Via rail

[Doug]

Originally Posted by milomilo

There are already people using VIA even with a significant time penalty over air on those routes, which indicates that there is a market, and AFAIK, the existing line is close to capacity. So it stands to reason that introducing a faster, more reliable, more frequent route there would increase ridership further, even if it still remains faster to fly.

They've tried to build HSR out there, and every time it has failed, which is convenient for those who don't support spending money on anything. But now VIA has come up with a sensible plan that can be built on top of, and it sounds like they are onto a winner, if only they could get funding. It seems insane to me that with a government that came into power with a mandate to fund infrastructure, they won't spend money on something like this.

How many orders of magnitude higher is air travel between city pairs in Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal then VIA? If VIA is at capacity that is because its capacity is laughably small. The only advantage rail could offer over air travel is end points near the city center. That would blow the budget right there. Toronto can’t even come up with several billion for the relatively short DRL. Building a dedicated VIA right of way to Union would cost many billions more.

No way is the business case even remotely positive for any route in Alberta. Say one way Calgary to Edmonton were $100. A $10B capital cost would require ~4M trips per year (11K per day) simply to cover financing. An extra lane on highway 2 would cost far less and also benefit commercial and through traffic.