It‘s not really useful to compare all of North America with all of Europe (let alone: its most densely populated areas), but when you take Ontario and Quebec and strip away the vastly unpopulated Northern regions (e.g., the Kenora district and Nord-du-Quebec), you get a similar population...

It took 9.5 months from funding announcement for VIA’s new corridor fleet to the contract signed with Siemens, but I agree that this procurement is much more complex…

And let‘s keep in mind that they are only expecting deliveries to start in the early 2030s, so 2027/28 seems indeed unrealistic at this point…

Correct, but that‘s more applicable for discontinuing a service rather than cancelling an investment which has already been announced and funded. That‘s indeed a striking omission, as comparatively small amounts of operating funding into bus services could really improve intercity connectivity...

The value of points is measured in how much ticket fare a single point covers. Comparisons like this are meaningless if we don‘t know what the corresponding cash values were. That said, the point value has indeed decreased by 4.3 cents (or 23%) for Economy travel in the Corridor, as reported by...

As you pointed out yourself recently, VIA‘s long-distance operations scatter well-paid jobs across almost the entire country. I therefore believe that the optics of axing the fleet renewal and thus starving non-Corridor VIA services to death would be much worde for the conservatives (the...

Back in 2018, when Budget 2018 announced at around the same time the funding for the Corridor fleet, the contract was indeed signed in December the same year. However, I would be surprised if that happens again, given that this procurement is much larger and more complex, with fewer obvious...

Holy moly, Alitalia had already accummulated 30 continuous years of losses before the Direttissima opened (in 1977) as arguably the first HSR line in Europe:

Exactly and that’s not a question about what speed the train reaches, but about how well it can sustain that speed and how long it takes to reach the destination. And that is where frequency comes to play, because the lack of flexibility adds to perceived travel times, especially with the...

Just like “solar roadways”, solar models on rail ties are an unworkable idea which borders on a scam…

I don’t know about you, but if there is a legal entitlement to purchase a ROW at salvage value, but the ROW is dismantled without any sale, I’m much more inclined to blame the lack of motivation on the prospective buyer’s than on the current owner’s side…

The abandonment process does not allow for the removal of tracks without offering it for sale to any potentially interested railroad for basically the scrap value of its assets. Had the OVR really been interested in that rail corridor, they could have just purchased it…

Quick reminder that this is the VIA Rail thread and that we have a different thread for this kind of freight rail discussions: https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/general-railway-discussions.31918/page-107

No worries, if it‘s rail and doesn’t really fit in the existing threads like VIA Rail, Quebec-Windsor Corridor, Ontario Northland and the various GO threads, then of course it belongs here! Will certainly be interesting to see the implications of this strike onto passenger and freight rail...

The problem is not rail capacity, but fluidity (e.g., VIA trains stuck behind freight trains) and operational flexibility (e.g., the availability of alternative routes if derailments or blockades make certain parts of the core network unavailable). CN and CP(KC) have attached a cost to these...

Agreed. I wasn’t familiar with the local specifics. I agree that only authorized vehicles/drivers should be allowed, but that qualification should be open in principle to any scheduled (though: not necessarily to chartered) bus services, regardless of their operator…

And I would hope so! Seems extremely wasteful to limit such use to just buses which happen to be red or green…

I can show you core parts of the ICE network where it took more than 20 years to plan, fund, design and build a second track for a conventional rail line. In fact, Dortmund-Münster (part of the Köln-Hamburg corridor) is still waiting for this to even happen…

Which would really not make this project an outlier compared to European HSR projects:

I‘m sure the same was said at some point about steam engines hauling the „Ocean Ltd.“, „California Zephyr“ and other iconic trains in North America…