What is it like to come home to Canada?

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Gresto

Screwdriving 101. It should be obligatory for every Canadian to learn of the superiority of the Robertson. That the Phillips essentially became the default is disgraceful.

The Robertson (which no one, literally no one, calls that here -- it's just called "Square" and to be precise, the more common version by far is called "Square Number Two") is really THE one and only default here for everything except drywall screws.

I always assumed all of Canada was like this. (The Vancouver project a few years ago, all our stuff came directly from our American partner, so the Star screws (Phillips) were to be expected; I didn't really get to buy screws over there so I didn't notice what was standard.)

[Acajack]

I know the names Phillips and Robertson (maybe due to SSP) but I and everyone I know just calls them Étoile and Carré.

Originally Posted by lio45

The Robertson (which no one, literally no one, calls that here -- it's just called "Square" and to be precise, the more common version by far is called "Square Number Two") is really THE one and only default here for everything except drywall screws.

I always assumed all of Canada was like this. (The Vancouver project a few years ago, all our stuff came directly from our American partner, so the Star screws (Phillips) were to be expected; I didn't really get to buy screws over there so I didn't notice what was standard.)

[lio45]

If you do electricity work occasionally, you'll be acquainted with Carré #1, but for most people, "Carré" is in fact Carré #2, the arch-standard for any screws here.

In several of my older buildings, I regularly find "flat" screws -- on stuff that hasn't been removed in many decades. Many old wooden doors are still held with flat screws at the time of this writing. REALLY not convenient to re-use! Especially not with a drill.

[ScreamingViking]

And whenever one buys a package of drill bits, the #2 Robertsons are usually the most plentiful.

Aside: one thing I truly DESPISE are "cheap" screws that don't hold up to even hand-powered screwdrivers, no matter what type they are. Value engineering at its finest, I guess.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by ScreamingViking

And whenever one buys a package of drill bits, the #2 Robertsons are usually the most plentiful.

Aside: one thing I truly DESPISE are "cheap" screws that don't hold up to even hand-powered screwdrivers, no matter what type they are. Value engineering at its finest, I guess.

99% of my drill bit buying is actually pure #2 Robertson (not merely "the most plentiful").

https://www.canac.ca/fr/ensemble-de-...s-2-po-6181588

If buying this instead, it's basically guaranteed that by the time I'm through with all the #2 bits, the remaining five (one #0, two #1 and two #3) will still be virgins...

https://www.canac.ca/fr/ensemble-de-...s-2-po-6181587

[flar]

Originally Posted by lio45

The Robertson (which no one, literally no one, calls that here -- it's just called "Square" and to be precise, the more common version by far is called "Square Number Two") is really THE one and only default here for everything except drywall screws.

I always assumed all of Canada was like this. (The Vancouver project a few years ago, all our stuff came directly from our American partner, so the Star screws (Phillips) were to be expected; I didn't really get to buy screws over there so I didn't notice what was standard.)

aka "red Robby"

[ScreamingViking]

Originally Posted by lio45

99% of my drill bit buying is actually pure #2 Robertson (not merely "the most plentiful").

https://www.canac.ca/fr/ensemble-de-...s-2-po-6181588

If buying this instead, it's basically guaranteed that by the time I'm through with all the #2 bits, the remaining five (one #0, two #1 and two #3) will still be virgins...

https://www.canac.ca/fr/ensemble-de-...s-2-po-6181587

Definitely a smarter purchase if one is using them all the time!

Within the last year and a half I've moved from a SFH to an apartment, so my need for hand tools has diminished greatly... but one of my last tool purchases was a screwdriver bit set from Canadian Tire, and it was mainly the different lengths of bits that appealed to me. I'll likely never use most of them.

And at some point, I'll surely see a set on sale and forget that I already have something like it! And when my dad passes some day, I'll inherit his collection of old screwdrivers, each with a custom tip style and size (an impressive collection really, mostly from when Craftsman tools from Sears were a dominant force for home/amateur builders and fixers)

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

I get what you are saying. But I think you miss the hidden point of the CIB. Taking politics out of major infrastructure procurements. If HFR succeeds in its privatization of the Corridor, for example, we'll finally have Brightline like service with less of the nonsense squabbles about public spending. Yes, it will cost more overall. But it's the only way to get things built in this country where government spending on large projects is always controversial. If we have to pay more overall, but less from public funds, so be it. At least we end the half century cycle of talking and never building.

But you don’t need an infrastructure bank for that. Just give Via an actual enabling legislation and allow them to borrow to fund capital projects.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

It wasn't a cost issue. The Southern Ontario HSR proposal dovetailed nicely with all the grade separation and corridor upgrading happening for GO RER. The opposition in Southern Ontario was from farmers who didn't want their lots severed or farms divided, especially if crossings were limited due to expense. Their NIMBYism will be addressed if/when singing is built in the region. Probably some combination of using existing rail corridors, providing a few more crossings and compensation to farmers.

The Wynne government basically didn't care about seriously working on HSR. And was using it as a carrot they could keep kicking down the road to win votes.

It was an utterly nonsensical plan that didn’t improve travel times much compared to the GO upgrades that are already underway. No country uses high speed rail in that way because the trains have to run at conventional speeds for nearly the entire route. The only beneficiaries were possible London Kitchener commuters, and that is a really niche market.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by acottawa

But you don’t need an infrastructure bank for that. Just give Via an actual enabling legislation and allow them to borrow to fund capital projects.

But we have more than VIA that has project potential like this. There are large and small projects throughout the public sector that could do with mixed financial and better public-private partnerships. The federal government is broadly worse at PPP. There is an opportunity here to create a focal point and clearing house for such expertise and simply start building. I don't think it's the idea that is the problem, so much as the execution. I think a conservative government could actually find such an outfit quite useful.

Originally Posted by acottawa

It was an utterly nonsensical plan that didn’t improve travel times much compared to the GO upgrades that are already underway. No country uses high speed rail in that way because the trains have to run at conventional speeds for nearly the entire route. The only beneficiaries were possible London Kitchener commuters, and that is a really niche market.

Commuters are major business for many HSR systems. And looking at travel times, the biggest beneficiaries would have been in London and Windsor, with a good amount of benefits to KWC.

From London:

Estimated journey time to…
Toronto Union: 73 minutes
Pearson Airport/Malton: 57 minutes
Guelph: 34 minutes
Kitchener-Waterloo: 25 minutes
Chatham: 29 minutes
Windsor: 51 minutes

This means that London-Windsor and London-KW/Guelph are commutable. It means that London doesn't need feeder flights to Pearson. And it means that Toronto would be more of an ex-urban commute (which already happen, only with VIA or 2-3 hr car trips, especially with the connections to GO RER and the subway network.

Also connecting KW in a reasonable amount of time is not a bad thing:

Estimated journey time to…
Toronto Union: 48 minutes
Pearson Airport/Malton: 32 minutes
Guelph: 9 minutes
London: 25 minutes
Chatham: 54 minutes
Windsor: 76 minutes

Right now GO train times from Kitchener to Union are somewhere between 100-125 mins. VIA is at 100 mins. GO RER will cut this down to 70-90 mins. But that still isn't enough to really develop KWC as a tech hub. In that area, tech leaders have been advocating for a faster connection to the airport and sub 1 hr connection to Union for ages. It's needed. The perceived overlap with GO RER came about because the Wynne government started talking about how they would have HSR trains every 15-20 mins and $15-20 tickets. They created the perception of overlap. That was always highly unlikely. Any HSR service in SWO probably wouldn't be more frequent that semi-hourly and would not be much cheaper than VIA today ($25-30).

Ontario HSR Archives:
https://www.ontario.ca/page/high-speed-rail#section-1

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

But we have more than VIA that has project potential like this. There are large and small projects throughout the public sector that could do with mixed financial and better public-private partnerships. The federal government is broadly worse at PPP. There is an opportunity here to create a focal point and clearing house for such expertise and simply start building. I don't think it's the idea that is the problem, so much as the execution. I think a conservative government could actually find such an outfit quite useful.

The Federal Government owns very little infrastructure. Most of its infrastructure is already leased out (e.g. the airports and ports). Outside of niche areas like national parks and military bases, Via is pretty much the start and end of the list.

I don't disagree that perhaps more expertise in PPP would be useful for things like office buildings, but a new crown corporation was overkill, and the federal government still doesn't have expertise in PPP.

Ontario, for example, does an enormous amount of PPP without a standalone infrastructure bank.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Commuters are major business for many HSR systems. And looking at travel times, the biggest beneficiaries would have been in London and Windsor, with a good amount of benefits to KWC.

From London:

This means that London-Windsor and London-KW/Guelph are commutable. It means that London doesn't need feeder flights to Pearson. And it means that Toronto would be more of an ex-urban commute (which already happen, only with VIA or 2-3 hr car trips, especially with the connections to GO RER and the subway network.

Also connecting KW in a reasonable amount of time is not a bad thing:

Ok, but what kind of numbers are we talking here? I am sure there are edge cases where one spouse has a job in Windsor and one as a job in London, but we don't build multibillion dollar infrastructure projects for edge cases.

Other than these edge cases there is not a lot of reason why someone who works in Windsor would want to live in London, and the cost of making that trip every day would add up really quick.

Also, employment in all three cities is really decentralized so these hypothetical HSR commutes would involve a lot of additional commuting in cities that don't have rapid transit (unless you count Waterloo's surface streetcar as rapid transit).

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Right now GO train times from Kitchener to Union are somewhere between 100-125 mins. VIA is at 100 mins. GO RER will cut this down to 70-90 mins. But that still isn't enough to really develop KWC as a tech hub. In that area, tech leaders have been advocating for a faster connection to the airport and sub 1 hr connection to Union for ages. It's needed.

Based on the charts you are showing we are talking 10-20 minutes of savings for people in KW compared to RER, and that is assuming their workplace is downtown Kitchener (which for most places it isn't, employment in KW is very decentralized) or that their final destination is Union and they don't want to transfer to get on the Eglinton, Bloor or Ontario lines.

To the extent this is a major concern for the KW business community they aren't putting much effort into lobbying for it or for alternatives (such as very early morning GO service to Pearson to catch early transborder flights).

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by acottawa

The Federal Government owns very little infrastructure. Most of its infrastructure is already leased out (e.g. the airports and ports). Outside of niche areas like national parks and military bases, Via is pretty much the start and end of the list.

I don't disagree that perhaps more expertise in PPP would be useful for things like office buildings, but a new crown corporation was overkill, and the federal government still doesn't have expertise in PPP.

Ontario, for example, does an enormous amount of PPP without a standalone infrastructure bank.

Different needs at different levels. Ontario has a lot of that expertise at Infrastructure Ontario. What the feds need is a bit different. They need financing experience more than just PPP experience to enable nationally significant projects. If people are hung up on this being called a "bank" I guess change the name?

Originally Posted by acottawa

Ok, but what kind of numbers are we talking here?

The large archived report has numbers.

Part of the problem here is that we keep focusing on present numbers and not what we could have with the future. We can't keep stuffing millions into the GTA into perpetuity. So at some point, if we want to develop alternatives like London, Peterborough, KWC to become million resident cities, we gotta build the transportation network that does this.

Your question kinda goes to the theme of this thread. This country is so worried about wasting a penny, we'll ignore dollars in opportunities. In this case, it wasn't just some commuter line. SWO HSR with HFR enabled substantial regional travel reducing the need for feeder flights and (if done right) reducing the need for highway expansion. All coming in an era where every one of the cities along the line are improving local transit substantially.

In any event, hopefully, post HFR and post-RER, we'll see some movement on an HFR West type of proposal that ties Toronto, Pearson, KWC, London and Windsor together, with (hopefully) a thru service at Pearson, so we finally decent continuous Quebec-Windsor service.

Originally Posted by acottawa

To the extent this is a major concern for the KW business community they aren't putting much effort into lobbying for it or for alternatives (such as very early morning GO service to Pearson to catch early transborder flights).

GO service to Pearson is useless for KWC. It would be much slower than a shuttle bus and would still require a transfer to the airport. This might change as part of GO RER where there is now discussion about simply replacing UPE with GO service into Pearson. But this could never have been done as one-off project.

[MolsonExport]

Few places in Canada would justify the cost of HSR. The corridor between Quebec City and Windsor (especially that between Montreal/Ottawa and Toronto/KWC/London) absolutely qualifies, for the reasons stated by Truenorth. I could imagine a scenario where the Calgary-Edmonton corridor also passes the litmus test for HSR. And in partnership with Amtrack, perhaps at some point in the future, HSR connections of Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, to Seattle/Portland, Chicago/Detroit, and Boston/New York City, respectively.

More than 94% of Ontario's population lives in its portion of the corridor. Similarly, more than 65% of Quebec's population lives in or close to Montreal and Quebec City. About half of Canada's total population live between Quebec City and Windsor. We are currently adding millions of people to the corridor, each and every decade. It needs to be stitched together.



Greater Toronto Area (6,202,225)
Greater Montreal (4,291,732)
National Capital Region (1,488,307)
Quebec City (839,311)
Hamilton (785,184)
Kitchener–Waterloo–Cambridge (575,847)
London (543,551)
St. Catharines – Niagara (433,604)
Windsor (422,630)
Oshawa (415,311)
Sherbrooke (227,398)
Barrie (212,856)
Kingston (172,546)
Guelph (165,588)
Trois-Rivières (161,489)
Peterborough (147,681)
Brantford (144,162)
Belleville (111,184)
Drummondville (101,610)

[Truenorth00]

It's a typical Canadian pattern.

"We don't have the population to build this."

"We need to build this because population is growing."

"No we don't." "Okay we do."

"Why is it now 3x the original cost?" -From the original opponent who never understood what happens to construction costs as all those areas get settled and both expropriation and construction costs go up.

Literally see this pattern over and over and over with every single transit project in the country.

[acottawa]

If your objective is to build high speed rail in the corridor, phase one should not be London to Kitchener on the hope Londoners really want to commute to Kitchener.

It is like how the first HSR line in France wasn’t Nantes to Lille.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by acottawa

If your objective is to build high speed rail in the corridor, phase one should not be London to Kitchener on the hope Londoners really want to commute to Kitchener.

It is like how the first HSR line in France wasn’t Nantes to Lille.

Agreed. But the feds were doing HFR east of Toronto. So the Wynne Liberals decided they'd handle West of Toronto.

There's no doubt that the Wynne Liberals were playing all kinds of politics here. Urban Sky has plenty of experience and stories with how uncoordinated this was. Doesn't invalidate the basic need to finish the whole Corridor eventually.

HFR itself is looking to leverage some of GO RER investment. Necessary for the terminal approach into Toronto and eventual rail service expansion to Peterborough.

The recent failure of the London GO service, kinda shows why this kind of service just won't work. 4 hrs on a GO train from London to Toronto via Kitchener was just ridiculous. Improvements will have to be some kind of regional or long haul service.

[Curmudgeon]

A few years back in the VIA Rail thread I advocated for the introduction of high (155mph/250kph+ is now the definition) or even higher speed (125mph/200kph) rail service in the Ontario-Quebec Corridor and also between Calgary and Edmonton, in addition to some conventional speed upgrades to the national network. This would link Toronto-Montreal in 3 to 3 1/2 hours which would be competitive or superior to air travel. In pointed out that the Acela Express service in the United States had achieved a 70% market share of New York City-Washington passenger traffic and that the Midwest Rail Initiative was proceeding, now in service between Chicago and St. Louis.

The blowback was unbelievably fierce. A ridiculous waste of money, a white elephant, pie-in-the-sky, were some among overwhelmingly similar opinions. Most surprisingly, such comments did not come from people in Prince George or Saint John, but mainly from people in the Corridor itself. It appears that there is a much greater consensus for infrastructure monies to be spent adding additional lanes to the 401. There were also concerns that a lack of parking in the downtown cores of both Toronto and Montreal was problematic as there would be additional passenger traffic at the respective railway stations.

Most unfortunate but I can't see Canada seriously discussing, let alone building, HSR for at least another decade or two. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to checking out the Tren Maya. Keep advocating, but don't get too disheartened.

[MolsonExport]

I was in Yucatan when the Tren Maya was inaugurated. Nothing much was rolling.

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Your question kinda goes to the theme of this thread. This country is so worried about wasting a penny, we'll ignore dollars in opportunities. In this case, it wasn't just some commuter line. SWO HSR with HFR enabled substantial regional travel reducing the need for feeder flights and (if done right) reducing the need for highway expansion. All coming in an era where every one of the cities along the line are improving local transit substantially.

France would be the perfect model to follow in that regard. Having the whole of France accessible by TGV directly from CDG is nothing short of miraculous. It's a proof of concept that I think should be rolled out in the Windsor-Quebec corridor. The French government is so ahead in embracing the green economy that it makes Trudeau's half-hearted attempts look like amateur hour in comparison.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

I was in Yucatan when the Tren Maya was inaugurated. Nothing much was rolling.

Really! I thought the first section opened in December between Cancun and Campeche. I'd just like to go back to Merida for a few days. Awesome city and not too touristy, although I'm sure the new train will make it increasingly so.