VIA Rail

[Curmudgeon]

A dummy booking for two weeks out for Winnipeg to Vancouver shows economy-escape fares of $175 and cabins for $891. It's an unbelievable 60 1/2 hour run now, slower than a century ago, so economy would be excruciating. I've done it several times both in a cabin and in coach (once, and it was 44 hours if memory serves, the seats are comfortable, but it was people snoring and kids crying that made it once only), it's one of the world's great rail journeys, but 60 hours and $900 is impractical for all but true rail aficionados. Cheaper to do a one way rental and drive, which can be done rather leisurely in 48 hours total time with an overnight along the way.

The Empire Builder does the similar distance Grand Forks, N.D. - Seattle run in 31 hours and provides daily service, so certainly VIA has huge room for improvement.

I would like to see Manitoba get on board with the Midwest rail initiative (Semi high speed, 110 mph, similar to the Streamliners of the 1930s) and try to get service reestablished between Winnipeg and The Twin Cities. The daytime Chicago-Twin Cities portion of the Empire Builder is heavily used and could be supplemented by a second overnight sleeper service in each direction. West of the Twin Cities the service is well used but would have much higher ridership if the schedule wasn't so bad (trains arrive and depart Fargo and Grand Forks in the middle of the night). The overnight Chicago/Twin Cities trains could leave some of the sleeper cars at Saint Paul-Union and continue onto Winnipeg as a daytime service with a smaller consist and a realistic 5 1/2 or 6 hour run time. Customs would be at Winnipeg-Union with no other stops in Canada.

[GoTrans]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

When you boil everything down, there are essentially two corridors that could generate the volumes of passengers necessary to have high frequency (and hopefully, high speed) passenger rail: (1) of course, the corridor between Quebec City and Windsor (or at least, for starters, between Montreal and Toronto with a slight jig north for Ottawa, then extensions east and west to Quebec and London/Windsor, respectively); and (2) the Calgary-Edmonton Corridor.

That is basically all there is, unless you want to talk about the possibility of HSR for Vancouver to Seattle/Portland, and Toronto/Montreal to NYC.

You are correct about HSR only being viable in a couple of corridors. That being said there are many corridors that could have 3-5 trains on segments of their corridors. Running trains so that they act like hub and spot system but without the need to change trains can be effective.

As an example the Northlander used to have 1 train a day ( most days ) from North Bay to Toronto and 1 train a day from Timmins to Toronto. On the North Bay to Toronto route that meant there were 2 trains a day. Similarly you could run trains St John - Moncton to Halifax and Moncton - Halifax.

In the west you could run Edmonton - Lloydminster - Saskatoon - Regina and Saskatoon - Regina - Brandon - Winnipeg which would result in a pair of trains between Saskatoon and Regina. Doing this increases volume because you are servicing more places while not making the route so long as to be unreliable. At a minimum, the train will at least start its journey on time.

[Tg11]

The fact that VIA Rail is still pouring in money just goes to show y'all that even a pandemic can't derail this thing period

[J81]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Would take actual investment on track and cooperation from CN. But I don't think it'd be hard to pull off given that track up grades would benefit CN too.

Where are you from? Serious question? Because i dont think you understand the terrain we run over in NB and NS and a portion or QC from St Andre Jct to Edmundston. You cant turn a 30mph curve into a 60mph curve. Sure you could bump up the straights to 80 but there’s virtually no straight stretch of track longer than 5 or 6 miles so by the time you go up to 80 or 90 you’d be slowing down for the next PSO. I just dont think you have any concept of what you’re proposing. What track upgrades will benefit CN exactly? The Napadogan sub is already in as good a shape as it will ever be. Same goes for the Bedford, Springhill, Pelletier and Montmagny subs. They keep those subs in tip top shape because their flagship intermodal trains 120/121 use them and they want them moving as fast as possible. As it stands right now the fastest trip i have ever done from Edmundston to Moncton is 4:50 with a short zippy little freight train not much bigger than the Ocean in the summer. If you throw a couple of station stops at Grand Falls and MacGiveny then you can say and easy 5hrs just Edmundston to Moncton. Halifax is another 4.5hrs down the road. So theres 9-10hrs before you even count the Quebec section. So in order to get to 8-9hrs QC to Halifax you would literally have to double the track speed every mile of track for 650miles! And thats rerouting the train away from its current route which will not happen. So 8-9hrs is simply impossible. Sure if you want to spend billions and billions of dollars building tunnels through hills we currently navigate around but we all know thats also impossible!

[GoTrans]

Originally Posted by J81

Where are you from? Serious question? Because i dont think you understand the terrain we run over in NB and NS and a portion or QC from St Andre Jct to Edmundston. You cant turn a 30mph curve into a 60mph curve. Sure you could bump up the straights to 80 but there’s virtually no straight stretch of track longer than 5 or 6 miles so by the time you go up to 80 or 90 you’d be slowing down for the next PSO. I just dont think you have any concept of what you’re proposing. What track upgrades will benefit CN exactly? The Napadogan sub is already in as good a shape as it will ever be. Same goes for the Bedford, Springhill, Pelletier and Montmagny subs. They keep those subs in tip top shape because their flagship intermodal trains 120/121 use them and they want them moving as fast as possible. As it stands right now the fastest trip i have ever done from Edmundston to Moncton is 4:50 with a short zippy little freight train not much bigger than the Ocean in the summer. If you throw a couple of station stops at Grand Falls and MacGiveny then you can say and easy 5hrs just Edmundston to Moncton. Halifax is another 4.5hrs down the road. So theres 9-10hrs before you even count the Quebec section. So in order to get to 8-9hrs QC to Halifax you would literally have to double the track speed every mile of track for 650miles! And thats rerouting the train away from its current route which will not happen. So 8-9hrs is simply impossible. Sure if you want to spend billions and billions of dollars building tunnels through hills we currently navigate around but we all know thats also impossible!

Thanks for the dose of reality. We need more of this.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by J81

Where are you from? Serious question? Because i dont think you understand the terrain we run over in NB and NS and a portion or QC from St Andre Jct to Edmundston. You cant turn a 30mph curve into a 60mph curve. Sure you could bump up the straights to 80 but there’s virtually no straight stretch of track longer than 5 or 6 miles so by the time you go up to 80 or 90 you’d be slowing down for the next PSO. I just dont think you have any concept of what you’re proposing. What track upgrades will benefit CN exactly? The Napadogan sub is already in as good a shape as it will ever be. Same goes for the Bedford, Springhill, Pelletier and Montmagny subs. They keep those subs in tip top shape because their flagship intermodal trains 120/121 use them and they want them moving as fast as possible. As it stands right now the fastest trip i have ever done from Edmundston to Moncton is 4:50 with a short zippy little freight train not much bigger than the Ocean in the summer. If you throw a couple of station stops at Grand Falls and MacGiveny then you can say and easy 5hrs just Edmundston to Moncton. Halifax is another 4.5hrs down the road. So theres 9-10hrs before you even count the Quebec section. So in order to get to 8-9hrs QC to Halifax you would literally have to double the track speed every mile of track for 650miles! And thats rerouting the train away from its current route which will not happen. So 8-9hrs is simply impossible. Sure if you want to spend billions and billions of dollars building tunnels through hills we currently navigate around but we all know thats also impossible!

Fair enough. I'll say that even 12-14 hrs from Quebec City to Halifax would be a substantial improvement over a 23 hr Montreal-Halifax run. All I'm suggesting is that we invest enough to get the trip time down to something more manageable and amenable to overnight or all day travel. If that's not possible, oh well, another service that will eventually wither away....

[J81]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Fair enough. I'll say that even 12-14 hrs from Quebec City to Halifax would be a substantial improvement over a 23 hr Montreal-Halifax run. All I'm suggesting is that we invest enough to get the trip time down to something more manageable and amenable to overnight or all day travel. If that's not possible, oh well, another service that will eventually wither away....

So basically change it just to say we did? The Ocean runs where it does when it does because thats what makes the most sense. Its not competing against air travel. Its providing a service to communities that have no other means of transportation aside from the car. Its not aimed at getting people from Montreal to Halifax quickly and it never will. Until the North Eastern part of NB and Eastern Quebec is completely devoid of human population the Ocean will stay where it is.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by J81

So basically change it just to say we did?

Where did I say that?

I'll go back to what started this tangent. I suggested that a shorter and faster Ocean be built to increase frequency and connect to an HxR service at Quebec City. There's nothing in my posts that suggests a re-routing in NB and Eastern Quebec. I was suggesting investment to improve the speed and frequency where possible, along the existing corridor.

Oh well. Since apparently this one is too hard to improve, maybe we can add the Ocean to the list of services that can be withered out of existence too.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Where did I say that?

I'll go back to what started this tangent. I suggested that a shorter and faster Ocean be built to increase frequency and connect to an HxR service at Quebec City. There's nothing in my posts that suggests a re-routing in NB and Eastern Quebec. I was suggesting investment to improve the speed and frequency where possible, along the existing corridor.

I think the confusion came from you saying:

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

But I don't think it'd be hard to pull off given that track up grades would benefit CN too.

CN wanted to discontinue the Newcastle Sub, but New Brunswick agreed to invest up to $25 million to upgrade and maintain most of it for 15-years in 2014 and the Federal government invested an additional $10 million to fix the remainder of it, so it hardly seems as if CN really cares much about it, and wouldn't really benefit all that much.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Oh well. Since apparently this one is too hard to improve, maybe we can add the Ocean to the list of services that can be withered out of existence too.

It is hard to say. The Ocean is very well used and requires substantially less subsidy per passenger km than most of VIA's other routes outside of the corridor (only The Canadian requires less).

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by J81

So basically change it just to say we did? The Ocean runs where it does when it does because thats what makes the most sense. Its not competing against air travel. Its providing a service to communities that have no other means of transportation aside from the car. Its not aimed at getting people from Montreal to Halifax quickly and it never will. Until the North Eastern part of NB and Eastern Quebec is completely devoid of human population the Ocean will stay where it is.

Lots of communities in Canada have no transportation options other than a car, should we provide rail to every single one of them too? Does the fact someone has something once mean they have the right for the government to give it to them forever?

Rail is a large investment, so it needs a large reward for whoever is building it. Keeping a service running just because it's "nice to have", nostalgic or to serve a tiny number of people so unproductive they cannot afford a car is not a good use of limited funds, and it deprives far more people, more deserving of rail transportation through this faulty reasoning.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by roger1818

It is hard to say. The Ocean is very well used and requires substantially less subsidy per passenger km than most of VIA's other routes outside of the corridor.

Which is exactly why I support investing in it. Other than QW and CalEd, I think this is the only other intercity corridor that could be developed without becoming a massive money pit.

It's 1100 km. Making it faster than car travel could probably be done for $1-2M/km. And if that can be pulled off, it's easy to imagine the Ocean running 2-3x per day, with a Halifax-Moncton regional/ex-urban service running several times per day.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Which is exactly why I support investing in it. Other than QW and CalEd, I think this is the only other intercity corridor that could be developed without becoming a massive money pit.

It's 1100 km. Making it faster than car travel could probably be done for $1-2M/km. And if that can be pulled off, it's easy to imagine the Ocean running 2-3x per day, with a Halifax-Moncton regional/ex-urban service running several times per day.

I think there's merit to this. Montreal-Halifax was pretty well the last long-distance train to be used as a serious intercity transportation mode in Canada (excluding remote services to areas without highway access)... it used to run 2x daily until 1994, one on the CN route, one on CP through Maine. I don't think it would take much to make it relevant again unlike The Canadian, where the ship sailed long ago.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Lots of communities in Canada have no transportation options other than a car, should we provide rail to every single one of them too? Does the fact someone has something once mean they have the right for the government to give it to them forever?

Rail is a large investment, so it needs a large reward for whoever is building it. Keeping a service running just because it's "nice to have", nostalgic or to serve a tiny number of people so unproductive they cannot afford a car is not a good use of limited funds, and it deprives far more people, more deserving of rail transportation through this faulty reasoning.

We need to rethink how we want to transport people in Canada. I said this in the Regional and Intercity Bus\Rail Transportation thread in response to a reposted article titled, With Greyhound gone, let’s replace it with a national public intercity operator:

Originally Posted by roger1818

I understand why the Amalgamated Transit Union would like to see a "national intercity public transit service" to ensure the drivers are union members; however, I would rather see a "national intercity public transit system" which is a network of private and public inter-city bustransportation operators with integrated ticketing and operations. This way each region (not necessarily province) has better control over what level of service they have based on local needs. This system should include VIA Rail as a member to allow seamless train/bus transfers.

The national system could financially support interprovincial routes and leave the financial support of the intraprovincial routes to the provinces and territories.

In places where it makes sense, trains could be used instead of buses, and with an integrated system, demand would likely grow, making trains viable in more situations.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Which is exactly why I support investing in it. Other than QW and CalEd, I think this is the only other intercity corridor that could be developed without becoming a massive money pit.

It's 1100 km. Making it faster than car travel could probably be done for $1-2M/km. And if that can be pulled off, it's easy to imagine the Ocean running 2-3x per day, with a Halifax-Moncton regional/ex-urban service running several times per day.

It's not actually well used though. It's what, 2 trains a week? In any other country if there was such little demand that it was 2 trains a day the service would be scrapped.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by roger1818

We need to rethink how we want to transport people in Canada. I said this in the Regional and Intercity Bus\Rail Transportation thread in response to a reposted article titled, With Greyhound gone, let’s replace it with a national public intercity operator:

I actually agree, but there would have to be some tough conversations. If tiny little villages deserve rail service literally for no other reason than they currently have it, does that mean every other tiny little village in Canada should have a train? If those other tiny little villages can be served by buses, can we scrap the rail services to those currently served and replace with cheaper and better buses?

[Truenorth00]

Should be noted, I think it only makes sense from Quebec City to Halifax. Going to Montreal drives up the investment requirement and lengthens the travel time, making it impossible to actually reach and turn the train around in half a day. It also forces a southern routing. Terminating at Quebec City, let's passengers take advantage of whatever HxR is built. It should be possible to get from Halifax to Toronto within 20 hrs. That would substantially change how we view travel to the Maritimes.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Fair enough. I'll say that even 12-14 hrs from Quebec City to Halifax would be a substantial improvement over a 23 hr Montreal-Halifax run. All I'm suggesting is that we invest enough to get the trip time down to something more manageable and amenable to overnight or all day travel. If that's not possible, oh well, another service that will eventually wither away....

What you are asking would be the same as expecting the drive between Toronto and Halifax to go from ~20 hours to 10 hours.

Right now, the Ocean is 23 hours from Montreal. Going to QC would save ~3 hours. So, now you are down to 20 hours. You want to cut 6-8 hours on the line? You are talking 1100km. Windsor to Quebec City is 13 hours. So, you want the ocean, which doesn't have, and won't have a dedicated track to go Even Faster???

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Where did I say that?

I'll go back to what started this tangent. I suggested that a shorter and faster Ocean be built to increase frequency and connect to an HxR service at Quebec City. There's nothing in my posts that suggests a re-routing in NB and Eastern Quebec. I was suggesting investment to improve the speed and frequency where possible, along the existing corridor.

Oh well. Since apparently this one is too hard to improve, maybe we can add the Ocean to the list of services that can be withered out of existence too.

Or, we accept that some things cannot be done within the reality we live in. By all means, let's speed it up if possible, but trying to go faster than the current Corridor trains for that area isn't realistic. Having said that, why not have 2 trains a day each way? The train is about 24 hours long. Have enough for 3 full runs a day. Have the schedule so that you get on 12 hours apart. For example, 0800 and 2000. This would mean you could choose what part to sleep through.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by milomilo

It's not actually well used though. It's what, 2 trains a week? In any other country if there was such little demand that it was 2 trains a day the service would be scrapped.

When it takes 23 hrs to get from Halifax to Montreal, it's not that surprising it isn't well used. But as others mentioned, in the past (when it ran in a more reasonable time) demand was higher.

We talk about building networks. This is how it is done. By leveraging of the big investments that will be made in the Corridor.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

When it takes 21 hrs to get from Halifax to Montreal, it's not that surprising it isn't well used. But as others mentioned, in the past (when it ran in a more reasonable time) demand was higher.

We talk about building networks. This is how it is done. By leveraging of the big investments that will be made in the Corridor.

In the past, people were poorer and roads and cars were worse. So the train was a better option. If you want to take advantage of network effects of the Corridor those dollars would be better spent on rail around the stations on the Corridor.

[GoTrans]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Which is exactly why I support investing in it. Other than QW and CalEd, I think this is the only other intercity corridor that could be developed without becoming a massive money pit.

It's 1100 km. Making it faster than car travel could probably be done for $1-2M/km. And if that can be pulled off, it's easy to imagine the Ocean running 2-3x per day, with a Halifax-Moncton regional/ex-urban service running several times per day.

Let's not worry about running trains 2-3 x per day when we can't even have a train running daily. We should make the train daily and speed it up. One thing that could be done is IF HFR is implemented the Ocean could run via Trois Rivieres to either Ste Foy or to the Gare du Palais before switching to the south shore. That would shorten the travel time to QC and make it more reliable.

I do agree with you about service from Halifax to Moncton and St John, NB. There needs to be multi frequency service between these cities with a change in the route to provide through service to Stanfield Airport. This would also reduce freight train interference.

I was not aware that the NB and the Feds actually spent some money on improving the trackage. I find it disgusting that NB, a poorer province put up 25Million$ while the federal government, whose responsibility it is for railways only put up 10Million$. What is wrong with this picture? All the federal MP's need to be taken to task for this. The repairs to the track obviously did little to increase the speed, showing how much more needs to be done.

As a side note, I think the only reason CN re-purchased the track was to potentially keep CP out of their backyard and have someone else pay for improvements.