VIA Rail network developments

[Norman Bates]

One more question on The Canadian, if I may.

Is there a particular time of year to avoid taking this voyage?

[GoTrans]

Originally Posted by Norman Bates

One more question on The Canadian, if I may.

Is there a particular time of year to avoid taking this voyage?

In the spring, summer and fall you have delays due to trac maintenance and in the winter you have delays due to weather conditions. I once took the Canadian from Lake Louise, AB to Washago ,ON which was 48 hours late due to winter storms and a cracked rail. We went through Nipigon 3 times, twice on CP one going forward and once backwards and once on CN from Thunder Bay to connect with the CN mainline in Longleaf to continue east.
It doesn't matter when you go, it will probably be late.

[kwoldtimer]

I chose to do my trip in the second half of September, on the theory that the scenery would still be nice and it would still be comfortable for wandering around Winnipeg (and Vancouver). I was correct on all counts.

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Ultimately, I think the best solution would be for CN and CP to merge their freight operations between Toronto and Montreal on one line and let Via use the other, which would be way less complicated then the dog's breakfast route that via is currently proposing.

This is essentially what the ViaFast proposal was about 15 years ago. Projected trip times were slightly shorter than the current proposal. I could be wrong, but my understanding is that they had buy-in from the freight railways but Paul Martin's government killed the plan. If it were a simple matter of reviving that plan I'm sure that's what Via would be attempting. It would without a doubt be a highly successful project. There must be some reason that ViaFast isn't feasible anymore, and with freight traffic being heavier now than it used to be, it could be that the freight railways aren't interested anymore. The dog's breakfast route is kind of a last resort - Via's attempt to get their own route, somehow.

Related to what was being discussed earlier, the ViaFast report that I downloaded years ago (not sure where it might be hosted now) shows Via modal shares in the Corridor. At the time the report was published their share from Toronto to Montreal was 14%, Toronto-Ottawa and Toronto-London were 7%, and Toronto-Windsor was 11%. Montreal-Quebec was the lowest at 3%.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Mister F

This is essentially what the ViaFast proposal was about 15 years ago. Projected trip times were slightly shorter than the current proposal. I could be wrong, but my understanding is that they had buy-in from the freight railways but Paul Martin's government killed the plan. If it were a simple matter of reviving that plan I'm sure that's what Via would be attempting. It would without a doubt be a highly successful project. There must be some reason that ViaFast isn't feasible anymore, and with freight traffic being heavier now than it used to be, it could be that the freight railways aren't interested anymore. The dog's breakfast route is kind of a last resort - Via's attempt to get their own route, somehow.

Related to what was being discussed earlier, the ViaFast report that I downloaded years ago (not sure where it might be hosted now) shows Via modal shares in the Corridor. At the time the report was published their share from Toronto to Montreal was 14%, Toronto-Ottawa and Toronto-London were 7%, and Toronto-Windsor was 11%. Montreal-Quebec was the lowest at 3%.

Martin killed a number of rail-related things underway at the time. Not sure if that had anything to do with the fact that his family owned a bus company that competed directly with Via rail.

I'm not sure that much detail on Viafast was ever released to know what they were planning in terms of routing. It was never public and the only public information is a leaked document from about 2009.

[Blitz]

It's weird that you're talking about this because I just returned yesterday from a trip on the Canadian where I started in Vancouver, stopped in Edmonton for two days, continued to Winnipeg, stopped there for two days, and then continued on to Toronto.

I did the whole thing in economy class and slept reasonably fine. There were enough open seats in economy where all the single travellers had an empty seat next to them. This allows you to curl up on the two seats at night (pull up the footrests of the two chairs and you have a nice little bed). There were two dome observation cars - one for the economy passengers and a separate one for sleeper car passengers. Because of that I didn't get to meet any sleeper car passengers but I assume most of them are older. The crowd in economy class was rather young (ages 20 to 40) and I was surprised how many families there were in there.

In each segment the train was 3 to 6 hours late. This is because Via doesn't own the tracks and therefore they have to give freight trains the right of way. Whenever a freight train passed we had to stop for about 20 minutes. The train leaves Vancouver at 8:30PM so you are in daylight from Kamloops all the way to Edmonton. Passengers can get off the train in Jasper for about an hour and that's in the late afternoon.

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Martin killed a number of rail-related things underway at the time. Not sure if that had anything to do with the fact that his family owned a bus company that competed directly with Via rail.

I'm not sure that much detail on Viafast was ever released to know what they were planning in terms of routing. It was never public and the only public information is a leaked document from about 2009.

It's hosted on highspeedrail.ca and has a lot of detail including routing.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6Q...liMDZnMG8/view

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Mister F

It's hosted on highspeedrail.ca and has a lot of detail including routing.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6Q...liMDZnMG8/view

Thanks for the link. It is interesting.

To be fair though that is much more than a "move passengers to CP, move freight to CN" (or visa versa) proposal. It had a lot of new track (often greenfield lines) and upgrades to a high-speed service.

I was at a senior level meeting where that was discussed in 2003 (I was there for an unrelated file). I don't remember details, but I remember the cost caused a lot of concern (I think it had crept up significantly by that point compared to the 2002 document in the link).

I think part of Via's interest in the Havelock line stems from the local MP under the previous government pushing for service to Peterborough.


I would still be curious what CN/CP's price would be.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by acottawa

I would still be curious what CN/CP's price would be.

For agreeing to share Toronto/Montreal so the other company's tracks are free for VIA?

I guess it would depend on how heavily the federal government was willing to strongarm them.

If this were to be the approach (and it's probably a lot more affordable than the Peterborough greenfield route), the best place to do a test of this (for both the freights and VIA) would be in the stretch through Northumberland and Quinte where the CN and CP mainlines are practically within shouting distance of each other. The CP line is single tracked through that segment but the CN line has 2-3 tracks. Just up that whole section of CN to 4 tracks and then boom, freights have 2 tracks, VIA has 2 tracks. The CP line can then be abandoned, which the city of Belleville would greatly appreciate as the non-grade separated CP line wrecks havoc on traffic in their downtown.

Heck, this, combined with more triple track segments on the rest of the CN mainline, could cut freight interference on the Lakeshore mainline down quite a bit, probably for a lot less than what the HFR proposal is going to cost. Of course, there's no way you could get Toronto-Ottawa travel time down to 2.5 hours like this--the routing through Brockville adds too much distance.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Thanks for the link. It is interesting.

+1

To be fair though that is much more than a "move passengers to CP, move freight to CN" (or visa versa) proposal. It had a lot of new track (often greenfield lines) and upgrades to a high-speed service.

Agreed. It had over 80km of new track, pretty much all of it greenfield. The longest piece was the Smiths Falls-Gananoque cut-off, which would have significantly shortended the route and also left the Brockville Subdivision available for the freight corridor. The Monkland- Moose Creek connection was to avoid the slower part of the Alexandria sub and get over to the straighter (hence faster) Winchester Sub sooner. There was also an airport loop, which would have made connections to Trudeau better.

The thing is, despite the faster speed and cut-offs, the Tornoto-Montreal travel time was still going to be 3:30 (not much savings over the "3:59" they were able to do at the time). Without those shortcuts and HSR, I don't think you could justify re-routing Tornoto-Montreal trains via Ottawa.

For those interested, I put my interpretation of the VIA and Freight (CN/CP) mainlines (on separate layers) from the VIAFast plan in Google My Maps.

I think part of Via's interest in the Havelock line stems from the local MP under the previous government pushing for service to Peterborough.

Maybe but Shining Waters Railway had an influence as well.

I would still be curious what CN/CP's price would be.

One thing I read in on pg.29 (30 of the PDF) of the VIAFast plan is that "each passenger train consumes the equivalent capacity of 2.5 - 5.0 freight trains." With VIA running over 30 trains a day between Toronto and Kingston (each way), that is is equivalent to at least 75 freight trains. I don't think CP runs anywhere close to that number of trains on their mainline and since CP has a lot of single track, switching to a double track mainline would greatly improve things for them.

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

If this were to be the approach (and it's probably a lot more affordable than the Peterborough greenfield route), the best place to do a test of this (for both the freights and VIA) would be in the stretch through Northumberland and Quinte where the CN and CP mainlines are practically within shouting distance of each other. The CP line is single tracked through that segment but the CN line has 2-3 tracks. Just up that whole section of CN to 4 tracks and then boom, freights have 2 tracks, VIA has 2 tracks.

Increasing to a triple or quadruple track mainline would be a lot more expensive than you would think. Not only would the grade separated crossings have to be upgraded (either twined or replaced), but most if not all level crossings would have to be grade separated as with 4 main lines the gates would likely spend more time down than up and those wanting to cross would likely have to wait for 2, 3 or even 4 trains to go by before crossing, so you might as well switch off your engine and grab a book.

The CP line can then be abandoned, which the city of Belleville would greatly appreciate as the non-grade separated CP line wrecks havoc on traffic in their downtown.

Even worse than the traffic congestion, it wrecks havoc on first responders having to wait for a 2 or 3 mile train to go by on their way to a 911 call (or to the hospital). I wonder how many people have died because a train caused a delay?

It wouldn't be so bad if it was VIA's ROW as passenger trains are much shorter and faster, which is probably why VIA was going to use the Belleville Sub through Belleville in the VIAFast plan

[roger1818]

An interesting article about the City of Kingston endorsing VIA's HFR plan despite not being on the HSR route:

https://www.kingstonregion.com/news-...ain-expansion/

One quote from the article I found interesting:

“Kingston is not on the new line,” the mayor stressed.

However, he says future benefits for the city include more frequent service on the current shared line. “This plan would make Kingston a hub.”

The only thing I can think of that would have this make sense is if CN would rather have more passenger trains running shorter routes than fewer trains running longer routes.

If so, I wonder if the same principle could be applied to The Canadian and have multiple, point-to-point trains instead of one train that runs all the way from Vancouver to Toronto.

[1overcosc]

Yeah. VIA has been very outspoken in Kingston by noting that the city will benefit from improvements despite not being on the line. This means they are planning **something** for the Lakeshore route. If they weren't, they would keep trying to awkwardly avoid the issue while giving a stock answer whenever anyone from Kingston asked. They certainly wouldn't be sending the President to make numerous speeches to City Council and the Chamber of Commerce promising more trips and expanded services in mornings and evenings.

If the answer is a DMU service, one possible benefit would be to take advantage of the increased acceleration of DMUs to add more stops--by switching to DMUs they could double the number of stops on each trip while maintaining the same travel time. More trips could stop in places like Trenton and Napanee that almost all trains skip, express trips that currently go only Toronto-Oshawa-Kingston-Ottawa could add trips in Belleville and Cobourg as well, etc. The milk runs could even add more stations altogether--some candidates for new stations could be Newcastle, Brighton, and Colborne--all large-ish communities on the route but not served. This would have the impact of increasing the potential customer base on the line. One thing VIA has started talking about in recent years is the value of intermediate stations--places like Kingston, Belleville, Smiths Falls, etc. account for a much larger percentage of seats and revenues than a lot of people think--whereas previous VIA schemes largely focused only on the Montreal-Toronto-Ottawa point-to-point.

[Truenorth00]

Kingston. I called it.

It was always logical to have some kind of hub in Kingston. Especially if the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal traffic is removed. The only thing I question is this idea they will have the same frequencies as today.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

The only thing I question is this idea they will have the same frequencies as today.

I would expect the frequencies to Ottawa and Montreal will remain about the same as they are pretty low. The actually frequency to Toronto will most likely decrease, but by making the departure spacing more regular, even though there would be fewer departures in a day, it would seem more frequent.

[zzptichka]

Announcing one extra round-trip train between Ottawa and Toronto

Toronto, October 30, 2017 - Starting November 5,VIA Rail will be offering 20 weekday departures between Toronto and Ottawa thanks tothe addition of a 10th round-trip, giving Canadians even more options for their travel. As well, a new evening departure from Toronto to Kingston will be added, along with additional stops in Trenton Junction and Guildwood.

“For the third time in three years, new departures will be added between Toronto and Ottawa,allowing more passengers to make the sensible choice to leave their cars at home. With each added frequency, VIA Rail sees a significant increase in ridership. On this popular segment, the number of travellers has increased by 40% since 2014. With this addition, we will be able to serve more Canadians, help reduce the carbon footprint of their journeys, and improve our financial performance,”said VIA Rail President and Chief Executive Officer Yves Desjardins-Siciliano.

http://www.viarail.ca/en/about-via-r...oronto-and-ott

[1overcosc]

And with that.. train frequencies between Toronto and Ottawa has now officially doubled since 2011.

[roger1818]

Where are they getting the equipment from? Are they cutting service somewhere else in the network? If only they could increase the number of Ottawa-Montreal trains. Those are at least mostly on VIA owned track.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by roger1818

Where are they getting the equipment from? Are they cutting service somewhere else in the network? If only they could increase the number of Ottawa-Montreal trains. Those are at least mostly on VIA owned track.

There's not as much demand on the Ottawa-Montreal route. They tried adding new trains but they didn't sell. Whereas with Ottawa-Toronto, whenever they add a new train, sales immediately go up to match.

I think Ottawa-Toronto is in this sweet spot distance-wise. It's far enough that a lot of people don't want to drive it, and close enough that it's not worth it to fly. Whereas Montreal is close enough that it's easy enough to just drive.

[lrt's friend]

The difference is that Highway 401 is becoming a horrible driving experience because of the truck traffic while Highway 417 is still quite a pleasant drive. I have taken the train to Montreal twice this past summer and there were plenty of empty seats. I would like to see an evening train between Montreal and Ottawa, late enough to enjoy an evening out or a hockey game especially with the Bell Centre so close to the train station.

[GoTrans]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

There's not as much demand on the Ottawa-Montreal route. They tried adding new trains but they didn't sell. Whereas with Ottawa-Toronto, whenever they add a new train, sales immediately go up to match.

I think Ottawa-Toronto is in this sweet spot distance-wise. It's far enough that a lot of people don't want to drive it, and close enough that it's not worth it to fly. Whereas Montreal is close enough that it's easy enough to just drive.

The problem with Ottawa to Montreal is primarily lack of adherence to the schedule. Being 15-20 minutes late over a short distance is less acceptable than over a longer distance such as Ottawa-Toronto. Most of the delay is between Central Station and Alexandria due to freight traffic and waiting for CP freights on the CP mainline. The options to fix this is to build a rail/rail overpass at the CP crossing and complete the original proposals for trackage at Coteau. This plus an extension of double track to Alexandria would solve a lot of the problems. Option 2 would be to build tracks separate tracks on the CP Mainline from the crossing to meet up with the CN tracks closer to downtown, probably before the junctions to the CP and CN rail yards. Option 3 would be to forget about using Via's current ROW and use the old CP ROW from Ottawa to a junction point in Montreal with the CN tracks. Speeding up the trains would boost ridership on the Quebec-Ottawa trains. We need to get the Ottawa-Montreal time down to at least 1.5 hours.

In order to be useful there needs to be about 2 more departures a day with one in the morning and one later in the evening. Before the big cuts to Via there used to be 8 trains a day on average departing Ottawa to Montreal and Ottawa was a lot smaller then.