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  #61  
Old Posted Aug 27, 2018, 11:43 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kool maudit View Post
I just think it takes a long time to board when it's single-file like that.
Now I'm getting nightmares of trying to get on a 16 carriage HSR train with nearly 1500 other people through a single door.
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  #62  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2018, 3:19 AM
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Originally Posted by kool maudit View Post
I am trying to find information about this and can't, but what I can find is very telling as to VIA's shittiness.

VIA transported 4.4 million passengers in 2017, which was seen as a success:

https://london.ctvnews.ca/via-rail-c...cade-1.3919894

DSB, its Danish equivalent, carried 195 million that year in a country smaller than Metro Toronto. So you can see why the Danish government really needs to keep its trains in good shape while Canada's does not.
I'm no expert but doesn't DSB run both intercity trains and commuter trains? Then it would kind of be the equivalent of VIA plus the Toronto and Montreal commuter systems, which would be something like 94 million passengers per year. Your point stands though, that number is still a lot lower than what they have in Denmark.

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Originally Posted by kool maudit View Post
As said above, though, Canada isn't Europe and like I said to my travel companion, Sweden is far from perfect and we could fit it into Manitoba with room left over for Denmark anyway so shut up.

This was after a beer or two.
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Originally Posted by whatnext View Post
Anyone used to European train travel is going to find Canadian train travel backwards. There’s too much geography and not enough people to ever make intercity really succeed now that cars and planes are available.
Canadians love to say this kind of thing but it's not really relevant to the Windsor-Quebec corridor, which has roughly the same population as Scandinavia in a much smaller area.

Maybe that's the answer. Canadians love to come up with excuses like population density and weather and car culture and "we're not Europe", when all of these things have been dealt with successfully by other countries. Maybe the culture of excuses is part of what's holding us back. We can't have nice things, so why try?

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Originally Posted by acottawa View Post
I think it is less the average density of the region that matters than the density of the cities along the route. Montreal and Toronto have about 1/6 the density of Paris for example.
Copenhagen (urban area) has only 2/3 the population density of Toronto. Malmo has the same density as Ottawa. Oslo is less dense still. Stockholm, to be fair, is denser than any Canadian urban area - roughly 4000/sq km to Toronto's 3000. But clearly Paris levels of density are totally unnecessary for the kind of system kool maudit is talking about.

A lot more people in Canada would ride trains if we hadn't spent the last several decades hacking apart the system. Via Rail, for all its bizarre practices, is doing what it can with what limited resources it has. Trains between Toronto and Ottawa now run almost hourly, which is driving up ridership despite the strange boarding practices and abysmal on time performance. And the HFR project is apparently still inching its way through the political grind.
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  #63  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2018, 5:40 AM
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If population density is a prerequisite to good rail service as it seems, has the US with its greater population density in regions, kept pace?
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  #64  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2018, 6:27 AM
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Originally Posted by Architype View Post
If population density is a prerequisite to good rail service as it seems, has the US with its greater population density in regions, kept pace?
Maybe (depends on definition) .....

Eastern US:
- Acela Express - Electric up to 240 km/h (operates quite a bit less than that), 15 daily trips
- Variety of trains into New York, Boston, Washington with frequency of 9 to 15 trains a day

In the West:

- Cascades (which does cross the boarder into Vancouver) - Not electrified but capable of getting up to 127 km/h) - 5 daily trips
- Capital Corridor (California) - 16 daily trips
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  #65  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2018, 7:23 AM
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In short, Europe doesn't have a single set of rules. Each country pretty much does their own thing with the ones that have had recent problems having relatively tight security.
Interesting. I don't take the train that much for long-distance trips due to the plethora of cheap airlines. I use it a lot within the region, though, and it seems like security and processes are lighter within Scandinavia.

I took a train down to Basel a while back which was mostly Deutsche Bahn and it was quite slow and old-fashioned. I think they have cancelled this line now. It is certainly true that 'Europe' contains a huge variation of train styles and programmes.

I took the Rome-Naples high speed a while back and it was amazing. I think it gets up to like 370 km/h.

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  #66  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2018, 7:27 AM
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Originally Posted by Mister F View Post
I'm no expert but doesn't DSB run both intercity trains and commuter trains? Then it would kind of be the equivalent of VIA plus the Toronto and Montreal commuter systems, which would be something like 94 million passengers per year. Your point stands though, that number is still a lot lower than what they have in Denmark.

Yes, I looked it up and DSB's numbers include the Copenhagen S-train, which is really something between a commuter rail system and a true urban transit system given how many stations it has within the city. I thought that was handled by DOT but I guess they are part of DSB.



(The grey lines in the centre are metro, which is totally different; it's this little, 24-hour, driverless thing. It looks like a Fisher-Price toy but it's pretty good because trains come at like two-minute intervals.)

Last edited by kool maudit; Aug 28, 2018 at 7:51 AM.
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  #67  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2018, 7:41 AM
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Originally Posted by Mister F View Post
Copenhagen (urban area) has only 2/3 the population density of Toronto. Malmo has the same density as Ottawa. Oslo is less dense still. Stockholm, to be fair, is denser than any Canadian urban area - roughly 4000/sq km to Toronto's 3000. But clearly Paris levels of density are totally unnecessary for the kind of system kool maudit is talking about.
Scandinavian cities don't have any real size/density advantage over Canadian ones. It's mostly the opposite. Even Stockholm, I am convinced, must be boosted in its density stats by where they draw the borders because it's no different from Copenhagen in 'felt density'.

None of these places is as large as Metro Vancouver.

People are really used to taking the train, though. One of the neat things about Denmark is how much train service even remote*, rural villages have.

They run these tiny trains that are more like the new Toronto streetcars in size and they have about 30-40 minute intervals in North Sjælland.



These stop, for example, in little Mårum, which has 247 people.





(* The caveat is that nothing in Denmark is remote by Canadian standards. Sweden is closer, though – it's a country where I have done 12-hour drives from city to city – and it has reasonable train service levels throughout.)
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  #68  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2018, 7:43 AM
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I really do think that if someone, by use of MAGIC POWERS, somehow graced, say, Nova Scotia or Southwestern Quebec with a setup like this, people would use it.
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  #69  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2018, 10:58 AM
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I think rural rail service is. More feasible in tiny countries. It would cost a staggering amount here, and the way our cities are structured I am not sure it would get used.
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  #70  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2018, 11:44 AM
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Originally Posted by d_jeffrey View Post
Class 5 ready, up to 160 km/h.
Not a chance! 75mph at most.
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  #71  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2018, 11:51 AM
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Not a chance! 75mph at most.
Yup, seems it's class 5 for freight, which is about that.
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  #72  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2018, 1:04 PM
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Not a chance! 75mph at most.
75mph = 120kmh.
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  #73  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2018, 1:13 PM
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Originally Posted by acottawa View Post
I think rural rail service is. More feasible in tiny countries. It would cost a staggering amount here, and the way our cities are structured I am not sure it would get used.


Well, say you had a Halifax-Moncton express line. I think that line would see more use, for example, if it was easy to get to Halifax Central from (imaginary) stations like Sackville South, Bedford North Street, Dartmouth Central, Dartmouth Cole Harbour, and so on.

It wouldn't work for Canada writ large but if you zoom in on regions it would.
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  #74  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2018, 4:59 PM
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The population density in the Maritimes is about the same as Scandinavia. If you were to rank them they would go Denmark -> PEI -> Sweden -> NS -> Norway -> Finland -> NB. Currently we are running trains through some of the least populated stretches of Northern NB.

That Halifax-Moncton corridor would be within the range of typical well-served rail corridors in Europe. Not Paris-Amsterdam but also not the train to Narvik. There are around 750,000 people living along that 250 km stretch, with towns spaced out every 50 km or so. The Halifax airport also lies along that route along with a bunch of suburbs. This corridor had suburban commuter rail style service from 1870-1970 or so, back when the population was much smaller and highways and car ownership were already well established.
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  #75  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2018, 5:35 PM
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Originally Posted by kool maudit View Post
People are really used to taking the train, though. One of the neat things about Denmark is how much train service even remote*, rural villages have.

They run these tiny trains that are more like the new Toronto streetcars in size and they have about 30-40 minute intervals in North Sjælland.

That's something I love about Switzerland too (it has the world's densest passenger rail network) - it seems like every town has trains going in every direction. It's a very rural/small town-oriented place, but still connected as though the whole thing were a big, sparse metropolitan area.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:R...rland_2017.svg


Now, that's not to say it's something we need here though - fast inter-city rail is more important. Our rural areas just aren't set up in that way spatially or culturally, while our population distribution is a bit more top-heavy.
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  #76  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2018, 9:36 PM
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Originally Posted by Mister F View Post


Copenhagen (urban area) has only 2/3 the population density of Toronto. Malmo has the same density as Ottawa. Oslo is less dense still. Stockholm, to be fair, is denser than any Canadian urban area - roughly 4000/sq km to Toronto's 3000. But clearly Paris levels of density are totally unnecessary for the kind of system kool maudit is talking about.
Copenhagen the city is 86 sq km and has a population of about 600k. That is considerably denser than Toronto or Montreal.

Density isn't the only thing that matters, but is a reasonable proxy for the number of people that can readily access a potential service.

Put another way, how many people living in the Corridor can access one of the principle stations in a reasonable amount of time (say 30 minutes)? That's your potential customer base, not people living in distant exurbs.
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  #77  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2018, 9:44 PM
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Originally Posted by kool maudit View Post
Well, say you had a Halifax-Moncton express line. I think that line would see more use, for example, if it was easy to get to Halifax Central from (imaginary) stations like Sackville South, Bedford North Street, Dartmouth Central, Dartmouth Cole Harbour, and so on.

It wouldn't work for Canada writ large but if you zoom in on regions it would.
I don't know rural Nova Scotia so maybe that would be a good place for such a service. In Ontario several rural communities have pretty regular train service. There doesn't seem to be a lot of uptake. Most people do their "city" errands by car in the suburbs, and many cities have good park and ride options for people who prefer that.
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  #78  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2018, 10:59 PM
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Originally Posted by acottawa View Post
Copenhagen the city is 86 sq km and has a population of about 600k. That is considerably denser than Toronto or Montreal.

...

Put another way, how many people living in the Corridor can access one of the principle stations in a reasonable amount of time (say 30 minutes)? That's your potential customer base, not people living in distant exurbs.

And the innermost 86 sqkm of Toronto has like 800,000 people. The urban areas of Toronto and Montreal are denser as well (about 3000/sqkm vs 2000/sqkm).

Hair splitting of density numbers aside, you do raise a good point about connectivity: easy access to a train station is important, especially for mid-range trips - but, only to a point. If intercity train travel is faster than flying, people will still travel longer distantances to get to the train station (as is, there's also a larger local population accessible to train stations than to airports).

Montreal-Toronto for example is a 1-hour flight, plus 2 hours of waiting at the airport, plus 30 minutes to disembark, plus however long it takes to get to and from where you're going. If the train trip could be brought down to 2 hours then, it'd still be faster even if it took you an hour longer to get to the station than to the airport.
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  #79  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2018, 11:02 PM
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As an aside I am happy we have Scandinavia as an example to look to since so many planning issues there are applicable to Canada and since they frankly tend to solve problems in a better way than the country directly south of us that we tend to obsess over.

This is something I notice most on the East Coast but there is a lot of defeatism in Canada about how we can't have nice things because this is a small and sparsely populated country or because of our winters.

Examples:

- We have to have expensive cell phone bills because this country is so big (even though most of it doesn't have cell service...).
- It's not worth investing in cycling infrastructure in cities that get snow and ice sometimes.
- We can't really have a pedestrian culture and street-oriented retail will never compete with the malls in places that have less than perfect weather year-round. Outdoor shopping can only exist in cities like LA, Miami, or Honolulu.
- We can't have good transit and rail service outside of giant cities with millions of people.
- We can't have nice modern architecture in cities that have a winter (e.g. we need Soviet-style concrete apartment blocks with small windows instead of glass curtain wall).

Thankfully some of these arguments are dying.
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  #80  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2018, 11:10 PM
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Originally Posted by kool maudit View Post
I really do think that if someone, by use of MAGIC POWERS, somehow graced, say, Nova Scotia or Southwestern Quebec with a setup like this, people would use it.
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Originally Posted by acottawa View Post
I think rural rail service is. More feasible in tiny countries. It would cost a staggering amount here, and the way our cities are structured I am not sure it would get used.
Whether or not "people would use it" entirely depends on how much it costs and how much the alternative (driving) costs; the question is impossible to answer in a vacuum.

What's for sure is that if we have to PAY to build it, rather than use magic powers to conjure it up free of charge, then no one will use it, because the rates, in order to have a chance of recouping a not-too-unreasonably-small part of the spending in a not-too-unreasonable time frame, would have to be astronomical.
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