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Originally Posted by lrt's friend
While bus service across the western province is not economically viable, slower and more expensive rail will be much less economically viable. VIA cannot afford to even investigate a service that will likely have 10% or 15% fare recovery.
We need to focus on the services that have over 50% fare recovery and work towards even higher fare recovery. The answer to that is HFR. We cannot even consider an Edmonton-Calgary route (currently with 0% fare recovery because there is no service) until HFR proves viable.
At the present time, the Canadian has over 50% fare recovery so we shouldn't fiddle too much with a reasonably successful service that supports the tourist trade in Western Canada. We certainly should not replace it with a service that will like generate poorer fare recovery results.
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HFR works where they plan to put it, not because it is a good spot, but because it is free. Currently, east of Peterborough is abandoned. So, they do not have to expropriate land. If they had to the costs would skyrocket. So, no, HFR is not the answer.
In fact, this project highlights what happens when you do as much as you can to speed up the route. Eventually, it gets to be too busy for the existing infrastructure and needs to be upgraded to it's own ROW.
That is what I would want to see on all routes. For the long hauls, every day, each way should be a must. This would mean you can cross Canada on daily trains.
Routes that could be added, and could be viable are the ones that used to exist but were cancelled as they were not on CN ROW. The Canadian currently runs where it does, not due to usage, but due to the fact that both CN and Via were both owned by the Crown at the time they switched over.
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Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse
If VIA will be using dedicated tracks, I wonder what the actual frequency limit will be? Even if there was just one or two commuter specials heading into town in the morning and the reverse again in the evening, it could help a lot of people.
Also, do we know what the HFR route would be through the GTA? I'm assuming it wouldn't be using the LSE corridor as that would present potential capacity problems as RER and/or Smart Track ramps up.
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It would be using the CP Belleville and Havelock Subs
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