Rural Commuter Rail

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Does Moose have a plan to finance the rehabilitation of the corridor? Your affidavit said you received $500k in financing and that you were in "discussions" for $5M for a feasibility study. All other funds were described in aspirational terms, which isn't really a plan to finance the rehabilitation of the corridor.

What it comes down to is I am from Missouri as to whether MOOSE can come up with enough money to do all they say they are going to do and turn a profit for their investors. If they can, all the power to them, but I won't be investing.

[Joseph Potvin]

Originally Posted by roger1818

I am curious what your theory is as to why they were in such a rush.

No 'theory' required. Here is an excerpt from Moose's letter to the Competition Bureau. (The numbers are from numbered paragraphs in the original.)
https://www.letsgomoose.ca/moose-consort...ial-railways-in-canadas-capital/#chelsea

• 16 On 3 October 2016 Moose received by regular mail a photocopy of Resolution No. 16-09-352 that had already been passed on 15 September 2016 by the MRC des Collines-de-l'Outaouais, without any prior communication from that body, thus without any invitation to discuss Moose’s plans or their concerns. The resolution is reproduced here as Annex 1. Eleven clauses of the resolution, reproduced here below, explain essentially that the MRC des Collines-de-l'Outaouais had decided to develop a bus service named “Transcollines” (of which Chelsea Mayor Caryl Green is President).
• ATTENDU QUE le 16 juin 2011, ce Conseil adoptait la résolution 11-06-169 aux fins de participer à l'étude menée par la Conférence régionale des élus de l'Outaouais concernant l'organisation de transport collectif et adapté des personnes pour son territoire;
• ATTENDU QUE la Conférence régionale des élus de l'Outaouais accordait, le 20 juln 2011, un mandat à la Société Gestrans pour effectuer l'étude relative à la réalisation d'un scénario opérationnel de l'organisation de transport collectif et adapté des personnes du territoire de la l'ARC des Collines-de-l'Outaouais
• ATTENDU QUE pour donner suite à l'étude Gestrans, la MRC des Collines-de-l'Outaouais e accordé un mandat à l'organisme Transports adaptés et collectifs des Collines aux fins de mettre en place une nouvelle structure organisationnelle mixte de transport routier de personnes soit : un service de transport adapté, un service de transport collectif de type rural. et un service de transport en commun de type urbain;
• ATTENDU QUE te 19 septembre 2013, ce Conseil adoptait un scénario opérationnel visant la mise en place d'un service routier de transport en commun de personnes de type urbain, et ce, visant les rnunicipalités de Cantley, Chelsea, Val-des-Monts et La Pêche
• ATTENDU QUE depuis cette date l'organisme Transports adaptés et collectifs des Collines a poursuivi son travail afin d'assurer la réalisation de ce nouveau service de transport de personnes;
• ATTENDU QUE les municipalités de Cantley, Chelsea, Val-des-Monts et La Pêche ont convenu de créer une régie intermunicipale de transport, afin de permettre la réalisation de ce projet, laquelle régie est maintenant connue sous le nom de « Régie intermunicipale de transport des Collines »;
• ATTENDU QU'afin d'offrir une intégration des parcours routiers de déplacement a ceux de la ville de Gatineau et de la région d'Ottawa, un partenariat était également essentiel avec la Société de transport de l'Outaouais;
• ATTENDU QUE le 15 juin 2015, fut lancé officiellement ce projet de transport de personnes dorénavant connu sous ]e nom de « Transcollines
• ATTENDU QUE ce Conseil considère le projet « Transcollines » prioritaire, afin de permettre des mesures concrètes devant assurer une mobilité durable des personnes pour le territoire de la MRC des Collines-de­l'Outaouais et devant contribuer également à l'atteinte des mètres objectifs fixés par la Société de transport de ['Outaouais;
• ATTENDU QUE le succès obtenu par les services offerts par Transcollines tend à démontrer qu'ils répondent aux besoins des citoyens en matière de transport en commun;
• 17 This resolution then states that because of its operation of a bus service, members for the MRC des Collines council have decided to prohibit Moose’s train service within their territory:
• ATTENDU QUE ce Conseil considère qu'il n'est pas dans l'intérêt de la MRC des Collines-de-l'Outaouais de participer au déploiement du projet ferroviaire MOOSE sur son territoire;
• ET RÉSOLU QUE ce Conseil ne donnera pas suite au déploiement du projet ferroviairen MOOSE sur son territoire.
• IL EST ÉGALEMENT RÉSOLU que la PARC continue de déployer, de manière prioritaire, le projet Transcollines afin d'assurer une mobilité durable des personnes pour son territoire
• 18 In a September 2016 media interview by reporter Alexandra Mazur, Chelsea Mayor Caryl Green further communicated her intent to restrict market competition from a railway development in favour of the bus service that she leads:
• "Caryl Green is the Mayor of Chelsea, Quebec and president of Transcollines transit, the publicly-funded bus system in the Outaouais region. She worries that Moose’s commercial railway will conflict with their current transportation system... “We really do support public transportation, but we were given a choice between rail and bus, and we chose bus,” says Green.” (Mazure, A. 2016. "Making Tracks", Ottawa Life Magazine, Published on 14 September 2016. Retrieved from: http://www.ottawalife.com/article/making-tracks?c=9)
  
  ...
  
• 23 In the Competition Act, the section on “Abuse of Dominant Position” defines an “anti-competitive act” to include “pre-emption of scarce facilities or resources required by a competitor for the operation of a business, with the object of withholding the facilities or resources from a market”.
• 24 Moose alleges abuse of a dominant position” by the MRC des Collines-de-l'Outaouais (Québec) and by the Municipality of Chelsea (Québec) to withhold scarce railway facilities from the public transportation market specifically in order to pre-empt passenger rail competition with the Transcollines bus service.

Joseph Potvin
Director General | Directeur général
Moose Consortium (Mobility Ottawa-Outaouais: Systems & Enterprises) | www.letsgomoose.com
Consortium Moose (Mobilité Outaouais-Ottawa: Systèmes & Enterprises) | www.onyvamoose.com

[Joseph Potvin]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Does Moose have a plan?

@acottawa,

Please review information on our website. You can begin here:
https://www.letsgomoose.ca/letter-of-application-cta-2016-06-29/


Joseph Potvin
Director General | Directeur général
Moose Consortium (Mobility Ottawa-Outaouais: Systems & Enterprises) | www.letsgomoose.com
Consortium Moose (Mobilité Outaouais-Ottawa: Systèmes & Enterprises) | www.onyvamoose.com

[FFX-ME]

I used to be a supporter of this project but now all this blabbing on a forum while no deals are seemingly being made over many years of work makes me think this is just all talk and no game. I wouldn't be surprised to hear this project is just scamming investors out of their cash.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Joseph Potvin

@acottawa,

Please review information on our website. You can begin here:
https://www.letsgomoose.ca/letter-of-application-cta-2016-06-29/

Plans without money are just wishes. Even assuming your business model is viable, none of these documents indicates you have secured financing or even have a strategy to secure financing to cover the upfront costs or the initial operating costs associated with this project. As far as I can tell, you have raised about 0.003% of the necessary funds.

If you showed up at the town hall with a letter of credit indicating you had the funds to buy and upgrade the line, or some sort of a performance bond to back up your plans then I would think it much more likely they would be willing to leave the railway in an abandoned state until you sort things out. Otherwise, converting an abandoned railway into a trail is a pretty common practice around the world.

[PHrenetic]

Originally Posted by acottawa

...........

If you showed up at the town hall with a letter of credit indicating you had the funds to buy and upgrade the line, or some sort of a performance bond to back up your plans then I would think it much more likely they would be willing to leave the railway in an abandoned state until you sort things out. Otherwise, converting an abandoned railway into a trail is a pretty common practice around the world.

Good Day...

and does not preclude nor exclude future re-instatement as a rail corridor alongside a MUP or Trail or connection. Ex: Trillium Line expansion which will co-locate the Trail/MUP.

EnJoy!

[Kitchissippi]

Originally Posted by Joseph Potvin

4. RE: "this has been embraced by most Chelsea residents". Are you sure? Can you please provide a link to a report of a survey, of an election result, of a consultation process, or any other empirical study which demonstrated that the population of the Municipality of Chelsea decided to not keep the railway in addition to getting the pathway it's seeking? Please share the source of your comment that the Rails-TO-Trails design was chosen over a Rails-WITH-Trails design.

And how much real support is there for a commuter train? Is there a survey or consultation for this? A cute little whistling tourist steam train is one thing, but a heavy locomotive with horns/signals sounding at every level crossing is another.

A rails with trails configuration will likely require a separating fence along much of the length of the ROW limiting wildlife movement, and/or removal of hundreds of trees to widen it, completely changing the ambience and appeal of a trail. Given the habits of residents chaining themselves to trees in the past, it's not a trivial matter

[zzptichka]

Looking forward to the trail to Wakefield. Would really hate if Moose litigate it out of existence without offering anything instead and having $50 Million+ on the table to do it.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

a heavy locomotive with horns/signals sounding at every level crossing

Which brings up another question for Joseph. What type of rail vehicle can be used on this route? In the south, it is sharing the ROW with VIA Rail, so heavy weight trains would be required. On the other hand, it is also sharing the ROW with the Trillium line, which uses lightweight Alstom Coradia LINT 41 trainsets, which I don't believe would be permitted to share the ROW with a heavy train during the same time of day. How is this going to work?

[OCCheetos]

Originally Posted by roger1818

Which brings up another question for Joseph. What type of rail vehicle can be used on this route? In the south, it is sharing the ROW with VIA Rail, so heavy weight trains would be required. On the other hand, it is also sharing the ROW with the Trillium line, which uses lightweight Alstom Coradia LINT 41 trainsets, which I don't believe would be permitted to share the ROW with a heavy train during the same time of day. How is this going to work?

They could in theory be equipped with the same safety system that the O-Train was required to have, and then could in theory be granted an exemption.

Whether or not they'd actually get the exemption... at this point who knows.

[Joseph Potvin]

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

And how much real support is there for a commuter train? Is there a survey or consultation for this?

Glad you asked. Years before co-starting MOOSE with colleagues I designed and ran the largest public opinion survey ever undertaken in Chelsea, which compared Rails-WITH-Trails and a road-side trail option along Hwy 105. Despite the survey having 60 questions, it obtained a good response rate representing 5% of the population, which normally in surveys is considered the benchmark for a valid representative sample. (It led to the municipality undertaking a formal feasibility study, mentioned on this other blog).

Since starting up, has MOOSE undertaken preliminary market research relating to rail service? Yes, of course. And it's ongoing.

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

A rails with trails configuration will likely require a separating fence

No. Such fences can be problematic, because people and animals can get trapped on the wrong side. What's needed is a trail beside the railway.

Joseph Potvin
Director General | Directeur général
Moose Consortium (Mobility Ottawa-Outaouais: Systems & Enterprises) | www.letsgomoose.com
Consortium Moose (Mobilité Outaouais-Ottawa: Systèmes & Enterprises) | www.onyvamoose.com

[Joseph Potvin]

Originally Posted by roger1818

Which brings up another question for Joseph. What type of rail vehicle can be used on this route? In the south, it is sharing the ROW with VIA Rail, so heavy weight trains would be required. On the other hand, it is also sharing the ROW with the Trillium line, which uses lightweight Alstom Coradia LINT 41 trainsets, which I don't believe would be permitted to share the ROW with a heavy train during the same time of day. How is this going to work?

@roger1818,

We're planning on full-size bi-level trains, suitable for sharing track with VIA, CN, CP and Genesee-Wyoming.

Correct, these would not run on the same track as an LRT.

But it will be for the LRT operators to justify to the mobile public why passengers arriving comfortably into the core area on high-capacity trains should have to disembark and crowd onto low-capacity trains. We expect any terribly inconvenient and entirely unnecessary capacity bottleneck of that type to last, at most, one election cycle. Most likely such incongruities will get resolved ahead of time, since there are several places those LRTs can be re-deployed as feeder systems into a main line for overall system efficiency.

Joseph Potvin
Director General | Directeur général
Moose Consortium (Mobility Ottawa-Outaouais: Systems & Enterprises) | www.letsgomoose.com
Consortium Moose (Mobilité Outaouais-Ottawa: Systèmes & Enterprises) | www.onyvamoose.com

[Kitchissippi]

So in short, you're expecting to kick the Trillium line off its own tracks.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

So in short, you're expecting to kick the Trillium line off its own tracks.

I think he wants to kick the confederation line off its tracks.

[PHrenetic]

Good Day.

sounds more and more like --- tie everyone in red tape knots......

Odd. Typical. But then I'm paranoid.

[Joseph Potvin]

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

So in short, you're expecting to kick the Trillium line off its own tracks.

Not at all. We're just confident that professional transportation planning staff of the City of Ottawa, and the taxpayers of Ottawa (and of Canada), will see a straightforward way to improve overall transit system performance with high-capacity trains on that line.

Do you have in mind some reason(s) that the city staff or its citizens ought to maintain low capacity at the centre? If so, please elaborate.

The only reason that we've heard about (as reported here), is the political gambit to keep transit clumsy with areas outside Ottawa's property tax base. Inter-provincial barriers to trade are nothing new. Well, if that's a motivation for restricted capacity at the centre, and for artificially requiring a delay and transfer of all rail passengers with the Quebec side, we just don't think that will be sustainable.

So, it won't be MOOSE that forces anything (other than conformance with existing laws). We think it will be voters.

Joseph Potvin
Director General | Directeur général
Moose Consortium (Mobility Ottawa-Outaouais: Systems & Enterprises) | www.letsgomoose.com
Consortium Moose (Mobilité Outaouais-Ottawa: Systèmes & Enterprises) | www.onyvamoose.com

[BlackRedGold]

Originally Posted by Joseph Potvin

@roger1818,
But it will be for the LRT operators to justify to the mobile public why passengers arriving comfortably into the core area on high-capacity trains should have to disembark and crowd onto low-capacity trains. We expect any terribly inconvenient and entirely unnecessary capacity bottleneck of that type to last, at most, one election cycle. Most likely such incongruities will get resolved ahead of time, since there are several places those LRTs can be re-deployed as feeder systems into a main line for overall system efficiency.

You expect Ottawa voters to convince Ottawa municipal politicians to spend money to alter Ottawa's transit system so that out-of-town commuters are not inconvenienced in having to switch trains? Seriously?

You'd have better luck getting Santa Claus to climb down your chimney with the a couple of full sized trains.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by BlackRedGold

You'd have better luck getting Santa Claus to climb down your chimney with the a couple of full sized trains.

Yes Virginia, a business model that works in Hong Kong will work in Maxville.

[Joseph Potvin]

Originally Posted by BlackRedGold

You expect Ottawa voters to...

...want to get back and forth efficiently to Gatineau Park on the train.
http://ottawaconstructionnews.com/featur...ons-quarry-between-la-peche-and-chelsea/

Absolutely. Among many other things.

You're in solid company sharing Mr. Watson's view though: « Ce n'est pas notre priorité d'offrir un service ferroviaire à une autre ville, dans ne autre province. »
Source: http://www.lapresse.ca/le-droit/actualit...pour-rester-insiste-le-maire-dottawa.php

Joseph Potvin
Director General | Directeur général
Moose Consortium (Mobility Ottawa-Outaouais: Systems & Enterprises) | www.letsgomoose.com
Consortium Moose (Mobilité Outaouais-Ottawa: Systèmes & Enterprises) | www.onyvamoose.com

[BlackRedGold]

Originally Posted by Joseph Potvin

...want to get back and forth efficiently to Gatineau Park on the train.
http://ottawaconstructionnews.com/featur...ons-quarry-between-la-peche-and-chelsea/

Absolutely. Among many other things.

Yeah, that's at the top of the list for what Ottawa residents want done with their tax dollars - make it easier to get to Gatineau Park. Huge outcry for that. Surprised Jimbo Watson hasn't come up with a plan for that yet.