Category Archives for "Intercity Rail and Bus"

May 25

Ontario Government Inequity for Rail Service in Northern Ontario

By Transport Action Ontario | Intercity Rail and Bus , Latest News , Northern Ontario

Our affiliate, the Northern and Eastern Ontario Rail Network (NEORN) has published a flyer summarizing the Ontario government’s legacy in transportation inequity.  The flyer contrasts the commitment to a $21B High Speed Rail proposal for Southwestern Ontario with the cutting of passenger rail service in the North.

The flyer can be viewed here:  NEORN-2017-05-24

Apr 18

Passenger rail policy – Not a world class act in Canada

By Transport Action Ontario | Intercity Rail and Bus , Latest News

Undoing the ties that bind. It is fair to observe that since the 1980s, our federal government has been getting out of the transportation business. Since the 80s, Transport Canada has been privatizing what it owned and operated or downloaded to other jurisdictions. CN was sold off and railways deregulated. Ports have been abandoned or turned over to local entities. Airports have been turned over to municipalities or to a few airport authorities. While VIA Rail was described by one wit as having been born “going out of business,” it would be closer to the mark to say that, with the exception of remote services, the company has been forced to contract by deliberate decisions over the years to take away trains that had good ridership. VIA is now truly a shadow of its former self.

The VIA funding roller coaster. In the Harper era, VIA was funded for an ambitious plan to upgrade track and even to add third-track to segments of CN between Toronto and Montreal. The program aimed to increase frequencies in the Windsor-Quebec City corridor. Locomotives were to be rebuilt and the LRC coach fleet refurbished. But, with a change of management, instead of progress, VIA became a case of arrested development. The CN Kingston Subdivision upgrade went overbudget for substantially less track than originally planned. The upgrade of track on the North Main Line corridor betwen Georgetown, Kitchener, and London, along with the planned six trains a day, disappeared. The LRC rebuilding program ground to a crawl and went overbudget. Budget cuts in 2012 caused VIA to chop train services especially in Southwestern Ontario. The Montreal-Halifax Ocean was cut from six days a week to three, resulting in a decline in ridership but no cost savings! A passenger train service that had been useful for basic transportation thus became useless or an ordeal.

To add to the tale of woe, during this period of decline, on-time performance of VIA trains deteriorated significantly. The freight railways were moving to longer freights and the oil boom added new traffic. CN asked VIA to add a fourth night of travel to the Toronto-Vancouver Canadian to help improve its on-time performance, an improvement that never materialized. Under federal railway legislation, VIA has the right to take railways to the regulator to obtain service compliance, but neither VIA nor Transport Canada has ever exercised this right to compel CN to provide VIA with the fair treatment it deserves and pays for under its train service agreement with CN. Apparently in Canada paying for expensive track access does not come with an actual time slot, not the industry norm. Deteriorating on-time performance of VIA trains has generated tens of thousands of hours of lost time for customers, including lost connections and even lost days for long-distance train riders. To this day, Canada does not have comprehensive passenger bills of rights legislation for rail and air travelers.

TAO has frequently pointed out that in the U.S. regional passenger rail development and expansion is following the model of High Performance Rail (HPR): incremental track improvements permit the introduction of frequent fast train service in a corridor with various sized cities. State government and federal funding programs make this innovation possible. This has not been the model for VIA. Since 2015 VIA has made the occasional offer to return cut trains, but it doesn’t happen. And VIA has made no commitments whatsoever about its long-distance trains. Rather, VIA has come forward with a proposal that concentrates on a new, dedicated high-frequency rail (HFR) line between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal through Smith Falls, Ontario, a route bypassing the Toronto-Kingston-Cornwall-Montreal corridor with substantial population. The claim is made that frequent fast trains Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal will make a profit. Future extensions of HFR at both ends of the initial corridor are mentioned, along with rejigged Toronto-Kingston service. TAO has been highly critical of this proposal. For present purposes we note that this plan has not been a hit with the federal government.

VIA Rail on hold. The election of a federal Liberal majority government in October 2015 raised the hope that passenger rail might return as a consequential element of public transportation. Advocates of better passenger rail were disappointed when Prime Minister Trudeau’s mandate to the Minister of Transport excluded any reference to VIA Rail whatsoever. While VIA has continued to try to build a political constituency for HFR, their main recent effort has been obtaining a new fleet of coach cars for the Windsor-Quebec City corridor. Fleet renewal is absolutely necessary at this time. It takes from four to five years for manufactures to deliver new passenger rail cars. VIA has made a federal funding request for its corridor fleet renewal, yet it was noticeably absent from Trudeau’s February 2017 budget, although the corporation did obtain minimal continuing operating funds. VIA’s 2016 Annual Report makes it clear that its whole fleet is clapped-out and “…VIA Rail may not be able to find quality cars in the short term to support growth while adding frequencies” (p. 60), not to mention simply continuing what it is already straining to do.

Is no news good news? The federal government has put off making decisions about passenger rail in Canada by the well-known device of studying it. VIA’s HFR plan is being assessed by a $3.3 million three-year study that won’t be ready until just before the next election. As part of the 2016 budget, VIA was authorized to hire a consultant to prepare a formal corridor fleet renewal. With no mention of HFR in the 2017 budget, it appears that this proposal is in limbo. Both VIA and the federal government have failed to release anything that gives any indication of the progress being made on both of these long-range studies.

We can be thankful that at least the feds continue to support VIA’s minimal system, apparently betting that the equipment will last long enough to complete current studies. VIA’s triangle service Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal will likely continue as is; it’s a route that shows that relatively decent frequency is popular with the public. That leaves the rest of the system in a precarious position. VIA’s long-distance trains, regional services in Southwestern Ontario and parts of Quebec, and even remote services face serious trouble. Lack of quality equipment leads to unwelcolmed breakdowns. With no solution to track access reliability, the plague of poor on-time performance will continue. Poor quality track that typifies too many portions of some of VIA routes is an added concern. Taken together, these conditions will drive away riders and marginalize rail as a public transportation option in Canada.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Around the world, rail travel is popular and growing when properly provided. “Only in Canada, you say. Pity.” takes on a whole new meaning if it refers to trying to find a train to board.

Editorial blog by Tony Turrittin, President, Transport Action Ontario, April 18, 2017.

Feb 07

High Speed Rail Canada’s verdict on VIA’s High Frequency Rail proposal: a mystery inside an enigma. TAO proposes High Performance Rail option.

By Transport Action Ontario | Intercity Rail and Bus , Latest News

On January 26, 2017, Paul Langan wrote on the High-Speed Rail Canada group’s website, “One thing has been constant about VIA RAIL in my over thirty years of rail advocacy. Their secrecy and arrogance to the taxpayers and the advocates that support them has not waivered.” The most recent example cited by Langan is VIA’s High Frequency Rail (HFR) plan for a new dedicated track in the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal triangle needed, VIA says, because CN freights often block its trains.

VIA’s proposal is about express trains serving the three triangle cities. At a low-balled cost of $4 billion, new conventional track would be constructed for express trains traveling in the 90 to 110 mph range (145 – 180 km/h) built amazingly quickly in just four years. Langan is asking for the details mentioning that the full details of a very similar 2002 proposal called VIAFast have never been released. Langan notes that the HFR route being proposed is the old Ontario and Quebec Railway (later Canadian Pacific) through Peterborough, Havelock, Tweed, Perth and Smith Falls abandoned by CP 100 years ago because of curves and steep grades.

Transport Action Ontario (TAO) opposes VIA’s HFR plan. It is the wrong investment to make at a time when central and southwest Ontario are so seriously deficient in intercity public transportation connectivity. The alternative is High Performance Rail (HPR) widely found in the U.S.

HPR is defined by its multiple service attributes, including frequency, low ticket price, comfort, all-weather reliability, on-time performance, and integration with other public transportation services. Imagine if GO trains were operated in longer distance intercity service with more comfortable seating.

Not originally in the HFR plan, apparently VIA woke up late to the fact that there’s a considerable population in eastern Ontario – cities such as Belleville and Kingston. VIA has now told these cities they will not be left behind. Once the dedicated backwoods line is built, there will be hourly trains on the Lakeshore with Kingston a hub offering some connecting trains heading further east. Details are sketchy or missing.

The federal government has already invested hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars upgrading CN’s Kingston subdivision to separate freight and passenger train movements east of Toronto. The few remaining bottlenecks can be similarly eliminated with public funds. This would free up the Lakeshore route for both express and hourly stopping trains. Connectivity would be enhanced by continuing Kingston’s present hub role. At Kingston, passengers would have access to both the express and stopping trains to and from Smith Falls and Ottawa and to Brockville, Cornwall and Montreal. It would also free up capital for investment in bi-level passenger cars that would provide comfortable, reliable, easy and quick boarding, and the extra passenger capacity that is the hallmark of the mass public transportation HPR model.

Instead of wasting time studying VIA’s technically challenging, commercially questionable HFR plan, the federal and provincial governments should be considering the benefits of an enhanced Ontario-Quebec international trade corridor. Rather than continued provincial ad-hoc expenditures on self-defeating highway widenings and expansions, the focus should be on a substantial expansion of rail capacity for freight and passengers through partnerships between governments, freight railways, and passenger train operating agencies. Expanding freight and passenger traffic capacity and raising speeds safely in the Windsor-Montreal corridor is in everyone’s interest. (February 7, 2017)

Sources: www.highspeedrailcanada.com; see blog entries and press releases dated Nov. 9, 2015, Aug. 6, 2016, Jan. 26, 2017, and Jan. 31, 2017.

Jan 12

Transportation Network Deficiencies in Northern Ontario

By Transport Action Ontario | Intercity Rail and Bus , Latest News , Northern Ontario

Our affiliate organization, the Northern and Eastern Ontario Rail Network (NEORN),  has issued a report summarizing the transportation network deficiencies in Northern Ontario.  These stem from too many highway closures, too many air travel disruptions, inadequate bus service and minimal passenger rail. alternatives.  The report advocates for restoration of passenger rail on existing rail corridors.

The report can be viewed here:  NEORN-2017-01-12

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