.

Originally Posted by someone123

What's always been a bit confusing to me is the suggestion that a municipal style water supply is the norm or appropriate in these cases. In my experience municipal water didn't extend very far out of town. For a number of years I grew up in a house with a hand-dug well, in an old rural area that had become exurban. I was curious so I googled and found this:

Approximately 46% of Nova Scotians rely primarily on groundwater from dug or drilled wells for their private supply. Private well owners are responsible for ensuring that their wells are constructed to provincial standards and for testing their water regularly to confirm that it is free of any natural or man-made impurities.

Normally in a village or hamlet in NS everyone's on a well. There is no centralized water supply.

The cost to dig a well for each home on a normal FN reserve is much more higher of a cost than putting in a simple RO skid and the maintenance for it.

However, this water issue is much like the Via issue.
How long would it take to fix the water issue if all of Toronto was under a boil water advisory? 20 years? That is about average for a FN reserve.
How long would it take to replace a bridge on the Corridor? The Dayliner is shut down due to bridge conditions, among other issues.

The way some talk here, we must ignore everywhere but Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal. That is silly no matter how you look at it.

[Floppa]

I have a proposal for a future VIA Rail service: The Canadian 2.0. It would run something like Toronto-London-Windsor-Detroit-Chicago-Milwaukee-Minneapolis-Winnipeg and then continue on the existing route to Vancouver. Or maybe that route would be split in two at Winnipeg.

The advantages to this would be that rather than running through very sparsely populated Northern Ontario it would take advantage of Amtrak's improved tracks, making it travel faster on a shorter route with more large population centres (Chicago having more people than all of Northern Ontario). All of this means less spending and more revenue for VIA.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

The way some talk here, we must ignore everywhere but Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal. That is silly no matter how you look at it.

What's silly is your strawman. Nobody says that we should ignore everywhere but TOM. But service should match demand levels. And we aren't going to build rail for rail's sake. If a bus or ferry is better, so be it. They goal should be mobility. Not stroking the modal fantasies of rail fanboys.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

What's silly is your strawman. Nobody says that we should ignore everywhere but TOM. But service should match demand levels. And we aren't going to build rail for rail's sake. If a bus or ferry is better, so be it. They goal should be mobility. Not stroking the modal fantasies of rail fanboys.

If you were trying to disprove me, you failed.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

The cost to dig a well for each home on a normal FN reserve is much more higher of a cost than putting in a simple RO skid and the maintenance for it.

Well there were FN reserves not too far from where I lived. They could also have their own wells (maybe they do, not sure).

The cost to dig the well we had was the labour of digging with a shovel and putting rocks in. The maintenance was roughly zero although we did have an electric pump that had to be replaced every so often. But basically this is the technology that poor people use. A lot of those houses had wells from the early 1900's and earlier still in use. There was testing but it was for peace of mind. The walls of the houses were stuffed with seaweed and newspapers.

Part of what I wonder is if the desire to centralize settlement and manage it collectively is making the problem more difficult. If the little place I lived in had to have a central water plant and pipes to every house the costs and maintenance would have been much higher. Also even if there were wells but there were a central authority to manage them instead of homeowners things could be worse.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by someone123

Well there were FN reserves not too far from where I lived. They could also have their own wells (maybe they do, not sure).

The cost to dig the well we had was the labour of digging with a shovel and putting rocks in. The maintenance was roughly zero although we did have an electric pump that had to be replaced every so often. But basically this is the technology that poor people use. A lot of those houses had wells from the early 1900's and earlier still in use. There was testing but it was for peace of mind. The walls of the houses were stuffed with seaweed and newspapers.

Part of what I wonder is if the desire to centralize settlement and manage it collectively is making the problem more difficult. If the little place I lived in had to have a central water plant and pipes to every house the costs and maintenance would have been much higher. Also even if there were wells but there were a central authority to manage them instead of homeowners things could be worse.

It's shitty, because the option poor people get is often more expensive to run than what richer people have. As you mention, seaweed and newspaper gives you a larger heating bill than modern insulation, and well and bottled water is more expensive than having it piped in magically. Same with propane/oil heating and anything else rural people have to deal with.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by someone123

Well there were FN reserves not too far from where I lived. They could also have their own wells (maybe they do, not sure).

The cost to dig the well we had was the labour of digging with a shovel and putting rocks in. The maintenance was roughly zero although we did have an electric pump that had to be replaced every so often. But basically this is the technology that poor people use. A lot of those houses had wells from the early 1900's and earlier still in use. There was testing but it was for peace of mind. The walls of the houses were stuffed with seaweed and newspapers.

Part of what I wonder is if the desire to centralize settlement and manage it collectively is making the problem more difficult. If the little place I lived in had to have a central water plant and pipes to every house the costs and maintenance would have been much higher. Also even if there were wells but there were a central authority to manage them instead of homeowners things could be worse.

It is a case of underfunding till it is irrelevant. Seems that is what the federal government is good at. Whether it be FN reserves, the military, Via Rail and anything else, the government is good at destruction by lack of funding. Maybe it is time we stop asking for the government to pay for something new without a new tax to cover it. That means no HFR without an increase in federal taxes.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by milomilo

It's shitty, because the option poor people get is often more expensive to run than what richer people have. As you mention, seaweed and newspaper gives you a larger heating bill than modern insulation, and well and bottled water is more expensive than having it piped in magically. Same with propane/oil heating and anything else rural people have to deal with.

We just drank the well water. We never had bottled water. Some had heating oil but a lot of people had wood stoves and cut down trees on their own property to heat their homes. I think that area (on the South Shore of NS) actually offered a good quality of life, though it was boring and mostly appealed to old people.

[Urban_Sky]

Originally Posted by thewave46

I'm not an accountant by far, but my non-expert reading of VIA's financial statements for 2019 seem to indicate revenues of $410m versus expenses of $820m. I don't have a breakdown of their individual routes, though.

You are looking at the "fully allocated" costs published in the Annual and Quarterly Reports (which reallocate all overhead and other fixed or semi-variable costs - like my salary when I worked for VIA - across the network), whereas I refer to the variable (i.e. direct) costs they publish in their Corporate Plan and which I have posted half a dozen times in this thread, like in this post from 10 weeks ago:

Originally Posted by Urban_Sky

May I ask by what financial metric the Ocean could possibly outperform the Canadian?

A look at the variable costs and revenues published by VIA in their Corporate Plan shows that the Canadian recovers about twice as much of variable costs (90.3% vs. 48.9% in 2018 and even 101.2% vs. 46.5% in 2017):


Note: Re-post from Urban Toronto

Originally Posted by thewave46

I still am of the opinion that the three differing mandates (not just one) listed is simply not compatible with VIA's limited support (both financial and political) within government.

So, we're back at square one. I digress on the matter though.

Cheers!

Given that VIA Rail is relatively autonomous in deciding how they want to fulfill the mandate I've outlined (as long as it doesn't cause an incremental increase in its subsidy need, compared to the Status Quo) and the federal government automatically pays for which ever deficit VIA's operations (and overheads) cause (unless it decides to cut VIA's budget, which it hasn't done since 2012), I fail to see how the presence of three separate mandates negatively affect or constrain each other...


***

Originally Posted by Floppa

I have a proposal for a future VIA Rail service: The Canadian 2.0. It would run something like Toronto-London-Windsor-Detroit-Chicago-Milwaukee-Minneapolis-Winnipeg and then continue on the existing route to Vancouver. Or maybe that route would be split in two at Winnipeg.

The advantages to this would be that rather than running through very sparsely populated Northern Ontario it would take advantage of Amtrak's improved tracks, making it travel faster on a shorter route with more large population centres (Chicago having more people than all of Northern Ontario). All of this means less spending and more revenue for VIA.

The main disadvantage and fatal error of your suggestion is that operating services through the United States is neither within VIA's mandate nor something Canadian taxpayers should have to pay for and I'm not aware of Amtrak having ever shown any inclination to send anything but buses into Manitoba...

[GoTrans]

Originally Posted by Floppa

I have a proposal for a future VIA Rail service: The Canadian 2.0. It would run something like Toronto-London-Windsor-Detroit-Chicago-Milwaukee-Minneapolis-Winnipeg and then continue on the existing route to Vancouver. Or maybe that route would be split in two at Winnipeg.

The advantages to this would be that rather than running through very sparsely populated Northern Ontario it would take advantage of Amtrak's improved tracks, making it travel faster on a shorter route with more large population centres (Chicago having more people than all of Northern Ontario). All of this means less spending and more revenue for VIA.

You can route the Canadian via larger population centres in Canada by routing it on the CP route at least as far west as Regina and then going to Saskatoon or by running it on CP the whole way from Sudbury. As an alternative you could even route the train via Sault Ste Marie to Franz and then back on CP to Winnipeg to add greater population. This would take longer but added passengers might make it pay off. Having 1 train via Saskatoon /Edmonton and 1 via Regina/Calgary makes more sense but not running transcontinental trains the whole distance.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Urban_Sky

The problem with REM is not that it uses the existing Mont-Royal tunnel. The problem is that it is purposely built in a way which prevents its usage by any competing service. Everyone remotely interested in this project should have grasped this by now...

The technology used by REM doesn't seem to be anything unusual for a modern rapid transit network? I suppose they could have used heavy rail trains with conventional signalling, but that would have changed the nature of the whole system and likely made it a whole different beast.

You've alluded to having some major issues with REM with out going into much detail. To the fairly limited knowledge I have, the funding model where there is a cross subsidy between pensions and infrastructure looks like a scam, but the actual railway being built looks fine. What other problems are there?