Via rail

[jawagord]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Mr. Clueless dino-mind that disbelieves the veracity of anthropogenic climate change is back again.

anyone care to dig up how much money is spent on the road network every year? If we actually invested in VIA maybe we would have a competitive system that would come closer to paying for itself, rather than the antiquated/unreliable system that shares all tracks with freight trains.

Shouldn’t you change your name to "de souche"? Via rail trains are like your Avatar “old stock”. Trains in Canada’s stopped being an important people mover in the 1950’s, get over it, it’s not coming back. Road costs are more than paid for by fuel taxes.

The Government of Canada collects about $5 billion per year in excise taxes on gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel[8] as well as approximately $1.6 billion per year from GST revenues on gasoline and diesel (net of input tax credits). The Canada Revenue Agency, a part of the government, collects these taxes.
Collectively, the provincial governments collect approximately $8 billion per year from excise taxes on gasoline and diesel.

[lrt's friend]

Do you know how many billion it would cost to add another lane on Highway 401 from Cobourg to the outskirts of Montreal? That is for one section of one highway. The billions collected in gas taxes need to maintain every road in the country.

[Mister F]

And they don't. Taxes on fuel and all other fees on driving don't pay for the cost of roads. It's well established that roads are highly subsidized.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by jawagord

Shouldn’t you change your name to "de souche"? Via rail trains are like your Avatar “old stock”. Trains in Canada’s stopped being an important people mover in the 1950’s, get over it, it’s not coming back. Road costs are more than paid for by fuel taxes.

The Government of Canada collects about $5 billion per year in excise taxes on gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel[8] as well as approximately $1.6 billion per year from GST revenues on gasoline and diesel (net of input tax credits). The Canada Revenue Agency, a part of the government, collects these taxes.
Collectively, the provincial governments collect approximately $8 billion per year from excise taxes on gasoline and diesel.

That is a complete falsehood. Direct expenditures on roads are far, far greater than revenues raised from fuel taxes. And none of these figures include the myriad other expenses associated with roads, from clearing snow, to costs of accidents, lost productivity due to extreme congestion (billions of man-hours lost per year), air pollution and premature deaths, etc., etc. Do you get paid to spin such falsehoods here on SSP? If so, you are doing a terrible job convincing anyone but the choir.

https://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/policy/anre-menu-3037.htm

30 years ago, you would be working for the tobacco industry telling us that there is no relationship between smoking and cancer.

By the way I live in Ontario and I am not Quebecois de Souche. Do you even know what that means?

Oh yeah, the fossil fuel industry receives many subsidies from various levels of government.
https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pm...the-microscope

While the U.S. spent the most overall, Canada spent the most per capita of any G7 country on oil and gas production, according to the report.

Existing reviews suggest Canada offers about $3 billion to companies to explore and produce oil and gas within Canada. Export Development Canada also finances oil production in other countries, spending almost $12 billion in 2016 and $10 billion in 2017 on foreign oil production.

Fossil fuel subsidies are a staggering $5 tn per year

A new study finds 6.5% of global GDP goes to subsidizing dirty fossil fuels

ossil fuels have two major problems that paint a dim picture for their future energy dominance. These problems are inter-related but still should be discussed separately. First, they cause climate change. We know that, we’ve known it for decades, and we know that continued use of fossil fuels will cause enormous worldwide economic and social consequences.

Second, fossil fuels are expensive. Much of their costs are hidden, however, as subsidies. If people knew how large their subsidies were, there would be a backlash against them from so-called financial conservatives.

A study was just published in the journal World Development that quantifies the amount of subsidies directed toward fossil fuels globally, and the results are shocking. The authors work at the IMF and are well-skilled to quantify the subsidies discussed in the paper.

Let’s give the final numbers and then back up to dig into the details. The subsidies were $4.9 tn in 2013 and they rose to $5.3 tn just two years later. According to the authors, these subsidies are important because first, they promote fossil fuel use which damages the environment. Second, these are fiscally costly. Third, the subsidies discourage investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy that compete with the subsidized fossil fuels. Finally, subsidies are very inefficient means to support low-income households.

There are hundreds of hard hitting academic studies in top ranked journals like Science, that corroborate the gross subsidies received by the fossil fuel industry. here is just one.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/329/5997/1292

[Metro-One]

The same lame argument was made against Skytrain to UBC. That each student could be given a new car for the same price.

The joke about that is first of all such an influx of new cars would also require road expansion (not cheap) and what happens when those cars needs to be replaced??? (or the number of students increases) You would need to continue buying / replacing cars forever. Not much of a permanent solution...

Not to mention all the non students that will use the line.

[CityTech]

Originally Posted by jawagord

Shouldn’t you change your name to "de souche"? Via rail trains are like your Avatar “old stock”. Trains in Canada’s stopped being an important people mover in the 1950’s, get over it, it’s not coming back. Road costs are more than paid for by fuel taxes.

Your Prairie-bubble mentality is showing again. In Ontario & Quebec trains are an important and well-used part of the transportation network, both for commuter trips and intercity travel, with significant ridership growth in recent years.

[CityTech]

The road network in Southern Ontario is overloaded. It can't absorb the millions of additional car trips that would be generated if every VIA trip was replaced with a car ride. Not just in the GTA, the intercity freeways themselves. On peak travel days, all it takes is the slightest disruption to generate hour long delays even in rural sections a hundred kilometres away from any major city.

[GoTrans]

Originally Posted by CityTech

Your Prairie-bubble mentality is showing again. In Ontario & Quebec trains are an important and well-used part of the transportation network, both for commuter trips and intercity travel, with significant ridership growth in recent years.

While Jawagord may have a Prairie-bubble mentality he is only showing the totally irrelevance that Via Rail is to the travelling public in western Canada due to years of neglect by every government of every political stripe. What he is guilty of is creating alternative "facts" without doing his homework.

It is time to get rid of transcontinental train service and replace it with reasonable regional service with multiple daily frequencies between large centres of population. A transcontinental train will likely never operate on time and will always service many locations during the night due to its nature.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by CityTech

Your Prairie-bubble mentality is showing again. In Ontario & Quebec trains are an important and well-used part of the transportation network, both for commuter trips and intercity travel, with significant ridership growth in recent years.

I think passenger rail could be resurrected in the Maritimes too if given half a chance. Right now VIA service consists of a train to Montreal three time a week. How can people be convinced to use the train when service is so intermittent (and slow)!!! To have buy-in by potential passengers, the service has to be frequent, reliable and appropriately priced. There should be at least twice daily serve along the Halifax/Moncton/Saint John corridor, connecting to a daily service up the east coast of NB from Moncton to Miramichi, Bathurst and maybe Campellton. In addition, the Ocean to Montreal also should be daily, and should connect in Moncton to the other two local services. I'm old enough to remember when there would be as many as three trains at the Moncton railway station at the same time (back in the 1960s) allowing for connecting passengers. Why can't this happen again?

In addition to the above, Halifax is ripe for the development of commuter rail and, it is conceivable this could extend to the northern Annapolis Valley and perhaps as far north as Truro.

There is a reckoning coming. We are approaching the end times for fossil fuels (not now, not tomorrow, but within the next 25-30 years, which gives us plenty of time to plan alternatives).

The obvious answer is an enhanced passenger rail system. Electric cars will be fine for urban commuting and for short jaunts into the countryside, but limited range of electrics will remain problematic, and regional rail will be necessary for regional intercity travel. Aircraft will also still be necessary for cross continent and intercontinental travel, but high speed rail can fill the gap in between, and should be the principle option for any trip between 250-1000 km.

A wholesale movement towards air travel is not really an option. People tend to forget just how damaging air travel is to the environment. Frequent fliers have a larger carbon footprint than almost anyone else (hence the hypocrisy of David Suzuki).

Regardless of your opinion on anthropogenic climate change, future fuel scarcity will eventually push increasing passenger rail usage, both for commuter rail and regional intercity travel. I suspect a lot of the recent raill to trail conversions will ultimately be converted back to rail again.......

[jawagord]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

That is a complete falsehood. Direct expenditures on roads are far, far greater than revenues raised from fuel taxes. And none of these figures include the myriad other expenses associated with roads, from clearing snow, to costs of accidents, lost productivity due to extreme congestion (billions of man-hours lost per year), air pollution and premature deaths, etc., etc. Do you get paid to spin such falsehoods here on SSP? If so, you are doing a terrible job convincing anyone but the choir.

https://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/policy/anre-menu-3037.htm

30 years ago, you would be working for the tobacco industry telling us that there is no relationship between smoking and cancer.

You posted one reputable link above for all transportation expenditures, this includes rail, air, marine etc. Road construction and maintenance is much less (are you going to do the math and subtract it out, thought not). In addition to the $13 billion in fuel taxes, the federal and provincial governments collect another $10+ billion in sales taxes on new vehicles and in some provinces used vehicle sales.

So close to $25 billion dollars is collected every year from vehicle owners, and without doing the math for you I’m sure this is more than what is spent on road construction,and maintenance, as the private industry that does most of the road construction is a $12 billion a year industry. Throw in another 4-5 billion in municipal road maintenance and we are still spending less than is being collected.

PS Go ahead and post some links on how the car industry is subsidized by the government, at least you should be able to find some credible sources and not post junk articles from the guardian.

Operators in the Road and Highway Construction industry in Canada build, expand, alter and reconstruct roads, highways, streets and runways for the public and private sectors. Industry Statistics & Market Size Revenue $ 12bn

https://www.ibisworld.ca/industry-tr...struction.html

New motor vehicle sales, by type of vehicle 2017 $ 83.6 billion
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1...pid=2010000201

[acottawa]

HST is generalized government revenue that is used to pay for all sorts of things. It isn’t a dedicated road tax.

[jawagord]

Originally Posted by CityTech

Your Prairie-bubble mentality is showing again. In Ontario & Quebec trains are an important and well-used part of the transportation network, both for commuter trips and intercity travel, with significant ridership growth in recent years.

Besides my prairie perspective (Calgary’s C-train) I have rode other trains from time to time:

City Transit
Vancouver: Skytrain
Toronto: Subway
Frankfurt: Commuter Train
Tokyo: Subway
Hong Kong: Subway
Singapore: Subway
KL: Subway

City Airport
Munich: to airport
Singapore: to airport
Hong Kong: to/from downtown
Denver: to downtown
KL: to downtown

City to city
Munich to Sonthoven: 3 hrs, one change
Tokyo to Kyoto: Shinkansen
Tokyo to Hitachi City: 2 hrs
Jakarta to Cirebon: 3 hrs

Via’s 15,000 passengers a day is not a well used system, perhaps your southern Ontario bubble makes you think so? I know a few things about train systems. Some were really good, some were a waste of time, some were packed full of passengers, on one I was the only person in the entire car. In Canada the intra-city train is the dinosaur not the car. These ridiculous fantasy arguments won’t bring intra-city train travel back and Via will continue to stumble along because governments lack the will to end it and lack the will to pile billions into it for marginal gain.

[CityTech]

Originally Posted by jawagord

Via’s 15,000 passengers a day is not a well used system, perhaps your southern Ontario bubble makes you think so? I know a few things about train systems. Some were really good, some were a waste of time, some were packed full of passengers, on one I was the only person in the entire car. In Canada the intra-city train is the dinosaur not the car. These ridiculous fantasy arguments won’t bring intra-city train travel back and Via will continue to stumble along because governments lack the will to end it and lack the will to pile billions into it for marginal gain.

VIA is not "stumbling along". It's ridership has surged in the past few years and its per-rider subsidy has significantly declined.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by jawagord

Besides my prairie perspective (Calgary’s C-train) I have rode other trains from time to time:

City Transit
Vancouver: Skytrain
Toronto: Subway
Frankfurt: Commuter Train
Tokyo: Subway
Hong Kong: Subway
Singapore: Subway
KL: Subway

City Airport
Munich: to airport
Singapore: to airport
Hong Kong: to/from downtown
Denver: to downtown
KL: to downtown

City to city
Munich to Sonthoven: 3 hrs, one change
Tokyo to Kyoto: Shinkansen
Tokyo to Hitachi City: 2 hrs
Jakarta to Cirebon: 3 hrs

Via’s 15,000 passengers a day is not a well used system, perhaps your southern Ontario bubble makes you think so? I know a few things about train systems. Some were really good, some were a waste of time, some were packed full of passengers, on one I was the only person in the entire car. In Canada the intra-city train is the dinosaur not the car. These ridiculous fantasy arguments won’t bring intra-city train travel back and Via will continue to stumble along because governments lack the will to end it and lack the will to pile billions into it for marginal gain.

The total number of passengers is not a good metric to use when comparing different types of systems (urban vs suburban vs interurban/rural). There may be fewer passengers, but each passenger is being provided with much more service since they're on the vehicle for longer (hours or even days) and covering large distances. The only realistic way to compare them is in terms of the total amount of transportation provided in terms of passenger kms. If we look at Calgary for example, the C-Train is about 60km with four arms stretching out from downtown - two for route 201 and two for route 202, making each arm an average of 15km. Some riders will be coming into downtown from the very ends of each line (about 15km trip) while others will be coming in from very close (about 1km), so we can approximate the average trip distance at 8km. The average weekday ridership of the system is about 315k, so 315,000 * 8 = 2520000. About 2.5 million passenger km per weekday.

Meanwhile, according to your Tesla post the QC-Windsor corridor can be assumed to average 15,000 riders per weekday. It spans about 1,150km, but of course most people won't be going the whole distance. There are three main segments (Toronto-Windsor, Toronto-Montreal, and Montreal-QC, so if we divide the corridor by three (383km) and assume about half will be crossing each full segment and half will be getting off at points in between, we can divide that in 1/2 again (191.5). If this is the average trip for 15000 people, that makes for 2872500km passenger km of transportation per weekday. About 2.9 million. That's more than the CTrain. The reason VIA's corridor trains won't seem as busy is just due to the nature of intercity service vs urban service. To accommodate peak loads on an urban service you would assume a high number of standing passengers so even at quiet times there will still be many steaded passengers. On an intercity route, your plan for peak times is to have all seats filled, but not to have standing passengers since the travel distances are too far for that that be practical. So if you have train capacity that never has any more than seated passengers, at quiet times some cars in some route segments will seem practically empty.

Anyway, the point is not that VIA is a super bustling system by world standards but rather that it can still be well-used without having a high number of individual passengers compared to an urban system. It just isn't useful to make assumptions about a service or its validity based on inappropriate comparisons or assumptions.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by CityTech

VIA is not "stumbling along". It's ridership has surged in the past few years and its per-rider subsidy has significantly declined.

In the Corridor, trains are also frequently sold out. Ridership is constrained by their use of freight tracks in many cases and I’m sure they would run more trains if they didn’t have to compete with CN freight trains.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by GoTrans

While Jawagord may have a Prairie-bubble mentality he is only showing the totally irrelevance that Via Rail is to the travelling public in western Canada due to years of neglect by every government of every political stripe. What he is guilty of is creating alternative "facts" without doing his homework.

It is time to get rid of transcontinental train service and replace it with reasonable regional service with multiple daily frequencies between large centres of population. A transcontinental train will likely never operate on time and will always service many locations during the night due to its nature.

That I would agree with. There is no need for a single train that goes all the way from Toronto to Vancouver; it would be better if they had daily trains from Vancouver to Edmonton and Calgary, and then Winnipeg to Edmonton and Calgary via Saskatoon and Regina, respectively. Toronto to Winnipeg could also continue to be a standalone service, or at least Toronto-Sudbury.

Basically I think the Canadian should be split into three separate services, and new services from Vancouver to Calgary to Winnipeg introduced. Edmonton to Calgary would be nice to restore too, though I understand the bus service there is decent.

[Innsertnamehere]

Even Calgary to Vancouver a real really far for a train trips trip. Calgary - Edmonton Is the only real route in the west that makes sense for a modern rail line. Vancouver - Seattle probably makes sense too, but it's not really a domestic route and should really be operated by Amtrak as it is currently.

[Nouvellecosse]

It might be somewhat niche, but sleeper trips actually make sense for some people since it combines transportation with accommodations and allows a chunk of the trip to occur during what's otherwise basically unproductive time you may have to pay for at the destination. Some people enjoy the idea of basically going to sleep in one place and waking up in another. It's especially great for those who don't like flying.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Even Calgary to Vancouver a real really far for a train trips trip. Calgary - Edmonton Is the only real route in the west that makes sense for a modern rail line. Vancouver - Seattle probably makes sense too, but it's not really a domestic route and should really be operated by Amtrak as it is currently.

There is currently no way to get to Calgary from Vancouver unless you fly or drive. Driving isn’t realistic as you pretty much have to stop somewhere in the middle to rest overnight, and not everyone wants to fly. Until last fall Greyhound was an option.

A Vancouver-Calgary train would also serve traffic to Kamloops and other destinations close to Highway 1. It would also be a link from Calgary to the Banff area.

[Rollerstud98]

Calgary-Vancouver isn’t even 11 hours drive time, unless on a scenic tour that’s a one day drive be there before supper. Weather permitting of course. When I drive to Kelowna I leave between 4-5am Calgary time and arrive in Kelowna 10:30-11 local time. Quick fill up and continue on my way would be in Vancouver early afternoon.