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Originally Posted by roger1818
That wasn't my interpretation when you said:
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Business travellers doing occasional day trips is not commuting in my books. I guess using the definition of "Travel some distance between one's home and place of work on a regular basis." could be used as you define it if the person does this a couple days a week, but I am not convinced that there will enough doing that on a regular enough basis to make it a significant portion of the travellers.
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It depends on how you want to see it.
I read that something like 40-60% of the customer base of most HSR lines are passholders. Those are regular travelers in some form. Daily, weekly, etc. Unfortunately, struggling to find that source.
There's a book here that covers the situation in Spain:
https://books.google.com/books?id=Cn...%20HSR&f=false
Key takeway here is that there are two kinds of business travelers. The professional traveler who is going for a meeting or professional event. That person is usually willing to put up with several hours of travel. And the commuter. The commuter usually has a smaller threshold for max travel time. In essence what HSR or Higher Speed Rail does is expand the geographical circumference that commuter can travel. At 1.5 hrs, Ottawa-Montreal is largely going to be for those infrequent who do the trip once or twice a week. Like VIA's commuters from Kingston or London to Toronto. That's an exurban commute. Exurban commuters are very rarely daily. Usually a max of 2-3 days a week. But if Ottawa-Montreal gets down to less than 1 hr, than basically anyone who lives within 10-15 mins of Tremblay could commute to Montreal daily with 1.5 hr trip. The salary would have to be worth the fare. But I think you'd have enough at that point to fill hourly trains between the two cities.
Quote:
Originally Posted by roger1818
Europe yes. I did see a lot of business travellers, but didn't really notice any that seemed to me to be what I would call commuters. Then again I tend avoid trains during rush hour when on vacation.
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Travel at rush. You'll lots of people in suits with nothing but a briefacase or lunch pail. Japan is even more extreme where HSR has turned a massive chunk of the country into Tokyo exurbs.
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Originally Posted by Hybrid247
As for your question, no, it's because $4 billion is an enormous cost for the marginal improvements HFR will bring, IMO.
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I don't consider 40% reduction in travel times and > 300% increase in ridership to be marginal. But maybe my understanding of the word "marginal" is different.
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Originally Posted by Hybrid247
I'd rather that money be spent on HSR, built in piecemeal fashion, like between Toronto-Pearson-Waterloo to begin with and expand from there.
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That corridor is the responsibility of the province, not the feds. You should be asking GO to build a high speed commuter line. Not VIA.
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Originally Posted by Hybrid247
Also, I believe this project will preclude HSR from becoming a reality for many more decades to come. That's perhaps the biggest reason I don't want it built.
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This is pure ignorance. First, no country has ever built high speed rail without regular rail service prior. Next, we've spent decades talking about building high speed rail but haven't gotten shovels in the ground. I fail to see the logic in arguing that avoiding building rail (what we've been doing for decades) is going to make high speed rail possible.
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Originally Posted by Hybrid247
The 5-6 hours savings was a ballpark figure, and was in reference to Toronto-Ottawa round-trip times. I never fly to Kitchener, I take either GO rail or bus from Toronto. That segment of the trip would only be shortened by GO RER/"Missing Link", HFR won't affect it under the current plan if I'm not mistaken.
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If you're flying into Toronto and then taking GO to Kitchener, then the only portion of the trip that matter is Toronto-Ottawa. HFR would be 3.75 hrs. A flight would be 2.25 hrs. Downtown-to-Downtown. So flying is only saving you 3 hrs roundtrip over HFR. I'd say spending $4 billion to get Toronto-Ottawa down to 3.5 hrs is worthwhile. HSR would be closer to $12 billion to get Toronto-Ottawa to get that trip down to less that 2 hrs. That's some marginal return right there. A 300% increase in cost to cut 43% in travel time over HFR.
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Originally Posted by Hybrid247
YTZ-YOW is about 50-55 minutes gate to gate. With security (no bag check), it's about 1h30, so 3h round-trip. TOR-OTT HFR will apparently be about 3h45 one way, 6h30 round-trip. So I stand corrected, 3h30 time savings by flying.
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For a substantial increase in cost and non-productive time.
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Originally Posted by Hybrid247
First hand experience. Anytime I travel back home to Ottawa, I compare VIA prices with flying prices, and I almost always end up flying because it costs about the same as rail (~$250 round trip), which is ridiculous. VIA hasn't said if HFR prices will differ, but I'm certain prices will go up if anything.
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We've been through this in spades in the last few pages. Prices should go down because asset utilization goes up. The same set of employees and trains is now 40% more productive. That drives down unit costs allowing them to lower prices.
Also, VIA is always cheaper 2-3 weeks in advance. I'm guessing you're looking up same week fares? I used to travel about once a month from Ottawa to Toronto a few years ago. VIA was only slightly more expensive than the bus when booked in advance.
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Originally Posted by Hybrid247
That's your opinion. Mine is that there's still a chance someone will commit to building HSR in stages. I think there's no chance of that happening if HFR gets built, at least not for the next several decades.
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It's not my opinion. It's reality. We've had decades of nobody investing in High Speed Rail. Why would this suddenly change when we decide not to build something? Not building something and not committing to high speed rail is the Canadian status quo. Hence the Rick Mercer joke about Canadians being leaders in HSR studies:
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Originally Posted by Hybrid247
Why don't we show Canadians what amazing rail service looks like instead, by building HSR in sections?
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Find somebody to fund HSR and you can have that demonstration project. It's not happened for decades. Hence, VIA is now taking a different (and more reasonable in my opinion) tact.
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Originally Posted by Hybrid247
I refuse to believe it's the best we can do. And if it really is the best we can do as the 10th largest economy, we're a joke.
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We are a joke. Get used to it. We're an economy that's largely built on resource extraction and real estate. Our best and brightest routinely leave. It's been that way for years.
The only way to change any of that is to stop hoping that Canadians will see the light and stop thinking actual development is pie-in-the-sky fairytales. HFR is training wheels for a Canadian public that refuses to even sit on the bike of rail travel. You aren't going to convince them that riding bikes is fun by insisting that their first ride should be down the steepest hill in the hood with no training wheels.