[Urban_Sky]

Originally Posted by milomilo

I think Urban Sky's question of what problem are you trying to solve is pertinent. The Canadian is a primarily a tourist train, not public transportation, which will make the economics quite different. If you split it into pieces it's going to become worse for tourists, and still not be any good for public transportation as the frequency is too low, so it doesn't appear to achieve much.

Exactly! The effectiveness of a treatment depends much more on the accuracy of the diagnosis than on the quality of the medication prescribed…

Originally Posted by GoTrans

If the Canadian is truly a tourist train then why do we run it through the muskeg of northern Ontario rather than around the shore of Lake superior? The Canadian is only a tourist train because as I previously stated it is currently irrelevant to the needs of Canadians due to the neglect of all federal governments.

Because it is not a pure tourist train, even though that is the only passenger segment it can serve somewhat adequately, given the constraints on punctuality and speed under which it operates. VIA has basically three mandates: to operate a more or less commercially viable intercity service in the Quebec-Windsor Corridor, to operate a transcontinental service and to operate so-called “mandatory services” to those remote communities which lack year-round ground transportation options and were historically served by CN and CP (which is why passenger services between Sept-Iles – Schefferville, Cochrane – Moosonee, Sault Ste-Marie – Hearst and Vancouver – Prince George are/were served by provincial railroads and not VIA).

The Canadian therefore serves two of VIA’s mandates by simultaneously providing a transcontinental service (between the Corridor and the Pacific Ocean) and a remote service (between Capreol and Winnipeg). And this is (despite all the conspiracy theories you will hear from rail buffs) the in my view by far most rational explanation why the federal government decided to route the little transcontinental service which survived the January 1990 bloodbath cuts via Capreol, Hornepayne and Sioux Lookout rather than Sudbury, White River and Thunder Bay: because operating an RDC service over a distance of 484 km is much cheaper than operating a locomotive-hauled trains with sleeper accommodations over a distance of 1499 km. The northern route was therefore chosen for the Canadian because it was so remote from population centers and other transportation routes, as the "remote" segment on the CP route was much shorter and therefore cheaper to serve by a mandatory service...

To underline my point, the Sudbury – White River generates a deficit of $3.4 million over revenues of only $234,000. If we assume the same per-train-mile costs and revenues as the Winnipeg – Churchill service, a remote Capreol-Winnipeg service would require a subsidy of $12.2 million over revenues of $2.6 million, thus an incremental subsidy increase of $8.8 million (note that the rerouted Canadian would replace the Sudbury – White River service).

Compiled and extrapolated from: VIA Rail Annual Reports 2016 and 2017
Note: 2016 figures used for the Winnipeg – Churchill service, due to the partial closure between May 2017 and December 2018.

Even worse, that figure is based on the very optimistic assumptions that you can get away with offering only 2 frequencies per week on that new remote service and that it attracts a similar level of ridership and revenues as the Winnipeg-Churchill train, without offering any of Churchill’s draws (the Northern Lights, polar bears, whale watching and a unique “end-of-the-line” experience) and in fact bypassing the most scenic sight between Toronto and Winnipeg (I'm of course talking about Lake Superior)…

The reason why the proposed frequencies are low is because we are starting at ground zero. No government is going to invest the kind of money required to support more than 2 round trips per day. We will be lucky to get daily service as it is.

To build ridership, you first have to offer attractive frequencies and that is much more affordable to do with a bus rather than a train which requires 2 locomotive engineers and 1 service manager instead of one bus driver…

Tourists don't just go to see the mountains. You claim that tourists don't care about on time arrivals and that is why they take the train.I don't know of many tourists that are willing to accept arriving 12 or 18 hours late while seeing the highlights in the dark. Timing is just as important to a tourist as to a citizen. Having to change hotel, car rental , ferry and airline reservations is not fun. Getting somewhere on time is fun.

Timing is of course important for all passenger groups, but the tolerances vary dramatically: Commuters might perceive a delay of 30 minutes as a major problem which can make them arrive late at work or important meetings with clients, while it is much less of an inconvenience for intercity travelers and a tourist might find it amusing to whitness that trains here are even less punctual than at home.

Given that the Rockies stretch from Hinton to Agassiz/Chilliwack (a distance of 850 km, which is scheduled over 20 hours of travel time), it is impossible to see the entire Rockies by daylight (which was the exact reason why VIA created the “Rocky Mountains by Daylight” service before it was forced to sell it to RMR), which however means that you are guaranteed to see some parts of the Rockies by daylight regardless of at what time the Canadian reaches them.

That said, delays of 12 and more hours do of course play havoc to many tourists’ (and tour operators’) travel arrangements (even though such extreme delays have become much more an exception than the rule since the July 2018 emergency timetable change), but that is not much different to the travellers of your hypothetical intercity service across the prairies, which would still have a good chance of accumulating multiple hours of delays, even on shorter stretches...

We all deserve to have a transportation system that runs on time. If we don't, even the tourists will stop using it. To correct this we need to start out small and build a sustainable system over time with regular investments in infrastructure across the whole country. Even the Windsor-Quebec corridor requires infrastructure upgrading in spite of having investments made from time to time This is not just a western problem, it is a national problem and one region should not be neglected while another one is not..

Fully agreed, but in order to demonstrate that investing in transportation infrastructure (and you will need a lot of funding to make travel times and punctuality remotely competitive in the Prairies) pays off, you have to start by the most promising markets (i.e. the already most popular routes) and these are without any doubt in the Quebec-Windsor Corridor. In absence of any political willingness to force CN and CP to provide passenger trains with operational priority, you will need to build your own dedicated tracks and this is exactly what VIA is currently proposing...

Originally Posted by milomilo

But those long intercity routes will not be viable at any frequency, as they will be expensive to run and poorly used. You'd be better off running buses that would probably be more reliable and faster, then maybe upgrade to trains if cost effective once the ridership materializes.

Exactly! Just coordinate the bus services on a joint provincial and federal level and tender the services under a PSA to ensure efficient use of public funds and integrated ticketing…