VIA Rail

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by milomilo

We all want that - it's just a we all need to be realistic about what things cost and what the federal government is likely to give.

With rail projects, it is often seems to be the case that you need to spend a lot of capital cost to make the business case worth it. But once you cross that threshold, spending incrementally more can give major benefits.

This is why the UK is spending so much money on HSR (HS2). They tried incremental improvements on existing lines and ended up spending way more money than they wanted for worse results than expected (the WCML upgrade). Eventually they realised that didn't work and that they needed to properly build new infrastructure to provide capacity, so HS2 was borne. While it is mainly a project to build capacity, they found that spending money on increasing line speed generated much more revenue than the cost, so it was worth spending money to make the line really fast. So even though their HS2 project is insanely expensive, it's worth it. Luckily Canada does not need to spend that much money.

This is kinda analogous to VIA HFR. The step change in service is probably similar going from UK WCML --> HS2 as it is from existing Corridor --> HFR corridor. You need to spend a lot of money to get up to that base level of decent service quality, but once VIA has HFR they should be able to get really good value from any upgrades they make.

Also, it's probably similar to GO in Toronto. For a while, GO seems to have provided pretty lame service (compared to real rail like seen in Europe), but managed to eventually eke out enough ridership and gain funding to start putting in upgrades where they could get the most value. They found those high value upgrades, and ridership increased to the point where now investing in GO is a no-brainer for Ontario and they can start to turn it into a proper commuter rail system Toronto can be proud of. I hope HFR can do the same for VIA, and as long as the federal government funds it I am confident it will.

Which is why the argument of HSR or even speeds approaching Corridor service must be achieved on opening day. We aren't the UK. We aren't Europe.

I am willing to bet that if passenger rail ever returns to the Chinook line it will not be HSR. I doubt it will even be HFR. But, I'll bet that it will grow like GO has to the point that decades from now, we will laugh about it was argued what should be there.