VIA Rail

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Your information is out of date. Go look up what Europe is building with the TEN-T network. And go look up the success OBB is having with its Nightjet services. People thought sleepers were dead a decade ago. OBB's success has completely changed opinions. Now they are planning HSR sleeper services.

I'm not saying they are dead or of no use. But Vienna for example has more than hourly service to Zurich. Let's get direct hourly service from Calgary to Regina before we think about night service.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

I'm not saying they are dead or of no use. But Vienna for example has more than hourly service to Zurich. Let's get direct hourly service from Calgary to Regina before we think about night service.

I guess I'm just not sure how the daytime service would be necessary for, or would even help, the night service. Like, why would one depend on the other? Other than maybe if the route is popular for daytime service then that would spur investment in the rail infrastructure? But the night service wouldn't need the same level of track upgrades since the trip wouldn't need to be as fast or a frequent, so it would be a way to do something at a lower cost if governments are tight-fisted.

[MolsonExport]

Anyone here ever get the chance to ride on the old CNR Turbo trains? I travelled these frequently in the early/mid 70s.



• Video Link

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

I'm not saying they are dead or of no use. But Vienna for example has more than hourly service to Zurich. Let's get direct hourly service from Calgary to Regina before we think about night service.

Why would we ever need hourly service from Calgary to Regina? There is no contextual similarity to Zurich-Vienna. This is always the problem with these discussions in Canada, people have this bizarre idea that we need the same level of service everywhere. We don't. The only corridors that can support hourly service are Quebec-Windsor and Calgary-Edmonton. Outside of that, it's a question of what type of long haul service to offer. And it's here where a discussion of sleeper service could be useful. Winnipeg to Calgary via Regina is exactly the kind of routing where sleeper services would be useful.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Why would we ever need hourly service from Calgary to Regina? There is no contextual similarity to Zurich-Vienna. This is always the problem with these discussions in Canada, people have this bizarre idea that we need the same level of service everywhere. We don't. The only corridors that can support hourly service are Quebec-Windsor and Calgary-Edmonton. Outside of that, it's a question of what type of long haul service to offer. And it's here where a discussion of sleeper service could be useful. Winnipeg to Calgary via Regina is exactly the kind of routing where sleeper services would be useful.

Agree.

For most of Canada, the standard should be daily service. There are a few potential routes that could be 2-3x daily like Saint John/Moncton/Halifax and perhaps Saskatoon/Regina, but, aside from this, outside the corridor, daily service would be just fine.

[ssiguy]

There are only 2 corridors in Canada where frequent and fast rail is realistic........Wind/QC & Cal/Edm. It maybe viable for Reg/Sask and Monc/Hfx but even that is pushing it. Everything outside of that is strictly tourist territory not viable public transport. Our rail system perfectly exemplifies how VIA is more of a political apparatus than a transportation one. It is patently obscene that one can get from Winnipeg to Churchill or Edmonton to Price Rupert on VIA but not Edmonton to Calgary. A 5 year old could tell you how non-sensical that is.

The VIA experiment has been a failure and it's about time Ottawa recognized this reality and whip their hands of it. All VIA's assets should be sold to the highest bidder and let private enterprise take over and only run the services that could be justified. Prices should be reasonable and monitored by Ottawa/provinces as well as service standards but outside of that they should just get out of the way.

[Urban_Sky]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

[lots of bla-bla-bla we’ve read at least a dozen times here]

Yawn, I hope you at least copied and pasted whatever you just revomited on us…

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Urban_Sky

Yawn, I hope you at least copied and pasted whatever you just revomited on us…

Yep. The selfish whiny routine is getting annoying.

"I live in Vancouver. I don't get good VIA service. Therefore, VIA should screw all the remote communities that depends on VIA long haul."

He'd change his tune right quick, if we were discussing a service that he had to rely on.

[Taeolas]

VIA as it is now is not really working and needs a major overhaul. But i don't think privatization is the answer. Just look at the bus transit network to see how well that works or doesn't work. In the Maritimes bus service has been private; we went from pretty decent in the 80's/90's, to horrible in the 2000's to literally nonexistant when the Quebec company that bought up Acadian shut the buses down.

Now we have Maritime Bus which is pretty minimal. For example, looking at their schedule for Fredericton. It has ONE bus a day going north (to Bathurst), ONE bus going to the south east (Moncton and beyond) and TWO buses to Saint John.

Moncton to Halifax; the two biggest cities in the region, has ONE bus that goes between them each day.

People often say that "Oh Canada is too big and too spread out", but frankly, we are criminally UNDER Investing in our public transit options, whether it be buses or trains or anything else. The Maritimes have 2-3M people within about 1000km radius (10 hour drive), and your options are basically "Own your own car" or "Fly". The Bus and Train options are too limited to really count as options unless you are really desperate for some reason. (And god help you if you want to travel outside the Maritimes and don't own a car nor can afford a plane ticket. Because your only options are a 3x week train in the dead of the night... or hitchhiking from Edmundston to Riviere-de-Loup so you can get back on the Orleans bus network.

So yeah, while I do agree that VIA as it is now, needs a major overhaul, I would also argue that we need a government that is willing to look at public transport in the country in total and get a plan to invest in the bus and train networks enough to establish some minimal connectivity criteria, so that we aren't limited to just cars and planes.

For rail, there are some obvious goals that should be worked on. Ed-Cal corridor (aiming for HSR), linking up the Saskatchewan cities (with normal regular daily service), linking up the Maritime cities (SJ/Mon/HFX to start, expanding to Freddy and Sydney midterm, and extra longterm getting back to Charlottetown) should be a goal as well.

Similarly, Bus service should be invested in and expanded on (and is really low lying fruit). There's no reason for the Gaspe gap for example; if the run isn't economical then it should still be invested in at least for nation-building purposes. Establish some minimal standards. "Cities of size X should have Y trips a day/week to Cities of size Z within a certain distance of the starting city" sort of thing. (Moncton/Freddy/SJ should at least have twice if not 3-4 time daily bus service between the three). Ditto Moncton to Halifax and Moncton to Charlottetown.

[Truenorth00]

^ The flaw here is thinking that the federal government should do everything. The provinces need to step up too. Look at what Ontario is doing with RER and all the Union Station works. This does help VIA a fair bit.

[Nouvellecosse]

The provinces do subsidize the regional bus service in the Maritimes although not very much under the current set up. I find the service operates well when it operates, but the frequency is very poor now. Worse than it's ever been in my lifetime. Which is the same that can be said for the rail service.

[VANRIDERFAN]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Why would we ever need hourly service from Calgary to Regina? There is no contextual similarity to Zurich-Vienna. This is always the problem with these discussions in Canada, people have this bizarre idea that we need the same level of service everywhere. We don't. The only corridors that can support hourly service are Quebec-Windsor and Calgary-Edmonton. Outside of that, it's a question of what type of long haul service to offer. And it's here where a discussion of sleeper service could be useful. Winnipeg to Calgary via Regina is exactly the kind of routing where sleeper services would be useful.

Winnipeg to Edmonton via Saskatoon
Winnipeg to Calgary via Regina

That would be ideal.

Maybe

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

^ The flaw here is thinking that the federal government should do everything. The provinces need to step up too. Look at what Ontario is doing with RER and all the Union Station works. This does help VIA a fair bit.

The Maritimes lose out to some degree by being smaller provinces that follow Ottawa's lead while bigger provinces like Ontario often do their own thing. I wonder how much this is changing with improved demographics and provincial finances. It used to be depressing how locals in the Maritimes would respond to Ottawa-led cost-sharing on projects that almost certainly were a net economic win with flawed "we can't afford that here" arguments. The Maritimes also used to be preoccupied a lot with building up the worst-performing or worst-served regions which had the side-effect of giving investments a very poor return.

NS is creating a transport authority that in principle should be taking on some of these projects, and could partner with NB and PEI to provide decent service along the Halifax-Moncton corridor (which is also useful to PEI and every other part of the region): https://jrta.ca/

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

^ The flaw here is thinking that the federal government should do everything. The provinces need to step up too. Look at what Ontario is doing with RER and all the Union Station works. This does help VIA a fair bit.

It’s how some of Amtrak’s services in the US are funded. The Cascades train for example is funded by both Washington State and Oregon.

[FromMaine]

Not sure this is the right venue, but interesting development for CN vs VIA Rail in Atlantic Canada.

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-revi...cean-analysis/

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by FromMaine

Not sure this is the right venue, but interesting development for CN vs VIA Rail in Atlantic Canada.

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-revi...cean-analysis/

Not sure how it's going to get resolved if the route isn't important enough to CN to need tracks that can handle normal weights and speeds and is used only 3x per direction per week by VIA making making expensive repairs a tough proposition. Infrastructure with little usage just doesn't warrant a lot of cost.

Perhaps it's just time to accept that long haul routes like The Ocean are going to serve as AF sleeper trains, tourist cruises whistle-stop connectors while investing money into sections that have higher ridership potential. The section between Moncton and Halifax could probably get a lot more use if it saw some major improvements.

[J81]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Not sure how it's going to get resolved if the route isn't important enough to CN to need tracks that can handle normal weights and speeds and is used only 3x per direction per week by VIA making making expensive repairs a tough proposition. Infrastructure with little usage just doesn't warrant a lot of cost.

Perhaps it's just time to accept that long haul routes like The Ocean are going to serve as AF sleeper trains, tourist cruises whistle-stop connectors while investing money into sections that have higher ridership potential. The section between Moncton and Halifax could probably get a lot more use if it saw some major improvements.

What kind of improvements do you think it would take to “get a lot more use” and why do you think that section of track isn’t capable of more capacity currently?

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by J81

What kind of improvements do you think it would take to “get a lot more use” and why do you think that section of track isn’t capable of more capacity currently?

That section is currently slow compared to the highway causing it to take over 50% longer on the train compared to driving and even significantly longer than the current bus service. Partly because it takes a meandering route compared to the highway making it longer overall and also curvier which requires lower track speeds. But also since it's single-tracked there are also delays caused by freight movements. So it just isn't appealing as a passenger route. There's no compelling reason to take the train when it not only takes much longer than the bus but also has one stop in Greater Halifax compared to one in both Hfx and Dartmouth which the bus has and isn't any cheaper. That more than counteracts the additional comfort of a train, at least for me.

Single track routes aren't necessarily limited in terms of passenger capacity since you could just use really long trains, but there's a limit to the number of trains you can run because of the number and location of sidings (short sections of double track to allow passing).

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

That section is currently slow compared to the highway causing it to take over 50% longer on the train compared to driving and even significantly longer than the current bus service. Partly because it takes a meandering route compared to the highway making it longer overall and also curvier which requires lower track speeds. But also since it's single-tracked there are also delays caused by freight movements.

I think the infrastructure is so bad it doesn't pass a "sniff" test. If you look at the metro Halifax sections, there are some portions that could have fully grade separated track added that run through congested areas with good transit ridership (people currently taking buses).

The rail cut running to the South End container terminal and VIA station, originally built at taxpayer expense, having half of its track removed seems like some kind of classic corporate/political mismanagement story.

I think the burden of proof should be on the people arguing why this infrastructure should be in shambles.

[J81]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

That section is currently slow compared to the highway causing it to take over 50% longer on the train compared to driving and even significantly longer than the current bus service. Partly because it takes a meandering route compared to the highway making it longer overall and also curvier which requires lower track speeds. But also since it's single-tracked there are also delays caused by freight movements. So it just isn't appealing as a passenger route. There's no compelling reason to take the train when it not only takes much longer than the bus but also has one stop in Greater Halifax compared to one in both Hfx and Dartmouth which the bus has and isn't any cheaper. That more than counteracts the additional comfort of a train, at least for me.

Single track routes aren't necessarily limited in terms of passenger capacity since you could just use really long trains, but there's a limit to the number of trains you can run because of the number and location of sidings (short sections of double track to allow passing).

The times between Moncton and Halifax by bus and train are identical at 4hours so your first claim is debunked. It does not in fact take “significantly” longer than the bus. The speeds on these subdivisions range from 45mph through wentworth valley up to Londonderry to as high as 75mph on the Bedford sub between Truro and brookfield and Alton to Shubie. So hardly meandering as you say. Next up, nobody cares about having a station in Dartmouth. There is no reason to consider having s train station in Dartmouth. If you would rather spend 4hrs on a bus than a train well thats your choice but as far as comfort goes you cannot beat the train.

The sidings on both the Bedford and Springhill subs are about 15 minutes apart so in the odd event of a meet with a freight train it doesnt usually slow you down that much. There are currently 2 freight trains in each direction between Halifax and Moncton. They mainly run between 2000 at night and 1000 the next day. The passenger train doesn’t normally run during those hours unless something drastic happens. So meeting freight trains is rarely an issue.

So with this newfound knowledge are you still of the opinion that the bus is faster and better than the train?