VIA Rail

[GoTrans]

Originally Posted by milomilo

I don't know about Edmontonians, but for Calgarians travelling to Edmonton isn't something they do very often, by plane or by car. You can see it in the numbers.

You want rail for the sake of rail. Your posts have said this over and over again. But that is not a reason to build rail. It needs to make the economy larger. That is what infrastructure is for.

Highway 2 between Calgary and Edmonton is not particularly busy, and it's 4 lane for much of it. Once it's 6 or 8 lanes the whole way, and the traffic is impacting the economy, then maybe building a railway will be worth it.

The situation with travel to Banff is closer IMO to needing rail than to Edmonton. That road actually does get very busy at peak periods and will only get worse. And there is a hard limit on how many people can park in the mountains, something that we really want to reduce. Getting people out of cars there will have real benefits, as will offering rail transport for tourists from YYC.

The reason why I say we should plan and gradually build a separate ROW is so we don’t have to build an additional 2 or 4 lanes as you suggest. All I am saying is that there is a better way with better environmental results by investing in rail. This is why I believe in a phased in approach. I realize it may take many years to complete just as Hwy 2 was completed over many years. By doing a phased in approach you gradually increase speed, frequency and ridership. This way the build out only has to be a little bit ahead of ridership.

How does making the highway 8 lanes for use predominately by private automobiles grow the economy? The problem is that the total neglect by both levels of government has led to the total demise of a rail service resulting in the current situation.

Wil HFR grow the economy in the corridor? Probably not. Is it worthwhile, absolutely.

I do agree with you with respect to the Calgary Banff proposal. Parking is a problem but providing transit will be difficult as many people are going to a variety of destinations to go hiking, camping and “touristing”.

[milomilo]

You can't do a phased approach, until you have the whole line between Calgary and Edmonton you have nothing.

8 lanes of traffic is 8 lanes of people going somewhere doing something economically productive. If you could get more people travelling with added rail capacity, possibly faster, that will grow the economy. And it may (may, not definitely) be cheaper than upgrading other infrastructure.

I would hope HFR will have a positive impact on the economy. It would be a failure if it didn't. That is the point of government spending money on anything.

And as I've said before, the environmental impact is a red herring. Look at the data, a railway will have a nearly imperceptible impact on Alberta's (or Canada's, for that matter) carbon emissions.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by milomilo

True, there are a ton of grade crossings and that does put a hard limit on speed.

I (perhaps naively) hope that many, perhaps 2/3, of those can be just closed leaving the rest to cross the railway.

This is the kind of politics that VIA was probably hoping to avoid with HFR. Right now, HFR has sort of been pitched as low impact on these rural areas. They lose a bike trail. There's a small bit of expropriation. But that's about it. Closing 2/3rds of crossings would be a substantial escalation in conflict. One that could well be exploited. Rural organizers actually did exactly that against the Wynne government's HSR proposal for Toronto-Kitchener-London. And the provincial conservatives were more than happy to play along. I hope VIA doesn't play into their hands.

Originally Posted by milomilo

I will also make a semi-baseless prediction that as the project progresses, there will be a push to grade separate many of the remaining ones from various parties.

So I wouldn't be surprised if the final HFR product is closer to HSR than it will be to the current corridor line. 200km/h already just about makes the grade by some definitions - the original Shinkansen ran at that speed, and sections of the UK's ECML and WCML are classified as such by some.

...

The same will happen with HFR.

I sincerely hope not. Scope creep will almost certainly kill this thing. The more sophisticated the end product, the longer the design phase, the later the shovels in the dirt, the higher the political risk. Especially as it comes with a higher price tag.

Sure, they need some value engineering and investment of opportunity. But the smart thing to do is not the whole corridor, but specific stretches where straightening and grade separation can be done quickly and deliver substantial bang for buck. This blog, for example, has a decent analysis of where a bit of investment could speed things up:

https://ontariotrafficman.wordpress....-on-via-lines/

Originally Posted by milomilo

It already happened in the Tuesday announcement with the addition of electrification. Once they do more detailed work, it'll turn out that to do certain parts of the line properly it'll require spending more money than the original bare-bones proposal laid out, and certain interest groups will want to change the project in ways that possibly make it better, but definitely make it more expensive. This will be hand-waved away later by politicians and perhaps it's all worth it in the end, but it is entirely predictable.

I would not count electrification as scope creep. It's been a listed option for almost as long as HFR has been a concrete proposal pushed by VIA. And it was always meant as a separate option for the government to exercise based on their other concerns (like emissions reductions). Moving closer to 200 kph HSR would, however, be substantial scope creep. It would drive billions more in grade separation.

[milomilo]

All that VIA have really shown us is some PowerPoint slides and a general map. Most of the rest of what we are talking about is speculation. It's hard to say whether what VIA originally pitched is similar to whatever is being developed but it always seemed like a given that it would be a diesel single track line. Electrified and "up to" 200km/h that they are saying now sounds like a more substantial project to me, but it really doesn't matter, we'll see what it looks like if we ever get concrete details.

The calls for "this should be better" are already here, see the below article. I fully understand why you fear scope creep, but it's inevitable and it may not be so bad. There's been so much disappointment with improved rail in Canada that pessimism is warranted, but maybe this is the project that gets over the finish line. I don't think hoping for this to be quietly be built under the radar are realistic, once the plans start getting unveiled people will have things to say, we can only hope our politicians and VIA keep pushing it through, and that the population is interested.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...en-better.html

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Alberta is the next obvious location for intercity rail investment. But not before HFR is sorted out and expanded westward till Windsor. That's easily 15-20 years out. $6-12B for HFR is basically all the intercity rail money in the federal kitty this decade. If anything is leftover, the Liberals will use it to completely overhaul VIA's fleet. And that's assuming the CPC doesn't get in and start slashing funding to VIA.

There's going to have to be a serious push from the provincial government in Alberta to do this. And we don't see that. So I don't get how anybody can say that Albertans want this. They routinely elect provincial and federal politicians who don't make rail a priority. I'm pretty sure if you gave the average Albertan a choice between another pipeline and CalEd HSR, they'd choose the pipeline.

There is a route planned west of Union?

Originally Posted by GoTrans

There is probably a majority of Albertans including those in the cities that would be serviced by the Edmonton-Calgary route that are against government ownership. Calgary is very protective of the flights between the two cities, especially West Jet which they consider one of their own. In my opinion any Calgary - Edmonton service has to be phased in with gradually building separate ROW and gradually increasing frequency in order to show the public there is a viable option and show both government that it is worth funding.

Milomilo talks as though if it isn't HSR it isn't worth building. I would ask why the 4th and 5th largest cities should have HSR before the 1st and 2nd? A phased approach does make the most sense with how little money Via has. Get a rail route running. Increase frequency. Increase speed. That makes sense.

Originally Posted by milomilo

I don't know about Edmontonians, but for Calgarians travelling to Edmonton isn't something they do very often, by plane or by car. You can see it in the numbers.

You want rail for the sake of rail. Your posts have said this over and over again. But that is not a reason to build rail. It needs to make the economy larger. That is what infrastructure is for.

Highway 2 between Calgary and Edmonton is not particularly busy, and it's 4 lane for much of it. Once it's 6 or 8 lanes the whole way, and the traffic is impacting the economy, then maybe building a railway will be worth it.

The situation with travel to Banff is closer IMO to needing rail than to Edmonton. That road actually does get very busy at peak periods and will only get worse. And there is a hard limit on how many people can park in the mountains, something that we really want to reduce. Getting people out of cars there will have real benefits, as will offering rail transport for tourists from YYC.

I agree with the Banff route. However, why not have it connect to an Edmonton route such that Edmontonians can get to Banff too without a car?

Originally Posted by GoTrans

The reason why I say we should plan and gradually build a separate ROW is so we don’t have to build an additional 2 or 4 lanes as you suggest. All I am saying is that there is a better way with better environmental results by investing in rail. This is why I believe in a phased in approach. I realize it may take many years to complete just as Hwy 2 was completed over many years. By doing a phased in approach you gradually increase speed, frequency and ridership. This way the build out only has to be a little bit ahead of ridership.

How does making the highway 8 lanes for use predominately by private automobiles grow the economy? The problem is that the total neglect by both levels of government has led to the total demise of a rail service resulting in the current situation.

Wil HFR grow the economy in the corridor? Probably not. Is it worthwhile, absolutely.

I do agree with you with respect to the Calgary Banff proposal. Parking is a problem but providing transit will be difficult as many people are going to a variety of destinations to go hiking, camping and “touristing”.

Actually... many of the popular spots in Lake Louis area have buses running to them as their parking lots fill up at 5am. They should bring back the old LRT line of Lake Louise.....

Originally Posted by milomilo

You can't do a phased approach, until you have the whole line between Calgary and Edmonton you have nothing.

8 lanes of traffic is 8 lanes of people going somewhere doing something economically productive. If you could get more people travelling with added rail capacity, possibly faster, that will grow the economy. And it may (may, not definitely) be cheaper than upgrading other infrastructure.

I would hope HFR will have a positive impact on the economy. It would be a failure if it didn't. That is the point of government spending money on anything.

And as I've said before, the environmental impact is a red herring. Look at the data, a railway will have a nearly imperceptible impact on Alberta's (or Canada's, for that matter) carbon emissions.

Didn't you just say you wanted Banff first? Doesn't Banff only have 4 lanes? Where are those 8 lanes you speak of?

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by milomilo

All that VIA have really shown us is some PowerPoint slides and a general map. Most of the rest of what we are talking about is speculation. It's hard to say whether what VIA originally pitched is similar to whatever is being developed but it always seemed like a given that it would be a diesel single track line. Electrified and "up to" 200km/h that they are saying now sounds like a more substantial project to me, but it really doesn't matter, we'll see what it looks like if we ever get concrete details.

We'll see the RFP in the Fall. But honestly electrified and "up to 200 kph" isn't as big a deal at you might think. Electrification was always an option in the original proposals. One could argue, it was split out that way to give the politicians a path to upgrade. The 200 kph line is also a bit of puffery on the part of the the minister. It's not anywhere close to a sustained speed. And their suggested travel times are still in line with rumours. Just yesterday, in Ottawa, he said Toronto-Ottawa would be 3 hrs. An actual sustained 200 kph line would be faster.

Originally Posted by milomilo

The calls for "this should be better" are already here, see the below article.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...en-better.html

I read this piece. And I am pissed about it. This is former Liberal Transport Minister David Colenette. If he thought HSR was so important, why the fuck didn't he do convince his cabinet colleagues in the 6 years he was in that office? Given that on his watch, ViaFast was shot down and he authored the provincial Toronto-Kitchener-London HSR proposal that the Wynne government slow walked and Ford government canned, I would think he, of all people, should understand the concept of political feasibility.

Originally Posted by milomilo

I fully understand why you fear scope creep, but it's inevitable and it may not be so bad. There's been so much disappointment with improved rail in Canada that pessimism is warranted, but maybe this is the project that gets over the finish line. I don't think hoping for this to be quietly be built under the radar are realistic, once the plans start getting unveiled people will have things to say, we can only hope our politicians and VIA keep pushing it through, and that the population is interested.

It's not just about getting something good built. Let's not forget that this is existential for VIA. Freight volumes are growing. If something isn't in service by 2030, the worsening delays will simply push future governments to dismantle VIA.

So yes, I really hope they understand that delivering faster is probably far more important than delivering a service that runs faster. All they need to do is build something that is more reliable, more frequent and sightly faster than today. They can build on this later.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

There is a route planned west of Union?

No. But it's pretty damn obvious that they can tailor the Ontario TKL HSR proposal to their next phase.

Also, Pearson is a much more sensible terminus than Union for an HFR line.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

No. But it's pretty damn obvious that they can tailor the Ontario TKL HSR proposal to their next phase.

Also, Pearson is a much more sensible terminus than Union for an HFR line.

If there is no plan for a HFR west of Toronto, I'd say the line between C-E has a better chance of happening sooner.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

We'll see the RFP in the Fall. But honestly electrified and "up to 200 kph" isn't as big a deal at you might think. Electrification was always an option in the original proposals. One could argue, it was split out that way to give the politicians a path to upgrade. The 200 kph line is also a bit of puffery on the part of the the minister. It's not anywhere close to a sustained speed. And their suggested travel times are still in line with rumours. Just yesterday, in Ottawa, he said Toronto-Ottawa would be 3 hrs. An actual sustained 200 kph line would be faster.



I read this piece. And I am pissed about it. This is former Liberal Transport Minister David Colenette. If he thought HSR was so important, why the fuck didn't he do convince his cabinet colleagues in the 6 years he was in that office? Given that on his watch, ViaFast was shot down and he authored the provincial Toronto-Kitchener-London HSR proposal that the Wynne government slow walked and Ford government canned, I would think he, of all people, should understand the concept of political feasibility.



It's not just about getting something good built. Let's not forget that this is existential for VIA. Freight volumes are growing. If something isn't in service by 2030, the worsening delays will simply push future governments to dismantle VIA.

So yes, I really hope they understand that delivering faster is probably far more important than delivering a service that runs faster. All they need to do is build something that is more reliable, more frequent and sightly faster than today. They can build on this later.

I agree with basically all of this just with slightly different levels of hope and pessimism.

One thing though - 3 hours for Toronto - Ottawa is pretty quick actually. That's only a little slower than London - Newcastle on the ECML, which is a proper high quality line that almost qualifies as HSR. It gets to its 200km/h full speed and stays at close to it the whole way with just a handful of stops. So VIA HFR must have substantial running at close to top speed to achieve that time.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Didn't you just say you wanted Banff first? Doesn't Banff only have 4 lanes? Where are those 8 lanes you speak of?

If you'd bothered to read the post, you'll see I also mentioned parking and the desire not to put more cars in the mountains. We might add another lane to the TCH to Banff, but adding more will be counterproductive.

That's not the case with Calgary and Edmonton. The negative impact of more cars driving in those cities, while still there, is much less than it would be in our mountains.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by milomilo

If you'd bothered to read the post, you'll see I also mentioned parking and the desire not to put more cars in the mountains. We might add another lane to the TCH to Banff, but adding more will be counterproductive.

That's not the case with Calgary and Edmonton. The negative impact of more cars driving in those cities, while still there, is much less than it would be in our mountains.

II have just showed your absurdities in metrics that are not relevant.

Show me where, outside of the cities there are 8 lane highways in Alberta.

I guess you did not read about the desire to revive the Lake Louis LRT.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

II have just showed your absurdities in metrics that are not relevant.

Show me where, outside of the cities there are 8 lane highways in Alberta.

I guess you did not read about the desire to revive the Lake Louis LRT.

I'm not sure what your argument is here. If the current 4 lane highway works fine (it does) to get people between cities in 3 hours, with buses available a little slower, and planes maybe a little faster, what does the money spent on rail actually give us? Unless it's faster than the current options, it's useless. In the coming decades capacity on highway 2 might get used up, but building more lanes would be cheaper than rail.

[GoTrans]

Originally Posted by milomilo

If you'd bothered to read the post, you'll see I also mentioned parking and the desire not to put more cars in the mountains. We might add another lane to the TCH to Banff, but adding more will be counterproductive.

That's not the case with Calgary and Edmonton. The negative impact of more cars driving in those cities, while still there, is much less than it would be in our mountains.

The problem is not so much the TCH, but parking in Banff NP. I agree that the TCH is busy from time to time, but many other times of the day there is little traffic on it compared to traffic volumes on 4 lane highways in ON or QC. Many other locations in the park do not have access to the park transit. If you want to go to Yoho or Kootenay National Park you must drive. If you want to go hiking anywhere up the Icefields Parkway with the exception of the Athabasca Glacier you have to drive. If you want to go skiing at Kicking Horse in Golden, BC you can't take a bus from Calgary or Banff to Golden.

In spite of this, I am still agreement with train service to Banff from Calgary but I think the Calgary Edmonton route is a higher priority.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by GoTrans

The problem is not so much the TCH, but parking in Banff NP. I agree that the TCH is busy from time to time, but many other times of the day there is little traffic on it compared to traffic volumes on 4 lane highways in ON or QC. Many other locations in the park do not have access to the park transit. If you want to go to Yoho or Kootenay National Park you must drive. If you want to go hiking anywhere up the Icefields Parkway with the exception of the Athabasca Glacier you have to drive. If you want to go skiing at Kicking Horse in Golden, BC you can't take a bus from Calgary or Banff to Golden.

In spite of this, I am still agreement with train service to Banff from Calgary but I think the Calgary Edmonton route is a higher priority.

And this describes the limitations of rail in general. It is only capable of replacing a small portion of trips (this number increases the more rail is built and the better public transit is).

However just replacing that small number of trips can have a disproportionate impact on other things. Traffic stays mostly the same until a road starts getting to capacity, then it quickly gets much worse. So taking a few cars off the road can have a big impact. And then you don't have that car clogging up Banff, taking up parking, aimlessly driving around Lake Louise etc.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

If there is no plan for a HFR west of Toronto, I'd say the line between C-E has a better chance of happening sooner.

LOL. No. Not even close.

TKL has a plan that was actually studied and has an EA currently underway, currently has VIA services on the route, a corridor that can be bought and repurposed by VIA, and ongoing provincial investment that will electrify a quarter of the line (Kitchener RER).

Calgary-Edmonton has an HSR (not HFR) high level study that was done a few years go. No EA underway. No corridor that can be easily repurposed. And no actual support from the provincial government.

And this is before we get into actual political return for any federal government proposing to build either proposal. If Alberta actually elects an NDP majority in 2023 and the federal Liberals are still in power, they might finally be able to do all the work the pre-requisite work that VIA and the CIB did for HFR for the last half decade.

[GreatTallNorth2]

There is an article CTV London today to say that there is a second announcement coming and that west of toronto (kw/london) will not be left out of the Via improvements. What that means - I have no clue, but hopefully there will be some improvements.

https://london.ctvnews.ca/local-lead...ents-1.5500720

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by milomilo

I agree with basically all of this just with slightly different levels of hope and pessimism.

One thing though - 3 hours for Toronto - Ottawa is pretty quick actually. That's only a little slower than London - Newcastle on the ECML, which is a proper high quality line that almost qualifies as HSR. It gets to its 200km/h full speed and stays at close to it the whole way with just a handful of stops. So VIA HFR must have substantial running at close to top speed to achieve that time.

Urban Sky explained this a while back. On UrbanToronto I think....

In any event, in the US, the FRA allows 125 mph passenger train operation on Class 7 without grade separation, but has to have some substantial barriers and onboard signalling. See the last page of this pdf:

https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uplo...Guidelines.pdf

Transport Canada hasn't really defined track classes beyond Class 5. So the assumption was that TC might not approve above 110 mph without grade separation. I suspect the government is working on changing that.

However, that still doesn't solve the geometry problem. A lot of the Peterborough-Smiths Falls portion just doesn't have the geometry to support higher speeds. There's a good analysis done by this blog here:

https://ontariotrafficman.wordpress....l-time-claims/

Now this has been known for a while, and is presumably included in VIA's projections. But upgrading to fully grade separated would over and above all the straightening required (102 of 397 km as per that analysis).

So while 3 hrs from Toronto-Ottawa is impressive, it's actually not indicative of a substantial amount of 200 kph running. It's a shift from an average of 120 kph to 130 kph (previous estimate was 3:15 hrs). As the blog show above, this is achievable with 110 mph/177 kph running just using straightening.

By the way, we're already seeing the first signs of scope creep with this whole Ottawa bypass thing:

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by GreatTallNorth2

There is an article CTV London today to say that there is a second announcement coming and that west of toronto (kw/london) will not be left out of the Via improvements. What that means - I have no clue, but hopefully there will be some improvements.

https://london.ctvnews.ca/local-lead...ents-1.5500720

Prediction: Service improvements. And the launch of HFR West study.

[Truenorth00]

From La Presse :



Kinda disappointed in Montreal-Quebec. But 3 hrs to Ottawa and 4 hrs to Montreal, from Toronto is substantial. Especially if the frequencies are high and the fares are reasonable.

[esquire]

4 hours Toronto-Montreal. The improved frequency will be nice but still a top speed that was first attained over 50 years ago with the CN Turbo Train. I wonder when we will ever see a 3.5 hour train run between those two cities?