VIA Rail

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by acottawa

So 15 years after this thing was proposed there might be a design. Then in 2031 whoever is in charge will make a decision on building it maybe. So 2040s at the earliest.

Just as a comparison, the CPR was built in 12 years in a country of 3 million with hand tools.

One was a hugely important project of national survival and a government dedicated to the cause. It was pursued with vigour.

The other is a nominal afterthought to a government that's been in power for 9 years as its mandate fails in slow motion. One doesn't introduce this stuff on the days before one punches out if they're dedicated.

Things government give a hoot about are introduced in the opening days of its mandate. Problems government wants to tackle have the band-aid ripped off right away.

It's a dead duck under this government. Likely the next one will view HFR/HSR with extreme prejudice. Don't hold your breath on anything until the 2030s at minimum.

[Truenorth00]

You're right that it's not important to this government. But also wrong that it's not of value. We talk about how to relieve housing pressure in the GTA. We talk about improving productivity. We talk about reducing emissions. This is one project that actually can help with all of that.

I will be pleasantly surprised if this survives a change of government. That said, if this country can engage in long term infrastructure construction like this, we're in real trouble.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

And this from a government focused on climate, infrastructure and middle class jobs. We could have full high speed rail in the whole corridor for less than the cost of one battery plant. Or 2 weeks of Covid helicopter cash.

Probably true though about the battery plant. I wonder which would have the greatest long term payoff. Obviously jobs directly improve QoL for many people but also indirectly though increased government tax revenue and increased consumer demand. But rail would also create jobs during the planning and construction while improving access to jobs and housing. And it would also reduce pollution and increase both safety and productivity since people can do other things unlike while driving. Plus if it was full HSR it would reduce overall travel times. Certainly compared to driving and current rail service, but even compared to many air trips when looking at door-to-door journey times. But perhaps being competitive in the battery industry would have additional long term effects that I'm not considering.

[Djeffery]

Rail would be government money up front, the battery plants are money going out in future years. Easier for a government to commit to future spending to get others to spend now on big projects. Maybe if some organization was planning to build an HSR line between Toronto and Montreal and the government promised them 10 cents per kilometer per passenger once it's up and running.

[Truenorth00]

Anybody who think we can have "full high speed rail in the whole corridor for less than the cost of one battery plant" hasn't looked at the previous cost estimates for HSR in the Corridor, inflation in the construction sector, or the cost of battery plants.

The Ecotrain study in 2008 said it would cost $21.3B for 300 kph electrified HSR for the full Corridor. Using just the B of C inflation calculator and ignoring the fact that construction inflation is probably double, that's $30.23B today.

The cost of building VW's battery plant in St. Thomas is $7B. The $16B subsidy package is for production. It's not to construct the plant and is conditional on the Americans maintaining their subsidies. If those went away tomorrow, the government contribution to this plant would be $700M for construction. And that $16B subsidy substantially pays for itself through taxes on the economic activity generated.

Full Corridor HSR is probably in the $40-50B ballpark these days. Return on investment, even via increased economic activity would take a lot longer than a battery plant. And that's what is really discouraging politicians from committing. They see a lot more ways to buy votes quickly with that money. That's the whole reason even this HFR project is looking for maximum private sector financing, even at higher total cost, if necessary.

[Nouvellecosse]

It's crazy how expensive the latest HSR estimates for the corridor are. I actually forgot how much more expensive the estimates got over the years.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

It's crazy how expensive the latest HSR estimates for the corridor are. I actually forgot how much more expensive the estimates got over the years.

A lot of transport infrastructure has shot up in price. Simple interchanges and grade separations cost tens of millions these days. And transit infrastructure is crazier. The Ontario Line is coming in at over $1B per kilometre. Literally over a million per meter of subway. There's a whole host of reasons for this. But a huge part of it is that we don't build enough continuously to sustain the learning curve and retain a skilled workforce. We need for transport construction what we are doing for shipbuilding for the navy and coastguard. Given how RER is going and the timelines involved, it will be absolutely tragic if a lot of that workforce isn't rolled into building electrified intercity rail next.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Anybody who think we can have "full high speed rail in the whole corridor for less than the cost of one battery plant" hasn't looked at the previous cost estimates for HSR in the Corridor, inflation in the construction sector, or the cost of battery plants.

The Ecotrain study in 2008 said it would cost $21.3B for 300 kph electrified HSR for the full Corridor. Using just the B of C inflation calculator and ignoring the fact that construction inflation is probably double, that's $30.23B today.

The cost of building VW's battery plant in St. Thomas is $7B. The $16B subsidy package is for production. It's not to construct the plant and is conditional on the Americans maintaining their subsidies. If those went away tomorrow, the government contribution to this plant would be $700M for construction. And that $16B subsidy substantially pays for itself through taxes on the economic activity generated.

Full Corridor HSR is probably in the $40-50B ballpark these days. Return on investment, even via increased economic activity would take a lot longer than a battery plant. And that's what is really discouraging politicians from committing. They see a lot more ways to buy votes quickly with that money. That's the whole reason even this HFR project is looking for maximum private sector financing, even at higher total cost, if necessary.

The “break even” assumptions of 15 years for Volkswagen and 23 years for Stellantis are based on the assumption that full production will continue after the massive subsidies end in 2032, which is magical thinking. It also doesn’t include construction subsidies, foregone revenue and debt servicing.

https://distribution-a61727465666163...b5ad774a3fe984

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

It's crazy how expensive the latest HSR estimates for the corridor are. I actually forgot how much more expensive the estimates got over the years.

The initial estimates were completely fanciful bordering on fraud, particularly given the cost of the minor track improvement project they had just completed or the feasibility study that GO had just done for a GO train to Peterborough.

I think they were basically assuming that the Victorian line with a 10 mph speed limit could run trains at class 6 or 7 speeds with no upgrades.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by acottawa

The “break even” assumptions of 15 years for Volkswagen and 23 years for Stellantis are based on the assumption that full production will continue after the massive subsidies end in 2032, which is magical thinking. It also doesn’t include construction subsidies, foregone revenue and debt servicing.

https://distribution-a61727465666163...b5ad774a3fe984

All true. And we can debate whether those subsidies will be recovered. But what's not debatable is that HSR isn't close to the cost of a single battery plant, as was previously suggested. Not in construction cost. Nor in net cost over any reasonable investment period. Worthwhile over the long run? Probably.

[acottawa]

The problem with HSR is that there are so many permutations and combinations that it could come out at almost any price range.

If you take the California or UK approach to HSR, where nearly every possible negative impact needs to be mitigated in the most expensive way possible then HSR will cost in the hundreds of billions. If you take the Acela/South Korea/France/Germany approach where large sections of lines actually run at conventional rail speeds then the cost probably isn't much more than what HFR would realistically cost.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by acottawa

The problem with HSR is that there are so many permutations and combinations that it could come out at almost any price range.

I'm not sure there's any permutation coming in at the $7B cost to build a battery plant. Let alone the $700M the government is contributing to the construction.

Maybe if we just built a 177 kph single track line that is not electrified between Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal and ran the existing rolling stock on it, the price could be $7B. But that's not HSR by any stretch of imagine.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

I'm not sure there's any permutation coming in at the $7B cost to build a battery plant. Let alone the $700M the government is contributing to the construction.

Maybe if we just built a 177 kph single track line that is not electrified between Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal and ran the existing rolling stock on it, the price could be $7B. But that's not HSR by any stretch of imagine.

The three projects reviewed by the PBO are a total of $43.6 billion, which is a plausible cost for a mixed HSR/conventional system.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by acottawa

The three projects reviewed by the PBO are a total of $43.6 billion, which is a plausible cost for a mixed HSR/conventional system.

$44B is a long way from $7B......

And like I said before, it's the fact that these plans are in the $40-50B range that are making them so hard to execute. Our politicians don't have any ability to think beyond the next election and buying votes. That makes the politics of HSR and battery plants very different. A battery plant buys votes in a few years for subsidies given over a decade or more (which can also be truncated after we capture the sunk cost of construction). An HSR projects will probably cost you votes for a decade, cost you the ability to buy other votes and and not deliver planned economic results for decades.

I'm starting to accept that we're a failure as a country when it comes to this stuff and will probably not get better in my lifetime. The CPC cancelling this would be the definitive marker for me that this country will never improve on infrastructure. If this gets cancelled, we'll repeat RER. We'll wait until the population of the Corridor is 40-50M and then build HSR between Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal for $50B.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

$44B is a long way from $7B......

And like I said before, it's the fact that these plans are in the $40-50B range that are making them so hard to execute. Our politicians don't have any ability to think beyond the next election and buying votes. That makes the politics of HSR and battery plants very different. A battery plant buys votes in a few years for subsidies given over a decade or more (which can also be truncated after we capture the sunk cost of construction). An HSR projects will probably cost you votes for a decade, cost you the ability to buy other votes and and not deliver planned economic results for decades.

I'm starting to accept that we're a failure as a country when it comes to this stuff and will probably not get better in my lifetime. The CPC cancelling this would be the definitive marker for me that this country will never improve on infrastructure. If this gets cancelled, we'll repeat RER. We'll wait until the population of the Corridor is 40-50M and then build HSR between Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal for $50B.

I think the Tories might keep the design phase going. We will see who is in power in 2031.

The Tories have the advantage of having fewer groups to pander to (there will not need to be a GBA+ analysis of every road crossing) and no political ties to Montreal (which means they could make a hard choice on TMR that the Liberals will not make). They also have the disadvantage of likely to control all of the ridings affected by this project from Scarborough to Ottawa (including PP's riding) so it will be harder for them to blow off local concerns in Eastern Ontario.

[Urban_Sky]

Originally Posted by acottawa

The initial estimates were completely fanciful bordering on fraud, particularly given the cost of the minor track improvement project they had just completed or the feasibility study that GO had just done for a GO train to Peterborough.

I think they were basically assuming that the Victorian line with a 10 mph speed limit could run trains at class 6 or 7 speeds with no upgrades.

The initial estimates assumed a start of construction at least 10 years earlier than what seems realistic today and painstakingly avoided the cost-escalators which the CIB now seems committed to: speeds above 110 mph (requiring full grade separation), electrification and the obsession to cut at least an hour from today‘s TRTO-MTRL travel times.

As for GO‘s Peterborough study, the bulk of the construction costs were allocated to avoiding interference with a rail yard which has been abandoned in the meanwhile and building multiple stations of which only one would be needed for HFR.

If you want to see „initial cost estimates which were so fanciful that they bordered on fraud“, check out the „Elbphilharmonie“ in Hamburg, where „total cost rose from €77m, an implausibly low figure given by the city authorities when the hall was first mooted, to a final bill (with substantial additions to the brief, but even so) of €860m.“

https://amp.theguardian.com/artandde...tle-in-the-air

Conversely, it is unfortunately completely normal for large-scale infrastructure projects to triple in costs once all the constraints, delays and scope creep (e.g., to placate NIMBYs or to include the pet wishes of local politicians) are factored in (google „Brent Flyvberg“ for a wealth of research on this topic). HFR would not have been a negative outlier, had it been designed with the principles VIA envisioned, which is why it should not be conflated with whatever the CIB and the federal government have morphed and scopecreeped this idea into…

[Truenorth00]

For all the Liberal failings on this file (and there have been many), the fact that this project is finally getting interest from experienced rail developers like DB and SNCF does bode well.

Sadly, I can't see the CPC interested in anything but revisionism where they do everything possible to rip out anything with a Liberal smell to get back to 2015. I hope I am wrong. But our history is full of both major parties behaving this way. Guess we'll see in 2 years.

[acottawa]

The Peterborough study does not appear to be online anymore, but it was not my recollection the bulk of the costs were for the Agincourt yard.

[StatelyElms]

Originally Posted by Taeolas

Maritime service is long overdue for improvements but it probably isn't on anyone's radar.

An ideal set up for the Maritimes would be to restore Moncton as the Hub. Set up twice daily, 7 day a week service to SJ and Halifax to Moncton. And then have Moncton to QC running once daily in each direction, 7 day a week. So Moncton would get 5 incoming trains each day and 5 outgoing trains a day, and SJ to Halifax would be a reasonable route for people who want to do a weekend trip or similar plans.

All routes should be runnable at highway speeds or above (ideally 150kph or so ) so it could compete with driving. (Especially for the SJ and Halifax legs). The QC to Moncton leg would be rougher since it doesn't follow the direct routes as is, but higher speeds there would still help. (And really it would be more like a Moncton to Riviere de Loup route and Riviere de Loup would be a Gaspe hub with more links to QC in general) Medium Long term plans would be to get Fredericton back on the rail network somehow with links to Moncton, as well as maybe pushing for a Saint John to Bangor link. Setting up Truro as a sub hub to serve upper Nova Scotia and Cape Breton eventually would also be something to consider.

Sorry to bring this back to the Maritimes once again, but I only noticed all the activity just now, and this is always how I've pictured it. It just makes the most sense to me, to the point where it feels like a no-brainer. Saint John to Halifax through Moncton and Truro. ~420km of good quality rail (I can't speak for the Sussex subdivision but the Bedford subdivision and Springhill subdivision are good lines, the Ocean regularly makes 90mph/140kph on them), directly connecting the very hearts of downtowns of major cities and large towns evenly spaced along the route (whose stations, or at the very least, platforms, are nearly all preserved), with a rough population catchment of ~700,000 and the majority of Maritime urban population. Assuming an overall average speed of 60mph/96kph without considering stops, it would take 4.5 hours. This would be a gamechanger for transport patterns in the region, seeing as currently driving nonstop would only be slightly faster than 4.5 hours, and current intercity bus route for the same trip takes ~8 hours.

• Moncton is perfectly poised as the central hub. It can take interregional trains from the Acadian coast through the Newcastle subdivision and even has the higher-quality Napadogan subdivision as an optional more efficient re-route, if the Acadian coast ever gets dedicated regional trains from Moncton to Matapedia to maintain the service.. or if CN abandons the subdivision.
• Truro could act as a secondary hub, making for easy connections to the eastern half of Nova Scotia. It has access to the Hopewell subdivision passing through a series of medium-sized towns, which could also extend to the Sydney subdivision if interest is ever renewed. In the meantime, it has good highway access for intercity buses through these towns to Sydney.
• Halifax, too, is well poised to act as a hub, though for the western half. It also has many abandoned (but preserved) rail ROWs through the very linear Annapolis Valley and to Lunenburg, should interest in rail be renewed.
• Fredericton, while it doesn't have an active rail line connecting it, has the NBSR-owned McAdam subdivision the majority of the way to it and a mostly-preserved ROW the rest of the way. If there were interest in restoring rail service it could be done fairly easily and cheaper than otherwise, and it would add a significant population to the network by extending the line, but still retain that goldilocks-zone station frequency and travel time.

I'm of the opinion that practically no advances in Maritime passenger rail can be done without putting this route together, but also that this is probably an incredibly low bar as route re-activating goes. It does go through two railways, but the rail is of good quality, the route has evenly-spaced goldilocks-zone station frequency, it's of the perfect length and duration to where it can compete with driving just by being an alternative but also has no air alternatives to compete with, it connects most major hubs of the region and has great potential for serving region-connecting hubs, it has most stations and platforms preserved.. the only thing I can really see being less than great would be the passing track situation.

Mind you, when someone will bite the bullet and finally put forwards a proposal to service this route is entirely beyond me. But sooner rather than later would be nice.

[Nouvellecosse]

Yes it would be great to have assuming there was also decent frequency. Even now, as much as i complain about the train being slow I'd still do it if there were more trip options. At the very least it would need to be twice per day per direction.