VIA Rail network developments
 

Do we not have a dedicated VIA Rail thread here? Move this if we do...

Via Rail seeks public-private partnership to fund Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal project

Canadian Press
Published on: June 30, 2015 | Last Updated: June 30, 2015 11:28 AM EDT

Via Rail is attempting to attract money from institutional investors like the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec to help generate private investments worth $3 billion for its railway infrastructure.

The Crown corporation expressed its desire to start a public-private partnership to improve its rails and increase the train frequency between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.

On Tuesday morning, Via Rail president Yves Desjardins-Siciliano outlined the company’s strategy and outlined its recent successes in other parts of the country.

Aside from the Caisse de dépôts, other institutions like the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and Omers have shown interest in Via Rail’s project.

Desjardins-Siciliano said he expects the money is available within Canada’s private sector but will welcome interest from foreign investors during the coming months.

Via Rail said the railways’ use by several companies transporting merchandise is having a negative effect on the rails because of increased traffic.

Between 2010 and 2014, the number of people using Via Rail’s services dropped from 4.1 million to 3.8 million. The company’s deficit reached $317 million.

http://montrealgazette.com/business/...ntreal-project

Via seeks faster service on Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto corridor

Michael Prentice, OBJ
Published on July 13, 2015

Ottawa will be a big winner if Via Rail is successful in its bid to raise $3 billion in private funding to improve train service in the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto corridor, OBJ has learned.

Most of Via’s proposed improvements would be on the line between Ottawa and Toronto, Via president Yves Desjardins-Siciliano said in an exclusive interview recently.

Via's chief executive appears optimistic the government-owned passenger rail company will raise the money required to improve service between Montreal and Toronto and turn the corridor from a money-loser into a profitable venture.

Under Via’s proposed improvements, travel time between Ottawa and Toronto would be slashed to as little as two hours and 30 minutes, making it competitive with flying and much faster than travelling by car or bus. Currently, the fastest trains between the two cities take almost four hours.

Train service along the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto corridor is now slow and infrequent. Via says it loses $48 for each passenger it carries on the route – a sum covered by the federal government in its annual subsidy to Via of about $300 million.

Mr. Desjardins-Siciliano believes he can make service profitable in the corridor by slashing journey times and doubling the number of trains.

Right now, rail service linking Canada’s three largest eastern cities operates in a triangle, rather than a corridor. But if Via’s ambitious plans are successful, trains will speed between Montreal and Toronto, with a stop in Ottawa, in as little as three hours and 50 minutes.

The journey time between Ottawa and Montreal would be cut to about one hour and 20 minutes, about 30 minutes faster than the current fastest time. The rail link between downtown Ottawa and downtown Montreal would be faster than taking a car, bus or even a plane, taking check-in times into account.

Via is now in discussions with major investors – notably pension funds – in the hope of persuading them to invest in the proposed service improvements.

We’re now well into the 21st century, so why is Via considering $3 billion in service improvements that will still only put us in the 20th century?

Super-high-speed trains, such as those in Europe and Japan, would cost billions of dollars in government subsidies, and few if anyone in Canada wants to pay for them. Via estimates it would cost at least $9 billion to introduce super-high-speed trains serving Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto.

One of the company’s biggest problems is that it has to share tracks – which are often old and dilapidated – with freight trains.

Under Via’s proposed improvements, $2 billion would be spent on new tracks or renovations to existing tracks. Most of the rest would be spent on doubling the fleet of trains that serve the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto routes. Via would have exclusive use of about 25 per cent of all track on the corridor.

Via estimates these improvements would enable it to operate the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto routes with an annual profit of about 15 per cent. That profit would then be shared between Via and the private investors.

Via has not yet indicated how such profits, if any, would be shared with investors. Mr. Desjardins-Siciliano told OBJ he expects the partners to get “a handsome return on their investment.”

Canadian taxpayers also stand to gain, he said, since he expects profitability in the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto corridor to “eliminate a chunk of the federal subsidy.”

A big reason super-high-speed train service is so expensive is that it requires exclusive use of track, with no railroad crossings, added Mr. Desjardins-Siciliano.

He estimated it would take 12 to 15 years to implement the plan. The improvements proposed by Via can be introduced gradually, he said.

If investors are found and if the federal government approves Via’s plans, service improvements could begin within 18 months to two years after that, the Via chief told OBJ.

http://www.obj.ca/Local/2015-07-13/a...nto-corridor/1

$3 billion is cheap enough that the federal government should simply just pay for it. That way, instead of having to share the resulting profit with investors, the federal government can pocket all of it and spend further on more improvements.

That said, it's exactly what we've needed. To date all proposals have just been massively expensive 300km/h trains; this is small enough to be pragmatic and thus possible in our fiscal climate.

The main bottleneck between Toronto & Ottawa is in Smiths Falls; there, VIA trains have to travel through a CP freight yard to connect between two subdivisions, which requires them to slow to a crawl, and can occasionally (thankfully pretty rarely) cause delays of about 20-30 minutes due to CP freight movements.

I've heard VIA plans to pay CP to move their yard outside the town to remove the bottleneck; if CP is not forthcoming a new railway line to bypass the town is possible but potentially politically difficult (as any new transportation corridor tends to be).

Here in Ottawa, these plans will almost certainly include grade separation of the Trillium/VIA interchange (as it puts scheduling constraints on VIA) which would be a much-needed boost to the Trillium line. The Fallowfield/Woodroffe crossings, however, probably won't be, as they aren't a huge burden on VIA (the trains are already slow through there due to the station).

This would be such a welcome service from my standpoint and sorely needed from Via's business position. Currently I drive to Toronto for business because I usually need to go with less than 2 weeks notice and while there are 50+ flights a day, they are all over $500 with the short notice. I prefer the train but have constantly opted to drive because driving is faster. Also, hoping on a train to Montreal with a 1 hr 20 minute ride makes a day trip even easier-almost providing a "regional" type service.

The Ottawa-Toronto line specifically has actually done quite well in recent years; ridership has climbed a lot (in one recent year, I'm pretty sure 2013->2014, it actually climbed 38% in just that one year!), and they've added a lot more trains. We've gone from something like 60 trains to a week to close to a 100 in the past 5 years; Friday specifically has jumped from 5 departures to 8.

This project could tie in very well with the GO RER project in Toronto. Because Union will be the main hub of the RER lines, it will make huge swaths of the GTA very accessible for VIA connections. An Ottawan going to a meeting in Markham or Mississauga could easily take trains to get there.

With regional RER connections to places like Hamilton, Barrie, and Kitchener, and new rapid transit lines in Ottawa, Toronto, and Kitchener-Waterloo, combined with improved VIA services, it will amount to an efficient transit network connecting millions of Ontarians.

This reminds me of the Kitchener bullet train from the last provincial election (which has since disappeared). Hardly any train service in the world is profitable and even fewer pay the capex privately, hard to believe they would make a profit on the operating cost and enough of a surplus to pay the investors a return on the investment.

I wonder if this is just an election gimmick or if this is the first step of a plan to just ask the government for $3B ("sorry boss, we tried to get private investors and they wouldn't bite")

There's currently an EA being done for that one that was launched last fall.

If it isn't a serious investment plan (though given the interest it has generated from a number of high profile investors I'd disagree with you on that one), it would be latter. Nobody from the CPC has said a peep about it and VIA has had this in the works for quite some time now.

That said, the timing of this around the election is suspicious. It makes me think this is an attempt by VIA to make this plan an election issue.

Yeah, for "bi-directional service"
http://www.therecord.com/news-story/...rts-this-year/

A far cry from the pre-election promise of high speed rail.

Regarding that $48 subsidy...that is pretty low compared to other lines. Before the Ontario government shut it down, the ONTC Northlander to Northern Ontario had a subsidy of over $400 per passenger, meaning they could essentially buy them all new cars for the same price if they were regular users.

No, there's a separate high speed rail EA going on too, in addition to the RER one.

http://news.ontario.ca/mto/en/2014/1...peed-rail.html

Two-way all day GO to Kitchener and the Toronto-London HSR were always meant to be separate projects/services (albeit sharing a lot of common infrastructure). The former has a higher chance of happening, though.

That's not the same thing. The plan Is to have 2 lines operating on the corridor, HSR and GO. That would be for the local GO transit service, while the HSR EA is for the high speed express trains that will run to London.

Yay, this thread is here! *drools* Anyways a few things I've been wondering:

-I don't get where VIA's stations come into all this, as they are mostly on CN lines. If Via builds a track, would they need new stations too? This is only really an issue between Brockville and Toronto (maybe Montreal too).

- Oh, ok, read it again, VIA will own 25% of the track. One would have to think though that the same issues could flare up in the future, though. That said, not sure where the half hour from Ottawa to Montreal is being saved.

- I had wondered if VIA would have considered a new line from Smiths Falls to Kingston. However, if they want to ditch the direct train from Toronto to Montreal, maybe it's better to not leave Brockville.

Based just on the article and the proposed time estimates and eliminating the "triangle" I would guess they're looking at the cp corridor between Belleville and smith falls

Even considering abandoned lines, there was never a direct route between Smiths Falls and Kingston. I think Kingston is a crucial midpoint station between Ottawa and Toronto and you wouldn't want to bypass it so likely the route via Brockville will remain the best choice.

I imagine VIA would add an additional set of tracks within the CN corridor on the Kingston Subdivision (the 'mainline' track between Toronto and Montreal) that would be exclusively VIA's by agreement, despite being technically CN-owned. GO did this between Pickering and Oshawa some time ago (in the 1980s or 1990s I think).

The federal government already invested a lot of money in replacing many of the stations along the route. Although, notably, Kingston station has not been replaced and as such has a number of deficiencies; and there's some pressure from Kingston City Council for the station to be relocated further east around Division Street; so we'll see how that plays out.

If they ditch the Toronto-Montreal direct train, that would mean the removal of service from Cornwall station, which is a fairly high ridership station; I imagine they would likely leave a few trains on the old route to reach Cornwall. Same solution could be done for Brockville.

A new straight-line track from Kingston to Smiths Falls, although identified as necessary/desirable in pretty much every HSR study, would be difficult. It would have to pass through heavily forested hills filled with lakes, making pretty much any route route both expensive and environmentally sensitive, and likely to draw the ire of cottage owner NIMBYs.

The track from Brockville to Smiths Falls is single-tracked (would have to be doubled as part of this plan likely) and owned by CP, but I don't think CP ever uses it. I'm a very frequent VIA rider, and while VIA trains are frequently stopped on sidings for each other on this route, never once has a train I've been on ever conflicted with a CP train. CP may very well retain ownership of the corridor; although the new second track built here might end up being VIA-owned.

Due to Queen's University, Kingston-Toronto has very high intercity travel demand on weekends and around holiday times; much more so than would otherwise be expected given the population and distance; furthermore, the demand is driven by a demographic that is more likely to take transit than drive. On a typical Sunday train from Toronto to Ottawa, half the train gets off in Kingston.

Even the express trains stop in Kingston on the Ottawa-Toronto route. It's a vital stop and would almost certainly not be bypassed.

There's no way to get the reductions in travel times (90 minutes) they're talking about on the Ottawa-Toronto route without taking a more direct route, which means either a greenfield railway from Kingston to Smiths falls (which as lrtfriend pointed out never existed as the old K&P took a direct route to Pembrooke and you pointed out involves major geographic impediments) or using the CPR from Belleville to Smiths Falls. Not sure which they're planning although with only a 1.5B track budget it sure looks like the latter.

That's interesting. Why is this? Easier to get to or something? Hopefully if they do move the station they could find a way to better integrate it with Kingston's express busses. A new station could also be an easy way to put more tracks at the station with minimal disruption.

However, I would have thought that the current location is more central...

The current route from Ottawa to Toronto is 446km. If upgraded to allow full speed, that route could be done in about 2 hours and 50 minutes with current equipment assuming a single stop in Kingston. 2 hours 30 minutes may be an exaggeration.

That inland CP route (the Belleville Subdivision, if I'm not mistaken), would be a pretty useful shortcut but it's in poor condition, very curvy (thus slowing down trains), and CP is hard to deal with (CP is much more hostile to passenger service on their lines than CN--this is a huge issue in the GTA with Metrolinx). I doubt $1.5B could do that one either.

The current location is seen by most in the city as out of the way and isolated. Because it's literally in a swamp, nothing else can really be built around it which the city feels is limiting its economic development potential; the KEDCO people (Kingston's equivalent of Invest Ottawa), want it relocated to one of the city's existing development hubs, it just so happens that the Kings Crossing area around Division Street is the only one on the mainline.

Ok, I agree with you if the assumption is that the 2.5 hours in the article is BS. If they do want to meet the 2.5 hours with conventional speeds then the Belleville sub knocks 54km of the trip from Ottawa to Toronto (which would be 2.45 hours at the very unlikely theoretical full speed).

I believe the maximum speed of the current equipment is about ~165km/h. I've measured the speed of trains using my phone GPS from Kingston to Ottawa before. VIA attains speeds of 160-165 between Smiths Falls and just southwest of Barrhaven, and between Ganonoque and Kingston Mills.

The Canadian Northern had a line from Napanee to Smiths Falls via Sydenham which connected to the existing line from Smiths Falls to Ottawa. This line also crosses the old K&P. The K&P crossed the current CP mainline at Tichborne and the old CP mainline to Peterborough at Sharbot Lake. CNOR had trackage rights over the old K&P from Harrowsmith to Kingston. The probabliity of reviving any portion of a rout from Kingston to Smiths Falls is likely nil since all the current landowners would protest the conversion from a recreational trail to a operating railway.
The cost of double tracking the CP Brockville sub and adding more triple track between Kingston and Brockville is much more cost effective than building a new route.

The problem with the previous capacity expansion on the Toronto Monreal mainline is that non of the triple track sections have been reserved exclusively for Via and they are built to a lower standard such as wooden ties as opposed to concrete ties. What we currently have is a subsidy to CN although it is referred to as an investment in Via Rail by the feds. With exclusive track the speed could be increased to achieve the times suggested.

I really do hope that they maintain service on the Montreal-Toronto mainline and not divert all trains through Ottawa. This is a big detour and you will never be able to obtain optimal service speed with this detour. I think the potential demand will be sufficient to have separate service between all three cities.

Agreed. Diverting all trains through Ottawa makes sense only when talking about real HSR (250-350km/h type stuff). At the 160km/h speed that's achievable with this dedicated tracks project, the added kilometres through Ottawa would make the Toronto-Montreal trip only marginally faster than driving even with the faster speed.

That said, if improved to 160km/h the whole way, a detour through Ottawa would be able to roughly match current travel time on the mainline... but it's not an improvement, which is what we want out of this.

Is there any way they could rebuild the Government Conference Centre as Union Station? The challenge is reconnecting the tracks from Hurdman over to the GCC...

We are already doing that with the Confederation Line. It will be faster than trying to return heavy rail to Union Station. VIA Rail should include a transit ticket with every fare coming into Ottawa. The cost is minimal and I am sure VIA could negotiate a significant discount with OC Transpo knowing that many will not use the option.

I'm still on the fence about whether or not reviving Union is a good idea.

This is Ottawa, and there is a healthy demand for driving into the train station; the area around Union would not be able to handle such parking demand unless some serious coin was chipped in for underground parking.

Furthermore, the current train station is highly accessible by transit, about to become more so. It's not a huge burden. Also, its presence just southeast of downtown could help kickstart urbanization of that area.

A counterpoint:

- Parking: This is one of the original arguments for moving the station, but it's not like there's a tremendous number of spaces at Tremblay either. My sense is that most people don't really drive and park to take the train - If you're going to take the train, you take transit or get dropped off - otherwise, you drive all the way. It's not like an airport where people probably can't drive to their destinations.

My thinking for Union is that it would do more than just make intercity travel easier and much more attractive; a central link would also allow us to develop a regional system akin to those found in places like Germany, Australia or New Zealand. With a rapid and direct connection to the centre of the city, we could start to restructure the region's growth around rail stations in places like Vars, Carp, Richmond and Greeley instead of letting those places sprawl around clogged highways. For that to happen, a central rail station is very important, as Auckland's Brittomart station revival demonstrated; after rail was brought back to the core, ridership shot up immediately and a station which was criticized for being overbuilt and unnecessary reached its 2030 capacity before even 2010.

I think that a new central station would soon become one of those "why-didn't-we-have-this-before?" things.

I know by observation that only a very small amount of VIA passengers--something like 10%-20% at most--take transit to and from Ottawa train station. I don't know about the rest though, not sure whether its mostly taxi/drop-off or drive-and-park.

When on personal business I use Fallowfield station - and park there.

I haven't travelled on business business in a very long time, but when I did I cabbed it to Fallowfield.

Most likely with a Union Station downtown, more people would use Fallowfield from suburban areas since that station would likely have additional parking. But overall ridership of those who want to go to downtown would more than make up the difference.

Too bad the VIA line doesn't go into Orleans, that would be a great place for a station for the east end as well.

So any idea if this plan would include double tracking the entire line through Ottawa? Or is that not needed as trains would probably not overlap through this stretch?

I ask because there are quite a few bridge's that would need to be replaced to allow double tracks over them.
- Prince of Wales (will happen when road is widened anyways)
- Rideau River (single only)
- Riverside (double can fit)
- Walkley (single only)
- Bronson (single only)
- Heron (might fit two)
- Transitway (might fit two)
- Bank (single only)
- Smyth (double can fit)
- Riverside near Hurdman (double can fit)

Not to mention the handful of pedestrian underpasses that may require retrofitting to allow double tracks to pass over top.

Thanks

The big expense on this list is the rail bridge over the Rideau River. If the Beachburg sub is ever converted to O-Train service to Kanata or Stittsville this will probably have to be double tracked. I would think this would be the last bridge to be reconstructed/replaced.

The one grade separation you forgot is the the rail/rail crossing of the O-Train. This is crucial especially if the frequency of the O-Train is ever increased to 5 minute intervals or less.
Clearly avoiding level crossings is the most important priority, followed by doubling existing single track rail bridges.

Good question. I imagine VIA would probably include this kind of detailed info about the infrastructure improvements needed in the prospectus (if I were investing billions in VIA, I'd want to know specifically what projects they were building so I can judge whether it will be a success or not!), but that info may or may not be made public. Here's hoping it is.

Current travel time between Ottawa Central and Fallowfield is 18 minutes normally although it can vary. The track east of the point where the tracks from Barrhaven merge in with the tracks from the west (near Colonnade), has a very slow speed limit, so I imagine VIA's first priority is to speed it up. If they do that, they can reduce the travel time from Tremblay to the inner edge of the Greenbelt to about 10 minutes or so. That's low enough that VIA can schedule around it--especially if the dedicated tracks project improves on-time reliability elsewhere in the system (which it should).

Within the Greenbelt, double tracking is obviously easy. In Barrhaven, it's also easy as all the crossings are still level (with the exception of Greenbank where a separation is being built; it protects for two tracks).

How would parking be improved by using Union Station downtown? The transit connection would not be much better downtown compared to the current station. For rail service, the current location makes much more sense because it is a through station and not a stub station requiring back up moves. In Avignon and Lyon all TGV's stop at suburban stations and not at the downtown stations. The main benefit of using Union Station is that there are several hotels within walking distance from the station.

I agree, while ripping up all the rail infrastructure downtown was probably a bad idea, trying to put it back would entail enormous cost because it would be mostly underground (I can't imagine getting agreement to tear up Colonel By, Nicholas and the grass). Terminal stations cause all sort of problems (particularly in North America where they are not designed for bidirectional travel) and given the speed heavy rail trains go as they approach stations, I can't image train getting downtown faster than an LRT vehicle.

I think you misunderstood me - Parking was an argument used in the 1960s to move the station to Tremblay, not an argument for moving it back to downtown.

I figure that it would cost about half a Scarborough subway ;)
The way that I see it, it would entail a new crossing of the Rideau river then a rail trench covered by the Nicolas Expressway, not unlike the option currently being pursued for Phase 2 under the Ottawa River Parkway. Past Laurier, you could bore a station under Union. It's a big project, but I don't see it being a tremendously difficult one.

As for having a terminus station, this is something which was possible in Ottawa in 1965 and is still done for passenger trains in Halifax, Vancouver, Toronto and both of Montreal's stations (albeit poorly in the case of Station Centrale).

Something I really wish via would add is late evening trains between Ottawa and Montreal. Departing somewhere around 11 PM. That would actually enable you to go attend things in Montreal without the expense of staying the night.

Boring a station under an existing building can be done (Stuttgart and Bologna come to mind) but those projects are tremendously difficult.

Ottawa was never a terminal station (tracks continued over the Alexandria bridge). While terminal stations are possible they are a huge pain in the ass - trains waste time driving in and backing out before they can continue on their way.

It's about to become less so, really: more people will have to transfer to or from their LRT trip to the station, as compared to the current Transitway.

I'm on Team-Bring-Intercity-Rail-Back-Downtown-(Somehow)

Not sure where or how, yet.

I know that glass and steel contraption out in Alta Vista has its architectural fans, but I'm not one of them.

Or within tunnel distance, in one case.

Won't someone think of the Nationally Significant Grass For All Canadians?

No... Only two tracks continued through. All the rest terminated.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/ch...g?size=640x420

Zürich HB is a large, very busy, terminal station at ground level, with through tracks underground, in a city with one third the population of Ottawa. Mind you the Swiss do trains like nobody's business.

Yes, they spent an enormous amount of money to make a terminal station into a through station, because of the problems of terminal stations.

Also, Zurich has 1.4 million people and a gdp the size of Hungary so probably easier to come up with cash for mega projects

I can see one mostly surface routing that would work for a rail connection to Union Station:

* Colonel By Drive would need to be closed between Daly Avenue and Main Street, in order to allow the tracks in position.
* The pedestrian pathway would be maintained throughout
* The trains (likely 2 tracks, widening to 4 tracks at the station to accommodate commuter trains) would run in the Colonel By Drive ROW
* The trains would enter a tunnel below the Nicholas-417 interchange, below the Rideau River and rising again in the Hurdman lands, and reconnect with the existing line at Lycee Claudel (the school would need to be expropriated, but a relocation would be made nearby) - tracks split with one track going west and one going east
* Straightening at the once again dormant Ottawa Station may be possible as that station would be decommissioned
* Commuter trains would also share the same routing