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The provinces will not provide intercity rail funding, especially when the route is an interprovincial route. The provinces have to maintain the roads even though the federal government cannot find money for Via but it can still find money for interprovincial roads. What is missing is a balance in funding for different modes. |
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Why should VIA keep focusing on the Corridor? It is well served.
What needs to happen is all services go to a daily service both ways. This will make scheduling with CN/CP, etc simplier as they know it is coming the same time every day. The next thing they need is to start servicing places they don't, like Calgary and Regina to name a few. The federal government needs to change thee TC laws to make passenger service have priority over freight. This would mean that all trains would have to take the siding and the passenger train just keeps on going. They would also need to make it law that the companies must allow passenger service on all their lines. I know we are dreaming, but with the focus on climate change, and a minority government, this could be something that the majority of parties would support. |
I don't know why it's so hard. We have a government that wants to spend money on infrastructure, wants to be seen to be doing stuff on climate, wants to be seen as not hating Alberta and other provinces outside the corridor, owns a railway that operates at the whims of the federal government, and can borrow money at will. Why not actually start spending money on VIA? These would be decades long investments, if you amortize a few billions over that time it's basically nothing anyway.
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The other problem is that sometimes fleets of trains are dispatched one behind another which increases the waiting time for trains travelling the opposite direction. Quote:
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I get that other parts of the country have effectively no rail service at all, but that doesn't mean that further investments in the Corridor aren't worth supporting. If HFR is successful that makes investments in the rest of the country more likely. |
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This is why I said that the regulation needs changing. It would force trains to be shorter, or have longer sidings built, or have double track built. This CN strike is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to real problems on the railways. |
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in the 1980's CN gradually expanded all sidings across northern Ontario to 125 car train capacity. Some sidings have been expanded but others have been ripped out to save maintenance costs resulting in sidings being further apart. There needs to be some regulation concerning ripping out sidings or double track. The double track CP mainline from Winnipeg to Thunder Bay is now a series of extended sidings. |
Interesting fragment:
https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebs...ations/201555E "In 1945, Canadian railways carried 55.4 million passengers, accounting for about 20% of railway revenues." The population of Canada in 1945 was 12 million. Sweden's population is currently 10 million and Swedish passenger rail carries 256 million per year. Given that Canadian passenger rail currently carries about 4.4 million passengers/year, the depth of the underperformance compared to Sweden, the most comparable European country, and historical Canada is clear: 58x and 11x. Looking at the 2018 annual reports of VIA and SJ was a little weird, as a lot of the numbers were far more on par than the actual performance of the companies would imply; I assume the difference has to do with much greater federal involvement in passenger rail as a whole on the infrastructural level, beyond the main public operator. Still, a few issues did emerge. VIA, for instance, is currently punctual on 75% of corridor services while SJ is punctual on 95%. Clearly, 75% is so low as to preclude effective use for commercial travelers. In many senses, though, the two reports were more similar than different despite one being for a well-performing and essential piece of national infrastructure and one being for a red-headed stepchild eking out a precarious existence on the margins of life. One thing both firms emphasized was the environment and climate, which is a solid angle in this age of Greta frowning at planes. Could our new Liberal government and its extreme climate focus spell opportunity for sad-sack VIA? I doubt it, because that would be bold and visionary rather than timid and next-to-useless, but one can hope. The more that I look into this, though, the more I am convinced that Ottawa just doesn't have a passenger rail strategy at all. It's a little sad given our history. Edit: I am increasingly doubtful regarding the Wikipedia number of 256 million pass./year for Sweden. SJ reported 32 million/year in 2018 and 33% market share; this would imply a total around 96 million/year, or about 22x Canada, not 58x |
Does this all come down to the track ownership issue? It seems like a real possibility.
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Interestingly, Canada ranks #1 in the world in terms of freight modal share for rail with 68%; Sweden is at 40% and the US is at 44%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...share_for_rail |
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Sweden has 12,821 km of rail of which 3,594 km is privately owned, whereas Canada has 49,422 km, all privately owned.
It seems like we could go with partial nationalisation in strategic areas to rectify the performance shortfall (and make libertarians yelp). That or build new track, of course, but I have to assume the ROW issues are killer. |
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Of course barring construction of new trackage, we would have to decide whether or not passenger rail should be prioritized over freight. There are probably some compelling reasons to maintain our freight network in addition to passenger capacity. |
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Canada screwed itself by not owning the track themselves from the start. I'd support going full commie on this and expropriating neccesary track and upgrading it so that it fulfils the needs of both operators. But this isn't realistic with the politics here, the rail operators are more powerful than the federal government. So the next best thing is to build new passenger only lines, and buy lines from the other operators where possible.
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Another interesting country to look at is Brazil, which is to the other side of Canada from Sweden. In Brazil, services have decayed to the point that essentially all inter-city rail is gone; prior to its departure, it was a pitiful relic system of trains travelling at 50 kph or less, so it was easy to kill as nobody used it or cared about it by that point.
There were proposals in 2008 to connect Sao Paulo, Rio and Capinas with a USD 15 billion high-speed network but this was halted due to the financial crisis and ensuing political volatility. My point is that Canada might prefer to be closer to its Nordic livability index peers on this one, but the reality is nearer Brazil. We should fix this. |
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https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/coun.../canada/sweden |
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