You two are not being reasonable though. Those of us that are reasonable do support rail, and probably do support Calgary getting service. But what we also recognize, which swimmer_spe seems to be coming around to, is that rail is only appropriate on high demand routes where its advantage of massive capacity and high speed are worth the cost. Calgary - Edmonton is the only route on the prairies worth considering, and both of your insisting that we run pointless, infrequent , services on low demand routes in the prairies is what is getting people irritated and leading to the negative responses you are getting.
It's a long way off, if ever, but if Calgary - Edmonton gets off the ground, then we can start discussing if extending it is worthwhile. And even then, it might be to Lethbridge, Medicine Hat or Banff rather than to Winnipeg.
Infrequent service is a big problem. That is why I am also advocating daily 2 way service on on existing routes. It really is the only way to grow the service. If you cannot take it daily, then it becomes less of transportation and more of tourist service.
Lethbridge and Banff make sense, but Medicine Hat would be too small to be a draw. Going at least to Regina or Winnipeg would make sense.
Any service I advocate for would always be a daily, 2 way or better.
First of all let me state that I am in favour or returning service to the Calgary-Edmonton route as soon as possible. That is why I say the service should be restarted with only 2-4 round trips per day as a place holder until a ROW separate from freight traffic can be established. Obviously discussions would have to take place with CP to determine the number of frequencies they would accept and what infrastructure improvements would be required. The most expensive capital cost option would clearly be the Calgary-Edmonton route but if CP only agrees with 2-3 trains daily, but 2-3 is better than 0.
I have always thought that extending the service to Lethbridge would make sense after service to Calgary is running and the frequency expanded past 2-4 round trips.
However, I think we should pick the low hanging fruit first, that being the previous routing of the Canadian via Regina from Calgary to Winnipeg. It is not barren prairies between the 2 major cities of Calgary and Winnipeg. I agree that the growth potential is limited 1 train a day to Winnipeg is reasonable provided the infrastructure improvements required are limited and different rolling stock is used.For this reason I would start with the Calgary-Winnipeg route as the first option as some equipment will become available when the HFR is implement in the Corridor. The route would still require selected infrastructure improvements to make the train more reliable but less than a separate ROW on the Calgary-Edmonton route. This route is far more viable than what a Medicine Hat-Calgary train as you suggested will ever be since the only other large town in-between is Brooks and Medicine Hat can hardly be described as a booming metropolis. But Brooks and Medicine Hat when added to Swift Current, Moose Jaw, Regina, Brandon, Portage la Prairie and Winnipeg represent a much larger pool of population which would be serviced by the Calgary-Winnipeg route. You cannot ignore all the medium sized communities from your analysis.
At a minimum we should re-route the existing Canadian between Edmonton and Winnipeg via North Battleford and Lloydminster to attract more ridership and reduce interference from freight trains.
Too many people say that nothing can be done to the current network. Keep in mind that the contrary to what Urban Sky says, a lot of the decision making was concerned with politics and the idea that the southern prairies had more bus service alternatives. On the northern prairie route the currently served communities are not on the Yellowhead Hwy so many did not have bus service. The fact that the government was not willing to operate the trains as 4 separate trains by ending them Winnipeg is was also part problem. What happens to service in Northern Ontario does affect the current service in the west and vice versa. My idea is to limit this by having a separate train based in the prairies and to service the prairies where a larger potential ridership exists. Maybe you don't care what happens in Northern Ontario but that problem needs to be fixed also. The time for transcontinental service is long since past.
i am not in favour of running trains to places you might consider to be no where just for the sake of running trains and drawing lines on a map. There is nothing worse than drawing a line on a map between Edmonton an Calgary for a constantly late train operating 2 days a week and call that service.
He is going to try to banish you....
The issues with Northern Ontario could be fixed, and I know the railways would love it.... Reroute the trains onto the HCR and ACR lines, and then on to the CP. HCR is constantly asking the government for money for maintenance. They have few trains running on it, so there is no reason that line could not be upgraded to run at a decent speed and that freight could be timed to avoid the Via passing through. In fact, doing that, and splitting at Washago to go north to North Bay and then over would also work well. The old Northlander did not wait on freight on that part of the line.
Just like how having 2 lines crossing the prairies makes sense, a second line crossing Northern ON also makes sense, especially if the new one connects all the major cities. I do think that Just like the Corridor, the Canadian should be different legs. For example, you cannot get on a train in Windsor that goes all the way to Quebec City without getting off at a station to switch trains. Winnipeg makes a good divisional point. Maybe even Edmonton and Calgary too.
"Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it." (writer and philosopher George Santayana)
Quote:
Originally Posted by swimmer_spe
The issues with Northern Ontario could be fixed, and I know the railways would love it.... Reroute the trains onto the HCR and ACR lines, and then on to the CP. HCR is constantly asking the government for money for maintenance. They have few trains running on it, so there is no reason that line could not be upgraded to run at a decent speed and that freight could be timed to avoid the Via passing through. In fact, doing that, and splitting at Washago to go north to North Bay and then over would also work well. The old Northlander did not wait on freight on that part of the line.
Personally I don't like this idea because it would (probably) take longer even though there is less interference from freight trains on the Newmarket sub to North By than on the Bala sub to Sudbury. But if the train is reliable then there would be the added bonus of servicing more population centres.
Quote:
Originally Posted by swimmer_spe
Just like how having 2 lines crossing the prairies makes sense, a second line crossing Northern ON also makes sense, especially if the new one connects all the major cities. I do think that Just like the Corridor, the Canadian should be different legs. For example, you cannot get on a train in Windsor that goes all the way to Quebec City without getting off at a station to switch trains. Winnipeg makes a good divisional point. Maybe even Edmonton and Calgary too.
This is my whole premise. Different legs increase reliability and hence ridership and may reduce costs if sleepers are no longer required. I am not against sleepers/night trains but not having night trains has 2 opposed results; 1: better scheduling for intervening stops and 2: a decline in through traffic for longer distance passengers. If item 1 surpasses item 2 then we should definitely scrap sleepers on certain segments.
"Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it." (writer and philosopher George Santayana)
In a way, I hope we do repeat it - the trains going places part. If full, trains are more green. If electrified, they are even more green as most of the power is from nuclear and hydro. Not so much coal these days.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoTrans
Personally I don't like this idea because it would (probably) take longer even though there is less interference from freight trains on the Newmarket sub to North By than on the Bala sub to Sudbury. But if the train is reliable then there would be the added bonus of servicing more population centres.
No matter how you go, Toronto-Winnipeg will be an overnight train. The Newmarket sub is quiet. So, a train can do it in almost the same as driving. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northlander
When the Northlander ran, it took about 4 hours, which by train isn't horrible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoTrans
This is my whole premise. Different legs increase reliability and hence ridership and may reduce costs if sleepers are no longer required. I am not against sleepers/night trains but not having night trains has 2 opposed results; 1: better scheduling for intervening stops and 2: a decline in through traffic for longer distance passengers. If item 1 surpasses item 2 then we should definitely scrap sleepers on certain segments.
The challenge is length. Winnipeg-Toronto is 2100km driving. If someone were doing that, even if the train was fast and never sided for anything, that is a hell of a ride sitting up. Sudbury is too close to Toronto to be a good demarcation, and Thunder Bay is too close to Winnipeg, as well as not connected to the northern CN route.
If you told someone that they need to get on at midnight to get to Toronto or Winnipeg, people would, especially in winter. I'll bet most of the prairie towns would have the same attitude. The good thing is, if there become enough demand, having a train go each way, twice a day, 122 hours apart could become a reality.
I think in 2 terms: reality and fantasy.
Reality is running 1 train a day each way.
Fantasy is demand to run more than 1 train a day each way.
For now, I am working in the reality and working on seeing what the numbers tell me.
The real reality is that the rebuilding of passenger service will be painful.
Last edited by swimmer_spe; Mar 29, 2020 at 8:15 PM.
That is why i keep pounding on the number that showed a lower subsidy.
GO AWAY, TROLL!!!
I'm not going to continue wasting my time arguing with you until maybe in 3 years time and 521 pages of discussion later you will finally acknowledge the following:
At the time the 1990 cuts were announced, the subsidy needed for operating the Canadian was higher than that of the VIA services on the CN route: $108.5 million [1] is more than $62.5 million [2].
Even when adjusting for the higher train mileage on the CP route (resulting from higher frequencies and serving two branches east of Sudbury, rather than zero), the Canadian's per subsidy was still higher than that of the Super-Continental or Winnipeg-Capreol service: $29.31 [3] is more than $27.35 [4] or $26.45 [5].
Extrapolating from the 1988 figures of the Canadian and the Super-Continental, continuing to operate the Canadian over the CP route rather than rerouting it onto CN would have resulted in a higher subsidy, even after reducing the frequency to 3 times per week: $40.0 million [6] is more than $38.2 million [7].
When looking at east of Winnipeg, operating the Winnipeg-Capreol service (which could not be eliminated if the Canadian was to serve the CP route) required a higher subsidy than continuing to operate the Sudbury-White River RDC service (which could not be eliminated if the Canadian was to serve the CN route), which means that routing the Canadian over the CP route would have incurred a higher subsidy need for the Remote Services: $12.4 million [8] is more than $1.7 million [9].
When looking at west of Winnipeg, continuing to operate the CN route allowed VIA to cut the Skeena back from Prince Rupert-Edmonton (note that this service was operated jointly with the Super-Continental between Jasper and Edmonton until towards the end of 1988) to just Prince Rupert-Jasper, which would not have been possible with abandoning the Super-Continental, which means that routing the Canadian over the CP route would have incurred a higher subsidy need for the Remote Services: zero is more than -$3.2 million [10].
Even worse, given that VIA didn’t have any maintenance facilities in Jasper or Edmonton, the Skeena would have needed to be extended to the nearest maintenance center, which means that routing the Canadian over the CP route would have necessitated to continue to operate the Super-Continental 3 times per week between Edmonton and Winnipeg (as the nearest maintenance center), which would have incurred a higher subsidy need for the Transcontinental Services to be maintained after the 1990 cuts: $10.9 million [11] is more than zero.
Considering all of the above, reducing the Canadian to 3 trains per week and direction, but keeping it on the CP route rather than moving it onto the CN route, would have resulted in a higher subsidy need: $76.2 million is more than $49.7 million [12].
[2] Refer to the financial metrics provided in Canadian Railroad Historical Association (p. 206) for the Super-Continental (176,418 * $283.80 = $50,067,428) and Winnipeg-Capreol (54,101 * $229.10 = $12,394,539), thus $62,461,968 combined.
[3] Refer to the May 1988 VIA timetable to confirm that the Canadian operated 7 times per week and direction over a distance of 5,071 km (4,645 km VCVR-SUDB-MTRL plus 426 km SUDB-TRTO), which translates to an annual timetable volume of 3,701,830 km (5,071 km * 7 * 2 * 365 / 7), thus a per train-km subsidy of $29.31 ($108,511,491 / 3,701,830 km).
[4] Refer to the May 1988 VIA timetable to confirm that the Super-Continental operated 7 times per week and direction over a distance of 2,508 km, which translates to an annual timetable volume of 1,830,840 km (2,508 km * 7 * 2 * 365 / 7), thus a per train-km subsidy of $27.35 ($50,067,428 / 1,830,840 km).
[5] Refer to the May 1988 VIA timetable to confirm that the Winnipeg-Capreol service operated 3 times per week and direction over a distance of 1,498 km, which translates to an annual timetable volume of 468,660 km (1,498 km * 7 * 2 * 365 / 7), thus a per train-km subsidy of $26.45 ($12,394,539 / 468,660 km)..
[6] Refer to the May 1988 VIA timetable to confirm that excluding the Sudbury-Montreal branch, the Canadian operated over a distance of 4,360 km (5,071 km minus 711 km SUDB-MTRL), which (assuming that the Canadian would still have been cut to 3 departures per week and direction, but over the CP route) translates to an annual timetable volume of 1,364,057 km (4,360 km * 3 * 2 * 365 / 7) or an annual subsidy need of $39,984,514.
[7] Refer to the January 1990 VIA timetable to confirm that the CN route measures 4,467 km from Toronto to Vancouver and was operated 3 times per week and direction, which translates to an annual timetable volume of 1,397,533 km (4,467 km * 3 * 2 * 365 / 7) or an annual subsidy need of $38,217,909 (1,397,533 km * $27.35).
[10] Refer to the financial metrics provided in Canadian Railroad Historical Association (p. 206) and the May 1988 VIA timetable for the Edmonton-Prince Rupert service to confirm that its subsidy need was $12,905,860 (26,665 * $484) and that it operated 3 times per week and direction over a distance of 1,540 km, which means that cutting the 380 km between Edmonton and Jasper off its route might have reduced this subsidy by $3,184,563 ($12,905,860 / 1,540 * 380).
[11] Refer to the May 1988 VIA timetable to confirm that the distance covered by the Super-Continental was 1,278 km between Edmonton and Winnipeg, which suggests that the subsidy need for operating the Super-Continental 3 times per week on this segment would have required a subsidy need of $10,934,069 (1,278 * 3 * 2 *365 / 7 * $27.35).
[12] Refer to the table below, which estimates the operating subsidy need by extrapolating the financial figures reported for the five VIA routes which are affected by the question whether the Canadian will continue to operate (with reduced frequency) over the CN or CP route to the distance and frequency of these services under both scenarios, assuming that the subsidy need per timetable-km will remain constant and using the following formula: Subsidy per timetable-km (1988) * Distance (after the cuts) * Frequency per week (after the cuts) * 2 * 365 / 7.
In conclusion, the only figure which showed a lower figure subsidy figure for the Canadian operating over the CP rather than the CN route that was ever mentioned in this thread was the one I prepared by extrapolating from data which was collected almost 30 years after the 1990 cuts and did not include any information on the CP route (beyond the Sudbury-White River RDC service). I merely made a crude extrapolation from the Canadian’s per-timetable-km subsidy in 2018 (on the CN route) in absence of any better figures available to me. However, now that I have found and shared the exact figures for what I tried to approximate, these previous figures have been proven to be wrong and I have therefore retracted from them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by swimmer_spe
I think in 2 terms: reality and fantasy.
I believe you that you think in these terms, but what you grasp as “reality” is already a fantasy…
Quote:
For now, I am working in the reality and working on seeing what the numbers tell me.
Wrong, you are only interested in those numbers which confirm whatever you want to be true, hence your insistence on using figures which which have been proven wrong and your refusal to use those which have been proven to be right. It is already sad enough to have one Donald Trump in the White House, we don’t need another one and his “alternative facts” in this discussion.
You have ignored my repeated warnings and the increasingly exasperated pleas of J81 and others to finally move on from your ever-same long-debunked claims and if you are not able to suppress your compulsion to repeat them, the only thing you can do to help other contributors maintain a constructive discussion is to leave this thread…
THEREFORE, PLEASE GO AWAY AND TROLL SOMEWHERE ELSE!!!
I would like to answer to some of the points you are raising, but given that the vast majority of posts concerns only a small aspect of the thread’s title, I feel like it would be more appropriate to create a separate thread. Would you mind creating one dedicated to that discussion with an appropriate title, for instance (if you want to hear my suggestion): “Can we revive intercity passenger rail across Western Canada?”? That way we can bring a change of topic here, which other posters like J81, Truenorth00, milomilo or Roger1818 seem to be increasingly desperately longing for…
Last edited by Urban_Sky; Mar 30, 2020 at 2:28 PM.
In respect of the repeatedly expressed wishes of certain posters to move this discussion away from the same ever-circling discussion around the lack of intercity passenger rail across Western Canada, I am cross-posting a long post I wrote on Urban Toronto yesterday:
***
The release of (the summary of) VIA's most recent (i.e. 2019-2023) Corporate Plan has already been noted and discussed here a few weeks ago, but while most of you were discussing and worrying about the potential effect of the loss of the possibility to turn the Ocean's equipment through the Port of Halifax, I read something in the plan which made me really excited and that was the release of direct costs and revenues figures.
But first of all, what is so special about direct costs and revenues? Well, like most companies, VIA differentiates between expenses and costs which result from its direct activities (e.g. operating trains and selling tickets), indirect activities (e.g. marketing and maintenance) and overheads (e.g. management and other corporate functions, including the salaries for HQ folks like myself). Given that VIA is a Crown Corporation which only recovers just under 60% of its operating expenses from its passengers and the remaining 40% from the taxpayer, politicians and bureaucrats (as the administrators of the tax revenue collected from individual and corporate taxpayers) demand accountability for where that taxpayer money went and for these reasons all the expenses and costs are allocated towards the various routes VIA operates (as its principal commercial activities), which is straight-forward in the case of direct expenses and costs, tricky in the case of indirect expenses and outright difficult in the case of overheads: because any activity which doesn't directly relate to one particular route (or any route at all) needs to be allocated proportionally to the most relevant (or better: least arbitrary) metric (as a distribution key), which could be the passenger count, passenger-mileage, seat-miles, train-miles or even the revenue itself.
Anyways, whereas these fully-allocated costs are appropriate for anyone interested in how VIA's subsidy distributes across its network, this approach obscures whether certain parts are actually increasing or decreasing the overall deficit. Naturally, the information about how much cost, revenues and profits (or losses) a certain route generates is valuable information for competitors (which could use this information to determine which markets to enter or to avoid), which could hurt the company publishing this information, which is why such information is usually guarded as commercial secrets and therefore very difficult to come by. That is, except you work in the "right" departments at VIA's HQ, but that unfortunately also means that you have to forget that you know them and instead refer only to publicly available information and this is why I'm so excited about reading these figures, because these are figures I can actually use in my posts here:
Source: VIA Rail's Summary of the 2019-2023 Corporate Plan (pp.20-21)
As you've might have noticed, VIA refers to direct costs and expenses as "variable", indirect costs and expenses as "semi-variable" and to overheads as "fixed", but this is just a different way to say the same. Either way, when piecing the figures from above excerpt together and cross-referencing it with VIA Rail's last two Annual Plans, you can separate the direct costs and expenses of operating services from the non-direct ones and that not just for VIA overall, but also for the Canadian, the Ocean, the Corridor and its Remote services:
Compiled from: VIA Rail's Summary of the Corporate Plan and Annual Plans 2017 and 2018
Note: figures in bold are provided in above documents, whereas all other figures are derived from these figures.
But what do all these figures mean? For instance, whereas $294.0 million (or 96.3%) out of the $305.3 million in operating revenues reported in the Annual Report 2018 for the Corridor are directly associated with the operation of Corridor trains, only $217.0 million (or 48.3%) out of the $448.8 million of its operating costs are, which means that the Corridor services recover 135.5% of their direct costs of operating and contribute $77.0 million towards non-direct (i.e. "semi-variable" or "fixed") costs and revenues of the Crown Corporation. Similarly, whereas $367.9 million (or 93.7%) out of the $392.6 million in operating revenues reported for the total VIA Network are directly associated with the operation of Corridor trains, only $328.8 million (or 49.6%) out of the $662.6 million of its operating costs are, which means that all VIA services collectively recover 111.9% of their direct costs of operating and contribute $33.0 million towards non-direct (i.e. "semi-variable" or "fixed") costs and revenues of the Crown Corporation. This means that $37.8 million (or 49.1%) of the $77.0 million which the Corridor services contributes towards the non-direct costs and revenues is offset by the direct deficit of the other (non-Corridor) services.
So what can we learn from these figures? First of all, it explains why VIA was able to decrease its overall (operating) subsidy need from $317.1 million in 2014 to $272.6 million in 2018* (i.e. a reduction of 14.0%) while increasing its total train mileage from 6.16 million in 2014 to 6.825 million in 2018, because all of this 10.8% increase occurred on its only network part which generated a direct contribution in 2018: the Corridor. This is good news for everyone arguing for increased Corridor service and - of course - underlines why VIA believes that HFR would allow it eliminate its overall subsidy need for the Corridor: because it would allow it to increase and grow its Corridor services until the point where the contribution of these services offsets (or even exceeds) the amount of non-direct deficits allocated to these routes.
However, there is also a second learning point and that concerns the Canadian: Even though the 2018 figures show a moderate direct deficit of $6.5 million (or 9.7% of its direct expenses) for 2018, the 2017 figures actually show a small contribution of $0.8 million towards the Corporation's non-direct deficit. This is of course in strong contrast with occasional media reports which call the Canadian "surely the First World’s most dysfunctional train" or posters like "Ssiguy" or another Troll (which deserves to remain unnamed) which obsessively call its subsidy "obscene" and want to divert it towards either different modes or the resurrection of an extensive passenger rail network in Western Canada...
*Note that this figure is slightly higher than the $270.1 million shown in above table, as these figures taken from p.8 of the Annual Report 2018 include the deficit of the Keewatin Railway Company between The Pas and Pukatawagan (which is paid through VIA's operating budget, despite not being a VIA operation)
***Part 2 of cross-posted post***
mdrejhon said:
Quote:
The Canadian was actually on-time 84% of the time a decade ago? That's not fantasyland?
TIL.
Actually, speaking about unfair (or in this case rather: outdated) criticisms of the Canadian, the problem of excessive delays was subject to a media report recently, which was basically spun around a quote from the 2018-2022 Corporate Plan (i.e. the one preceding the one you were quoting):
Quote:
Tourism operators have indicated their displeasure and many are contemplating leaving the Canadian off their offerings putting further pressure on the service. It is, as well, becoming increasingly difficult to arrange alternate accommodations, both for passengers and our crews. This situation is a serious embarrassment for Canada's reputation and the Canada brand, in North America and abroad. Travellers return home with the lasting impression wondering how a G7 nation cannot operate its trains on time.
Now, having been delayed myself almost 24 hours on my first trip on the Canadian (together with my wife) in summer 2015, I am well aware how bad delays can get on the Canadian. However, when I took it again last April, it was running more than 6 hours late through the Prairies, but still arrived 18 minutes early into Toronto. To demonstrate that I was not just lucky the second time, I have looked up every single departure on ReserVIA and compiled it into this handy table:
Compiled from: train data obtained from ReserVIA by playing around with the date stamp in the URL.
Note: unfortunately, ReserVIA only saves train data for just over a year and I’ve only started downloading all instances of trains #1 and #2 recently (i.e. starting with Train #1 of 2019-02-09). For the same reason, all data shown for Jasper only includes train departures which can also be found in my Dropbox folder..
Now what change reduced this issue so significantly? We are talking of course about the two timetable changes which took place in the last 2 years, as throughout the first half of 2018, the timetable which had been in place since 2008 (when the timetable was already extended by 12 hours, thus requiring the operation with four instead of 3 consists) only had relevance until Train #2 hit the Prairies, with delays accumulating to the point that Train #2 routinely arrived into Toronto in excess of 10 hours late. This reliably pushed the departure time of Train #1 to the next morning (as a minimum turn-around time of 6 hours in Toronto would place the earliest possible departure time into the middle of the night), meaning that it would already depart almost 12 hours late, at which point the operation of Canadian would become so erratic that it would show up in Edmonton, Jasper and Vancouver at any time of the day. The situation escalated with the operation of the round-trips (from Vancouver to Toronto and back) of trains #2 of Friday, May 11, 2018 and Sunday, May 20, 2018:
• Train #2 of Friday, May 11th departed Vancouver on time (at 20:30), but arrived Toronto only in the early morning (02:28) of Wednesday (16th), thus 17 hours late and 4.5 hours after (!) the scheduled departure time of Train #1 of May 15th.
• Train #1 of Tuesday, May 15th consequently departed only in the early Wednesday afternoon (14:30, thus 16.5 hours late) and arrived into Vancouver Sunday afternoon (15:34), thus almost 30 hours late and less than 5 hours before the scheduled departure of the next round trip.
• Train #2 of Sunday, May 20th was consequently delayed until the next morning and departed at 08:10 (thus 11.5 hours late) and arrived into Toronto only in the early afternoon (13:05) of Friday, May 25th, thus 27.5 hours late and 15 hours after (!) the scheduled departure time of Train #1 of May 24th.
• On Friday, May 25th, VIA Rail cancelled the departure of Train #1 of Thursday, May 24th (which had already been postponed until Friday) would be cancelled, as well as its return trip from Vancouver as Train #2 of Tuesday, May 29th, in order to allow operations to recover from these massive delays.
In the same press release announcing the cancellations of the round trip mentioned above, its CEO at time stated that "we are currently working with our infrastructure partner on a new schedule, to start during the peak summer period, that will provide a longer but more predictable travel time" and this new schedule was announced in a separate press release one month later (on June 22), to take effect on July 26. The Achilles' heel of the schedule used since 2008 was clearly the short layover of barely over 12 hours in Toronto, which provided insufficient to compensate the significant delays Train #2 routinely accumulated through the prairies. The departure time of Train #2 was therefore moved from 15:00 to 12:00 (which decreased the risk of forcing the departure of Train #1 to be postponed to the next day, which would regularly force VIA to put outbound passengers into a Hotel) and the arrival time in Toronto was moved from 09:30 to 14:00 (which decreased the risk of passengers feeling tempted to book onward transportation for the same day, thus frequently causing missed flights and forced VIA to put incoming stranded passengers into a Hotel). As for Train #1, its departure time remained unchanged, but its arrival time into Vancouver was changed from 09:42 to 18:00, which virtually eliminated the risk of passengers feeling tempted to book an outgoing flight for the same evening.
Even though this reduced the risk of next-morning departures of Train #1, it did not eliminate it entirely (note in above table that the average delay at departure decreased from over 9 to just under 2 hours) and the timetable was completely reworked with the start of last year's peak season, featuring prolonged turn-around times on both ends of the Canadian's route, thus exploiting the fact that the summer-only third weekly frequency would only operate between Vancouver and Edmonton, while CN is increasing track capacity across the Prairies:
The success in reducing the delays on the Canadian can be seen in the following graphs, which shows that arriving no later than the advertised arrival time of Train #2 in Toronto under the new schedule is roughly as likely (44% vs. 46.5%) as arriving no more than 12 hours late was under the old schedule (in early 2018), while arriving no more than 6 hours late under the new schedule is roughly as likely (90.5% vs. 91.5%) as arriving no more than 24 hours late under the old schedule:
Compiled from: train data obtained from ReserVIA by playing around with the date stamp in the URL.
An even more drastic improvement can be shown for Train #1, where arriving in Vancouver no later than 3 hours prior (!) to the advertised arrival time is roughly as likely (31.7% vs. 31.4%) under the current schedule as arriving 13 hours late under the old schedule, while arriving no more than 4 hours late is roughly as likely (95.1% vs. 95.7%) than arriving no more than 30 (!) hours late under the old schedule:
Compiled from: train data obtained from ReserVIA by playing around with the date stamp in the URL.
So what does this tell us about the quality and relevance of certain media reports made about the Canadian? Maybe that heavily relying on a two year old report which describes the situation 3 years ago to describe the current situation might make for a captivating, but not necessarily timely or accurate story...
It’s not always easy to unearth publicly accessible sources and I wish I had already started saving the train data from ReserVIA (which I am sharing on Dropbox) the same time I started recording the actual timings at Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver for every departure, so that I would have better prove of how bad things were before the first timetable change end of July 2018, but thankfully there are more than enough media and eyewhitness accounts to testify for the frequent 24+ hour delays back then...
I come here to get insights from Urban_Sky. I'd rather have his data filled posts than the half dozen trolls who think their opinions should be weighted as facts.
@urban_sky. Don't waste your time. Block them. And keep posting here for those of us who genuinely appreciate the content you provide.
This is getting ridiculous. We are behaving like children here when we don't get our own way, when at the end of the day the only thing anybody is likely to get is a of dose sober reality that there are different opinions. Contrary to your point of view, most of the postings are based on logic and with some use of facts and commonly accepted views. Unfortunately you believe that the only way Via can be structured is the current way which clearly is not working for large parts of the country. If you have never lived in other parts of the country than people that have, you are much more ready to write those areas off as wasteland (financial.
The network in the regions is a failure by any standard. If one does not think outside the box we are destined to repeat our current failures. No one expects things to change overnight with a federal government injection of billions of dollars. What is reasonable to expect is a gradual attempt to re-connect major centres in other parts of the country, in both the east and the west with some useable land based public transport. Continuing to base your support on the current route network that has a nodal network, frequency, speed and reliability that is impractical for use of the population centres of the regions does not improve anything.
I am sure that Via Rail has ridership figures, and cost figures from the past that shows data from when the frequency was daily. I presume that data is may available to you as an employee of Via Rail but not to the general public for "proprietary" reasons. Boardings and off boardings between Calgary and Winnipeg, excluding bridge traffic is an example of the data required. This data would be valuable in determining if a regional rail service is feasible. Continuing to support the existing route does not make sense. Trying to use data from the current routing of the Canadian and frequency and applying it to the southern prairie route is not realistic.
A little bit of decorum on all our parts is required to have a respectful conversation and I believe that a lot of the contributors to this thread have lost their respect of other opinions or portrayals of fact, including yourself and probably myself. People have a variety of educational, employment and experiential backgrounds that they can each bring to the table.
Let's clean up our act people.
It's amazing how you can write that much with literally not one actual substantiated number and you want us to think that @Urban_sky is the unreasonable one?
Bullshit like this is why people who know about a topic rarely post on forums.
I come here to get insights from Urban_Sky. I'd rather have his data filled posts than the half dozen trolls who think their opinions should be weighted as facts.
@urban_sky. Don't waste your time. Block them. And keep posting here for those of us who genuinely appreciate the content you provide.
You can block people? I didn't think that is possible.
You can block people? I didn't think that is possible.
1) - At the top of the page select "User CP" (CP stands for control panel)
2) - Then choose "edit ignore list", then add in the "handle" of the person you want to ignore.
You can undo this in the future if you wish.
easy peasy
I don't currently have anyone on "ignore", but I have used this in the past occasionally with particularly vexatious forumers.
It doesn't work very well as you can still see when they post and manually show the comment, and they still show up in quotes. For me, I'd like to use it on posters that wind me up and provoke a negative response, but for them I'm already wound up as soon as I see they have commented and can't help but click to see it, so the ignore function does little. For the posters that just post dross, I just scroll over it anyway.
So from what Urban_Sky is saying, the corridor routes are generating more revenue than the costs that can be directly attributed to their operation and the Canadian is very close to recovering their costs (it did in 2017 but didn't in 2018). If my understanding is correct, that is huge!
One question I do have is what are the sources of semi-variable or fixed revenues that VIA has? I can't think of any that wouldn't be directly attributable to a specific route.
So from what Urban_Sky is saying, the corridor routes are generating more revenue than the costs that can be directly attributed to their operation and the Canadian is very close to recovering their costs (it did in 2017 but didn't in 2018). If my understanding is correct, that is huge!
The amount by which direct revenues exceed direct expenses is often called "direct contribution", as it contributes towards paying for the non-direct (e.g. corporate) expenses. Therefore, the question whether the direct contribution of a certain route is positive or negative determines whether we can expect that increasing the service (on that route) would decrease or increase VIA's overall subsidy need...
Quote:
One question I do have is what are the sources of semi-variable or fixed revenues that VIA has? I can't think of any that wouldn't be directly attributable to a specific route.
Total system passenger revenues: will grow by 15.2%, from $367.9 million in 2018 to $423.7 million in 2023.
[...]
Semi-Variable and Fixed Revenues: are categorized as revenues not incurred from direct passenger revenues. They can be categorized as revenues from station activity, marketing and sales activity, maintenance operations, or corporate activities. Semi-variable and fixed revenues are forecast to grow 11.1% (from $24.8 to $27.5 million) over the Plan period.
That said, I did wonder as well what kind of semi-variable or fixed revenues would place the Canadian above the Corridor ($12.3 million vs. $11.3 million in 2018)...
Last edited by Urban_Sky; Apr 2, 2020 at 12:05 AM.
The release of (the summary of) VIA's most recent (i.e. 2019-2023) Corporate Plan has already been noted and discussed here a few weeks ago, but while most of you were discussing and worrying about the potential effect of the loss of the possibility to turn the Ocean's equipment through the Port of Halifax, I read something in the plan which made me really excited and that was the release of direct costs and revenues figures.
Thanks for the post! I am interested though if you had any thoughts on the fate of The Ocean? I know little of it, but to an interested, yet ignorant, person like myself, it would appear likely doomed? As I understand, the equipment is not in great shape, so is going to need to be replaced or refurbished at some point - a large, unwanted cost.
Given that, the removal of the turnaround and that sleeper trains aren't very efficient anyway, could a complete reconfiguration of the network on the east coast be in the cards? If we ever were to replace The Ocean's equipment, it would seem far more prudent to me to replace it with regular trains.
Thanks for the post! I am interested though if you had any thoughts on the fate of The Ocean? I know little of it, but to an interested, yet ignorant, person like myself, it would appear likely doomed? As I understand, the equipment is not in great shape, so is going to need to be replaced or refurbished at some point - a large, unwanted cost.
Given that, the removal of the turnaround and that sleeper trains aren't very efficient anyway, could a complete reconfiguration of the network on the east coast be in the cards? If we ever were to replace The Ocean's equipment, it would seem far more prudent to me to replace it with regular trains.
I know from your past posts that you arent a fan of sleepers. I honestly dont know why though as it they make the most money for the train and are the most comfortable way of travelling by train from Montreal to Halifax or between any two points in between. Would you like to sit up in a coach for 22hrs? I would definitely not. Have you got any ideas as to how you would replace the Ocean with Regular trains? Id like to hear some ideas myself because i cant come up with any.
IMO i see the Ocean terminating at Moncton and only running 2 days a week. That would allow it to be done with only one trainset. This would allow VIA to rid themselves of the REN sets. Then also have a train run between Moncton and Halifax daily after the Ocean arrives and before it departs. This could be a set of RDCs or even a push pull consist with 3 coaches. I think this is the most likely scenario but thats just me.
It's not what I would like, it's what is the most cost effective use of equipment.
And no I wouldn't like to sit in coach for 22 hours. I might like the novelty of riding in a sleeper once, but otherwise I and almost any other normal person would fly, especially if it is also cheaper. And an employer would also definitely have the employee fly and stay in a hotel rather than waste that much time.
You don't need to replace it like for like, you just scrap it and fulfill the local transport needs with regular trains. Unless the business case for the sleeper route specifically is so strong that it is worth keeping, but I don't see evidence of that.
It's not what I would like, it's what is the most cost effective use of equipment.
And no I wouldn't like to sit in coach for 22 hours. I might like the novelty of riding in a sleeper once, but otherwise I and almost any other normal person would fly, especially if it is also cheaper. And an employer would also definitely have the employee fly and stay in a hotel rather than waste that much time.
You don't need to replace it like for like, you just scrap it and fulfill the local transport needs with regular trains. Unless the business case for the sleeper route specifically is so strong that it is worth keeping, but I don't see evidence of that.
Nobody uses that train for business for the reasons you mentioned. For leisure travellers the sleepers are really the only reason for taking that train long distance. The idea of leaving Montreal in the evening and arriving the next on the maritimes without spending money on a hotel is attractive to a lot of people. The fact the sleepers are sold out many trips during the summer proves that they are in high demand and useful. What other cost effective use of sleeper cars is there?
So again i would like you to give me an example of how you scrap it with regular trains? How does a service like that look in your mind? Im curious.
Prev
Linear Mode
