VIA Rail

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

VIAs problem go far beyond the CN & CP issues because the premise of VIA itself is wrong. VIA is strictly a rail service but what it needs to be in order to be a viable transportation option for all Canadians is a TRANSPORTATION service.

As it stands now, VIA is completely useless for anyone outside The Corridor because train travel is not financial viable outside of it save the Cal/Edm corridor. If VIA was to cancel all passenger rail service in BC and not tell the media, 99.9% of BCers wouldn't even notice the difference. In BC VIA is as much part of our transportation system as the Maid of the Mist is to Niagarans.

VIA should be a complete system using both trains and buses where appropriate. So buses in nearly all of Western Canada save Cal/RD/Ed, continue the Corridor but not to Subdury or Chicotomi or AC. It should work as a system. Currently there are hundreds of thousands of Ontarians and Quebecers who live with 50 to 100 km of a VIA station but can't access it because they can't get to the stations. People in Sarnia can't get to Windsor without going completely out of their way and transferring back at London. Hell, there are 100,000 people in Elgin county that are within a short trip to London and can't get to the train station making the service useless to them. You can't even get from Hamilton to Kitchener on VIA yet they are only 30km apart. VIA should not only provide long distance trips but also regional ones to connect cities/town that have no service and use as fedder routes to the cities that do.

Maybe I dreamt this up but it seems to me that VIA in the past may have had some type of bus service. Am I right?

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Maybe I dreamt this up but it seems to me that VIA in the past may have had some type of bus service. Am I right?

I'm fairly sure that you're right and that VIA has sporadically run bus service through the years, although I can't remember the details. Possibly in NB?

I did a Google Image Search and the only pictures I could find seem to suggest the services ran in the 1980s.

By contrast, Amtrak has for as long as I can remember run a fairly extensive fleet of buses to connect nearby cities with their rail routes.

[milomilo]

I don't think we should make VIA's job even harder by giving them buses too. There has been a complete lack of interest on developing regional buses at a provincial level, but throwing that problem at VIA won't be helpful. I'd like to see provinces develop routes and contract them out, and (importantly), have a national ticketing system that allows our rail lines to be integrated with thm.

[kool maudit]

VIA express bus from Montreal to Toronto

[milomilo]

Yep, that's accurate.

If people are interested in VIA, there's a thread on urbantoronto with a few very knowledgeable posters that explain a lot of the constraints VIA has and a sensible path forward, absent any political will to spend big bucks:

https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/via-rail.21060/

The VIA thread in the Ottawa forum here is good too.

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by SpongeG

Alberta hyperloop isn't 'science fiction:' Company urges government to climb aboard

Perhaps we should consider running trains before jumping straight to hyperloops. Perhaps.

[Dengler Avenue]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Yep, that's accurate.

If people are interested in VIA, there's a thread on urbantoronto with a few very knowledgeable posters that explain a lot of the constraints VIA has and a sensible path forward, absent any political will to spend big bucks:

https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/via-rail.21060/

The VIA thread in the Ottawa forum here is good too.

Nice thing is, UrbanSky, an insider, is active on both.

[ssiguy]

Originally Posted by JHikka

Perhaps we should consider running trains before jumping straight to hyperloops. Perhaps.

Kenny would only support a Hyperloop if it's diesel powered.

[ssiguy]

The option for a comprehensive VIA bus service in WC is there. Greyhound is cancelling all it's Western Canadian routes because they are not financially viable. VIA, however, would have several advantages over Greyhound:

First, they would no longer have a ground competitor in the entire region.
Second, they could make use of current and abandoned VIA stations as opposed to Greyhound which has to buy/build/maintain a large number of expensive statons.
Third, it would be attractive as one could buy a single trip to their destination including rail and the ROC as opposed to having to double pay.
Fourth, they would receive an operating subsidy from Ottawa as the rail system currently does now.
Fifth, taking VIA doesn't have the same negative stigma that Greyhound does.

WC is an ideal place to begin a truly national and accessible VIA service.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by esquire

I'm fairly sure that you're right and that VIA has sporadically run bus service through the years, although I can't remember the details. Possibly in NB?

I did a Google Image Search and the only pictures I could find seem to suggest the services ran in the 1980s.

By contrast, Amtrak has for as long as I can remember run a fairly extensive fleet of buses to connect nearby cities with their rail routes.

From what I’ve seen of VIA schedules from the late 70s and early 80s, they had a few bus services, although some were contracted out to third parties such as Greyhound or the Saskatchewan transportation commission. One such bus connected Charlottetown with Amherst, on the Ocean route; another connected Hamilton with Burlington station. STC ran between Regina and Saskatoon, initially complementing the VIA train on that route and continuing after that rail service was cut. There were also a couple of limousine services, one of which connected Fredericton with Fredericton Junction, a station on the Montreal-Saint John route; another connected Windsor’s VIA station with Detroit’s Amtrak station.

CN operated bus service on Newfoundland up until 1996, as a replacement for its passenger rail services which shut down before VIA even existed.

VIA also much more extensively used Budd RDCs back then. The Toronto-Kitchener-London route was served by Budd cars back then for all but one train per day. I believe Budd cars were also used for some Toronto-Kingston runs, and for a seasonal weekend late night train on the London-Burlington-Toronto route.

[ghYHZ]

CN Buses in Newfoundland:







And the VIA Bus to Charlottetown at Moncton in 1986:

[MonctonRad]

Maritime Bus now has an interconnected service with VIA Rail. They use several train stations in the Maritimes as their bus depots. It is not uncommon to see three or four busses parked at the VIA station in Moncton at any one time, with passengers making connections either to other busses or to the VIA Rail Ocean. It seems to work very well.

The train station used to be dead most of the time (only 3x weekly service either way using the train), but there are now well over a dozen busses a day using the train station too. It's good to see the train station alive again.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Maritime Bus now has an interconnected service with VIA Rail. They use several train stations in the Maritimes as their bus depots. It is not uncommon to see three or four busses parked at the VIA station in Moncton at any one time, with passengers making connections either to other busses or to the VIA Rail Ocean. It seems to work very well.

The train station used to be dead most of the time (only 3x weekly service either way using the train), but there are now well over a dozen busses a day using the train station too. It's good to see the train station alive again.

And you can buy an integrated ticket through VIA's website, so this is exactly the setup we need in more places.

[lrt's friend]

It is very difficult to run a connecting bus service when long distance trains cannot maintain schedules. This particularly difficult in the west where trains are often greatly delayed by freight traffic. When I took the Canadian last May, our train was several hours behind schedule despite the extra day that was added between Vancouver and Toronto.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

It is very difficult to run a connecting bus service when long distance trains cannot maintain schedules. This particularly difficult in the west where trains are often greatly delayed by freight traffic. When I took the Canadian last May, our train was several hours behind schedule despite the extra day that was added between Vancouver and Toronto.

Yeah, that's true. It only works when one or both of the rail or bus services is frequent and reliable. If you had a bus every hour, it wouldn't matter much if the train was a day late. The good thing about an integrated ticket is that the passenger doesn't have to worry about it. Same as with flying - it's one thing missing a connecting flight if you booked the tickets seperately, but if the airline ticketing system booked it, it's on them to make it work. And much easier to have a centralised computer find the cheapest route for you, than for the user to have to figure out all the different options.

[ssiguy]

Very true, an reliable VIA bus service must be coordinated with reliable VIA rail service which we currently donèt have. This is even more reason why rail outside CaléEdm and The Corridor should be stopped and transferred to buses.

The huge amounts we spend on maintaining infrastructure and rolling stock on non-productive routes can be spent on doubling track in The Corridor and Cal/Edm. This would mean millions of Canadians get a reliable transportation system {both rail & bus} that they don't have now.

[J81]

Originally Posted by Mister F

Not hourly. While Via has increased frequencies and made them as close to hourly as possible, CN hasn't allowed them to achieve that. Six trains a day (it's actually 8 to Montreal) is okay service but not great. For example, there are 15 daily trains between Dublin and Cork. Stockholm to Gothenburg has 24. Edinburgh to Aberdeen has 16. All of these are less populated routes. And even if Via could manage to run that many trains, that still doesn't address the terrible on time performance that results from using CN track.

The Corridor has the best train service in Canada but it's still just okay at best. The fact that in other parts of Canada it's even worse doesn't change that.

From 10am until 630 pm there is a train that departs Toronto for Ottawa nearly every 60-80 minutes.

[J81]

Originally Posted by GoTrans

You are correct in theory but not in practice. With the horsepower of todays's locomotives you would not be able to keep the horsepower per trailing ton the same since the higher horsepower units are not exactly divisible to provide the same horsepower per trailing ton.

What?? Lol?! If you have 16000 tons of train and 4 locomotives at 4400hp each then its pretty easy to split that in 2. Most of the high horsepower units today are 4000 to 4400hp. Your HPT numbers arent affected much by 400hp.

[GoTrans]

Originally Posted by J81

What?? Lol?! If you have 16000 tons of train and 4 locomotives at 4400hp each then its pretty easy to split that in 2. Most of the high horsepower units today are 4000 to 4400hp. Your HPT numbers arent affected much by 400hp.

That's the problem. Most Canadian passenger trains in the corridor don't even need 4,000 hp.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by J81

From 10am until 630 pm there is a train that departs Toronto for Ottawa nearly every 60-80 minutes.

Sure, but it's not really a service you can count on. Beyond the reliability issues, each train stops at different stations and takes a different amount of time to get to Ottawa. The trains don't run on a clockface schedule, nor on all days. It's not as if you can show up at Union station and expect to wait a maximum of 59 minutes to take a train to Ottawa that will take the same amount of time to reach your destination, give or take.