VIA Discussion Thread

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

As a student, I regularly take Greyhound between Ottawa and Montreal and I thoroughly dislike every minute of it. Everything from the service to the traffic to the horrible sound and smell of the bus... you just feel dirty after two hours of it.

I take the train whenever I can, but there are two big problems;

Frequency
There's a bus almost every hour from 7am to 10pm with some earlier and later departures to boot. The train has about six daily departures with none past 6pm. There's just not enough flexibility to make the train a viable option most of the time. The goal should be to attain hourly service from 7am to 8pm with some early and later departures.

Hourly! WOW! Ottawa-Kingston only has a handful of buses per day--last I checked, something like 2-3 buses per day, on most weekdays, literally only one.

Originally Posted by Aylmer

Price
Taking the train is expensive. $79 for a 200km trip?! Only at its super-discount price does it start to make sense ($30) and it's never a competitive option for families or groups. I think that there are a whole bunch of big and little things VIA could do to reduce its cost without sacrificing anything important: things like the number of staff on the train (we don't need two per train, let alone two per car), the number at the station (we don't need to have our tickets checked three times, nor do we require a FREE bag check), the size of the trains (with executive track, we MUST allow VIA to run inexpensive and quick DMU trains). The goal should be to become competitive with the price of driving (max $40 for Ottawa-Montreal, $80 for Ottawa-Toronto, etc.) with group tickets and better offerings for students. There should also be agreements with transit agencies to accept VIA tickets both before and after a trip.

A few years ago, VIA adopted airline-style pricing, where you can get good deals if you book far in advance or take less popular trips, but where you get ripped if you want a desirable trip on short notice. As such, you can now get tickets for way cheaper than you could before if you get them at the right time (Ottawa-Toronto for $40 now exists, for example, previously it never did)--but spontaneous travel is now basically unaffordable, which is not good.

VIA's pricing model also heavily subsidizes frequent passengers by giving them really good discounts. VIA's loyalty program gives close to 10% returns, and they sell lots of bundles that give some pretty hefty discounts (for example, people under the age of 26 can get tickets between two specific cities for 50% off, as long as they pay for 6 of these discounted tickets upfront and use those 6 tickets within 1 year). I think those programs drain their revenue too much.

[MasterG]

Originally Posted by Taeolas

That is sadly the main hold back. There are a lot of logical places where we should have passenger rail service (if not HSR service), but the rail network has rotted or was never made in the first place, that it is financially impossible to build it now.

That does make me curious... How the hell did we build the rail networks in the first place? If they are so financially punitive to build now, what made them so viable 100 years ago? Is it because the road and airport networks have made everything so cheap that train isn't viable now or what? (That applies at a local level too; how many cities, small cities even, had Street Car service a century ago, where nowadays many of those cities can barely afford to run a Bus transit network?)

Will we ever see a government (likely federal, due to the nature of railroad responsibilities) that actually supports rail?

The VIA P3 upgrade project at $3B is all well and good, but this whole problem could be resolved if there was a political champion on the file. It's not like they don't know what to do to make rail more attractive (dedicated lines and right-of-ways etc.). For a $300B federal budget and infrastructure spending always in high demand, a decade of 300M / year for specific rail upgrades could solve this problem.

I think a bigger problem is similar to what we see from many local transit agencies in this country, their publications & annual report reek of lack of confidence and vision. I would suspect this issue is both political and cultural within the organization. It's like VIA's whole culture is explaining the subsidy and making modest surface improvements rather than fixing underlying issues that actually matter.

I reviewed similar publications from Irish Railways (about the same budget and subsidy as VIA has along the corridor). They make no mention of subsidy, but call it a "Public service contract" i.e. the government pays this share which we must meet certain requirements. It's a completely different document, as if it's a public service, not a subsidized vestige of yesteryear, even though their financials are relatively similar.

Highway departments never have to explain their subsidy per driver when proposing new plans.

[eternallyme]

There needs to be a way to fix the "Mandatory" services. Their subsidies, of as high as $1,000 per passenger, are outrageous and ridership is extremely low on them. But the isolated communities would need an alternate way to travel - as in connections to the road system.

Also, for the longhauls, is there a rail corridor running from Moncton to Riviere-du-Loup via Fredericton, Woodstock, Grand Falls and Edmundston? I know one way to increase ridership on the western route through Northern Ontario would be to shift it to the CP line from Sudbury to Winnipeg (that would directly service Thunder Bay) before rejoining the CN line in Winnipeg. Such would also make the Sudbury-White River mandatory route redundant.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

Also, for the longhauls, is there a rail corridor running from Moncton to Riviere-du-Loup via Fredericton, Woodstock, Grand Falls and Edmundston?

The CN mainline does cut through central NB from Moncton to Grand Falls and Edmundston, but this line runs north of Fredericton through the wilderness.

You could run the Ocean on this line. It's in better repair and is more direct therefore it could cut about three hours off the run to Montreal, which could boost ridership.

The northern NB cities of Miramichi, Bathurst and Campbellton would lose their service, but if VIA chose to run a rail liner on this line down to Moncton, I think this would be a satisfactory compromise.

FWIW, the new VIA President was in Moncton several months ago, muttering about reinstituting rail liner service, increasing service frequency between Moncton and Halifax up to 3X daily, putting on a norther dayliner from Moncton to Campbellton (via Miramichi and Bathurst), and shifting the Ocean to the CN mainline (which would reestablish service to Grand Falls and Edmundston). This is a grand vision that I approve of, but I have seen no action since his musings. It might all be hot air.......

[esquire]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

Also, for the longhauls, is there a rail corridor running from Moncton to Riviere-du-Loup via Fredericton, Woodstock, Grand Falls and Edmundston? I know one way to increase ridership on the western route through Northern Ontario would be to shift it to the CP line from Sudbury to Winnipeg (that would directly service Thunder Bay) before rejoining the CN line in Winnipeg. Such would also make the Sudbury-White River mandatory route redundant.

The problem is that if you reroute the 1/2 to the CP line, then you still require a train to service the remote areas on the CN line, even if it is just a 2 day a week thing (there used to be a Winnipeg-Capreol 3x week train that did just that). And rerouting the train would probably be a challenge given that CP has shown little inclination for dealing with passenger trains on their lines.

[TorontoDrew]

Everytime I visit montreal I take VIA. Price wise it's not much cheaper then Porter and it takes more then 3 hrs longer but it takes from one cities core to the others. Also upgrading to business class doesn't cost much more so you are constantly being fed and boozed the entire trip. Hopefully Katherine Wynne comes through with her campaign promise and moves to bring HSR to the corridor. Ontario and Quebec governments seem to be working very well together lately so I could see them sitting down at the table to upgrade the corridor in the not so distant future.

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by Taeolas

That does make me curious... How the hell did we build the rail networks in the first place? If they are so financially punitive to build now, what made them so viable 100 years ago? Is it because the road and airport networks have made everything so cheap that train isn't viable now or what? (That applies at a local level too; how many cities, small cities even, had Street Car service a century ago, where nowadays many of those cities can barely afford to run a Bus transit network?)

It's basically a question of priorities. The money that other countries put into intercity rail we put into highways. Australia for example has a tiny divided highway system but an extensive rail network connecting just about every town in the country. Divided highways to cities comparable to North Bay and Chicoutimi don't exist. They put that money into trains instead. It doesn't help that in most countries the rails are owned by the government while we sold CN off to the private sector.

Interesting discussion about double standards for subsidies. Nobody asks how much the subsidy per car is Highway 11 going to North Bay. But when the Northlander was shut down subsidies were all the media talked about. Sure the Northlander wasn't feasible anymore, but if the money that went into twinning Highway 11 went into the rail line instead, I have no doubt that it would be a viable and well used service.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by TorontoDrew

Everytime I visit montreal I take VIA. Price wise it's not much cheaper then Porter and it takes more then 3 hrs longer but it takes from one cities core to the others. Also upgrading to business class doesn't cost much more so you are constantly being fed and boozed the entire trip. Hopefully Katherine Wynne comes through with her campaign promise and moves to bring HSR to the corridor. Ontario and Quebec governments seem to be working very well together lately so I could see them sitting down at the table to upgrade the corridor in the not so distant future.

The HSR promise is only from Toronto to London, not to Montreal.

[eternallyme]

Along the corridor, how I would restructure it?

Windsor to Toronto and Niagara Falls to Toronto should be operated by the Province of Ontario. Basically it would be a combined GO-VIA, except with VIA representing "express" trains and GO representing "local" trains.

At Windsor and Niagara Falls, the Amtrak trains should meet up with a timed transfer. It would operate in an unusual setup: get off the local or express train, go through customs, then on the Amtrak train. That would allow for pre-clearance for those boarding in those stations, but also allow them to service intermediate stations.

Toronto to Quebec City should be a joint Ontario-Quebec compact with federal oversight, although the Quebec government might want to add Montreal-Quebec extras or additional intra-Quebec routes (i.e. Montreal-Sherbrooke, via South Shore), which would be under their jurisdiction.

As for a possible frequency at this stage that would be competitive and boost ridership?

Toronto to Windsor (via Brantford, London) - 7 daily trips (most meeting Amtrak trains)

Toronto to London (via Guelph, Kitchener), initial stage: 12 daily trips plus additional weekday commuter service

London to Sarnia - Consider replacing with bus service on the 402 corridor meeting London trains, more frequent than current train service

Toronto to Niagara Falls - 4 daily trips (to meet all Amtrak trains) plus additional weekday commuter service

Toronto to Montreal - Combined at least 42 trips daily on weekdays
* 20 local trips via Ottawa (every 30 minutes at busy times)
* 9 express trips only stopping at Kingston
* 9 trips bypassing Ottawa
* 4 additional express trips via Ottawa only stopping in Ottawa and Kingston

Quebec City to Montreal - 8 daily trips

(The numbers given are on weekdays, likely fewer trips on weekends)

[eternallyme]

Originally Posted by Mister F

It's basically a question of priorities. The money that other countries put into intercity rail we put into highways. Australia for example has a tiny divided highway system but an extensive rail network connecting just about every town in the country. Divided highways to cities comparable to North Bay and Chicoutimi don't exist. They put that money into trains instead. It doesn't help that in most countries the rails are owned by the government while we sold CN off to the private sector.

Interesting discussion about double standards for subsidies. Nobody asks how much the subsidy per car is Highway 11 going to North Bay. But when the Northlander was shut down subsidies were all the media talked about. Sure the Northlander wasn't feasible anymore, but if the money that went into twinning Highway 11 went into the rail line instead, I have no doubt that it would be a viable and well used service.

At a $400 per passenger subsidy, if they rode the train once a week, that means they are being paid over $20,000 to ride the train for one year. You could buy that passenger a car for that price. At $1,000 per passenger (the subsidy on the Churchill train), the $50,000 annual subsidy could buy them a car AND easily pay the insurance, fuel, etc. to Winnipeg. The only thing is there is no road to Churchill...one thing I would like to see to improve the port there.

Trains work best between downtown areas or as tourist routes, not when serving remote areas.

[ssiguy]

In VIA's attempt to serve everyone with passable service it has resulted in no one getting service well.

VIA should have only 2 lines in the Corridor.........Win- QC alternating service using either Ott/Kit/Ham and that's it. Get rid of NF as it has unacceptable low ridership and will become even more irrelevant as GO expands. Get rid of the Sarnia leg and the entire Canadian, Ocean, PR/Jasper, Gaspe, Quebec North, and Churchill lines, permanently.

They neither make money nor sense. If someone want to continue them as tourist trains then they should certainly be given complete and unfettered access to both the tracks, stations, and infrastructure as VIA departs but absolutely NO public money. They could if they wanted work out some form of fare integration while running but that would be of their own accord.

VIA is no longer the essential service it was. Today VIA is simply an option but no where does it go that there is not a major highway and thus bus or service. Let's face it, 90% of VIA's trackage is never more than 30 km away from the TCH. These politicians that will bitch about not having service anymore probably have never ridden the train once in their life and nor has 95% of the population.

The only place where regular train service makes sense outside the Corridor is the one place that has absolutely no service at all.........Calgary-Edmonton corridor. Not only are these 2 fast growing cities but are a perfect distance for fast rail .......300 km. Which makes the trains faster than air, bus, or car. There is a lot of traffic between the two cities one being the business capitol, gateway to Banff, and largest city while the other is the political, cultural, and academic capitol of the province.

This is made even more viable by Red Deer being smack in the middle of the two and the city has 100,000 in it's core and easily 150,000 within a 20km radius.

[eternallyme]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

In VIA's attempt to serve everyone with passable service it has resulted in no one getting service well.

VIA should have only 2 lines in the Corridor.........Win- QC alternating service using either Ott/Kit/Ham and that's it. Get rid of NF as it has unacceptable low ridership and will become even more irrelevant as GO expands. Get rid of the Sarnia leg and the entire Canadian, Ocean, PR/Jasper, Gaspe, Quebec North, and Churchill lines, permanently.

They neither make money nor sense. If someone want to continue them as tourist trains then they should certainly be given complete and unfettered access to both the tracks, stations, and infrastructure as VIA departs but absolutely NO public money. They could if they wanted work out some form of fare integration while running but that would be of their own accord.

VIA is no longer the essential service it was. Today VIA is simply an option but no where does it go that there is not a major highway and thus bus or service. Let's face it, 90% of VIA's trackage is never more than 30 km away from the TCH. These politicians that will bitch about not having service anymore probably have never ridden the train once in their life and nor has 95% of the population.

The only place where regular train service makes sense outside the Corridor is the one place that has absolutely no service at all.........Calgary-Edmonton corridor. Not only are these 2 fast growing cities but are a perfect distance for fast rail .......300 km. Which makes the trains faster than air, bus, or car. There is a lot of traffic between the two cities one being the business capitol, gateway to Banff, and largest city while the other is the political, cultural, and academic capitol of the province.

This is made even more viable by Red Deer being smack in the middle of the two and the city has 100,000 in it's core and easily 150,000 within a 20km radius.

In Atlantic Canada, I would argue Fredericton-Moncton-Halifax is viable, although beyond Fredericton should be limited to a tourist train with private funding or higher costs.

In Western Canada, routes from Vancouver to Calgary are already provided by tourist trains, although no real cities from Kamloops to Calgary is a major hinderance. On the Prairies, it is difficult to determine the viability.

I agree Niagara Falls should be run by GO (or at least by the Province of Ontario), as well as west of Toronto. Niagara Falls provides a valuable international connection though.

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

At a $400 per passenger subsidy, if they rode the train once a week, that means they are being paid over $20,000 to ride the train for one year. You could buy that passenger a car for that price. At $1,000 per passenger (the subsidy on the Churchill train), the $50,000 annual subsidy could buy them a car AND easily pay the insurance, fuel, etc. to Winnipeg. The only thing is there is no road to Churchill...one thing I would like to see to improve the port there.

Trains work best between downtown areas or as tourist routes, not when serving remote areas.

You better tell that to the Australians, Russians, and Scots. Highways are no better than rail for remote areas. The highway 400 extension is costing $2 billion to serve very few people. It will have huge subsidies. The only place that highways cover their costs is in major urban areas. The Northlander was so heavily subsidized because the government drive down demand by building a parallel highway and neglecting the rail line.

Churchill is in no way comparable to North Bay. It has 1% of the population and a journey that's 5 times longer. Inverness is comparable to North Bay in a lot of ways. Take a look at their rail service.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

In Atlantic Canada, I would argue Fredericton-Moncton-Halifax is viable, although beyond Fredericton should be limited to a tourist train with private funding or higher costs.

There is no rail service to Fredericton (freight or otherwise)

The viable line is Saint John-Moncton-Halifax. The rail lines here are in good repair and service the three largest cities in the region with a combined urban population of about 725,000 (with the total population in the corridor being about 1M).

I would argue for at least 3X daily service between these cities using rail liners or three car diesel pulled trains. Public bus transit in the Maritimes is shit, and road travel in the region is often hazardous in the winter time, so I think there is great potential for this service (if instituted).

I would also argue that the Ocean should move to the CN main line between Moncton and Grand Falls/Edmundston (saving three hours on the trip to Montreal), and should revert to a daily service model (currently three times weekly - which is really the death by a thousand cuts).

Finally, there should be a daily rail liner from Moncton to the north shore cities of Miramichi, Bathurst and Campbellton.

I am probably in the minority on this thread. I think that passenger rail service should be nurtured and expanded in Canada, especially on a regional basis, but maintaining a national cross country service as well. This service should be in the public realm and VIA should be a crown corporation. Taking the long view, within a century air travel will be prohibitively expensive and long distance car travel impractical as fossil fuel resources deplete. Electrified rail will become the preferred method for inter city travel (except for perhaps cross country trips exceeding 2,500 km or so where air travel might remain viable).

[SHOFEAR]

Are you going to take the horse and buggy to the station?

The way some of you guy's romanticize about train travel is hilarious. Privatize it all. If it makes sense somebody will operate some sort of high speed to compete with planes and cars. But longing for better passenger service out west (or east of QC)is just silly. How long to go from Edmonton to Winnipeg, 24 hours? I'll pass (and so does everybody else).

[Taeolas]

Originally Posted by SHOFEAR

Are you going to take the horse and buggy to the station?

The way some of you guy's romanticize about train travel is hilarious. Privatize it all. If it makes sense somebody will operate some sort of high speed to compete with planes and cars. But longing for better passenger service out west (or east of QC)is just silly. How long to go from Edmonton to Winnipeg, 24 hours? I'll pass (and so does everybody else).

Rail is hardly the equivalent to the Horse and Buggy; thouhg the way some people treat it it might as we ll be.

Good rail travel is better than planes over short distance, even for regular speeds, especially when you account for the security joke at airports. Sadly, outside of the Corridor, Via isn't supplying that. (Good travel should at an absolute minimum be daily between destinations in each direction. which we don't have any more)

If you read this thread, no one is looking to have train travel across the long routes; everyone is advocating that Via should be focusing on the short stretches where rail can compete favorably with air and car travel. The main issue is that because rail in general has been abandoned so much since last century, it's basically not economically feasible to run the passenger trains where they should be making a killing.

Hell, just look at how far GO is expanding throughout southern Ontario, and then tell me that passenger trains are "horse and buggy".

As is, as others have pointed out, outside of the Corridor, there are other corridors where Via should be able to do well; but can't for various reasons. The most likely one that they might be able to do well on, would be one in the Maritimes, the SJ/Moncton/Halifax routing. (which I really hope they are seriously considering). The problem is, Via is hampered by a lack of vision, and a lack of someone with the backbone required to look beyond what they have always done in the past.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by SHOFEAR

Are you going to take the horse and buggy to the station?

The way some of you guy's romanticize about train travel is hilarious. Privatize it all. If it makes sense somebody will operate some sort of high speed to compete with planes and cars. But longing for better passenger service out west (or east of QC)is just silly. How long to go from Edmonton to Winnipeg, 24 hours? I'll pass (and so does everybody else).

I took the train a number of times in my student days 10-12 years ago... it used to be a convenient 14 hour overnight trip between Winnipeg and Edmonton, which put it roughly on par with driving or taking the bus (I never did the latter). You'd leave Winnipeg around supper and get into Edmonton around breakfast. Easy peasy. Obviously not fast, but fast enough for the most part and a nice experience overall with the dining room, nice beds and all that.

These days, the train still gets to Edmonton bright and early (6:22 am) but it leaves Winnipeg at 11:45 am the previous day, so now it's a roughly 20 hour ride, a good chunk of which takes place during the day so you can't just sleep away the miles as you once did.

I took the train because it was a pleasant experience, but when I was in any sort of rush I flew. However, paying money to take 20 hours to traverse a distance that would take me maybe 13 hours to drive or 2 hours to fly just seems crazy. Schedules out here are so bad now that the only people who can stomach them are sightseeing pensioners who aren't in a rush to get anywhere.

[Aylmer]

Originally Posted by SHOFEAR

Privatize it all. If it makes sense somebody will operate some sort of high speed to compete with planes and cars.

Privatisation will make sense once we privatize roads too. Rail service to remote communities is a hand-out, but why isn't a billion dollar highway?

As a mainstream alternative to the automobile and planes, rail makes a whole lot of sense over short and medium distances (<750km) which make up an overwhelming majority of intercity trips. As it is, there's no question that it isn't there yet. But as they say, it's hard to justify building a bridge by counting the number of people who swim across a river!

Make rail frequent, quick and inexpensive and I can guarantee ridership will go up just as people bought more cars when we built more extensive, cheaper and faster highways.

[esquire]

^ Rail is worth public investment, but only where the return justifies it. To get passenger rail infrastructure in Western and Atlantic Canada to a state where it is even close to competitive with other modes of transport would require such a massive investment that could never be justified. By contrast, in Southern Ontario and south-central Quebec, the population base and existing infrastructure are sufficient to make further investment worthwhile.

I mean, if the government is going to throw, say, $2B at a passenger rail project, it would make far far far more sense to do it to the Toronto-Kingston stretch of rail where there are many passenger trains a day en route to Ottawa and Montreal, as opposed to using it to improve passenger trains on the 2x a week Vancouver-Toronto run.

[eternallyme]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

Privatisation will make sense once we privatize roads too. Rail service to remote communities is a hand-out, but why isn't a billion dollar highway?

As a mainstream alternative to the automobile and planes, rail makes a whole lot of sense over short and medium distances (<750km) which make up an overwhelming majority of intercity trips. As it is, there's no question that it isn't there yet. But as they say, it's hard to justify building a bridge by counting the number of people who swim across a river!

Make rail frequent, quick and inexpensive and I can guarantee ridership will go up just as people bought more cars when we built more extensive, cheaper and faster highways.

Are there any billion dollar highways to truly remote communities? For a medium-standard, 2 lane highway, that would likely build over 2,000 km of asphalt in rough terrain and 10,000 km in flat terrain on average.