The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[Aylmer]

What I'd really love for VIA is if they were to add some evening departures between Montreal and Ottawa. Currently, the last train out of Montreal is at 5:30pm, so if you work or study or just want to eat dinner before heading to Ottawa, the train just isn't an option. If they had a 7:00 and a 9:00 train, it would make it so much more flexible.

But I'm happy to see that they're increasing service somewhere. Let's hope it's a trend which will be supported by the (next) government.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

What I'd really love for VIA is if they were to add some evening departures between Montreal and Ottawa. Currently, the last train out of Montreal is at 5:30pm, so if you work or study or just want to eat dinner before heading to Ottawa, the train just isn't an option. If they had a 7:00 and a 9:00 train, it would make it so much more flexible.

But I'm happy to see that they're increasing service somewhere. Let's hope it's a trend which will be supported by the (next) government.

There is an evening departure from Montreal. I just checked the schedule and it departs at 7:15 p.m at least on weekdays. Likewise, there is an evening departure from Ottawa at 8:38 p.m.

[Aylmer]

That's embarrassing!

Whenever I do Montreal-Ottawa it's almost always on Friday or Sunday evening which, along with Saturday, are the days when the late train doesn't run. I guess that's why I never knew it existed!

Even so, I'd love a departure around 9:00. Of course, in my opinion, the medium-term goal should be hourly or bi-hourly departures between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal from the early morning till the evening. I mean, there's a Greyhound bus every hour or two (sometimes even every 30 minutes) from the wee hours until the wee hours. God knows the number of times I've had to take the bus for a lack of a train and every times reminds me why I'd prefer to ride the rails.

[Nouvellecosse]

Yes hourly should be the very least, half hourly during busy times of day.

Now if only we could get the Halifax train to run more than every other day. There are so many times I wanted to take the train and it didn't go the day that I wanted.

[Innsertnamehere]

It would be nice to see the Halifax train get some speed upgrades between Hali and Fredricton and see it upgraded to something like twice daily. Thats about as much as I can see happening though.

[Aylmer]

Well, if VIA offered more than just tourist trains to non-Southern Ontario/Quebec (which I shall henceforth call NSOQ) then perhaps there could be service actually worth taking between cities like Halifax, Moncton and St. John, Banff-Calgary-Edmonton or Saskatoon-Regina. When you have a train which regularly arrives more than 6 hours late and only runs two days a week at 5am, it's not the most dependable mode of transport. The only solution is to have lines which don't cross half the continent. As an actual mode of transportation, I don't think that many people would take a non-HSR train for distances longer than 600km (roughly the distance between Toronto and Montreal) because flying becomes appreciably shorter. But there are a heck of a lot of ≤600km corridors between cities which aren't being served (or served adequately) by rail. I think our rail system is ready to evolve beyond exclusively being a quaint nicety to become an actual way of getting somewhere.

Of course, that takes the monies.

[VIce]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Yes hourly should be the very least, half hourly during busy times of day.

Now if only we could get the Halifax train to run more than every other day. There are so many times I wanted to take the train and it didn't go the day that I wanted.

At least Halifax has train service.

Although, on the functional side, Calgary-Edmonton Greyhound tickets occasionally sell for a dollar.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

Well, if VIA offered more than just tourist trains to non-Southern Ontario/Quebec (which I shall henceforth call NSOQ) then perhaps there could be service actually worth taking between cities like Halifax, Moncton and St. John's, Banff-Calgary-Edmonton or Saskatoon-Regina. When you have a train which regularly arrives more than 6 hours late and only runs two days a week at 5am, it's not the most dependable mode of transport. The only solution is to have lines which don't cross half the continent. As an actual mode of transportation, I don't think that many people would take a non-HSR train for distances longer than 600km (roughly the distance between Toronto and Montreal) because flying becomes appreciably shorter. But there are a heck of a lot of ≤600km corridors between cities which aren't being served (or served adequately) by rail. I think our rail system is ready to evolve beyond exclusively being a quaint nicety to become an actual way of getting somewhere.

Of course, that takes the monies.

I thought they tore up the railway in NFLD and built a highway to replace it at the time of confederation. If so a train to St. John's would never happen.

[Aylmer]

Whoops - St. John is what I meant. I constantly put the 's in the wrong spot.

A train from Halifax to St. John's would require a very, very long bridge.




But here's a thought - if we found the cheat code for unlimited infrastructure money and built a 120km bridge from Cape Breton to Newfoundland and a maglev, you could travel from St. John's to Montreal in about 3 hours Anyone up for a day trip to Newfoundland?

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

What I'd really love for VIA is if they were to add some evening departures between Montreal and Ottawa. Currently, the last train out of Montreal is at 5:30pm, so if you work or study or just want to eat dinner before heading to Ottawa, the train just isn't an option. If they had a 7:00 and a 9:00 train, it would make it so much more flexible.

But I'm happy to see that they're increasing service somewhere. Let's hope it's a trend which will be supported by the (next) government.

Ottawa-Montreal does not seem to be as viable a route as Ottawa-Toronto. Many of the OTT-MTL trains run with lots of empty seats, whereas on the OTT-TOR corridor VIA simply can't keep up with demand, every time they add new trains they fill up almost immediately. At this point, Ottawa-Kingston-Toronto has probably overtaken Toronto-Kingston-Montreal and Montreal-Ottawa to become the busiest route on the VIA network.

The Ottawa-Kingston-Toronto corridor is nearing its capacity limit. Harper's infrastructure upgrades allowed the expansion of service from 64 trains per week to 96 trains per week, but more upgrades will be required to go much past 100. VIA will need to expand its fleet (I'm honestly shocked they were able to squeeze in those extra trips with their current fleet), and need full double tracking between Brockville and Ottawa, some sort of bypass at Smiths Falls, and likely a few more sections of third track on the Brockville-Toronto mainline. Interestingly, I noted that the new trips have a pretty high travel time for an express trip--it's scheduled to take about the same amount of time as the local trains despite skipping most stations. To me this says VIA had difficulty allocating track time to these new trips and is anticipating they will face delays.

With these new trips, probably the only new trips VIA could add without an expanded fleet or additional track upgrades would be a new set of late evening trips leaving each city around 8pm & and arriving in each at midnight. I actually expect VIA to do that in 2015 or 2016 if ridership continues to grow.

The opening of the Union Pearson Express in the spring will likely give VIA service even more of a boost because it will become much more convenient for Ottawans, Brockvillians, Kingstonians, Bellevillians, etc. to get to Pearson Airport using VIA Rail. It may also take a bite out of YOW-YYZ passenger numbers.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by VIce

At least Halifax has train service.

Although, on the functional side, Calgary-Edmonton Greyhound tickets occasionally sell for a dollar.

To me, the big success VIA is having with its Toronto-Ottawa service--managing to grow ridership, increase frequencies to high levels, and keep fares nice and low while being affordable to taxpayers--says that conventional, non-HSR service could work for Calgary-Edmonton.

[miketoronto]

Forget hourly trains. We need 20 minute service

I just got back from northern Europe, and in most corridors, the base service between cities is a train every 20 minutes.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

VIA Rail has announced yet another round of service expansions between Toronto-Ottawa starting this Friday in response to increased demand. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday will see an additional 10:30am departure from Ottawa and a 10:15am departure from Toronto. These trips will be semi-express running Ottawa-Fallowfield-Kingston-Toronto.

With this, there will now be 96 trains per week between Toronto & Ottawa, up from 88 currently. Three years ago there were only 64 trains.

VIA reports that Toronto-Kingston-Ottawa ridership increased by 38% from 2012 to 2013.

SOURCE: http://www.viarail.ca/en/about-via-rail/...travel-advisory-via-rail-adds-new-freque

Are they taking more trains away from the Windsor-London-Toronto and Sarnia-London-Toronto corridors to do this, like they did in 2012?

Aside from that, a friend used VIA today and told me that VIA between Toronto and Kingston is now cheaper than Megabus on that same route at certain times, which has likely helped drive some of this ridership increase. I've been hearing that Megabus fares have gone up while VIA fares have gone down, which is dead opposite of what I recall when I took a Megabus to visit Kingston three years ago.

It sounds like the federal government is getting its act together on VIA in at least Eastern Ontario, though I'm sure the people of Peterborough would like their route re-established. Now, I'd like to see some movement from Queen's Park to end inter-city bus monopolies. This is needed in order to bring down prices for consumers, and put an end to illegal (and potentially dangerous) "ride share" services. There's one such service between Kingston and Toronto, and I cringe every time friends of mine in Kingston talk about using that to save money on bus fares. There's no checks and balances in place to protect users of these services from bad drivers, unlicensed drivers, drivers without insurance, or impaired drivers.

[Innsertnamehere]

IIRC VIA turns a profit on the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal portion, its other portions just lose money so insanely that it makes little difference to its extremely high subsidization levels.

[VIce]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

To me, the big success VIA is having with its Toronto-Ottawa service--managing to grow ridership, increase frequencies to high levels, and keep fares nice and low while being affordable to taxpayers--says that conventional, non-HSR service could work for Calgary-Edmonton.

I think so as well. However, there are infrastructure issues on that route. A lot of the track into downtown Edmonton, since it was unused, was torn up and redeveloped as far as I know. One of the things that killed Calgary-Edmonton service was a number of accidents at grade crossings also. The grade crossings all need to be improved if they plan on running more than a few trains a day.

The reason why Calgary-Edmonton rail service is always framed as high speed is because of all the above required infrastructure changes. The marginal cost between low-speed service and high-speed service (with a JetTrain or something similar) is pretty much negligible.

[Allan83]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

To me, the big success VIA is having with its Toronto-Ottawa service--managing to grow ridership, increase frequencies to high levels, and keep fares nice and low while being affordable to taxpayers--says that conventional, non-HSR service could work for Calgary-Edmonton.

I think there are different market conditions at play on that route. Have a look at the table on the bottom of page vi in this document. It shows where they predict the riders will come from - i.e. people who are currently traveling by air, bus or car – and how ridership will increase with speed.
http://www.transportation.alberta.ca/Con...ssessment_Full_Rpt_02-2008_FINAL_rev.pdf

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

Now, I'd like to see some movement from Queen's Park to end inter-city bus monopolies.

But isn't Southern Ontario like one of the only parts of the country without inter-city bus monopolies? You've got Greyhound and Coach Canada for most of it and Go for a big chunk of the population. As far as I could tell for most of the prairies at least it's Greyhound, and only Greyhound.

[Innsertnamehere]

not really, there is a bit of competition on the Toronto - Ottawa - Montreal route, but Greyhound gets a bunch of guaranteed monopoly routes to subsidize some money losing routes to smaller communities. Greyhound is still dominant.


GO transit is quickly becoming a sort of government run regional carrier, through it doesn't really go past Peterborough and Niagara. There is talk of bringing it to Brantford though, so its getting bigger and bigger as time goes on.

There are rumblings of the Province conducting a complete overhaul of the bus industry in the province though, I think they recognize that there are issues with the current setup.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by Beedok

But isn't Southern Ontario like one of the only parts of the country without inter-city bus monopolies? You've got Greyhound and Coach Canada for most of it and Go for a big chunk of the population. As far as I could tell for most of the prairies at least it's Greyhound, and only Greyhound.

Once you're out of the GTA, the monopolies very much still exist. I'm only listing privately-run bus carriers and not Ontario Northland routes.

Toronto-London-Windsor*: Greyhound
Toronto-Kingston-Montreal*: Coach Canada (dba Megabus)
Toronto-Peterborough-Ottawa*: Greyhound
Toronto-Sudbury-Thunder Bay-Winnipeg-Calgary**: Greyhound
Toronto-Barrie-Owen Sound*: Greyhound
Ottawa-Cornwall: Greyhound
Ottawa-Kingston-Belleville***: Greyhound
Ottawa-Sudbury: Greyhound

* Portions of routes closest to Toronto compete with GO: Toronto-Barrie, Toronto-Hamilton, Toronto-Peterborough, Toronto-Kitchener, Toronto-Newcastle
** Toronto-Sudbury portion competes with Ontario Northland
***Kingston-Belleville portion competes with Coach Canada

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

Once you're out of the GTA, the monopolies very much still exist. I'm only listing privately-run bus carriers and not Ontario Northland routes.

Toronto-London-Windsor*: Greyhound
Toronto-Kingston-Montreal*: Coach Canada (dba Megabus)
Toronto-Peterborough-Ottawa*: Greyhound
Toronto-Sudbury-Thunder Bay-Winnipeg-Calgary**: Greyhound
Toronto-Barrie-Owen Sound*: Greyhound
Ottawa-Cornwall: Greyhound
Ottawa-Kingston-Belleville***: Greyhound
Ottawa-Sudbury: Greyhound

* Portions of routes closest to Toronto compete with GO: Toronto-Barrie, Toronto-Hamilton, Toronto-Peterborough, Toronto-Kitchener, Toronto-Newcastle
** Toronto-Sudbury portion competes with Ontario Northland
***Kingston-Belleville portion competes with Coach Canada

There's some variety, which is better than the pure Greyhound I got the impression of on the Prairies. I suppose I was spoiled by the Hamilton-Niagara corridor though.