[Urban Sky]

We’re not going to see HFR to Niagara Falls or Sarnia though (which is how I read the prior comment)?

Contrary to what @guavadelic wrote, no Corridor services will disappear, as they will simply switch operators.

Not sure what Windsor will get but it will be at the tail end of whatever rollout is coming because they don’t have the juice Quebec City has

Whatever is happening east of TRTO can also happen west of it, just a few years later…

 

[crs1026]

Whatever is happening east of TRTO can also happen west of it, just a few years later…

I see differences, because of the current and growing density through the GTA and westwards. East of the GTA, there is all sorts of low value real estate which offers any number of alternatives for a new build, as well as abandoned row's. Whereas Toronto-London is approaching a state of seamless urban development and/or prime farmland - so a route selection is more problemmatic and the sticker price will be huge. Really, we should be planning that leg now, fighting the political battles and assembling the land even if it makes more sense to build other parts first.
If the decision is to build along the existing freight lines, then an overall policy is needed on how that will be accomplished, with a direct path to a final design. (I am not suggesting that the freight railways give anything up.... just that the planning and design process has to be productive and can't be impeded by a railway ragging the puck out of disinterest or in hopes of leveraging a better deal). And even there, railway corridors are only so wide... if additional width is needed, buy it now. This is clearly a legislative thrust that has to come from Ottawa.
I am dubious that the time to Phase II will be only "a few years". There is a bigger inertia in municipal planning to overcome. Provincial policies and positions around land development and urban planning will be more central to this leg, and perhaps that argues for having Ontario run with the project.... if only to avoid the whole thing bogging down in a federal-provincial tussle.

- Paul

 

[guavadelic]

VIA‘s Corridor services are getting replaced and overall expanded by HFR, which is the exact opposite of „slowly phasing out of service“…

The entire Quebec City-Toronto Corridor is being handed over to a private consortium to operate and maintain, thats more what my comment was directed towards. They seem to lessening their involvement in passenger rail.

 

[urbancog]

The Federal Government's thought process seems to have been:
Neither Via Rail nor our civil service has the expertise to plan, design, build. and operate a high frequency intercity railway so we'll need to bring in expertise from places that already have these skills.
We need to provide an incentive to attract this expertise, so we'll offer an opportunity to operate and maintain the railway over a long enough term that proponents can both make a profit and pay for the planning, design and construction of any new assets needed.
By creating a Via Rail branded crown corporation and having it contract with the new rail company we can continue to brand the new services as Via Rail services.

To be truly useful, there needs to be seamless ticketing between regular Via Rail and HFR Via Rail so a I can make a single booking for a journey from London, ON to Montreal, QC.

Hopefully the contractual arrangements will be more like the Contract for Service arrangement that now exists between the UK government and their Train Operating Companies than the previous Franchise Agreements that transferred more marketing, branding, and sales to the franchisee.

 

[nfitz]

VIA‘s Corridor services are getting replaced and overall expanded by HFR, which is the exact opposite of „slowly phasing out of service“…

The discussion was about west of Toronto - where the only expansion I've seen is provincial.

I've seen nothing but cuts of VIA service west of Toronto - and many broken promises and misleading statements about improving service west of Toronto. Is there anything about improving it in the HFR RFP? Is there a solid plan to improve it?