VIA Rail

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Urban_Sky

Quite honestly, I have no idea anymore what actually the argument is you are trying to defend:


What exactly do you mean by that?

I mean that when anyone reads it, they think "Well obviously..." and then do what everyone can see, even the ones that might be against it.

Originally Posted by Urban_Sky

What exactly is the project for which you want to determine whether it should or should not happen? Also, evidence alone can't recommend you any course of action. You have to first define what your objectives are, i.e. what is the problem you are trying to fix and what is the amount of resources (mostly: money) you are willing to allocate for solving it?

Returning rail to Western Canada, and eventually all Via operates dailies for all routes.

All of what you hammer on will be detailed.

Originally Posted by Urban_Sky

What exactly is your bias? You cannot mitigate your bias without acknowledging what exactly it is...

My bias is wanting daily service on all Via routes.Ho do I mitigate it? By letting the numbers tell me how much of a frequency should be there.

Originally Posted by Urban_Sky

Which number was lower than what?

The subsidy. I thought I hammered that enough. the southern route had a lower subsidy.

Originally Posted by Urban_Sky

I have no idea anymore what exactly the point is you are trying to prove here. Instead, let me restate my two main claims which I'm defending against your relentless criticism:

1. That under the publicly stated policy objectives of the 1990 cuts (to cut VIA's subsidy needs as much as possible, without abandoning any of its three mandates), abandoning the CP route was the inevitable choice, therefore it doesn't matter if local politicians or host railroads had a strong preference back in 1989 to save the CN rather than the CP route (because it apparently didn't distract from the stated objectives).
2. That the operating cost (per timetable-km) of a bus is a small fraction of that of a train and that therefore a train needs a multiple of ridership revenue (i.e. the product of passenger count, average distance traveled and yield [i.e. average fare per km traveled]) compared to a bus to operate with the same subsidy need, which cannot be realistically achieved on any thinkable rail corridor in Western Canada, except (maybe) Calgary-Edmonton.

What are your two counter-claims which put you in opposition to these two claims and what is the evidence you claim to have presented to defend your refusal to acknowledge and accept them?

I am working on the evidence. However, like I have stated many times here, there have been some things that you have posted that have me believe it is feasible to have more rail service out there. We just need to figure out how to pay for it.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by roger1818

^^^I challenge you to take a step back, take time, do your research and present an argument that is backed real statistics and not emotional opinions.

I don’t believe you are a troll or a moron. A while back you said you won’t take no for an answer and I think that’s your problem. That can lead to persistence (refusing to give up) and that can be a good trait. The problem is it can also lead to stubbornness (refusing to change your opinion), and that is a bad trait. While it is important to fight for what you believe in it is also important to have an open mind that you might sometimes be wrong.

The fine line between trolling and persistence comes down to facts. You either have them on your side or you don't. And I, for one, prefer to hear from people who have facts to present. We all know who has the facts in this discussion.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

So would I. As an ex military member, there are some facts that even the most strongest opponents and proponents don't want to agree on.

But, that does not matter on VIA. It is not like they are going to use planes.... oh, wait, the government does pay for those too.....

Is this the bit where we find out that every grunt who ever held a rifle or supply clerk who counted mukluks and cook who peeled thousands of potatoes is also an expert on complex aerospace ops?

It seems that we can now expand this to the concept of, "Once a customers, always a network planner."

You know why I respect Urban_Sky? It's not just because he has a degree in this suff and wrote a graduate thesis about VIA. It's because he shows up with numbers. And puts all of it together in a format that a moron like me can understand, with a structured argument that supports a central thesis.

There's no bluster. There's not even a claim of expertise on his part, which is actually incredibly remarkable given the proprietary info he must have access to. Nope, he spends an incredible amount of time to source publicly available data, synthesizes it and explains what it means. In doing so, he gives us a small window of insight into how a professional network planner might think about different routes.

You can choose to learn from his incredible body of work here. And if you want credibility on this topic with him, I suggest you start presenting posts of the same caliber.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

I am going into this that I want the evidence to stand on it's own. I want it to be as clear as it can be that either it should, or should not happen, or that there is nothing conclusive. I am trying to not sway this with my bias.

Good to hear.

The Covid mess. The one thing rail has over flying is that their seats usually have more space. When the dust settles, I have no doubt that this might be a side effect; people choosing not to fly due to the cramped space.

But they aren't 2m (6') apart. If people will be afraid of flying to that extent after this, they will want do drive in their own car, or just stay home all together, since gas pumps have twice (200%) the germs as a toilet seatref. If people aren't afraid of trains, they won't be afraid of airplanes. 9-11 would have been a much better opportunity for passenger rail, but people got over their fears then.

Once it was pointed out, I accepted that the second route may have played a role in which one was kept. Again, as many have said, including you and I, there is no one reason. However, when something is presented, then it is a good idea to look at that as a black and white thing. Then, you add that to the other reasons for and against. In the end, if there were more reasons for or against, then that is what happens.

And then today:

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

The subsidy. I thought I hammered that enough. the southern route had a lower subsidy.

Why do you keep using this argument if you truly understood that using the southern route would have required a much larger subsidy, if you look at the big picture?

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Is this the bit where we find out that every grunt who ever held a rifle or supply clerk who counted mukluks and cook who peeled thousands of potatoes is also an expert on complex aerospace ops?

It seems that we can now expand this to the concept of, "Once a customers, always a network planner."

You know why I respect Urban_Sky? It's not just because he has a degree in this suff and wrote a graduate thesis about VIA. It's because he shows up with numbers. And puts all of it together in a format that a moron like me can understand, with a structured argument that supports a central thesis.

There's no bluster. There's not even a claim of expertise on his part, which is actually incredibly remarkable given the proprietary info he must have access to. Nope, he spends an incredible amount of time to source publicly available data, synthesizes it and explains what it means. In doing so, he gives us a small window of insight into how a professional network planner might think about different routes.

You can choose to learn from his incredible body of work here. And if you want credibility on this topic with him, I suggest you start presenting posts of the same caliber.

Why? No matter what I have posted it has been shot down. He is also an employee of Via, and these changes would affect him. You wonder about that grunt, but, yet he has been quiet on what he actually does. I will gladly say what I do, and what I have done. I was a Marine Engineer on 3 classes of HMC ships. I am currently an Operating Engineer at a pulp mill.

My expertise is math. I can add, subtract, multiply and divide, as well as do complex formulas to get an answer that is correct. I use math to ensure that the bias is based on the numbers, not me.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by roger1818

But they aren't 2m (6') apart. If people will be afraid of flying to that extent after this, they will want do drive in their own car, or just stay home all together, since gas pumps have twice (200%) the germs as a toilet seatref. If people aren't afraid of trains, they won't be afraid of airplanes. 9-11 would have been a much better opportunity for passenger rail, but people got over their fears then.

I agree that the seats aren't 6 feet apart. I understand everything else well. Depending on how long this is in place, it could linger long after it is over. 9/11 was a couple of days. This has already lasted longer than the planes that were grounded during 9/11. This will have a change on society, and one might be rail instead of air.

Originally Posted by roger1818

And then today:

Why do you keep using this argument if you truly understood that using the southern route would have required a much larger subsidy, if you look at the big picture?

I hammer it because quoting numbers is not the whole picture. Just like there are more reasons than number that got it shut down, it will be more than numbers that get it going again.

So, let's list all the other reasons it got canceled besides the numbers.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

I agree that the seats aren't 6 feet apart. I understand everything else well. Depending on how long this is in place, it could linger long after it is over. 9/11 was a couple of days. This has already lasted longer than the planes that were grounded during 9/11. This will have a change on society, and one might be rail instead of air.

First of all, I am not sure how old you were when 9/11 occurred, but I am guessing that you were a child (correct me if I am wrong). If so, I don't think you really understand how what things were like before hand and how it affected people at a fundamental level. Yes the flights were only grounded for a couple days, but the impact of seeing the attack lasted much longer and the fear of flying, specifically, was very real, yet neither Amtrak nor VIA did any marketing to try an increase market share long term. Maybe it would have been considered in bad taste or maybe, the governments were trying to restore public confidence in flying and the passenger railways, being government agencies, were not permitted to do so.

Having said that, my real point was that, if there is a long term, psychological effect, it will affect all forms of pubic transportation, airplane, train and bus. Even taxis and Ubers would be affected (to a lesser extent), as you are touching the same surfaces as the passenger before you.

Personally, I believe that it may take time, but people will get over it and go back to flying, but if they don't, I just don't see the slight increase in spacing making the train a compelling alternative in terms of the fear of the spread of disease for the masses.

I hammer it because quoting numbers is not the whole picture. Just like there are more reasons than number that got it shut down, it will be more than numbers that get it going again.

You hammer that it there was some evidence that it might have been cheaper because there are reasons other than cost that it was shut down?

So, let's list all the other reasons it got canceled besides the numbers.

Why? That was 30 years ago. Why it was shut down is largely irrelevant. My suggestion has been to list the pros and cons of rail travel on the southern root as compared to both bus and air travel.

[J81]

Blah blah blah! Page after page on this thread of going around in circles with this guy. Enough already. It’s exhausting.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

My expertise is math. I can add, subtract, multiply and divide, as well as do complex formulas to get an answer that is correct. I use math to ensure that the bias is based on the numbers, not me.

And yet we've not seen any numbers from you in this discussion.

[Urban_Sky]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

The subsidy. I thought I hammered that enough. the southern route had a lower subsidy

LET’S START THIS REPONSE WITH A CLEAR WARNING: if you repeat this falsehood one more time (in any variant), I will quarantine you from any further discussion here in exactly the same way I did it with Ssiguy and LakeLocker!



Now to explain to you why you are wrong:


Contested claim (put forward by yourself, but please correct me if I paraphrased it wrong):

“At the time the Canadian was cut on its original CP route in January 1990, its subsidy need was lower than the services offered by VIA over the CN route”


Counter-claim (put forward by myself):

“At the time the Canadian was cut on its original CP route in January 1990, its subsidy need was higher than the services offered by VIA over the CN route”


Evidence brought forward in support of the contested claim:

Your argument is based on a table I’ve presented in various variants which indeed showed a lower subsidy need figure for a tri-weekly transcontinental service operated over the CP route (i.e. from Toronto via Thunder Bay and Calgary to Vancouver) than the same operated over the CN route (i.e. from Toronto via Hornepayne and Edmonton to Vancouver). However, this data was derived from VIA’s Annual Report 2018, which means that the data is unsuitable to support your claim for the following reasons:

• The data included in VIA’s Annual Report 2018 describes the financial situation of its network in the year 2018, i.e. almost 30 years after the “Canadian” travelled over its traditional CP route for the last time, which mean that it is impossible to extrapolate anything beyond order-of-magnitude estimates from these 2018 figures to the year 1990.
• For the same reason, the data I used only pertains the current route of the Canadian, which means that none of the data I have presented so far pertains the CP route.
• The only metric I’ve used to extrapolate the subsidy figure of today’s Canadian onto the pre-1990 Canadian’s CP route was train length, which means that the only reason why my figures suggested that the subsidy need might have been 2% lower over the CP route was that that route was 2% shorter, while it completely ignores any differences in the demand and costs specific to the two routes in question.

Therefore, the data you keep referring to is meaningless when trying to support your own claim, even though it provides some (limited) indication to my claim (i.e. the reason why I presented these figures) hat their likely was not a significant difference in the operating costs of both lines.


Evidence brought forward in support of my counter-claim:

Luckily, I stumbled over a document from October 1989, in which the federal government supports its decision for the cuts taking effect 3 months later by providing a detailed route-by-route overview with four key metrics (ridership, subsidy per passenger, cost-recovery rate and load factor):

Compiled from: Canadian Railroad Historical Association (1989, p.206)

By multiplying the Ridership with the per-passenger ridership, we can easily calculate the total subsidy for 1988, which was $50.1 million for the Super Continental, $12.4 million for Capreol-Winnipeg, $108.5 million for the Canadian and $2.0 million for the Sudbury-White River RDC run. Furthermore, we can consult the May 1988 VIA schedule to calculate the scheduled train mileage by taking the distance covered by each service and multiplying it first with the number of frequencies offered per direction, then with 2 (as there are 2 directions) and 365 (days in the year), before dividing the product by 7 (days per week). Dividing the annual subsidy by the train mileage results in a per-train-km subsidy of $27.35 for the Super-Continental, $26.34 for Capreol-Winnipeg, $29.31 for the Canadian and $11.44 for the Sudbury-White River RDC run:

Compiled from: previous table and VIA Rail timetable effective 1988-05-01

Analysis

When looking at the total subsidy, operating the Canadian throughout 1988 was 74% more costly to the taxpayer ($108.5 vs. $62.4 million) than the two services operated over the CN route (i.e. the Super-Continental and the Capreol-Winnipeg service). Similarly, when looking at the subsidy per train-km (since the route of the Super-Continental needed to be extended from Winnipeg beyond Capreol to Toronto), operating the Canadian was more costly to the taxpayer ($29.31 vs. $27.35 vs. $26.45) than either service, the Super-Continental and the Capreol-Winnipeg service (or 8% costlier than both services on the CN route combined).


Conclusions

The evidence brought forward in support of the counter-claim don’t only support it (both in terms of absolute subsidy and relative subsidy per train-km), but also proves it beyond any reasonable doubt, given that it uses financial data which was timely (1988 was the year prior to when the decision to cut certain routes and keeping others was made and thus the most recent year available to assist this decision), relevant (it provides detailed information for every route in service) and dependable (since it was provided by the federal government, which is subject to intensive scrutiny by the political opposition, the Office of the Auditor General and investigative journalists).

Furthermore, the total subsidy paid for all four services combined amounts to $173.0 million in 1988, which equals $372.4 million in 2018 prices, thus more than six times the subsidy paid for the Canadian and Sudbury-White River service combined ($52.3 million) and even 20% more than VIA’s total operating subsidy in 2018 ($272.6 million). This confirms the long-term success of the 1990 cuts in terms of the main policy objective of containing the financial burden VIA’s operations places onto the taxpayer, regardless of whether we believe that this objective was appropriate or not. Therefore, the validity of your (contested) claim has been proven wrong beyond reasonable doubt and the validity of my counter-claim has been confirmed as a fact.


***


Now that you know that you have been repeating a falsehood all over and over (and assuming that you can’t find any glaring errors in above calculations), you have the choice to acknowledge that you stand corrected or move on with the consequences I have mentioned at the beginning of this post, which would at least do us the service of no longer having to debunk your ever-recurring and grotesquely uninformed opinions…

PS: Prepare to get shot down in the same way for all the other long-identified falsehoods you keep repeating. Learn how to make an argument and how to participate constructively in a discussion or face being quarantined…

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Urban_Sky

LET’S START THIS REPONSE WITH A CLEAR WARNING: if you repeat this falsehood one more time (in any variant), I will quarantine you from any further discussion here in exactly the same way I did it with Ssiguy and LakeLocker!



PS: Prepare to get shot down in the same way for all the other long-identified falsehoods you keep repeating. Learn how to make an argument and how to participate constructively in a discussion or face being quarantined…

Quarantined?

[Urban_Sky]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Quarantined?

I should have said "being compelled into self-quarantining yourself".

Click here and here and check how many times Ssiguy and LakeLocker have posted here since having been shot down here (Ssiguy replied once, LakeLocker twice, but both left the discussion within 2 hours and were never seen again in this thread).

One does not need to be an admin to frustrate a troll enough to have him voluntarily leave a discussion, so don't be surprised if you are the next to find out (and probably rather soon)...

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Urban_Sky

I should have said "being compelled into self-quarantining yourself".

Click here and here and check how many times Ssiguy and LakeLocker have posted here since having been shot down here (Ssiguy replied once, LakeLocker twice, but both left the discussion within 2 hours and were never seen again in this thread).

One does not need to be an admin to frustrate a troll enough to have him voluntarily leave a discussion, so don't be surprised if you are the next to find out (probably rather soon)...

That is my hope of you and your narrow views. I am no troll, but you are ignorant.

I feel no more need to justify myself to you. Go work your comfy government, taxpayer job and leave the real work to us.

[jawagord]

Originally Posted by Urban_Sky

LET’S START THIS REPONSE WITH A CLEAR WARNING: if you repeat this falsehood one more time (in any variant), I will quarantine you from any further discussion here in exactly the same way I did it with Ssiguy and LakeLocker!



Now to explain to you why you are wrong:


Contested claim (put forward by yourself, but please correct me if I paraphrased it wrong):

“At the time the Canadian was cut on its original CP route in January 1990, its subsidy need was lower than the services offered by VIA over the CN route”


Counter-claim (put forward by myself):

“At the time the Canadian was cut on its original CP route in January 1990, its subsidy need was higher than the services offered by VIA over the CN route”


Evidence brought forward in support of the contested claim:

Your argument is based on a table I’ve presented in various variants which indeed showed a lower subsidy need figure for a tri-weekly transcontinental service operated over the CP route (i.e. from Toronto via Thunder Bay and Calgary to Vancouver) than the same operated over the CN route (i.e. from Toronto via Hornepayne and Edmonton to Vancouver). However, this data was derived from VIA’s Annual Report 2018, which means that the data is unsuitable to support your claim for the following reasons:

• The data included in VIA’s Annual Report 2018 describes the financial situation of its network in the year 2018, i.e. almost 30 years after the “Canadian” travelled over its traditional CP route for the last time, which mean that it is impossible to extrapolate anything beyond order-of-magnitude estimates from these 2018 figures to the year 1990.
• For the same reason, the data I used only pertains the current route of the Canadian, which means that none of the data I have presented so far pertains the CP route.
• The only metric I’ve used to extrapolate the subsidy figure of today’s Canadian onto the pre-1990 Canadian’s CP route was train length, which means that the only reason why my figures suggested that the subsidy need might have been 2% lower over the CP route was that that route was 2% shorter, while it completely ignores any differences in the demand and costs specific to the two routes in question.

Therefore, the data you keep referring to is meaningless when trying to support your own claim, even though it provides some (limited) indication to my claim (i.e. the reason why I presented these figures) hat their likely was not a significant difference in the operating costs of both lines.


Evidence brought forward in support of my counter-claim:

Luckily, I stumbled over a document from October 1989, in which the federal government supports its decision for the cuts taking effect 3 months later by providing a detailed route-by-route overview with four key metrics (ridership, subsidy per passenger, cost-recovery rate and load factor):

Compiled from: Canadian Railroad Historical Association (1989, p.206)

By multiplying the Ridership with the per-passenger ridership, we can easily calculate the total subsidy for 1988, which was $50.1 million for the Super Continental, $12.4 million for Capreol-Winnipeg, $108.5 million for the Canadian and $2.0 million for the Sudbury-White River RDC run. Furthermore, we can consult the May 1988 VIA schedule to calculate the scheduled train mileage by taking the distance covered by each service and multiplying it first with the number of frequencies offered per direction, then with 2 (as there are 2 directions) and 365 (days in the year), before dividing the product by 7 (days per week). Dividing the annual subsidy by the train mileage results in a per-train-km subsidy of $27.35 for the Super-Continental, $26.34 for Capreol-Winnipeg, $29.31 for the Canadian and $11.44 for the Sudbury-White River RDC run:

Compiled from: previous table and VIA Rail timetable effective 1988-05-01

Analysis

When looking at the total subsidy, operating the Canadian throughout 1988 was 74% more costly to the taxpayer ($108.5 vs. $62.4 million) than the two services operated over the CN route (i.e. the Super-Continental and the Capreol-Winnipeg service). Similarly, when looking at the subsidy per train-km (since the route of the Super-Continental needed to be extended from Winnipeg beyond Capreol to Toronto), operating the Canadian was more costly to the taxpayer ($29.31 vs. $27.35 vs. $26.45) than either service, the Super-Continental and the Capreol-Winnipeg service (or 8% costlier than both services on the CN route combined).


Conclusions

The evidence brought forward in support of the counter-claim don’t only support it (both in terms of absolute subsidy and relative subsidy per train-km), but also proves it beyond any reasonable doubt, given that it uses financial data which was timely (1988 was the year prior to when the decision to cut certain routes and keeping others was made and thus the most recent year available to assist this decision), relevant (it provides detailed information for every route in service) and dependable (since it was provided by the federal government, which is subject to intensive scrutiny by the political opposition, the Office of the Auditor General and investigative journalists).

Furthermore, the total subsidy paid for all four services combined amounts to $173.0 million in 1988, which equals $372.4 million in 2018 prices, thus more than six times the subsidy paid for the Canadian and Sudbury-White River service combined ($52.3 million) and even 20% more than VIA’s total operating subsidy in 2018 ($272.6 million). This confirms the long-term success of the 1990 cuts in terms of the main policy objective of containing the financial burden VIA’s operations places onto the taxpayer, regardless of whether we believe that this objective was appropriate or not. Therefore, the validity of your (contested) claim has been proven wrong beyond reasonable doubt and the validity of my counter-claim has been confirmed as a fact.
…

Why all the jiggery-pokery analysis when Via’s own numbers (that you so cleverly found) show the Canadian through Calgary had much higher ridership, lower per person subsidy, higher cost recovery, higher occupancy than the truncated Super Continental? Cutting the more efficient, higher ridership route is an odd way to reduce subsidies, by that analysis Via should have cut the Windsor-Quebec route! Here we have perhaps the lone instance where Trudeau got something right and Mulroney made it wrong.

https://media.viarail.ca/sites/default/files/publications/VIA_Q2_2019_EN_1.pdf

However, the 1981 federal budget of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's Liberal government led to fully 20% of Via's route miles being eliminated. The Super Continental was among the trains immediately cut. Its last service arrived in Vancouver on November 16, 1981.[15]

Such reductions in passenger service proved to be politically unpopular,[16][17] and following the election of the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney in 1984, service was restored on June 1, 1985, but on a truncated route from Vancouver to Winnipeg via Edmonton that no longer lived up to the 'Continental' name.[18] The Toronto/Montreal to Sudbury segment was eliminated, and the Capreol–Winnipeg segment was reduced to a triweekly nameless remote services train.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Continental

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by jawagord

Why all the jiggery-pokery analysis when Via’s own numbers (that you so cleverly found) show the Canadian through Calgary had much higher ridership, lower per person subsidy, higher cost recovery, higher occupancy than the truncated Super Continental? Cutting the more efficient, higher ridership route is an odd way to reduce subsidies, by that analysis Via should have cut the Windsor-Quebec route! Here we have perhaps the lone instance where Trudeau got something right and Mulroney made it wrong.

https://media.viarail.ca/sites/default/files/publications/VIA_Q2_2019_EN_1.pdf

However, the 1981 federal budget of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's Liberal government led to fully 20% of Via's route miles being eliminated. The Super Continental was among the trains immediately cut. Its last service arrived in Vancouver on November 16, 1981.[15]

Such reductions in passenger service proved to be politically unpopular,[16][17] and following the election of the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney in 1984, service was restored on June 1, 1985, but on a truncated route from Vancouver to Winnipeg via Edmonton that no longer lived up to the 'Continental' name.[18] The Toronto/Montreal to Sudbury segment was eliminated, and the Capreol–Winnipeg segment was reduced to a triweekly nameless remote services train.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Continental

Quit using his facts against him. He will have a hissy fit and use all caps again.

[Urban_Sky]

Originally Posted by jawagord

[...]

If you want me to engage in any kind of discussion with you, you will have to write a post without placing almost every single word into emphasis (bold, italics, underlined or ALL-CAPS), as I don’t discuss with people who shout at me...

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

[...]

I thought you promised us to leave, the door is the other way...

[GoTrans]

Originally Posted by Urban_Sky

If you want me to engage in any kind of discussion with you, you will have to write a post without placing almost every single word into emphasis (bold, italics, underlined or ALL-CAPS), as I don’t discuss with people who shout at me...


I thought you promised us to leave, the door is the other way...

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.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by GoTrans

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.

Thank you.
Someone gets it.

We are living in a reality where new routes could be added as a stimulus package. The government could source the rolling stock in Canada as a stimulus package.

Now, my goal is simple, find the numbers that exist that can tell me whether it will work. Numbers don't lie or have bias. That is why i keep pounding on the number that showed a lower subsidy.

GoTrans; I am guessing your name is due to your like of the Go Transit system? So, there is very little data on any of the routes that GO has added, yet they seem to do well. That could be because there actually is data, but not in the form of a "This route has this, so it should get that."

So, using that logic the southern route has the 4th largest metro in Canada. It should have some service. What level is up to discussion.

[milomilo]

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.

[GoTrans]

Originally Posted by milomilo

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.

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 calling that service.