VIA Rail

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

London Mayor Ed Holder has held a post-HFR interview stating that London wants HFR with 3 requirements.......higher speeds, more reliability, and higher frequencies. He stated he has already talked with VIA {IOW Ottawa} and says that a SWO rail announcement is "imminent" which means within the month at most.

quite sure that officials from Windsor & London gave Ottawa an earful on how infuriated they are about HFR not going west of Toronto

My biggest question is which route? AFAIK there are no abandoned routes between Toronto and London.

[Innsertnamehere]

They would likely go through Kitchener and Stratford for any London bound service as it’s already owned by Via past Kitchener I believe and is owned by Metrolinx from there into Tpronto.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

They would likely go through Kitchener and Stratford for any London bound service as it’s already owned by Via past Kitchener I believe and is owned by Metrolinx from there into Tpronto.

https://rac.jmaponline.net/canadianrailatlas/

It's owned by CN

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

London Mayor Ed Holder has held a post-HFR interview stating that London wants HFR with 3 requirements.......higher speeds, more reliability, and higher frequencies. He stated he has already talked with VIA {IOW Ottawa} and says that a SWO rail announcement which means within the month at most. Needless to say the mayors of London & Windsor gave them an earful.

LOL. A city that rejected building an LRT, leading a bunch of politicians from a region, that voted for a party that scrapped an existing HSR plan. The plan which, specifically compelled VIA to focus on the eastern Corridor.

I do believe VIA and the federal government fully intend to extend HFR to Windsor. But it will not be on any timeline these folks want. Or at the kind of service levels they claim to want and explicitly voted against.

Oh. And those London pols should talk to their Oxford county neighbours who led the NIMBY drive against HSR to begin with, that helped substantially kill it.

https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/...eed-rail-again

[ssiguy]

Oxford County has been pressuring Ottawa for years about getting better VIA service. They wanted the southern route thru Aldershot which would serve them much better and is a far more direct route than going north to Kitchener.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Oxford County has been pressuring Ottawa for years about getting better VIA service. They wanted the southern route thru Aldershot which would serve them much better and is a far more direct route than going north to Kitchener.

Attacking HSR was a bad way to go about getting what they wanted. Now the feds and VIA are going to be really strict. Probably with demands for substantial cooperation from Metrolinx on the Kitchener Line and on the Pearson Transit Hub. The Southern route was never going to happen. Serving Pearson is a priority for VIA.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Attacking HSR was a bad way to go about getting what they wanted. Now the feds and VIA are going to be really strict. Probably with demands for substantial cooperation from Metrolinx on the Kitchener Line and on the Pearson Transit Hub. The Southern route was never going to happen. Serving Pearson is a priority for VIA.

Not from Oxford County’s perspective. Current Via service gets people from Ingersoll or Woodstock to downtown Toronto in about two hours. If HSR had been built they would have had to drive to London or Kitchener to catch a train and had much longer travel times. With HSR dead they keep a pretty good service to Toronto and London.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Not from Oxford County’s perspective. Current Via service gets people from Ingersoll or Woodstock to downtown Toronto in about two hours. If HSR had been built they would have had to drive to London or Kitchener to catch a train and had much longer travel times. With HSR dead they keep a pretty good service to Toronto and London.

I’m sure some sort of service would have continued on the current VIA mainline, its service of Brantford and the West GTA was valuable, especially if they could have figured out a way to serve Hamilton.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

I’m sure some sort of service would have continued on the current VIA mainline, its service of Brantford and the West GTA was valuable, especially if they could have figured out a way to serve Hamilton.

If they maintained something, I doubt it would be very much for the population levels left after London and Windsor are taken out of the picture. Certainly a far cry from the level of service they have now.

[Mister F]

We have to stop thinking of HSR as something that replaces current services. Almost everywhere it exists, HSR is in addition to slower local services in small towns, not a replacement for them. Towns like Ingersoll and Woodstock wouldn't have lost their Via service under the previous plan.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Not from Oxford County’s perspective. Current Via service gets people from Ingersoll or Woodstock to downtown Toronto in about two hours. If HSR had been built they would have had to drive to London or Kitchener to catch a train and had much longer travel times. With HSR dead they keep a pretty good service to Toronto and London.

You're presuming that their opposition was based on concerns over service to them. It wasn't.

Their opposition was entirely based around HSR's corridor severing a few lots. They held that line for years. And then moved to asking for "High Performance Rail" when they realized their NIMBYism was a particularly shitty look.

Good news for them. VIA is going to give them exactly what they want: nothing. At least for a decade, while it works on HFR East and while Metrolinx sorts out all other precursor projects. After that, public support for expropriation and to shut down their NIMBYism should be pretty solid.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

From our link:
For such speeds above 200 km/h, the infrastructure can be categorized in “High-Speed” if the system in operations, complies with:

You stated 120km/hr.

So, it is you who needs to learn how to read.

Why do you reply when you don't read what I have written? I both said that I don't know if it has to be by the numbers HSR, and the 120km/h was obviously referring to average speed since 300km/2.5h = 120km/h.

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Rather than build staged LRT expansions, why not build the whole system out all in one go? Same reason.

That is why I suggest a phased approach.

Phased approach only works if the first phase is viable, and for the first phase to be viable you need something that people will use. If it is slower and less convenient than what exists today, then it will not be used and future phases won't happen.

LRT was phased after the bus routes had sufficient ridership that building rail made sense. This isn't really the case in the Calgary - Edmonton corridor where bus usage isn't all that high. You'd at least have to provide a product that is faster than the bus, which a train using the CP line would not be.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Yes it is.

Day trips and business trips between Toronto and Montreal is key. This announcement may technically be HSR but 200km/h isn't going to get us where we want to go. It still constitutes a 3+ hour trip from Toronto to Montreal or 6+ hours there and back. That's NOT going to get people out of planes and on to this service. It won't even get people out of their cars.

200km/h is an improvement over what exists now but that's not saying much. There's a reason train ride share is so low and this won't change that. If they're serious about building HSR on this route, they need to be looking at 400km/h or faster. It would get the trip down to 90 minutes or 3 hours there and back. 400km/h will be very expensive but build it right or don't build it at all.

After 50 years of HSR talk I've stopped paying attention. At this point it's probably better if this doesn't happen. We should wait another 20 years for HyperLoop technology to arrive and build that instead.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Why do you reply when you don't read what I have written? I both said that I don't know if it has to be by the numbers HSR, and the 120km/h was obviously referring to average speed since 300km/2.5h = 120km/h.

The interesting thing about 120 kph average is that if we apply the the rough 2/3rds guideline (of nominal speed), it's 182 kph. So theoretically something like HFR could work. There could stay just under 200 kph top speed and avoid the need for complete grade separation. But that's still probably a $5B project.

I could actually see it working if they can get enough of a white collar commuter base out of Red Deer to generate like 2 million trips per year at $50-60 per trip. Like 4000-5000 commuters doing a round trip per day on average from Red Deer. With Calgary and Edmonton generating another 2-3M trips at a $100 pop.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Phased approach only works if the first phase is viable, and for the first phase to be viable you need something that people will use. If it is slower and less convenient than what exists today, then it will not be used and future phases won't happen.

LRT was phased after the bus routes had sufficient ridership that building rail made sense. This isn't really the case in the Calgary - Edmonton corridor where bus usage isn't all that high. You'd at least have to provide a product that is faster than the bus, which a train using the CP line would not be.

Wait, you had buses that showed something more would work?

Do we have something to show trains would work?

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by isaidso

Day trips and business trips between Toronto and Montreal is key. This announcement may technically be HSR but 200km/h isn't going to get us where we want to go. It still constitutes a 3+ hour trip from Toronto to Montreal or 6+ hours there and back. That's NOT going to get people out of planes and on to this service. It won't even get people out of their cars.

200km/h is an improvement over what exists now but that's not saying much. There's a reason train ride share is so low and this won't change that. If they're serious about building HSR on this route, they need to be looking at 400km/h or faster. It would get the trip down to 90 minutes or 3 hours there and back. 400km/h will be very expensive but build it right or don't build it at all.

Why is it that everybody only talks about travel time and nobody talks about cost? A 400-500 km HSR ride would be about $80-100 one way on the Shinkansen. Not cheap at all. And that would most certainly never fly here. If we built HSR and VIA doubled its prices, there would be a massive outcry. And any further HSR investment would be killed right there. VIA is right to try and aim for the sweet spot.

Also, this focus on business travel is always a bit myopic. First, because business travelers are not the majority of travellers. And next because there's the strange assumption that all business travel is extremely time sensitive and nobody is cost sensitive. But that's just not true. Somebody doing a same day return is schedule sensitive. Somebody who isn't doing that is not. I would argue that if VIA can keep Toronto-Montreal to 4 hrs, and fares under $150 r/t, they'll be able to capture a substantial portion of the market that is not time sensitive. They just have to be competitive on cost after adding taxis and transit on each end, against mileage for drivers.

3 hrs Toronto-Ottawa. 4 hrs Toronto-Montreal. That is all they to capture significant marketshare on launch day, as long as they also keep fares reasonable.

Originally Posted by isaidso

After 50 years of HSR talk I've stopped paying attention. At this point it's probably better if this doesn't happen. We should wait another 20 years for HyperLoop technology to arrive and build that instead.

LOL @ anybody who thinks Hyperloop is ever happening. Let alone in 20 years. Even if they succeed technologically (and that's a big if), there's zero change they succeed economically.

[MolsonExport]

speed, cost, and reliability. Those are the three ingredients, mixed in equal proportions.

I find Via scores poorly on all three currently (not its fault, but rather due to having to share trackage, chronic underinvestments in rolling stock, and of course, death by a thousand budget cuts).

HFR between Montreal-Toronto (with intermediate stops in Guildwood or Oshawa, Ottawa, Kingston, and Dorval) at 3 to 3.5 hours, 95% reliability (within 15 mins), and 18-24 trains each way, each day, for under $150 one-way...that would be extremely attractive to millions of potential riders.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

....with intermediate stops in Guildwood or Oshawa, Ottawa, Kingston, and Dorval....

HFR is dropping Guildwood and Oshawa. The maps all show an "Eglinton station". There's a chance this would be at Kennedy station, which would be amazing for connectivity with the TTC and GO.

Personally, I do hope they add a station in Markham or North Durham. Given the amount of tech traffic between Markham and Kanata, I would think this makes sense.

[Innsertnamehere]

They probably want a park and ride station of some sort in Toronto. I agree that Markham is probably a better spot than Eglinton for that.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

They probably want a park and ride station of some sort in Toronto. I agree that Markham is probably a better spot than Eglinton for that.

On one side of the line in Markham is existing sprawl. The other side is a national park.