VIA Rail

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Paige Saunders, one of the most interesting of Canada's Youtubers, had an interesting take on the HFR issue. I feel he over emphasises speed and trip times and focused too heavily on the Toronto-Montreal segment while downplaying the Toronto-Ottawa aspect. I also find his approach to the freight rail conflict which basically amounts to "make the freight wait" was overly simplistic and kind of unrealistic. But his point about how improving the corridor is as much in the best interest of the rest of the country as it is in the interest of the locals is extremely important. I also was interested in his take on the Montreal-QC segment.

• Video Link

Is he correct that Amtrak does not wait, and if they do, they sue? If that's the case, he is being very realistic.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Is he correct that Amtrak does not wait, and if they do, they sue? If that's the case, he is being very realistic.

I mean realistic in terms of the legal and political context in Canada, not in the US.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I mean realistic in terms of the legal and political context in Canada, not in the US.

So, Amtrak does not do as he said?

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

So, Amtrak does not do as he said?

I'm not an Amtrak expert but I assume so. Though I'm not sure how that follow up question is related considering that it mainly operates in the US?

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I'm not an Amtrak expert but I assume so. Though I'm not sure how that follow up question is related considering that it mainly operates in the US?

"If they can do it, so can we."

Or, why can't we?
The answer is mainly political. Imagine going from Vancouver to Halifax and knowing your connections will be met. One can dream.....

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

"If they can do it, so can we."

Or, why can't we?
The answer is mainly political. Imagine going from Vancouver to Halifax and knowing your connections will be met. One can dream.....

I never suggested that it can't be done; just that it isn't realistic that it would be. And frankly I don't think it should be. Keeping freight off the roads and on the rails is as valuable as accommodating passenger use if not more so. Large trucks are the main cause of wear on highways and railroads transport goods far more efficiently in terms of energy usage and carbon emissions than do trucks. The video basically implies that you can impose these additional delays and regulations on freight operators without any real consequences when that isn't realistic either. Causing additional freight delays would make rail freight transportation less appealing and that isn't something I'd support, nor is it realistic that the government would do it.

And honestly, the only reason this is even an issue is that we're too tight-fisted to invest in infrastructure (other than roads). We have a greater volume of freight on the rails than ever before yet the total rail capacity hasn't really expanded much over the last recent decades. If you want to cram more and more traffic onto the infrastructure you can either legislate that one type has priority over the other causing the other to be less competitive, or you can bloody well fork out the cash to expand the infrastructure which is what we need to do in places where it makes fiscal sense. And yes there's a lot of places where passenger rail is unlikely to ever have enough traffic to warrant dedicated infrastructure, the Corridor isn't one of them.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I never suggested that it can't be done; just that it isn't realistic that it would be. And frankly I don't think it should be. Keeping freight off the roads and on the rails is as valuable as accommodating passenger use if not more so. Large trucks are the main cause of wear on highways and railroads transport goods far more efficiently in terms of energy usage and carbon emissions than do trucks. The video basically implies that you can impose these additional delays and regulations on freight operators without any real consequences when that isn't realistic either. Causing additional freight delays would make rail freight transportation less appealing and that isn't something I'd support, nor is it realistic that the government would do it.

And honestly, the only reason this is even an issue is that we're too tight-fisted to invest in infrastructure (other than roads). We have a greater volume of freight on the rails than ever before yet the total rail capacity hasn't really expanded much over the last recent decades. If you want to cram more and more traffic onto the infrastructure you can either legislate that one type has priority over the other causing the other to be less competitive, or you can bloody well fork out the cash to expand the infrastructure which is what we need to do in places where it makes fiscal sense. And yes there's a lot of places where passenger rail is unlikely to ever have enough traffic to warrant dedicated infrastructure, the Corridor isn't one of them.

Are you saying that Amtrak is forcing freight off the rails?

We are at a point where freight is moving as fast as it can but is bottlenecked all over the country. This is why one of the things I feel should be forced is on all mainlines, it must be at least double tracked. Give CN/CP a reasonable time of 25 years to do it. The other thing that should be done is in the corridor, where it is already double tracked, a 3rd track for passenger rail only is needed.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Are you saying that Amtrak is forcing freight off the rails?

I'm not saying anything about Amtrak. I made it clear earlier that my statements pertain to Canada and not the US since I'm not familiar enough with US intercity rail and obviously there are enough potential differences between countries that it's best not to speculate.

Fact is, it's easy to say "If they can do something why can't we" while it's orders of magnitude more difficult to accurately answer such a question. There's always a temptation to make assumptions such as "There's no good reason" or "There must be some reason" but without sufficient knowledge to actually know, the question and attempted answers are pointless so we need to give that aspect a rest.

Another thing I find frustrating is that people sometimes treat political obstacles are less important or challenging than other types of obstacles such as those involving engineering or economics. Like, "It's just a matter or us "choosing" to do it. Easy!"

In my experience that isn't at all true. With politics it usually means that there are stakeholders who stand to gain or lose power, money, or privilege based on a decision and they're not simply going to be persuaded by a convincing argument. Success only comes after a huge and nasty fight which is an uphill battle if the opposition is already powerful. With technical issues, if you're smart and innovative enough to find a creative solution, you're good!

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I'm not saying anything about Amtrak. I made it clear earlier that my statements pertain to Canada and not the US since I'm not familiar enough with US intercity rail and obviously there are enough potential differences between countries that it's best not to speculate.

Fact is, it's easy to say "If they can do something why can't we" while it's orders of magnitude more difficult to accurately answer such a question. There's always a temptation to make assumptions such as "There's no good reason" or "There must be some reason" but without sufficient knowledge to actually know, the question and attempted answers are pointless so we need to give that aspect a rest.

Another thing I find frustrating is that people sometimes treat political obstacles are less important or challenging than other types of obstacles such as those involving engineering or economics. Like, "It's just a matter or us "choosing" to do it. Easy!"

In my experience that isn't at all true. With politics it usually means that there are stakeholders who stand to gain or lose power, money, or privilege based on a decision and they're not simply going to be persuaded by a convincing argument. Success only comes after a huge and nasty fight which is an uphill battle if the opposition is already powerful. With technical issues, if you're smart and innovative enough to find a creative solution, you're good!

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I'm not an Amtrak expert but I assume so. Though I'm not sure how that follow up question is related considering that it mainly operates in the US?

That reply is what confused me. Sounds like you as assuming they do exactly what the video said, which is that they have right of way and if they get held up, they sue.

As far as political vs engineering, engineering will always be easier. It is the politics that are the real issue. I think I have been pretty clear that I feel politics is always the biggest problem with Via. Always has been. Always will.

[ScreamingViking]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

And honestly, the only reason this is even an issue is that we're too tight-fisted to invest in infrastructure (other than roads). We have a greater volume of freight on the rails than ever before yet the total rail capacity hasn't really expanded much over the last recent decades. If you want to cram more and more traffic onto the infrastructure you can either legislate that one type has priority over the other causing the other to be less competitive, or you can bloody well fork out the cash to expand the infrastructure which is what we need to do in places where it makes fiscal sense. And yes there's a lot of places where passenger rail is unlikely to ever have enough traffic to warrant dedicated infrastructure, the Corridor isn't one of them.

CN and CP have also ripped up a lot of track that was not cost-effective for them to maintain. Some of that was spur lines to dead industrial sites, or older track too costly for them to replace vs. what they could do on it, but how much of that could have been repurposed for passenger use if the federal government had stood up and been stubborn about it?

Our context *is* different in terms of rail use priorities; you're quite right. I don't see that changing unless we do spend public money to add rail if more or new passenger service changes make sense in a freight corridor. E.g., to get hourly GO trains into Hamilton, Metrolinx had to add track (including a new bridge) along CN's corridor into the city, otherwise they'd still be dancing to CN's music.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by ScreamingViking

CN and CP have also ripped up a lot of track that was not cost-effective for them to maintain. Some of that was spur lines to dead industrial sites, or older track too costly for them to replace vs. what they could do on it, but how much of that could have been repurposed for passenger use if the federal government had stood up and been stubborn about it?

Our context *is* different in terms of rail use priorities; you're quite right. I don't see that changing unless we do spend public money to add rail if more or new passenger service changes make sense in a freight corridor. E.g., to get hourly GO trains into Hamilton, Metrolinx had to add track (including a new bridge) along CN's corridor into the city, otherwise they'd still be dancing to CN's music.

That's exactly what happened in the case of Halifax where there was double track for the rail corridor leading into the central station but now just single track as of about a decade ago which is another obstacle for hopes of commuter rail. But the corridor is still capable of hosting the second track if the money and will materializes.

[milomilo]

Those single trackings do make me a little suspicious. To the layman one questions how much money they could save by tearing them up - it can't be that much and now you have additional wear on the single track and much less capacity. And the scrap price of the steel must be a rounding error for CP and CN. Even just mothballing the track would seem more sensible, although there may be some accounting rules to deal with there.

But at the same time, the rail monopolies are not idiots. The more rail cars they run, the more money they make. It's not credible to me that they would reduce their own capacity solely to stick it to VIA.

[Floppa]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Are you saying that Amtrak is forcing freight off the rails?

We are at a point where freight is moving as fast as it can but is bottlenecked all over the country. This is why one of the things I feel should be forced is on all mainlines, it must be at least double tracked. Give CN/CP a reasonable time of 25 years to do it. The other thing that should be done is in the corridor, where it is already double tracked, a 3rd track for passenger rail only is needed.

It's insane to me that this isn't already the case. There was a train crash near Prescott recently. We're extremely lucky that only one person was hurt. It's only a matter of time until this happens again, and there will probably be far more casualties the next time, and when that happens, I hope the train companies are held criminally responsible. Then, we can give them the option: build dedicated tracks for VIA or pay up (and then we have even more money for VIA! )

[ScreamingViking]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Those single trackings do make me a little suspicious. To the layman one questions how much money they could save by tearing them up - it can't be that much and now you have additional wear on the single track and much less capacity. And the scrap price of the steel must be a rounding error for CP and CN. Even just mothballing the track would seem more sensible, although there may be some accounting rules to deal with there.

But at the same time, the rail monopolies are not idiots. The more rail cars they run, the more money they make. It's not credible to me that they would reduce their own capacity solely to stick it to VIA.

I don't think they do the latter either. They just don't factor VIA or other passenger service into their decision-making.

Re: track removal, if it's in good enough condition I believe it gets repurposed in locations where the freight demand calls for more capacity.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

That reply is what confused me. Sounds like you as assuming they do exactly what the video said, which is that they have right of way and if they get held up, they sue.

I wasn't talking about assuming individual facts are correct. Even if I don't agree with all his conclusions, his videos tend to be factually accurate so I have no reason to doubt his Amtrak claims. The point was about assuming that facts about one system like Amtrak have direct relevance to another system like VIA without knowing what other relevant facts one is missing. In other words, with the constant "Well does Amtrak do it???" type questions, the issue isn't just determining if the answer is yes or no, but rather with assuming that the answer, whichever it may be, is relevant to VIA. Sorry for any confusion!

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Those single trackings do make me a little suspicious. To the layman one questions how much money they could save by tearing them up - it can't be that much and now you have additional wear on the single track and much less capacity. And the scrap price of the steel must be a rounding error for CP and CN. Even just mothballing the track would seem more sensible, although there may be some accounting rules to deal with there.

But at the same time, the rail monopolies are not idiots. The more rail cars they run, the more money they make. It's not credible to me that they would reduce their own capacity solely to stick it to VIA.

From my understanding it's basically a tax thing. A rail track is a valuable, taxable property while the land sitting empty as part of the corridor much less so. Kind of like how it can be more profitable in some cities to tear down a building and replace it with a surface parking lot since the building being more valuable has a far higher property tax bill even if it earns more revenue. So that combined with the higher maintenance tips the scales in favour of the parking lot. In the case of rail, freight trains tend to be extremely long and infrequent compared to passenger making single track with sidings ideal. So after the decline of passenger traffic, the freight operators were basically just right sizing to their needs. Stopping the problem from progressing may be largely a matter of reforming the tax code, but if most of the damage has already been done at this point the focus would have to be on rebuilding.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

From my understanding it's basically a tax thing. A rail track is a valuable, taxable property while the land sitting empty as part of the corridor much less so. Kind of like how it can be more profitable in some cities to tear down a building and replace it with a surface parking lot since the building being more valuable has a far higher property tax bill even if it earns more revenue. So that combined with the higher maintenance tips the scales in favour of the parking lot. In the case of rail, freight trains tend to be extremely long and infrequent compared to passenger making single track with sidings ideal. So after the decline of passenger traffic, the freight operators were basically just right sizing to their needs. Stopping the problem from progressing may be largely a matter of reforming the tax code, but if most of the damage has already been done at this point the focus would have to be on rebuilding.

That makes sense to me, it's much more believable that it is just some boring piece of bureaucracy causing track closures than a plot. I know that when we just shut down a production facility at work there was no option of keeping the equipment in place - it had to be made completely inoperable and/or sold off.

Changing the policy such that there is incentive/less disincentive to scrap the track may be an option, but I suspect this really isn't the thing stopping rail service. If there is a good business case for a passenger railway, then it would justify the cost of rebuilding the rail, which can't be all that much if there is already a clear path for it.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by ScreamingViking

I don't think they do the latter either. They just don't factor VIA or other passenger service into their decision-making.

Re: track removal, if it's in good enough condition I believe it gets repurposed in locations where the freight demand calls for more capacity.

Yeah, I agree that they wouldn't factor in VIA. Because there's no money to be made. Which speaks to the economic value of the trains VIA runs. If the trains had a positive value (whether that be through fares or wider economic impact) then money could be found to either pay the rail operators enough money for them to start caring, or build track themselves.

We see this with GO. A threshold was hit where GO actually became a valuable, self sustaining entity that could justify significant investment. The challenge for VIA is for them to also reach that threshold, so they have to be very wise with their investments. I think HFR will do that. Once it is in place, people in Ontario and Quebec will say "we like this and want more".

[someone123]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Those single trackings do make me a little suspicious. To the layman one questions how much money they could save by tearing them up - it can't be that much and now you have additional wear on the single track and much less capacity. And the scrap price of the steel must be a rounding error for CP and CN. Even just mothballing the track would seem more sensible, although there may be some accounting rules to deal with there.

I have read that there were tax savings too but I am not sure of the details. It wouldn't surprise me if Canada has tax rules that encourage railway companies to tear up tracks. That's how property taxes work generally.

[esquire]

There must be a pretty strong incentive considering CP went to the massive effort of double-tracking the Portage la Prairie-Thunder Bay mainline only to remove the second track once centralized traffic control allowed them to do so and maintain a similar level of operation.