A project with a payback period that extends beyond the life of certain assets contained within as calculated (Locomotives) by Urban Sky, is a project that will not be profitable within its lifetime. I'm not saying that HFR shouldn't be built. I'm saying that VIA should sell HFR as a project to...

I'm really glad we got that cleared up. I think I did address the evacuation issue in my earlier posts and how it might be difficult to facilitate an evacuation if all the crew are sitting in car 3 together. Admittedly, I probably shouldn't have said "waste of taxpayer money". Also, I'm a bit...

Yup, but that's what the government is trying to do with the infrastructure bank. Need a copy of the business case to know for sure. Nonetheless, no one is biting, not even the CPPIB. The risk/reward doesn't appear to be there, not when institutional investors can pick toll roads or malls. With...

See Annex 5 https://ozarkmountainrailcar.com/ http://www.sterlingrail.com/ Found a 1998-GP40 listed for USD$140,000, a 1954-Budd coach for USD$150,000, and a dilapidated VIA Rail Snack Bar/Coach for $12999... Even a 1954-Budd Dome Car for USD$255,000 (it's ex-VIA too). For New Builds (Double...

Idk, need to see the business case... Although if it did, I have a feeling pension funds would be lining up to invest by now. More likely that it gets funded as a COVID-19 stimulus project with the goal of shoring up Ontario/Quebec voters, supporting the economy, and keeping people socially...

I did, 6850. Urban Sky did an operational analysis, I did a financial analysis. Operational analysis is for internal use, financial analysis is for external use... Edit: Although, mine was just for Montreal-Quebec City since I wanted to do a comparison of business vs economy. If you want a...

Bank of Canada is just going to print more money through quantitative easing... money doesn't have to be repaid because we're going to inflate our way out of this. Or at least that's the plan.

This reminds me of a case study I did relating to a certain company and its oil wells a while back. While VIA does have a positive contribution for its corridor services, profit = contribution - fixed costs. If VIA cut its corridor services completely, there are ways for it to cut its fixed...

Well... All of VIA is cash flow positive and has to be over time unless they want liquidity issues. Cash flow is a measure of liquidity and not a measure of profitability. Cash flow positive does not mean profitable without government funding. Air Canada lost $1.049 billion in Q1 2020, but they...

No, if you go on VIA's website and look at like McTavish, or Club Sommet, there is no road access to these stations. Cash flow can be generated from a variety of sources. Some are sustainable, some are not. According to VIA's 2018 Annual Report page 87, VIA's over half of the corporation's...

I think you should have a look at post 6850 again. On non-corridor routes, VIA essentially has a monopoly following the downfall of Greyhound. You can't exactly steal from a mode that doesn't exist. While I can see how it might be a good idea to cycle in idle sleeper cars from the Canadian onto...

Thing is that outside the corridor, VIA is essential public transportation for remote communities... Politically it would be best if fares were kept as affordable as possible. A fancy economy seat doesn't exactly support this.

If you take the average implied cost per passenger and multiply it by the load factor from my analysis below, the breakeven is $68.60 per passenger on the Montreal to Quebec City route assuming a 100% load factor (which is not feasible on a train). Given that there is almost no route to...

hmmmm....

While I agree with your idea about what things should look like. It seems like VIA is going in a different direction and targeting high-yield business travellers over leisure travellers. According to the proposed trainset layouts here (slide 10), the base trainset capacity is 87 business/194...

Given that VIA sometimes gouges students with $120 economy class tickets from London to Toronto, while Greyhound charges less than half of that during the Holidays, I'm not very comfortable with VIA having a monopoly.

Payments are processed via Moneris, or at least they used to.

Yes, I know, in some ways you can say that VIA employees are caregivers but I'm not going to go down that path. It's just that onboard employees are avoiding social contact by sitting in an empty train car. While this prevents the spread of COVID-19 both through passenger-to-staff spread, and...

I don't think there are any. If you look at this from the point of view you described. Having staff members sitting in the deadhead car chatting and doing pretty much nothing is unnecessary, and taxpayers really shouldn't be helping to subsidize this. Edit: At the end of the day, I'm just...

I was talking about surgical masks.