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Originally Posted by Truenorth00
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Thanks. It is nice to hear things from a reliable source (or at least as reliable as our media can be
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Originally Posted by Truenorth00
So again, I'm wondering why they didn't just spend that $91.5M on trackwork now?
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I don't work for VIA so I would have no way of knowing, but there are several possible reasons.
One possible reason is that VIA is afraid that the government would see the $91.5-million as good enough to look like they are helping VIA in the public's eye without having to spend the full $4.4-billion. It is really hard to say for sure.
Don't forget that VIA initially asked for the new fleet as part of the HFR project. This was probably done to try and expedite the funding of HFR, but the government decided to split it into two requests, since the fleet was urgent and needed even without HFR.
It is also possible that VIA didn't expect that it would take this long to get approval and thus didn't see the point of splitting the project up into smaller chunks.
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Originally Posted by Truenorth00
Their fastest scheduled service in the past has been 1:35 as per Urban_Sky's look at past schedules. So it's entirely possible that just adding some passing tracks, fixing some crossings, etc could get the speed they want. HFR is only scheduling for 1:33. The money is being spent mostly to reduce congestion, not improve geometry.
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I agree that most of the gains will likely come from reducing congestion, not by improving geometry. The question is how are they planning on reducing congestion? Knowing that could help explain why they aren't doing it right away. Maybe it is somehow conditional on VIA reducing the number of trains on CN's ROW.