You may be right, and I have no way to otherwise prove my claims. 🤷‍♂️

You can check the transit times yourself here. Type Montreal and Vancouver as endpoints and you'll see that transit times for a container moving from Vancouver, BC to Montréal, QC ranges between 269 (11d5h) and 302 (12d14h) hours. It's a CN calculator that you can find on their website, so it's...

I took it as a counter-example to disprove a claim. Also, I fail to understand why Russia should have a higher output than the US on a raw tonne-km basis considering that all the factors play against them. On the contrary, one would expect the US to far outperform Russia, given the geographical...

I expected the "Canada is not a socialist country" comment to be posted earlier, though. Jokes apart, there's some truth in your remarks. The last available data (Y2019) put Russia second to China and ahead of the US in terms of volume of rail freight transport (2 617 039,00 million tonne/km)...

You're absolutely right. Unfortunately for some users, VIA has to provide at least three different types of services: intercity, long-distance, and rural. Would you imagine an RDC service between Toronto and Montréal? I can't, and I can't imagine using a Venture trainset for the Sudbury-White...

Well, it depends on your business model: airlines typically focus on one type of model, be it short-haul or long-haul, and therefore acquire their airplanes accordingly. You can't expect a passenger rail operator to only have one type of train unless you plan to only focus on one business model...

I think it depends on the electronics of the units, so in theory it would be possible — I guess.

This is the natural outcome of an industry that is more focused on short-term profits rather than excelling in railroading. To whoever says that private railroads in North America are the most efficient and the best one could imagine getting from the industry, I suggest taking a look at the...

If I'm not mistaken, the Nippon Sharyo DMUs can be configured for basically any operation. While DMUs for SMART are essentially comprised of gangway-less A-cars and B-cars, which only differ in internal seat and amenities arrangement, DMUs for UPX have been designed with non-aerodynamic...

BTW, talking about transportation policies. RFI (Italian Rail Network), contract update with the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport (MIT): €31,7 billion of new investment (CA$46.9 billion). Of those €31,7 billions: — €2,7 billions will be invested to repair and stabilize tunnels, seismic...

State-supported services are one of the key factors in Amtrak experiencing an increasing ridership in the latest years. I can't see why that wouldn't happen in Canada as well. You know, if only some of the provinces involved avoided spending hundreds of millions of dollars in highways and...

Thank goodness, it still is a national carrier — albeit a maimed one. Regarding hydrogen, it has to be seen whether fuel cell technology will be chosen, or if railroads will switch to a hydrogen-diesel mix to be used as fuel for existing equipment. Although it isn't CO2-free, the fuel mix makes...

Exactly, "if you massively overproduce." As if that were a good thing. Like, if I were to massively overwork to death, I might become a millionaire. Or maybe I might rent out a tank to go buy some groceries. :rolleyes: Also, I feel the urge to remember @kEiThZ that he's talking about...

Past isn't future, sure. But physics is physics, meteorology is meteorology, astronomy is astronomy. Solar produces electricity only during the daytime with a capacity factor that varies throughout the day (talking about grid stability, ahem) and is inherently subjected to obstruction by...

Cheap construction costs ≠ cheap energy. Quite the opposite, if you factor in the fact that all the extra capacity which is unneeded in the summertime and that produce almost nothing during wintertime has to be paid for both for CAPEX and OPEX. I don't know exactly how the energy market works on...

It surely won't happen before the end of the century. You can't control the sun, and you can't indefinitely store unneeded electricity for future usage, so the only way a developed country could run entirely off renewables would be by building an infrastructure that has to produce enough surplus...

One should also remember that the bulk of passengers travelling on the NEC with AMTK run on their Regionals, rather than Acelas.

As if HSR were the only way to tackle transportation issues in the North American continent. Leaving aside ends-to-ends, which will remain the soft spot for air travel for quite a few more decades, and that can, in any case, be supported with overnight trains, how many people move between...

Overnight equipment, for one thing. The second thing would be pre-clearance facilities in Toronto (unless you really want to annoy your passengers by spending 2 hours in Niagara Falls for customs). Third, agreements with host railroads, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem in the US...

The "last-mile problem" isn't just a Canadian problem. I've argued with many people who are convinced that driving A to B would still be the best option, even with a train departing every 15 minutes for their destination. Others simply drive to suburb metro/underground stations, and then change...