High Speed Rail (HSR)

[J.OT13]

It's the ultimate business case for HSR. There is a market for it; a relatively cheap, ultra fast way of travel between 3 of the top 5 metros, 6 of the top 10, or 9 of the top 20 metros if you stretch it to Windsor. It would serve 12 to 18 million people over a relatively short distance.

[kwoldtimer]

I'll be interested to see how Ontario's new plan rolls out. The K-W/Pearson/Toronto section is urgent (the high tech sector has been pushing for a while now). The London/K-W leg seems to reflect the influence of the deputy Premier, but seems not a bad thing. The Windsor/London leg seems a bit of expensive political expediency to me - I wouldn't be surprised if construction were delayed for that portion.

[citydwlr]

FYI: http://www.highspeedrailcanada.com/ (@HSRCanada)

I'm not sure if this site has been mentioned before on this thread, but it usually posts some good articles from the media regarding HSR in Canada.

The three most recent articles had some interesting info regarding HSR in Southern Ontario, as well as VIAs interest in HSR and potential private sector funding:

- Ontario Moving Forward With High-Speed Rail - Environmental Assessment Starts (* Windsor - Kitchener/Waterloo - Toronto line)
- Via Rail eyeing private capital to build its own dedicated rail lines
- CEO of VIA Rail and CEO of Italian State Railway talk High Speed Rail

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

It's the ultimate business case for HSR. There is a market for it; a relatively cheap, ultra fast way of travel between 3 of the top 5 metros, 6 of the top 10, or 9 of the top 20 metros if you stretch it to Windsor. It would serve 12 to 18 million people over a relatively short distance.

Cheap relative to what? Viafast was 8Bish in 2003 dollars. The pro-HSR group identified on the wikipedia page estimates $18-21B (10 confederation lines) and I suspect they are lowballing big time.

I used to be in favour of high speed rail, but then I spent an extended period of time in Italy, where the government spent 200B on about 1200 km of HSR (about the distance from Windsor to Quebec City) trying to keep up with the french which squeezed every other infrastructure priority and most of the trains run far below capacity most of the time because there just isn't that much demand.

High speed rail service has to run pretty close to hourly to be competitive with flying, so say 6 cars at 80 pax per car means you need close to 500 pax/hour wanting to travel and I just don't think there is that kind of demand for people wanting to travel at high speed, which will be considerably more expensive than bus, slow train or driving, will be less convenient for those flying to a connection at Pearson or Trudeau (which is a big part of the current flight business) and would still struggle to beat Porter.

I think high speed rail works best where it connects big cities (10M plus) - London-Paris, Tokyo-Osaka, etc. or where the country's rail system makes it easy to run high speed trains on conventional lines and they can take a very incremental approach (France).

We'll see what this EA in SW Ontario produces. It seems almost certain that they're planning to brand conventional rail (say via rail speeds) as "high speed" - it will be interesting to see if it fools anyone.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Cheap relative to what? Viafast was 8Bish in 2003 dollars. The pro-HSR group identified on the wikipedia page estimates $18-21B (10 confederation lines) and I suspect they are lowballing big time.

I used to be in favour of high speed rail, but then I spent an extended period of time in Italy, where the government spent 200B on about 1200 km of HSR (about the distance from Windsor to Quebec City) trying to keep up with the french which squeezed every other infrastructure priority and most of the trains run far below capacity most of the time because there just isn't that much demand.

High speed rail service has to run pretty close to hourly to be competitive with flying, so say 6 cars at 80 pax per car means you need close to 500 pax/hour wanting to travel and I just don't think there is that kind of demand for people wanting to travel at high speed, which will be considerably more expensive thethan bus, slow train or driving, will be less convenient for those flying to a connection at Pearson or Trudeau (which is a big part of the current flight business) and would still struggle to beat Porter.

I think high speed rail works best where it connects big cities (10M plus) - London-Paris, Tokyo-Osaka, etc. or where the country's rail system makes it easy to run high speed trains on conventional lines and they can take a very incremental approach (France).

We'll see what this EA in SW Ontario produces. It seems almost certain that they're planning to brand conventional rail (say via rail speeds) as "high speed" - it will be interesting to see if it fools anyone.

Given the costs associated with HSR, I'd be happy with faster, frequent conventional service between K-W and Toronto, if they could get the travel time down to under an hour, including the stop at Pearson.

[Aylmer]

To be fait, Italy's system has some extremely difficult terrain to negotiate (Appenines) which it does mostly by tunnelling (Florence to Rome is underground for very long portions), whereas the terrain between a Corridor HSR line would have to cross is very flat and relatively uncrowded. Relatively little new RoW (but not tracks) is required - less than 50km, I'd wager.

As for demand, it is there. But at the risk of sounding like a broken record:

RAIL MUST COMPETE WITH THE CAR FOR COST AND AIR FOR TIME.


Take the cost of driving a 5-passenger sedan and charge the same for the train (and have a group ticket which makes rail travel a possibility for families and people travelling together).

Ottawa-Toronto: $65 - 90 minutes
Ottawa-Montreal: $35 - 35 minutes

I'd imagine that those prices would have to be subsidized, but then again, so are our highways and we don't expect them to pay for themselves or build themselves either. But unlike highways, rail travel is clean, safe and accessible to everyone (an important point since an ageing population and a less auto-centric youth means that, going forward, fewer people will be willing/able to drive). Mobility is essential to our social and economic well-being and we need to make sure that we have the infrastructure to link our cities together in the 21st century. We don't want to become like the forgotten canal cities which couldn't keep up with rail.

Of course, that doesn't mean we necessarily have to have full-blown, 350km/h HSR. We could increase operating speeds to 170km/h with just track, signal and scheduling improvements - low hanging fruit. I would favour an incremental approach to HSR, but with a plan d'ensemble for what our intercity transportation network should look like going forward.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Cheap relative to what? Viafast was 8Bish in 2003 dollars. The pro-HSR group identified on the wikipedia page estimates $18-21B (10 confederation lines) and I suspect they are lowballing big time.

I meant relatively cheap for riders relative to flying. Like Aylmer said, "RAIL MUST COMPETE WITH THE CAR FOR COST AND AIR FOR TIME". It would also be hands down faster than cars or flying (as per the Mythbusters episode mentioned by swimmer_spe) with a cost somewhere in between.

[1overcosc]

The proposed Ontario government plan is a mix of real HSR and faster conventional rail. The projected travel times are something like 45 minutes from Union to Kitchener, and 1h15 from Union to London, which indicates 300km/h-ish (therefore real HSR) from London to Kitchener but closer to 200km/h (fast but not really HSR) from Kitchener to Toronto.

It really should be emphasized that the plan the MTO is pushing is much cheaper and much more feasible than a broad Windsor-QC plan. The bulk of the capital work necessary between Kitchener and Toronto is already getting done as part of the GO RER project, only half of it is a real HSR, and thanks to the Kitchener-Toronto demand the high tech industry has created, ridership should be high enough to create operating profits. So P3 financing can get a chunk of change to fund it. The net cost to taxpayers will only be about $1B-2B or so (MTO says $500M but that seems too optimistic to me).

London's not that much further than Kitchener so pushing it out there doesn't add much. I highly suspect that Windsor was thrown in for political value and will be cast out of the plan and pushed into an unscheduled 'phase 2'.

Whereas to get from Toronto to Ottawa would be MUCH more expensive with less certain ridership levels. It's definitely possible, as there's lots of demand for rail service between Toronto & Ottawa--we're now up to almost 100 trains a week between the two cities almost all of them full at departure--but still very expensive.

TL;DR - HSR in southwest Ontario doesn't mean it will happen to Ottawa anytime soon.

[1overcosc]

I can't remember but I believe the last study projected a construction cost of something like $14B for Toronto-Kingston-Ottawa-Montreal HSR, but it did make a number of assumptions that resulted in a higher cost (For example, it proposed grade separating every single rural concession road crossing instead of just dead-ending the lesser used ones like was done when the 400-series freeways were built), so who knows.

[Aylmer]

No, I think it was 9 for Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal, but 14 from Windsor-QC

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

I meant relatively cheap for riders relative to flying. Like Aylmer said, "RAIL MUST COMPETE WITH THE CAR FOR COST AND AIR FOR TIME". It would also be hands down faster than cars or flying (as per the Mythbusters episode mentioned by swimmer_spe) with a cost somewhere in between.

The LA Times article linked below says the international average is 40-50 cents per passenger mile, so 300 miles to Toronto would be $150ish to operate, and to compete with the car Alymer's family ticket would be $15 a passenger. So the government is supposed to pay over $500 for a family of 4 to take a high speed train to Toronto? I'm not aware of a lot of places where high speed rail competes with cars on cost (which is why the motorways of Europe are still full of cars, buses, airplanes and slow trains despite there being lots of high speed rail around).

I just can't see the value of spending billions every year to subsidize the operating costs intercity train travel.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/24/local/la-me-0423-bullet-subsidy-20120424

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

The proposed Ontario government plan is a mix of real HSR and faster conventional rail. The projected travel times are something like 45 minutes from Union to Kitchener, and 1h15 from Union to London, which indicates 300km/h-ish (therefore real HSR) from London to Kitchener but closer to 200km/h (fast but not really HSR) from Kitchener to Toronto.

It really should be emphasized that the plan the MTO is pushing is much cheaper and much more feasible than a broad Windsor-QC plan. The bulk of the capital work necessary between Kitchener and Toronto is already getting done as part of the GO RER project, only half of it is a real HSR, and thanks to the Kitchener-Toronto demand the high tech industry has created, ridership should be high enough to create operating profits. So P3 financing can get a chunk of change to fund it. The net cost to taxpayers will only be about $1B-2B or so (MTO says $500M but that seems too optimistic to me).

London's not that much further than Kitchener so pushing it out there doesn't add much. I highly suspect that Windsor was thrown in for political value and will be cast out of the plan and pushed into an unscheduled 'phase 2'.

Whereas to get from Toronto to Ottawa would be MUCH more expensive with less certain ridership levels. It's definitely possible, as there's lots of demand for rail service between Toronto & Ottawa--we're now up to almost 100 trains a week between the two cities almost all of them full at departure--but still very expensive.

TL;DR - HSR in southwest Ontario doesn't mean it will happen to Ottawa anytime soon.

This is a problem with having a UK-based consulting company (whose main client appears to be MTO), a former transport Minister from Winnipeg, a current transportation Minister from Vaughan and a premier from Toronto - nobody has ever ventured west of the 427, they just know they want votes out there.

London is a little over 100km from Kitchener, Kitchener is a little over 100 km from Toronto, so "adding" London makes the line 100% longer. There is no viable corridor between Kitchener and London (existing rail line is a huge zig zag and the 401 corridor is considerably south of the two city centers) so they have to cut a new line through open farmland, something nobody has done in this country since the early 20th century, I could imagine there being significant local opposition (and it is federal jurisdiction so they have every incentives to pander to the locals).

London meanwhile, has perfectly good Via service to Toronto (on the CN mainline through Brantford) as well as good air service to Toronto. It is really unclear what particular advantage taking a detour through Kitchener offers when trying to get to Toronto, particularly if tickets are priced at "operating profit" levels.

A travel time of 45 minutes to travel a little over 100km seems somewhat unlikely. They have recently spent billions to upgrade the Pearson-Union corridor to conventional speeds (about 25 minutes to the airport) so either they have to build another adjacent high speed corridor or make the 85km journey from Pearson to Kitchener in 20 minutes.

The province owns part of the line and could presumably make whatever upgrades they want, but from Georgetown to Brampton (approximately) GO and VIA use the CN mainline, where the province has no ownership and no jurisdiction, which could make it difficult to run trains at the speeds necessary.

Hardly any rail line on the face of the earth makes an operating profit, certainly nothing in North America. I would find it almost inconceivable that the presence of a tech sector in KW would suddenly drive the kind of demand necessary to make an operating profit. Lots of places in North America have tech sectors.

Moreover, Waterloo Region (my home town BTW) has a very strong car culture, including in the tech industry and while there is a hub in downtown Kitchener, most of the tech sector (as with tech sectors everywhere) is located in the suburbs of Waterloo and in the time it would take them to drive to downtown Kitchener, find parking, wait for a train they could be on their way to Toronto. What the tech sector really wants is 2 way GO service, since many of their employees reverse commute from Toronto.

Does it not strike you as odd that the fastest train in the western hemisphere would be between two cities with populations less than 500k?

The Kitchener GO line does suck though, and could use upgrading (nothing fancy, just upgrading to normal GO speeds which would get people to downtown Toronto in a little over an hour).

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by acottawa

This is a problem with having a UK-based consulting company (whose main client appears to be MTO), a former transport Minister from Winnipeg, a current transportation Minister from Vaughan and a premier from Toronto - nobody has ever ventured west of the 427, they just know they want votes out there.

London is a little over 100km from Kitchener, Kitchener is a little over 100 km from Toronto, so "adding" London makes the line 100% longer. There is no viable corridor between Kitchener and London (existing rail line is a huge zig zag and the 401 corridor is considerably south of the two city centers) so they have to cut a new line through open farmland, something nobody has done in this country since the early 20th century, I could imagine there being significant local opposition (and it is federal jurisdiction so they have every incentives to pander to the locals).

London meanwhile, has perfectly good Via service to Toronto (on the CN mainline through Brantford) as well as good air service to Toronto. It is really unclear what particular advantage taking a detour through Kitchener offers when trying to get to Toronto, particularly if tickets are priced at "operating profit" levels.

A travel time of 45 minutes to travel a little over 100km seems somewhat unlikely. They have recently spent billions to upgrade the Pearson-Union corridor to conventional speeds (about 25 minutes to the airport) so either they have to build another adjacent high speed corridor or make the 85km journey from Pearson to Kitchener in 20 minutes.

The province owns part of the line and could presumably make whatever upgrades they want, but from Georgetown to Brampton (approximately) GO and VIA use the CN mainline, where the province has no ownership and no jurisdiction, which could make it difficult to run trains at the speeds necessary.

Hardly any rail line on the face of the earth makes an operating profit, certainly nothing in North America. I would find it almost inconceivable that the presence of a tech sector in KW would suddenly drive the kind of demand necessary to make an operating profit. Lots of places in North America have tech sectors.

Moreover, Waterloo Region (my home town BTW) has a very strong car culture, including in the tech industry and while there is a hub in downtown Kitchener, most of the tech sector (as with tech sectors everywhere) is located in the suburbs of Waterloo and in the time it would take them to drive to downtown Kitchener, find parking, wait for a train they could be on their way to Toronto. What the tech sector really wants is 2 way GO service, since many of their employees reverse commute from Toronto.

Does it not strike you as odd that the fastest train in the western hemisphere would be between two cities with populations less than 500k?

The Kitchener GO line does suck though, and could use upgrading (nothing fancy, just upgrading to normal GO speeds which would get people to downtown Toronto in a little over an hour).

This is true. It is the tech sector that has pushed the Province toward some sort of fast service between K-W and Toronto, but the rest of it is more political than economic, imo.

[Aylmer]

ACOttawa, I can't quite reconcile that 25-30¢/pass-km with the fact that RENFE, DeutschBahn and SNCF's HSR (which operates without subsidies) charge an average of 10¢, 10¢ and 11¢/pass/km for their tickets respectively. I think it's that the 25-30¢ figure assumes a quick recovery of capital costs, which is something which I don't think we should necessarily expect or even want exactly for the reason that it jacks up prices.

So let's assume that the capital cost of HSR is funded by the different levels of government, but that we still expect VIA to turn a slight profit on operations. Assuming we use the European average, a trip to Toronto would cost $40 and Montreal at $18 while still turning a modest profit. Of course, what I'm proposing (fixing the price of a ticket to the cost of driving in gas and maintenance) is even higher at 15¢/km.

I haven't been able to find a distilled figure for operating costs (as opposed to average ticket price/pass-km), but I'd imagine that it's much lower than 10¢, thereby allowing for the Aylmer Family Ticket which, though it would probably be at a loss (unless it's under 3¢/pass-km), but it could probably be counterbalanced by first-class tickets and people travelling alone.


But I don't have the numbers to say for sure.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

ACOttawa, I can't quite reconcile that 25-30¢/pass-km with the fact that RENFE, DeutschBahn and SNCF's HSR (which operates without subsidies) charge an average of 10¢, 10¢ and 11¢/pass/km for their tickets respectively. I think it's that the 25-30¢ figure assumes a quick recovery of capital costs, which is something which I don't think we should necessarily expect or even want exactly for the reason that it jacks up prices.

So let's assume that the capital cost of HSR is funded by the different levels of government, but that we still expect VIA to turn a slight profit on operations. Assuming we use the European average, a trip to Toronto would cost $40 and Montreal at $18 while still turning a modest profit. Of course, what I'm proposing (fixing the price of a ticket to the cost of driving in gas and maintenance) is even higher at 15¢/km.

I haven't been able to find a distilled figure for operating costs (as opposed to average ticket price/pass-km), but I'd imagine that it's much lower than 10¢, thereby allowing for the Aylmer Family Ticket which, though it would probably be at a loss (unless it's under 3¢/pass-km), but it could probably be counterbalanced by first-class tickets and people travelling alone.


But I don't have the numbers to say for sure.

It is really hard to find numbers. According to this anti-hsr site (so take it with a grain of salt)
http://stophs2.org/news/5712-debts-subsidies-high-speed-rail

SNCF receives 10B (not sure what currency) which counts as "revenue" under French accounting rules and REF receives 3B (again, not sure what currency).

Also, I am not sure HSR prices in Europe are as low as you think, I just did a quick search for Paris to Bordeaux for tomorrow, was quoted 77 euros in economy which is about 20 Cdn cents per kilometre (and the Alymer Family Pass is not offered). I've taken a lot of trains in Europe and I've never seem 500km trips (i.e. the distance to Toronto) for $40 except maybe on some special discount or promotion.

I'm not sure on what basis you would estimate operating costs would be less than 10 cents per kilometre (or 1/5 of what the california study suggests). If you look at existing hsr, acela costs $97 per ride (isn't broken down by mile). http://www.brookings.edu/research/interactives/2013/AmtrakRoutes and Acela has a population base that dwarfs the ON-QC corridor.

[Aylmer]

God knows Acela should NOT be our model - it's horrendously overpriced!



It's worth pointing out that the distance between Ottawa and Toronto with a new Smith Falls-Kingston segment is about 400km, not 500. Toronto to Montreal via Ottawa is just under 600km. In contrast, Paris to Avignon by TGV is 650km, but the average ticket price on a random Wednesday in January is $35 (€25) with many of the trains costing only $25 and the low-cost (but equally fast) OuiGo trains clear it in a smooth $15 several times a day at a whopping $0.02/km.

At that price, you could go to Toronto for under $10 and visit Montreal for $4 (incidentally, this is LESS than the price per person with an AFT [Aylmer Family Ticket]!) But let's not get carried away. At the average price of $35, that's 0.05$/km.
In fact, the only price I could find that approached the $0.15/km I propose was $0.13/km for the most expensive first class ticket I could find.

Now I know that SNCF significantly hikes their prices in the two weeks before any even departure (unlike, for example, Germany, where you can get up to 50% off for last minute tickets), but it's meant to illustrate how they can still offer these prices as regular prices.


So considering that the normal fares range from $0.02/km to $0.13/km including first class, I don't think $0.15 is ludicrous.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by acottawa

This is a problem with having a UK-based consulting company (whose main client appears to be MTO), a former transport Minister from Winnipeg, a current transportation Minister from Vaughan and a premier from Toronto - nobody has ever ventured west of the 427, they just know they want votes out there.

London is a little over 100km from Kitchener, Kitchener is a little over 100 km from Toronto, so "adding" London makes the line 100% longer. There is no viable corridor between Kitchener and London (existing rail line is a huge zig zag and the 401 corridor is considerably south of the two city centers) so they have to cut a new line through open farmland, something nobody has done in this country since the early 20th century, I could imagine there being significant local opposition (and it is federal jurisdiction so they have every incentives to pander to the locals).

London meanwhile, has perfectly good Via service to Toronto (on the CN mainline through Brantford) as well as good air service to Toronto. It is really unclear what particular advantage taking a detour through Kitchener offers when trying to get to Toronto, particularly if tickets are priced at "operating profit" levels.

A travel time of 45 minutes to travel a little over 100km seems somewhat unlikely. They have recently spent billions to upgrade the Pearson-Union corridor to conventional speeds (about 25 minutes to the airport) so either they have to build another adjacent high speed corridor or make the 85km journey from Pearson to Kitchener in 20 minutes.

The province owns part of the line and could presumably make whatever upgrades they want, but from Georgetown to Brampton (approximately) GO and VIA use the CN mainline, where the province has no ownership and no jurisdiction, which could make it difficult to run trains at the speeds necessary.

Hardly any rail line on the face of the earth makes an operating profit, certainly nothing in North America. I would find it almost inconceivable that the presence of a tech sector in KW would suddenly drive the kind of demand necessary to make an operating profit. Lots of places in North America have tech sectors.

Moreover, Waterloo Region (my home town BTW) has a very strong car culture, including in the tech industry and while there is a hub in downtown Kitchener, most of the tech sector (as with tech sectors everywhere) is located in the suburbs of Waterloo and in the time it would take them to drive to downtown Kitchener, find parking, wait for a train they could be on their way to Toronto. What the tech sector really wants is 2 way GO service, since many of their employees reverse commute from Toronto.

Does it not strike you as odd that the fastest train in the western hemisphere would be between two cities with populations less than 500k?

The Kitchener GO line does suck though, and could use upgrading (nothing fancy, just upgrading to normal GO speeds which would get people to downtown Toronto in a little over an hour).

The travel time along the rail corridor Pearson to Union, if going straight through, is 14 minutes post-upgrade. The reason why the UPX travel time is 25 minutes is because UPX goes down a long spur to Pearson, and it stops twice en route. There's discussion about it on UT, and some GO drivers popped in with this explanation.

As for the rest, I trust MTO. They have worldwide renown as one of the best transportation ministries out there (they're like Statscan in this respect).

The plans that were drawn up for the HSR corridor do indicate a new greenfield ROW to London. I don't see how that's a huge issue, we expropriate rural land all the time for transportation projects. I'm not sure what you mean by 'hasn't been done since the early 20th century'. It's been done many times much more recently. Just a few years ago, a big swath was expropriated for the 407 East project. And huge chunks of rural land were expropriated for the 400-series highway builds back in the middle of the last century. If they're smart they'll run it along a concession line(s) to minimize impact (like what was done with one of the freeways out there--I believe it was the 403).

Two all way GO is coming to K-W, too. The huge amount of infrastructure work that has to happen to make that reality is what makes HSR within reach. Between K-W and Toronto, the only piece of additional infrastructure HSR will require that GO RER will is a bypass of Guelph. Everything else--grade separations, electrification--is happening from the RER project. Essentially, it's not really a 200km HSR project at all (though you can bet the government will insist that it is). It's simply a limited stop express GO RER from Toronto to K-W with a Guelph bypass, and then a greenfield HSR to London. GO already comes very close to cost-neutral on its current network (I believe farebox return is something like 90%-95% on the GO Rail network), so it's not unreasonable to expect full farebox return for a service that will be even faster and won't actually cost anymore to operate.

A big part of the HSR push from the tech industry is about competing internationally. A lot of people don't realize just how significant it is to K-W, or indeed to the entire province. There's a common idea that IT is just some sort of fringe industry that survives on corporate welfare which is simply untrue. It's a huge industry, and Waterloo is one of the biggest centres of it in the entire world. A list of the top 20 cities for tech innovation in the whole damn world was compiled, and Waterloo made the list. By far and way the smallest city to do so, all the others were the biggies like Tokyo, San Fran, Tel Aviv, London, etc. But the difficulty of international access due to distance from Toronto makes it harder for K-W to compete, especially from Japanese and Europeans who expect/want to take trains instead of having to rent a car. As the low-skill manufacturing that Ontario's economy has long had at its bedrock has no future left in the developed world, it is absolutely imperative that Ontario nurture its tech industry, and follow in the path of countries like Japan & Israel whose economies are technology & R-D oriented. It is also imperative that Ontario's IT scene is urbanized to prevent IT-induced sprawl like what happened in west Ottawa in the 1990s. This is already happening in Ontario, especially in Toronto, and HSR will help. Google is locating its main Canadian office in downtown Kitchener, and the train station was the main reason why Google chose downtown.

[1overcosc]

As for Ottawa-Toronto and Ottawa-Montreal, I instead favour the current approach of continually improving the conventional rail services with an eye to HSR as the eventual end goal. VIA has done a very good job steadily improving Toronto-Kingston-Ottawa service, ridership on that route has more than doubled since 2009, including a 30-something percent increase in 2013 alone, and the number of trains per day is constantly growing (in 2011, there were only 10 trains a day between Toronto & Ottawa on a Friday, now there's 16), travel times are dropping (some trains are now down to less than 4 hours), and fares are actually getting cheaper (you can get $40 for Toronto-Ottawa now if you book in advance, you used to never be able to do that, ever). If VIA can keep the momentum growing that's honestly enough IMO.

As of 2013, if YOW-YYZ passengers connecting to a destination further afield in YYZ are excluded, VIA now has a larger share of the Toronto-Ottawa market than the airlines do, although both are dwarfed by the number of automobile trips.

[Aylmer]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

As of 2013, if YOW-YYZ passengers connecting to a destination further afield in YYZ are excluded, VIA now has a larger share of the Toronto-Ottawa market than the airlines do, although both are dwarfed by the number of automobile trips.

Therein lies the real problem and exciting opportunity! If we can get rail to compete with car travel, then we open it up to a huge basin of potential riders. With more riders, we can justify frequent service (at least every hour, perhaps up to every 30 minutes) and a wider network while at the same time shrinking our environmental debt, strengthening the cores of our cities and reducing the cost (both human and monetary) of accidents, bad weather and traffic.

[1overcosc]

Agreed wholeheartedly. This talk of treating HSR like some luxury system that measures up to air travel is a multi-billion dollar waste of opportunity.

With respect to the pricing discussion, the most optimal revenues don't necessarily come from a fixed rate per kilometre. They come from yield management. VIA switched from a fixed price-per-km model to a YM model a few years ago, and it worked wonders on their balance sheets, and opened up new options for travellers. Basically, pricing is dependent on how many seats have already been sold for each trip, to spread out demand. And pricing changes significantly depending on travel patterns, too. For example:

Say we have three trains, trips A, B, and C, that go from Ottawa to Kingston to Toronto on the Friday before the academic Reading Week. Because train B arrives in Kingston around the time classes let out, it is by far the most popular option for the horde of Queen's students going home to their GTA parents for the week. But A & C are much less popular for these students. What VIA will do, is cut the price for an Ottawa-Kingston booking on train B, and cut the price for Ottawa-Toronto bookings on trains A & C. This encourages someone from Ottawa looking to go to Kingston to take train B, and those going all way to Toronto to take A & C instead. This results in train B having the greatest number of seats available for Kingston boarders, and shifts those that take up seats on the whole route to ones where there's less demand coming in from Kingston. This way VIA sells the most seats across all 3 trains. This creates a pricing anomaly where on Trains A & C Ottawa-Toronto is cheaper than Ottawa-Kingston despite being twice the distance, but it nonetheless maximizes VIA's profits.