Quote:
Originally Posted by jawagord
The only people that want to ride Canada’s antiquated inter city rail system are tourists. They want to experience the way travel was a 100 years ago, except the service isn’t as good and the steam engines have been replaced with diesels, whomp whomp.
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I don't know what part of the country you live in, but if it is in the Windsor-Quebec corridor you are completely out of touch. If you live anywhere in western Canada you are correct, with the following proviso:
1. The urban population has grown but there is no attempt to improve rail service, only more cut backs.
2 Nobody is going to ride a train that is only going to operate 2 or 3 times a week or in many cases not operate at all. Few people will ride a train if it is not daily or if there is not multiple frequencies. The Toronto-Ottawa service has expanded over the years from 4 trains per day to 10 trains per day. Passenger volumes and revenue have increased higher than costs in spite of CN not running trains on time for Via Rail.
3. Very few of the passengers in the corridor are foreign tourists, most being students to business people to regular people in spite of your claim. If you are talking about western Canada or the Maritimes you are more correct. Most people want to take a train to a nearby large city and come back the same day or the next day which is impossible especially in the west.
4. Nobody is can ride a train that doesn't service the larger population centres between the metropolitan cities.[/QUOTE]
Quote:
Originally Posted by jawagord
Our population goes up and ridership goes down, VIA is a rail system for those few who have no transportation options. As VIA points out in their study a dedicated track high speed rail system is needed to increase ridership. But we’ve done the high speed rail debate already, you don’t do it until intracity rail systems are in place. You get way more bang for your buck building city LRT and metropolitan commuter rail, more ridership, more cars off the road, better for the environment. Who would spend $20 billion building HSR between Calgary and Edmonton, when the green line and the blue line aren’t finished? Ditto for LRT and commuter rail projects in Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal. Maybe 40 years from now we’ll be ready for HSR, that’s if self driving car technology hasn’t made it redundant .
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If you do not have a ridership base you will never have better service. You have to start small but think big. For example, the Toronto-Ottawa service used to comprise of 4 trains a day and now it has grown to 10 trains a day. Passenger volumes have grown with every additional train offering. The rate of increase in train offerings has not matched the population growth but there is a limit to how volume Via Rail can garner given the on time performance and speed constraints.
We should not be waiting for 40 years to go by with out doing anything. We may never get to true HSR but at least HFR is a start and in the east and west at least additional services would be a start. Maybe the federal government should be taking care of it own responsibilities rather than paying for urban transit which is a function of the provinces and the cities or at least direct some money to capital improvements to Via Rail.