In the future, it might actually be interesting to have a Toronto-Winnipeg route via Chicago. Between a future HFR West to Windsor, the improved Detroit-Chicago and Chicago-Minneapolis routes, you could already get from Toronto to Minneapolis in only 10 hours. At conventional speeds from there, you'd get to Winnipeg 7 hours from there. It's a total of 17h vs today's 35 hours.
Before I get read for railfanning, I'm obviously not saying every trip between the prairies and the corridor would be appropriate to pass this way or by train at all. Simply that leveraging the numerous rail upgrades happening on the route anyways would open up some interesting new possibilities and mobility options. As many forumers point out, it's difficult to justify investing in passenger infrastructure for the meagre number of long-haul passengers. Perhaps piggybacking on the improvements in short- and medium-distance routes is the best hope for long-distance services then. Like, it's hard to justify upgrades for a twice-per-week Canadian, or even a daily service. But if you've got some everyday medium-distance services between closer city pairs, and commuter/regional-type short-distance services, then it's easier to get investments in track improvements, dedicated corridors, and well-placed stations that can also be used by long-distance routes. The long distance routes aren't the main point, but a happy secondary effect.
The Toronto-Minneapolis improvements are already happening. Perhaps one day we start to see intra-Prairie routes as well (Regina-Saskatoon, Brandon-Winnipeg, Saskatoon-Battleford-Lloydminster-Edmonton, etc.). With upgrades in these two regions and a bit of stitching, you could get, say, Toronto-Edmonton from the current 61 hours down to 24. And by decreasing trip times and spreading out the fixed costs of the infrastructure over many more passengers on the short routes, VIA would have the ability to run more frequencies with cheaper tickets. It moves us towards a more robust intercity transportation network.
There likely won't be a time when everyone will opt to take a 24h train over a 3h flight, but that's not the point. The point of a robust mobility network is to have a suite of viable, dignified options to best suit a given trip or traveler. We're getting better at doing this for short-distance trips, with improved metropolitan and corridor transit and intercity options. I think that the next frontier will be doing the same for medium- and long-distance trips.
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I've always struggled with reality. And I'm pleased to say that I won.
You are looking at the "fully allocated" costs published in the Annual and Quarterly Reports (which reallocate all overhead and other fixed or semi-variable costs - like my salary when I worked for VIA - across the network), whereas I refer to the variable (i.e. direct) costs they publish in their Corporate Plan and which I have posted half a dozen times in this thread, like in this post from 10 weeks ago:
Given that VIA Rail is relatively autonomous in deciding how they want to fulfill the mandate I've outlined (as long as it doesn't cause an incremental increase in its subsidy need, compared to the Status Quo) and the federal government automatically pays for which ever deficit VIA's operations (and overheads) cause (unless it decides to cut VIA's budget, which it hasn't done since 2012), I fail to see how the presence of three separate mandates negatively affect or constrain each other...
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The main disadvantage and fatal error of your suggestion is that operating services through the United States is neither within VIA's mandate nor something Canadian taxpayers should have to pay for and I'm not aware of Amtrak having ever shown any inclination to send anything but buses into Manitoba...
But VIA does run the Maple Leaf from Toronto to NYC.
I don’t think you can stitch little route improvements together like that. You would need sleeper cars that go the whole distance pretty much non-stop, and the trains would have to be quite short to be able to keep up n the fastish segments.
Night trains in Europe are in the 8-12 hour range (1000ish km).
The only place that has the kind of service you’re talking about as mainstream transportation is former Soviet places, where people are willing to spend days in barracks type bunkbeds, which I don’t think Canadians will accept.
IIRC, they switch crews at the border. VIA crews operates it within Canada, and Amtrak crews within the USA.
Oh ok. Thanks for the info. I don't see why that couldn't be done on a Toronto-Winnipeg route though.
This might seem off topic, but when do you think we'll have a rail tunnel/bridge between Vancouver Island and the mainland? Once HFR west is finished, I think the feds should explore that option.
Oh ok. Thanks for the info. I don't see why that couldn't be done on a Toronto-Winnipeg route though.
This might seem off topic, but when do you think we'll have a rail tunnel/bridge between Vancouver Island and the mainland? Once HFR west is finished, I think the feds should explore that option.
Oh ok. Thanks for the info. I don't see why that couldn't be done on a Toronto-Winnipeg route though.
This might seem off topic, but when do you think we'll have a rail tunnel/bridge between Vancouver Island and the mainland? Once HFR west is finished, I think the feds should explore that option.
That is why proponents on VI have actually been pushing for an extension of the E&N to Campbell River. Then it can cross over there where it is much narrower and would work for a bridge. It would be interesting to have the Canadian go all the way to Victoria.
That is why proponents on VI have actually been pushing for an extension of the E&N to Campbell River. Then it can cross over there where it is much narrower and would work for a bridge. It would be interesting to have the Canadian go all the way to Victoria.
I have noticed this on maps before. If you go that far north, then a fixed link would definitely work. It would be a circuitous route between Vic & Van, but it would help to stimulate growth on the mid coastal region of Vancouver Island and on the Sunshine Coast. I think it should definitely be considered (as much as an act of nation building as anything else).
That is, with respect, such a farcical proposal. The route it would take forever to get to Nanaimo little alone Victoria and would costs untold billions for little ridership.
There is already a vastly cheaper and faster alternative to get to the VI cities which BC Ferries flatly refuses to do.............passenger-only fast ferries/catamarans from Waterfront to Nanaimo & Comox.
That is, with respect, such a farcical proposal. The route it would take forever to get to Nanaimo little alone Victoria and would costs untold billions for little ridership.
There is already a vastly cheaper and faster alternative to get to the VI cities which BC Ferries flatly refuses to do.............passenger-only fast ferries/catamarans from Waterfront to Nanaimo & Comox.
Additionally there is an existing rail ferry terminal in Nanaimo with a link to Annacis Island in Delta, which I understand to still be in occasional use for propane shipments to Vancouver Island. The Nanaimo rail ferry terminal could be used to connect to the mainland, though I wouldn't use the Annacis Island terminal for passenger travel due to its out-of-the-way location.
That is, with respect, such a farcical proposal. The route it would take forever to get to Nanaimo little alone Victoria and would costs untold billions for little ridership.
There is already a vastly cheaper and faster alternative to get to the VI cities which BC Ferries flatly refuses to do.............passenger-only fast ferries/catamarans from Waterfront to Nanaimo & Comox.
Yeah, I agree. Looks easy enough on VI, but the mainland side isn't exactly a nice even coastline. The number of bridges needed to get to across from Campbell River, it would be easier to build one mega bridge straight across from Vancouver. Sounds like the idea that pops up every so often of the bridge to Newfoundland from Point Amour.
I have a proposal for a future VIA Rail service: The Canadian 2.0. It would run something like Toronto-London-Windsor-Detroit-Chicago-Milwaukee-Minneapolis-Winnipeg and then continue on the existing route to Vancouver. Or maybe that route would be split in two at Winnipeg.
The advantages to this would be that rather than running through very sparsely populated Northern Ontario it would take advantage of Amtrak's improved tracks, making it travel faster on a shorter route with more large population centres (Chicago having more people than all of Northern Ontario). All of this means less spending and more revenue for VIA.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aylmer
In the future, it might actually be interesting to have a Toronto-Winnipeg route via Chicago. Between a future HFR West to Windsor, the improved Detroit-Chicago and Chicago-Minneapolis routes, you could already get from Toronto to Minneapolis in only 10 hours. At conventional speeds from there, you'd get to Winnipeg 7 hours from there. It's a total of 17h vs today's 35 hours.
Before I get read for railfanning, I'm obviously not saying every trip between the prairies and the corridor would be appropriate to pass this way or by train at all. Simply that leveraging the numerous rail upgrades happening on the route anyways would open up some interesting new possibilities and mobility options. As many forumers point out, it's difficult to justify investing in passenger infrastructure for the meagre number of long-haul passengers. Perhaps piggybacking on the improvements in short- and medium-distance routes is the best hope for long-distance services then. Like, it's hard to justify upgrades for a twice-per-week Canadian, or even a daily service. But if you've got some everyday medium-distance services between closer city pairs, and commuter/regional-type short-distance services, then it's easier to get investments in track improvements, dedicated corridors, and well-placed stations that can also be used by long-distance routes. The long distance routes aren't the main point, but a happy secondary effect.
The Toronto-Minneapolis improvements are already happening. Perhaps one day we start to see intra-Prairie routes as well (Regina-Saskatoon, Brandon-Winnipeg, Saskatoon-Battleford-Lloydminster-Edmonton, etc.). With upgrades in these two regions and a bit of stitching, you could get, say, Toronto-Edmonton from the current 61 hours down to 24. And by decreasing trip times and spreading out the fixed costs of the infrastructure over many more passengers on the short routes, VIA would have the ability to run more frequencies with cheaper tickets. It moves us towards a more robust intercity transportation network.
There likely won't be a time when everyone will opt to take a 24h train over a 3h flight, but that's not the point. The point of a robust mobility network is to have a suite of viable, dignified options to best suit a given trip or traveler. We're getting better at doing this for short-distance trips, with improved metropolitan and corridor transit and intercity options. I think that the next frontier will be doing the same for medium- and long-distance trips.
There may one day be Toronto-Chicago and Chicago-Winnipeg trains which offer a somewhat usable connection from Toronto via Chicago to Winnipeg, but there will never be a through-service. Also, Winnipeg is a highly unattractive destination for Amtrak, given its comparatively small size (the respective CMAs of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are 7.5, 5 and 3.7 times as large) and absurd lack of any non-negligible population center in its hinterland (the next-largest population center in all of Manitoba is Brandon with only one-thirteenth of Winnipeg's size).
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoTrans
You can route the Canadian via larger population centres in Canada by routing it on the CP route at least as far west as Regina and then going to Saskatoon or by running it on CP the whole way from Sudbury. As an alternative you could even route the train via Sault Ste Marie to Franz and then back on CP to Winnipeg to add greater population. This would take longer but added passengers might make it pay off. Having 1 train via Saskatoon /Edmonton and 1 via Regina/Calgary makes more sense but not running transcontinental trains the whole distance.
I invite you to look up the CMA/CA populations of all the Sault-Ste-Maries, Thunder Bays, Kenoras, Reginas and Salmon Arms and compare them with that of Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Vancouver - or just with stations in the Corridor - in the vain hope that you might one day finally realize how immaterial even their combined population is (given the enormous distance over which they are scattered)...
Quote:
Originally Posted by milomilo
The technology used by REM doesn't seem to be anything unusual for a modern rapid transit network? I suppose they could have used heavy rail trains with conventional signalling, but that would have changed the nature of the whole system and likely made it a whole different beast.
You've alluded to having some major issues with REM with out going into much detail. To the fairly limited knowledge I have, the funding model where there is a cross subsidy between pensions and infrastructure looks like a scam, but the actual railway being built looks fine. What other problems are there?
Heavy Rail is a system characterized by high capacity (long trains) and low cost (can operate at-grade and share existing rail corridors).
Heavy Metro is a system characterized by high capacity (long trains) and high costs (requires dedicated and grade-separated infrastructure).
Light Rail is a system characterized by low capacity (short trains) and low cost (can operate at-grade and share existing rail corridors).
Light Metro is a system characterized by low capacity (short trains) and high costs (requires dedicated and grade-separated infrastructure).
There is nothing wrong with using Light Metros as a people mover at airports (because real estate is insanely expensive and frequency matters so much more than operating costs), but using such a low-capacity-high-cost solution for a transit network is like making a pig fly. I recommend visiting Vancouver and to travel on board its SkyTrain during rush hour for an Exhibit A. The only motivation I can see for the CDPQ chosing such a non-solution is to hand over the contract to their (at that time) de-facto subsidiary Bombardier Transportation, but I guess that they in the end realized that Bombardier's brand had become too toxic to get away with taking the conflict of interest inherent to this taxpayer-funded scam to an entirely new level...
Quote:
Originally Posted by MonctonRad
I have noticed this on maps before. If you go that far north, then a fixed link would definitely work. It would be a circuitous route between Vic & Van, but it would help to stimulate growth on the mid coastal region of Vancouver Island and on the Sunshine Coast. I think it should definitely be considered (as much as an act of nation building as anything else).
If you had tried to even cursory estimate the distance of a Vancouver-Victoria route via Campbell River, you might have realized that you are quintupling the distance from 80 km (e.g. Toronto-Guelph) to more than 400 km (e.g. Toronto-Ottawa). The only reason this was suggested is because Micheal Artindale (@swimmer_spe) desperately jumps on every straw which might suggest that the E&N could one day become useful for anything other than a rail trail. The total population of Vancouver Island only matches the CMA population of Quebec City, which is why the idea of building a fixed link is mere daydreaming, which seems to be Micheal's core competency...
I have noticed this on maps before. If you go that far north, then a fixed link would definitely work. It would be a circuitous route between Vic & Van, but it would help to stimulate growth on the mid coastal region of Vancouver Island and on the Sunshine Coast. I think it should definitely be considered (as much as an act of nation building as anything else).
If ou are looking at a fast route, this is not it, but if you are looking for a relatively inexpensive way that has less of an environmental impact, this is the route to take.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ssiguy
That is, with respect, such a farcical proposal. The route it would take forever to get to Nanaimo little alone Victoria and would costs untold billions for little ridership.
There is already a vastly cheaper and faster alternative to get to the VI cities which BC Ferries flatly refuses to do.............passenger-only fast ferries/catamarans from Waterfront to Nanaimo & Comox.
I'd assume there is no real demand for it. Most on here seem to be saying that unless the demand is there, it should not be done. We are also talking about a fixed link. I am sure the folks in PEI would like to have a word with you. Their fixed link isn't cheap in comparison to the ferries, but it is better. Ever have a ferry cancelled due to weather? Bridges tend to not close as much.
Quote:
Originally Posted by manny_santos
Additionally there is an existing rail ferry terminal in Nanaimo with a link to Annacis Island in Delta, which I understand to still be in occasional use for propane shipments to Vancouver Island. The Nanaimo rail ferry terminal could be used to connect to the mainland, though I wouldn't use the Annacis Island terminal for passenger travel due to its out-of-the-way location.
I doubt it would be faster than the existing ferries. Is there anywhere in the world that does what you speak of?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Djeffery
Yeah, I agree. Looks easy enough on VI, but the mainland side isn't exactly a nice even coastline. The number of bridges needed to get to across from Campbell River, it would be easier to build one mega bridge straight across from Vancouver. Sounds like the idea that pops up every so often of the bridge to Newfoundland from Point Amour.
Agreed, the mainland would be the challenging part. The good thing is once it gets to Squamish, there is an existing rail line.Tunneling along the coast, above sea level is easier than a 50km bridge. And then, you have the problem of shipping. Vancouver is a major port in Canada. The entrance to it is through the Salish Sea. A big bridge would also need to be high. That makes for some even more challenging work. And a tunnel? It would be the deepest tunnel in the world. Going north, may seem hard, but going across is even harder. One other thing, connecting the E&N to the mainland would see Port Alberni turned into a major port as well.
If ou are looking at a fast route, this is not it, but if you are looking for a relatively inexpensive way that has less of an environmental impact, this is the route to take.
Ferries have relatively low carbon footprints (although it varies significantly by ferry). Also, electric options are now available (Ontario bought two electric ferries recently).
Quote:
Originally Posted by swimmer_spe
I doubt it would be faster than the existing ferries. Is there anywhere in the world that does what you speak of?
Rail ferries used to be fairly common. A few still exist for passenger service. (Sicily to the mainland comes to mind).
IIRC, they switch crews at the border. VIA crews operates it within Canada, and Amtrak crews within the USA.
Just throwing this out there.....but VIA did operate through the US at one time with VIA crews and equipment. No Amtrak involvement. You could buy a VIA ticket between two stations within the US or board in the US and get off in Canada.
This was VIA's Atlantic between Halifax-Moncton-Saint-John-Montreal...running on 200 miles of Canadian Pacific across Maine. The Atlantic was discontinued in 1994.
LOL. People are dreaming of connections to Vancouver Island when we can't even build proper rail service between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal? Talk about cart before horse.
Once there are shovels in the ground on HFR, we will know how competent this country is at passenger rail development. Before that, these fantasies are beyond pointless.
Rail ferries used to be fairly common. A few still exist for passenger service. (Sicily to the mainland comes to mind).
With the Hamburg-Copenhagen day train and Berlin-Malmø night train being rerouted via Flensburg-Odense rather than using the Puttgarden-Rødby or Sassnitz-Trelleborg ferries to cross the Baltic Sea, I am not aware of any other rail ferries in operation (at least not for passenger trains)...
With the Hamburg-Copenhagen day train and Berlin-Malmø night train being rerouted via Flensburg-Odense rather than using the Puttgarden-Rødby or Sassnitz-Trelleborg ferries to cross the Baltic Sea, I am not aware of any other rail ferries in operation (at least not for passenger trains)...
I think there is one in China between Hainan and the mainland.
I think there is one in China between Hainan and the mainland.
The crossing of the Chinese mainland to Hainan is a reasonable engineering comparable to a fixed link to Vancouver island. Apparently the Chinese have mulled this for 20 years but have shelved it due to complexity. Hainan has more than 10x Vancouver island’s population and is in China, an authoritarian regime with an appetite for Herculean infrastructure projects. If they think it’s a pipe dream, we don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of ever realizing a fixed link to VI.
LOL. People are dreaming of connections to Vancouver Island when we can't even build proper rail service between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal? Talk about cart before horse.
Once there are shovels in the ground on HFR, we will know how competent this country is at passenger rail development. Before that, these fantasies are beyond pointless.
Well, once they announce construction has commenced for the HFR we can start talking about it. Til then, we seem to talk about all sorts of things. If you don't like it, you don't need to participate in it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hipster duck
The crossing of the Chinese mainland to Hainan is a reasonable engineering comparable to a fixed link to Vancouver island. Apparently the Chinese have mulled this for 20 years but have shelved it due to complexity. Hainan has more than 10x Vancouver island’s population and is in China, an authoritarian regime with an appetite for Herculean infrastructure projects. If they think it’s a pipe dream, we don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of ever realizing a fixed link to VI.
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