Moving this discussion here:
Quote:
Originally Posted by roger1818
By "The Dayliner" I assume you mean the Victoria–Courtenay train (aka the Malahat or E&N)? One issue is it will no longer be possible to have a station in downtown Victoria. The tracks were removed and the station was demolished when the Johnson Street Bridge was replaced in 2018. You could still have a station across the narrows in Victoria West, but you would need to find a new location for and build a new station.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by roger1818
To be fair, resumption of the Victoria–Courtenay train has been studied and the Federal government promised $7.5 million to do the repairs back in 2014, but never came through with the funds. ref1, ref2 Also, VIA Rail did list this route (along with the Matapédia – Gaspé route) as two of their Regional Services in their Summary of the 2018-2022 Corporate Plan on pg.21, but indicate that they "have been suspended for safety reasons." |
BC's Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure has published a
report which finally puts a realistic price tag at restoring the Victoria-Courtenay service:
Unfortunately, the cost of just restoring the service which operated until unsafe track conditions forced its suspension is estimated at $227.3 million, which translates with a ridership figure of
45,706 in 1988 (sorry, couldn't find any more recent ridership figure, but would be surprised if it had increased since then) to a capital cost of $5,000 per rider. To compare, this is equivalent to spending $29.9 billion to get VIA's Corridor ridership from 4.1 to 9.9 million, whereas the sales pitch for HFR
promises to achieve the same with only $4 billion...
Just to provide an illustrative example for why the costs of restoring the ROW have escalated so much:
Source:
WSP (2020, p.21)