Category Archives for "Intercity Rail and Bus"

MTO Southwestern Ontario Transportation Plan – Input to Technical Advisory Committee

By Transport Action Ontario | Intercity Rail and Bus , Southwestern Ontario

As readers know, Transport Action Ontario (TAO) was very active in commenting, participating in meetings and making recommendations during 2020-2021 as Ontario consulted on its draft plan “Connecting the Southwest: a draft transportation plan for southwestern Ontario”. The final report was completed in late 2021 and submitted to the Minister of Transportation, but has never been released publicly.

In early, 2023, we were advised that a new MTO study lead by Arcadis/IBI was in the works covering a long-term (to 2051) transportation planning study for southwestern Ontario. We were subsequently invited to join an expanded Technical Advisory Committee, which held its first meeting in London on June 1, 2023.

TAO participated actively in the meeting, emphasizing our previous recommendations and adding some new ones on rail capacity in London, improvements to intercommunity bus services, connecting to national and provincial parks, highways and road safety and road pricing.

Our comments can be viewed in the attachments below.

Bus services to Detroit reinstated by Flixbus and Trailways

By Transport Action Ontario | Intercity Rail and Bus

Passengers in Ontario once again have options to travel by bus to Michigan and the US Midwest, with both Flixbus and Trailways offering routes between Toronto and Detroit.

The Trailways service, launched on April 5, 2023, operates twice daily and makes intermediate stops in London, Chatham and Windsor. It operates in partnership with Megabus, so fares within Canada can be booked through Megabus, but cross-border travel must be booked through Trailways or a fare retailer like Busbud.

The Flixbus service, which started operating to Detroit in March, originates in Scarborough, making stops at Toronto Union Station Bus Terminal, McMaster University, London, Western University, Highway 401/Bloomfield Road interchange in Chatham-Kent, and in Windsor. Connections are available to the Greyhound network in the United States, with is now owned by by Flixbus parent company Flix AG. Flixbus also operates an additional round trip daily between Toronto and Windsor.

Photograph: Trailways stops adjacent to the downtown bus terminal in Chatham, allowing connections to urban and intercommunity bus services.

Advocacy Summary for April, 2022 – April, 2023

By Transport Action Ontario | Events , Highways and Bridges , Intercity Rail and Bus , Latest News , Northern Ontario , Southwestern Ontario , Uncategorized , Urban Transit

Transport Action Ontario’s annual general meeting (AGM) was held in Toronto on April 15, 2023 in a hybrid format. The meeting followed a pro-forma agenda, including Treasurer’s report and election of officers and directors for the upcoming year.

The major part of the meeting was devoted to the President’s report, which summarized the extensive advocacy work undertaken by the organization all across the Province over the past 12 months. In total, work was conducted on about 30 items, with some successes and good progress on others.

For members and subscribers who were unable to attend the AGM, the President’s Report is attached as a FYI.

Enhanced Train Control for Canada’s Railways

By Transport Action Ontario | Intercity Rail and Bus

In February 2022, Transport Canada published a Notice of Intent describing how it intended to implement enhanced train control (ETC) in Canada by 2030. ETC is also known as positive train control (PTC) in the USA.   Currently, reliance for train safety in Canada is placed solely on the train crew.  There is no regulatory requirement for technologies to be installed to protect against operation above the permitted speed or to ensure that a wayside signal is followed.

ETC technologies are used to improve safety and can also increase track capacity by moving people and freight faster through high volume corridors.   The basic Canadian approach will likely have railway companies tailor investment according to the level of safety risk posed by individual railway corridors:

•  More advanced functionality in higher risk corridors – stop train movement to prevent collision with other trains, derailments caused by excessive train speeds or prevent trains from entering authorized areas of track.

• Basic functionality in lower risk corridors – e.g. alert crews of excessive speed or upcoming stop restrictions.

Canada’s rail network is an “open network” meaning trains owned by one company can operate on its corridors and, with prior agreement, in corridors owned and maintained by other railways.  Canadian companies operating in the USA have had to comply with its congressional mandate to implement PTC by end 2020.  Any Canadian ETC technology will have to preserve interoperability among Canadian operators and compatibility with PTC.  It will also need to be compatible with ETC systems being installed by Canadian passenger railways like GO Transit and VIA Rail on their corridors. For example, European Train Control System (ETCS) Level 2 is the system promised for GO Expansion.

Transport Canada has just completed stakeholder consultation on the ETC plan.  Comments were supportive and raised the expected themes of interoperability, risk-based assessment and technology.  Some respondents pointed to the ETCS as a proven system that could likely meet the federal goals.

Transport Action is supportive of the federal ETC approach, but urge a shorter time line than 2030.  After all, this issue has been a priority of the Transportation Safety Board since the VIA Rail derailment in Burlington, ON in 2012. The use of open standards like ETCS is welcome but CN and CP already have iETMS systems for PTC operations in the USA, so interoperability becomes more complex.

Truth in Advertising for High Frequency Rail

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

Transport Action board members Terry Johnson and Peter Miasek recently published an article in the March/April 2023 edition of Renew Magazine advocating for increased federal transparency for the High Frequency Rail (HFR) project. This project appears to be rapidly increasing in scope and complexity versus what was proposed in 2017 by VIA Rail, including higher potential speeds and more complex routes into Montreal and Toronto city centres.

We urged the release of the $71M study completed by the Joint Project Office in 2021, an updated cost estimate and a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis.

The article can be read here.