VIA Rail

[Truenorth00]

That doesn't mean much in a country where every large investment is controversial. There's the petty regional jealousy: "We're paying equalization to Quebec and then Trudeau builds a $10B train for them? Why isn't he helping our oil sector?". There's even intra-regional rivalries. Cheapest way from Toronto to Ottawa is to skip Kingston and all the Lakeshore communities that are currently served by VIA. Imagine how the conversation is going to go.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by jmt18325

I don't know why we fight so hard about this. We need a high speed rail line from Toronto to Montreal. There.

Basically everyone agrees with you. Including the person from VIA that isn't currently posting but might see this. Problem is the government.

It doesn't make sense. The Liberals want to spend money on infrastructure. People like the sound of HSR. We can afford it easily. It's not even a project with difficult technical constraints. Why can't we just bloody do it?

[jmt18325]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

That doesn't mean much in a country where every large investment is controversial. There's the petty regional jealousy: "We're paying equalization to Quebec and then Trudeau builds a $10B train for them? Why isn't he helping our oil sector?". There's even intra-regional rivalries. Cheapest way from Toronto to Ottawa is to skip Kingston and all the Lakeshore communities that are currently served by VIA. Imagine how the conversation is going to go.

Oh, I get all that. But, as someone from the west who doesn't hate Eastern Canada for one irrational reason or another, I know it just makes sense. I don't even care if it goes through Ottawa, though that would be ideal, I suppose. We need the line. Other lines, we probably don't need.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Basically everyone agrees with you. Including the person from VIA that isn't currently posting but might see this. Problem is the government.

It doesn't make sense. The Liberals want to spend money on infrastructure. People like the sound of HSR. We can afford it easily. It's not even a project with difficult technical constraints. Why can't we just bloody do it?

VIA announced plans for some things people have mentioned in this thread (e.g. a train running just in the Maritimes), but they have not been implemented. Not sure about the Toronto-Montreal high-speed rail.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by someone123

VIA announced plans for some things people have mentioned in this thread (e.g. a train running just in the Maritimes), but they have not been implemented. Not sure about the Toronto-Montreal high-speed rail.

It's HFR or bust, literally. If VIA and our government can't make that work then we might as well forget about intercity passenger rail in Canada.

It should be the least controversial thing ever. But I'm optimistic, I think it will get built, probably over budget, but it will be a success and will demand upgrades. I only wish we could skip the interim slow speed stage and just go right to what is obviously justified.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

In the rest of the world they wouldn't be building rail between cities the size of Regina and Saskatoon, before cities like like Toronto-Montreal and Calgary-Edmonton had proper service. That doesn't mean HSR. But what we talk about as VIA's ambitious HFR plan is literally baseline regular rail service for a lot of the developed world.

Also, people love to bring up some tiny ass town in Europe as evidence that everybody gets rail service over there. But those towns are usually on a rail line between much larger cities or in the commuter shed of one.

The irony is that those lines have existed over 100 years. They were put in to colonize the west. Now, they are left to move goods from the coast to Toronto.

What we need to do is to use what we have. There are tracks between Calgary and Edmonton. Put a passenger train service on it. There are tracks between Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. Put a passenger train service on it.

It really could be that easy. Instead, we look for every excuse as to why we need to add service to a route that is already well serviced than to add service to places that could add more passengers.

I doubt we are going to see much higher ridership due to HFR.

Originally Posted by someone123

One effect for rail lines connecting cities only a couple hours apart is that the entire trip is within the commuter shed of one of the endpoints. For example if you head into Toronto and you're 1 hour away, or even a bit more, you can serve Toronto commuters as long as the pricing is reasonable enough. If you go back and forth between Kitchener and Toronto you've got a service for Kitchener commuters, Toronto commuters, and people going back and forth between the cities. Many European routes are like this, useful for different types of trips.

VIA's current services outside of perhaps a few main routes aren't like this at all. Too long, too expensive, too infrequent.

The only route that isn't too long/expensive/infrequent is the Corridor. which is why breaking the others up in major cities might actually fix some of the other issues.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

That doesn't mean much in a country where every large investment is controversial. There's the petty regional jealousy: "We're paying equalization to Quebec and then Trudeau builds a $10B train for them? Why isn't he helping our oil sector?". There's even intra-regional rivalries. Cheapest way from Toronto to Ottawa is to skip Kingston and all the Lakeshore communities that are currently served by VIA. Imagine how the conversation is going to go.

If the government invested better, we wouldn't be in this mess. Cutting service outside the Corridor will always piss of those outside the Corridor. After HFR is online, leave the Corridor alone. Work on other parts of the network. Bring in dailies to all other service. Add new routes. Add new rolling stock.

In short, invest in all of Canada's passenger rail network.

[kool maudit]

We should probably get over the "yeah but that's Europe" comparison when comparing passenger rail services to ones over here. No, we are not Benelux when it comes to population density, but neither is much of Europe.

The bottom line is, people use the trains a lot here because they are a practical, comfortable method of transportation, not because of culture. When you need to go to Gothenburg or Copenhagen (466 and 657 km) from here, the train is a no-brainer because planes require the use of (distant, cumbersome, security-intensive) airports and driving requires time, concentration and parking.

Rail services that are cheap, fast, convenient and well-appointed will always be competitive over certain distances.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by milomilo

It doesn't make sense. The Liberals want to spend money on infrastructure. People like the sound of HSR. We can afford it easily. It's not even a project with difficult technical constraints. Why can't we just bloody do it?

The Liberals don't want to spend money on infrastructure. They get dragged kicking and screaming to the table to sign. They will literally prioritize any excuse to cut a tax break or direct payment to someone over any infrastructure project.

The other option is the Conservatives, the only party who could give less of a shit about infrastructure and is actively opposed to the large infrastructure projects we need in the populated parts of the country.

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

The irony is that those lines have existed over 100 years. They were put in to colonize the west. Now, they are left to move goods from the coast to Toronto.

Back then people didn't have cars and airplanes. So they would ride the trains. There's no need to do that today, except in some specific high traffic corridors.

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

What we need to do is to use what we have. There are tracks between Calgary and Edmonton. Put a passenger train service on it. There are tracks between Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. Put a passenger train service on it.

You get that VIA doesn't own those tracks right? You can't just "put a passenger train on it".

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

It really could be that easy.

No it isn't.

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

I doubt we are going to see much higher ridership due to HFR.

You're wrong. But if you're right, it's effectively the end of VIA and intercity passenger rail service in Canada. If there's no business case in the highest population density, highest air traffic and highest auto traffic corridor in the country, there' s literally no case to build anywhere else. You, and every other rail advocate, better hope and pray that HFR beats every single forecast.

I, for one, think VIA is underestimating ridership. I think they will do fantastically if it's ever built.

Originally Posted by milomilo

It's HFR or bust, literally. If VIA and our government can't make that work then we might as well forget about intercity passenger rail in Canada.

Exactly. People just don't seem to understand that this is VIA's only shot at making a business model that lets them survive. If it doesn't pan out, some future government (mostly likely a Conservative one) will privatize them and that will lead to the end of most services.

Originally Posted by milomilo

It should be the least controversial thing ever. But I'm optimistic, I think it will get built, probably over budget, but it will be a success and will demand upgrades. I only wish we could skip the interim slow speed stage and just go right to what is obviously justified.

The whole reason we have to go through the slow speed stage is because nearly a half century of talking about high speed rail has delivered fuck all. Every Liberal government comes in. Talks about it for a few years. Does a study. And then discovers that a lot more votes can be bought for those billions in other ways and moves on.

HFR is a fantastic idea specifically because it is politically realizable. In theory, a government could get this built and in service, in little over one term. With the work currently underway, they could have shovels in the ground by 2022 and service start by end 2026 if they really wanted. And the cost is low enough that the government can claim to deliver a notable benefit without being tempted to blow as much elsewhere.

As Urban_Sky has related, it's not being built in the most upgradeable manner because of budget constraints. But that just means future upgrades will cost more. Hopefully, once this is in service, it will be easier to argue at least for upgrades on the close city pairs like Ottawa-Montreal.

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

If the government invested better, we wouldn't be in this mess. Cutting service outside the Corridor will always piss of those outside the Corridor. After HFR is online, leave the Corridor alone.

HFR being discussed right now is just the first phase. And nobody is even really sure if Montreal-Quebec City will actually get done this go. The whole Southwestern Ontario portion has to be done next. Including running the service through Pearson airport as the hub being planned there comes to fruition. The Corridor is more than just Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal.

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Work on other parts of the network. Bring in dailies to all other service. Add new routes. Add new rolling stock.

In short, invest in all of Canada's passenger rail network.

Opportunity cost. What would that same money do for transit in those cities? Or health care? Or education? Or simply leaving it in the economy? Governments have to balance competing priorities. And in this reality, building lines where the business case for them is very poor is indefensible. In a lot of cases (even in parts of the Corridor), VIA should be doing what many other rail operators do worldwide and run buses instead.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

The bottom line is, people use the trains a lot here because they are a practical, comfortable method of transportation, not because of culture. When you need to go to Gothenburg or Copenhagen (466 and 657 km) from here, the train is a no-brainer because planes require the use of (distant, cumbersome, security-intensive) airports and driving requires time, concentration and parking.

You are missing a major comparative data point. Cost of fuel. And tolls. Driving 500-700 km in Canada costs $40 to $60 in Canada. What would that cost in Sweden?

I guarantee you if gas and freeway tolls were like Europe, the demand for intercity passenger rail would be several times what it is in Canada today.

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Rail services that are cheap, fast, convenient and well-appointed will always be competitive over certain distances.

This is mostly true because Europe didn't have to build a passenger rail network from scratch. When it does, the costs add up as quickly as they do here. Just look at the perpetual debate over HS2 in the UK. A country that we can all agree loves trains.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

You are missing a major comparative data point. Cost of fuel. And tolls. Driving 500-700 km in Canada costs $40 to $60 in Canada. What would that cost in Sweden?

I guarantee you if gas and freeway tolls were like Europe, the demand for intercity passenger rail would be several times what it is in Canada today.

Good point. According to rome2rio, the cost of a one way drive from Toronto to Montreal is pegged at $60-90, while from Stockholm to Copenhagen it's $120-$190. Both drives are in the 6 to 7 hour range.

[lrt's friend]

The irony is that those lines have existed over 100 years. They were put in to colonize the west. Now, they are left to move goods from the coast to Toronto.

What we need to do is to use what we have. There are tracks between Calgary and Edmonton. Put a passenger train service on it. There are tracks between Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. Put a passenger train service on it.

It really could be that easy. Instead, we look for every excuse as to why we need to add service to a route that is already well serviced than to add service to places that could add more passengers.

I doubt we are going to see much higher ridership due to HFR.

You clearly don't understand the difference between the corridor and elsewhere.

Rail service does not exist in most of the country other than to serve the tourist market because trains are not competitive with car or air travel. Even bus service is not viable in western Canada and rail service would be much slower and less reliable. Passenger rail service is dead in Western Canada unless rail lines can be substantially improved at enormous cost.

HFR on the corridor is next logical step as there is already a demand. Already, VIA service in the corridor is fairly time competitive. The roads are very congested and short-haul flights are a pain. There is opportunity for VIA in the corridor if frequency and speed can be improved. This is what HFR offers. I cannot imagine that HFR will not increase ridership. The only question is how much will ridership increase. The current study is attempting to analyse those possibilities as well as the cost and best route.

HFR is a demonstration project on the line that is most likely to succeed. The degree of success will determine whether additional lines will be built. The next logical step is to serve south-western Ontario as it opens up possibilities of service to Detroit and Chicago as well. There is already service between Toronto and Windsor and between Detroit and Chicago. It is just a matter of getting some access to the Windsor-Detroit tunnel, which did have passenger service back in the day. They are already attempting to restore Detroit Central Station.

You should be a big supporter of HFR as a top priority as it is the key to bringing passenger service back to the Edmonton-Calgary corridor. It will show how to accomplish this. I am encouraged by the possibility of rail service being introduced between Calgary and Banff. This is the first step. You should support this project big time as this will demonstrate viability of new passenger service in Western Canada.

The key to service expansion is successful projects. There will be no success by putting passenger trains on rail lines that will guarantee slow unreliable service. That is exactly what would be the result of using current freight rail lines in Western Canada. The quality of the rail lines is at a level to support the movement of long freight trains not for the fast movement of passenger trains. The freight companies have no financial incentive to bring these lines up to modern passenger train standards.

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

After HFR is online, leave the Corridor alone. Work on other parts of the network.

What you fail to understand is that if you successfully campaign against rail upgrades in one part of the country you've just made made upgrades less likely in other parts of the country. That money saved won't go towards your favoured rail project, it'll get spent on something other than rail altogether. Or it won't get spent at all. The stronger the rail network in the Corridor, the more likely that other parts of the country will get some love too.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Even bus service is not viable in western Canada

I agree with the rest of your post but wanted to comment on this. Bus service not being "viable" is political more than anything. Bus services often need subsidy, the routes that don't need subsidy in Western Canada do have private operators on them. But we could install other subsidised routes, we just choose not to, and I would say that just because a route is subsidised doesn't mean it isn't viable. Rapid transit systems are subsidised, but who would describe them as not viable?

We do have some government run bus services in Alberta - the On-It regional bus system operates between Banff, Calgary, Okotoks and in between. I'd very much like to see this expanded greatly, both for its own sake and as a precursor to rail service.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

You clearly don't understand the difference between the corridor and elsewhere.
...
You should be a big supporter of HFR as a top priority as it is the key to bringing passenger service back to the Edmonton-Calgary corridor.

Originally Posted by Mister F

What you fail to understand is that if you successfully campaign against rail upgrades in one part of the country you've just made made upgrades less likely in other parts of the country.

His narcissism requires that HFR fail so that he can be proven right about working professionals at VIA knowing less than him.

Just imagine the delusion required to think that after a $4-6B project failing to generate the promised returns, future governments will happily sign up to fund more multi-billion projects in areas of the country with a fraction of the population and the traffic between them.

Ottawa-Montrreal and Montreal-Quebec City, are both city pairs that are closer to together with higher combined populations than Calgary-Edmonton. Quebec also has higher fuel taxes then Alberta. If those city pairs don't perform as promised the case for Calgary-Edmonton will be shot.

[hipster duck]

I think HFR will succeed. Even if it fails, you could argue that there were worse things to spend money on than an infrastructure project that hired Canadian tradespeople for 5-10 years and freed up freight capacity on the CN mainline.

The bigger question is why it hasn’t happened yet. While we can lay some blame on various Federal governments and the airline lobby, etc., we have to lay some blame on the failure of leadership at Via rail to convince politicians and funding sources to champion this project. I mean, here we are, in an economic crisis with almost zero percent interest rates, and a Federal government desperate to throw cash at shovel ready stimulus projects, and we have an initiative that will provide just be a report that gathers dust on a shelf.

The business and even public policy world is full of case studies of people who turned a pariah organization around. Robert Moses went from being a New York State parks commissioner building playgrounds to gobbling up 25% of the Federal infrastructure budget. Maybe VIA doesn’t need such a tyrant, but it could still stand to have someone who can survey the political and business landscape, make deals, and get this kind of a project off the ground.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

I think HFR will succeed. Even if it fails, you could argue that there were worse things to spend money on than an infrastructure project that hired Canadian tradespeople for 5-10 years and freed up freight capacity on the CN mainline.

I think our planning horizons are too short and we are too focused on the bottom line in Canada rather than long-term value. I don't know how something like the TCH or original Pacific rail connection ever could have been built with the current mindset (I suspect that if you looked at the % of GDP of even some modest projects from the first half of the 20th century they'd be far beyond anything on the table today).

One good goal in Canada would be to develop new cities and areas to build where people want to live. Trains would be great for this, particularly as more work becomes remote but people want to be able to go in to the office a couple times a week. If you live on a 200 km/h rail line, you can live hundreds of km from a workplace that you visit a few times a week.

The Lower Mainland is kind of screwed because it's largely ALR land but there's still some potential. Ontario has lots of old towns that would be pretty nice places to live if they were stops on a quick train route to Toronto.

NS and NB are extremely ripe for this type of development. If you built a 200 km/h line between Halifax and Moncton it would create a quasi-metro area with a bit of critical mass, revitalize a bunch of towns, and open up lots of attractive land to develop (non-agricultural land around lakes with a comparatively mild climate that is actually pretty rare in Canada). It would also be an immediately useful service for a bunch of suburbanites. This could be for Canada a bit like what some of the Sunbelt metros are for the US.

I also liked the post earlier about how HSR between Toronto and Montreal would change how people work and live in Canada. I even think it would have a cultural impact, and that it's highly desirable to encourage travel between Ontario and Quebec in Canada (or Quebec and anywhere else, but Ontario has the most people living the closest).

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

The bigger question is why it hasn’t happened yet. While we can lay some blame on various Federal governments and the airline lobby, etc., we have to lay some blame on the failure of leadership at Via rail to convince politicians and funding sources to champion this project. I mean, here we are, in an economic crisis with almost zero percent interest rates, and a Federal government desperate to throw cash at shovel ready stimulus projects, and we have an initiative that will provide just be a report that gathers dust on a shelf.

Sorry. But it is ridiculous to blame VIA. They've been pushing this since the Harper days. It is the same problem as every other rail proposal. No politician wants to build something that a successor might take credit for. And your caucus will have a tough time supporting a costly project that only benefits a handful of ridings or a constituency that won't matter electorally.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Sorry. But it is ridiculous to blame VIA. They've been pushing this since the Harper days. It is the same problem as every other rail possible. No politician wants to build something that a successor might take credit for. And your caucus will have a tough time supporting a costly project that only benefits a handful of ridings.

I would argue that they either haven’t been pushing this very hard, or they don’t know how to play politics.

In the grand scheme of things, this project is not that Herculean. Bigger projects have been green lit; HFR wouldn’t even be in the top 10 largest Canadian infrastructure projects under construction right now.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

I would argue that they either haven’t been pushing this very hard, or they don’t know how to play politics.

I have not followed the Ontario rail story very closely but I have followed the Halifax stuff and what little info is available for VIA elsewhere in the Maritimes.

One problem that was evident at the time and is even more obvious in hindsight is that the rail proposals in metro Halifax were always incredibly modest and compromised. They were developed under the assumption that $30-60M is a huge capital outlay that would be hard to justify (with this dollar value range staying the same since the late 90's). VIA's public statements revolved around getting costs down. Not much effort seemed to go into solving compromises of the system to drive the value up.

When the rail proposal finally died regional council ended up supporting a $780M BRT-based transit plan a little while later (the scale of improvement the city's transit needs since so little has changed in decades). The assumption that the city was limited to cheap bare bones options was clearly wrong.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

I would argue that they either haven’t been pushing this very hard, or they don’t know how to play politics.

Doesn't sound like you've worked in Ottawa. There's a limit to how much bureaucrats can push. I was once on a project for Search and Rescue aircraft didn't go anywhere for years. You wouldn't think procuring SAR aircraft would be all that controversial or difficult. My first stakeholders meeting there were a dozen government departments. One of the key ministers refused to sign off on our procurement strategy and delayed the project for years. All while our aircraft were aging, possibly risking lives. Now just imagine how much more difficult it is going to be to push a project with even less urgency (no lives on the line), and benefits a much smaller politically sensitive constituency.

Originally Posted by hipster duck

In the grand scheme of things, this project is not that Herculean. Bigger projects have been green lit; HFR wouldn’t even be in the top 10 largest Canadian infrastructure projects under construction right now.

There's bigger projects sure. But there's few infrastructure projects that are as large that are exclusively federally funded. And you can bet there's backbench MPs from all over the country asking why their interests aren't being prioritized, with Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal getting all the good stuff again (not saying this is true, but this is how they think).