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Urban Sky said:
There is no such federal minimum staffing requirement. At least that’s what the TSB report for the 2012 Burlington derailment noted, as I recall that there was only a single On-Train Staff member overseeing the evacuation of the train:
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Excellent; and quite quick! Thank you.

So it would seem then that VIA's attendant to passenger/coach ratios are set by one of their safety plan, the collective agreement w/the union, or simple operational choice.

I don't take a position on what an appropriate number is; but it is an interesting point of discussion.
 
It is surprising that there is no number, but I would suspect that, if nothing else, "sufficient number" is greater than zero.
 
It's pretty clear from the ritual short demonstrations of emergency windows and tools in coach, and the way in which VIA enlists "safety assistants" among sleeping car passengers on the long distance trains, that there is no commitment made by VIA with respect to emergency assistance. The crewing standards are simply a matter of service design, and to some degree union agreements.... plus a business decision about how many people are needed to manage routine entraining and detraining in non-emergency scenarios.
And1, while VIA employees are as heroic a bunch as any workers in a people business, one has to assume that in an emergency they might be casualties themselves.
So when all is said, it's every person for themselves, or everyone helping each other.
This really isn't much different a standard than on airplanes, where safety briefings address the emergency exits and the people sitting in the extra legroom seats by the emergency exists are enlisted to assist other people out the exit in an emergency. (I'm not actually confident that they always would, and that includes myself - hopefully we never find out.) Worst case, there may or may not be a flight attendant available to manage the evacuation.

- Paul
 
crs1026 said:
It's pretty clear from the ritual short demonstrations of emergency windows and tools in coach, and the way in which VIA enlists "safety assistants" among sleeping car passengers on the long distance trains, that there is no commitment made by VIA with respect to emergency assistance. The crewing standards are simply a matter of service design, and to some degree union agreements.... plus a business decision about how many people are needed to manage routine entraining and detraining in non-emergency scenarios.
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This really makes me wonder what you got to say about evacuating a 12- car bilevel GO train (i.e. 2000 seats spread across almost 50 seperate passenger areas) with one single attendant…
 
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crs1026 said:
I would say, let's be grateful for properly-trained first responders..

- Paul
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And that’s certainly another factor. GO trains predominantly run in somewhat urban areas and thus are relatively close to first responders. VIA trains, on the other hand, can often be in quite remote areas, and getting fast access to a sufficient number of first responders may not be possible.
 
Urban Sky said:
So how exactly is that supposed to work? Adding HEP1/2 cars at the end of a Siemens trainset?
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If you can get slots from CN just run the HEP sets by themselves or J them together on the outbound from Toronto.

However, I'm surprised that VIA's Chargers aren't MU/HEP compatible with the existing fleet, since Amtrak mixes their chargers and P42DCs.


Urban Sky said:
Let’s assume that only a quarter of passengers is demand diverted from existing trains and that they currently pay $50 (which is unrealistically low, given that VIA’s lowest Escape bucket fare is $49, IIRC). This means that three-quarters of passengers generate a net revenue of $25 (i.e. the ticket fare), whereas the final quarter of passengers makes you loose $25 (i.e. $25 ticket fare minus the $50 they would have paid otherwise). Now your average net revenue halves to $12.50 (75% * $25 + 25% * -$25 = $18.75 - $6.25) and your break-even point doubles to 540 passengers (i.e. 8 car loads, meaning you’d now have at least 13 cars hauled by a single locomotive!). Oops!
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GO does 12 bilevel cars by one locomotive. Again, a low-cost service isn't unprecedented. GO operated both the Toronto-Niagara and the Toronto-London via Kitchener services. I don't know if VIA takes economic, environmental, traffic congestion, and public feedback into account when it plans its services, but I know GO as a public transit agency certainly does. If you read the GO services thread, the Niagara train is very popular.

If you read the 2019 business case for the project: https://assets.metrolinx.com/image/upload/Documents/Metrolinx/20191122_BoardMtg_Niagara_IBC.pdf

The service increases to GO's Niagara services which began in May of this year (equivalent to option 1) will be $66 million in net present benefits to society despite the financial case for GO being in the negative. The luxury of VIA not being a public transit provider is that it like GO can choose to focus more on the economic case for a project over the financial case. Whether it does or not in practice is a different story.

I find that VIA straddles between minimizing its required subsidy and offering an essential transportation service to the communities it serves. In the Annual Public Meeting Q&A people are asking "Why is the train so expensive?" and Does "VIA Rail (have) any concrete plans to make its services more affordable
to Canadians in the coming years. If so, what are they?" The train is available, but it's not very price accessible for many.

lenaitch said:
It is surprising that there is no number, but I would suspect that, if nothing else, "sufficient number" is greater than zero.
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Zero on-train service staff (except the driver) is not unprecedented on a federally regulated railway in Canada. Both the Trillium Line and the Confederation Line in Ottawa are federally regulated railways (operating as Capital Railway). I'm not saying VIA should get rid of all their onboard staff, but staffing levels should be commensurate with the level of service offered and whether it can be done safely. GO operated the Toronto-London and the Toronto-Niagara routes with one onboard CSA, VIA could choose to do the same if they want to offer a low-cost service.

roger1818 said:
And that’s certainly another factor. GO trains predominantly run in somewhat urban areas and thus are relatively close to first responders. VIA trains, on the other hand, can often be in quite remote areas, and getting fast access to a sufficient number of first responders may not be possible.
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I hate to say it, but I'm not sure the on-board staff were able to do much last year during the snowstorm according to this article: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/loca...ronto-via-rail-trip-into-a-winter-horror-show

Urban Sky said:
I would assume that this attitude can be better explained with the attitude towards innovation or taking risks of VIA’s and Metrolinx’ political masters than of their respective management boards. From my personal experience, it is almost impossible to exaggerate the “why make a decision if you can just ask another question without being in any way interested in the answer” and “hide your ass” mentality at TC…
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This is somewhat common even on this forum😉.
 
lenaitch said:
With all that is going on, I'm not sure mid-distance inter-city pax rail is going to be much of a vote-getter (Calgary-Edmonton perhaps)
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Honestly,I doubt anything can.However,a photo op is a photo op. TBH anything to prevent a CPC majority is worth a try. And with what is still potentially ok enough to run for now, the 2lowest hanging fruit would be the Calgary - Edmonton and Saint John - Halifax routes have the most potential for being successful and gaining some votes.
 
littlewill1166 said:
If you can get slots from CN just run the HEP sets by themselves or J them together on the outbound from Toronto.
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The working assumption should be that CN won’t feel compelled to offer any additional slots without demanding VIA to fund infrastructure updates and that the only way to offer a low-cost service is to avoid incuring incremental Track Access charges or Locomotive Engineer labour costs as two of the most signficant drivers of VIA’s operating costs…

littlewill1166 said:
However, I'm surprised that VIA's Chargers aren't MU/HEP compatible with the existing fleet, since Amtrak mixes their chargers and P42DCs.

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Amtrak procured locomotives from Siemens, whereas VIA procurred semi-permanently coupled trainsets.

littlewill1166 said:
GO does 12 bilevel cars by one locomotive.
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Yes, by a locomotive they own and maintain by themselves and can therefore run into the ground by attempting to haul 100 cars if they wanted to do insane experiments. VIA has a contract with Siemens which includes maintainance and guaranteed availability rates and therefore has very strict limits to how it may utilize its fleet and how not.

littlewill1166 said:
Again, a low-cost service isn't unprecedented. GO operated both the Toronto-Niagara and the Toronto-London via Kitchener services. I don't know if VIA takes economic, environmental, traffic congestion, and public feedback into account when it plans its services, but I know GO as a public transit agency certainly does. If you read the GO services thread, the Niagara train is very popular.

If you read the 2019 business case for the project: https://assets.metrolinx.com/image/upload/Documents/Metrolinx/20191122_BoardMtg_Niagara_IBC.pdf

The service increases to GO's Niagara services which began in May of this year (equivalent to option 1) will be $66 million in net present benefits to society despite the financial case for GO being in the negative. The luxury of VIA not being a public transit provider is that it like GO can choose to focus more on the economic case for a project over the financial case. Whether it does or not in practice is a different story.

I find that VIA straddles between minimizing its required subsidy and offering an essential transportation service to the communities it serves. In the Annual Public Meeting Q&A people are asking "Why is the train so expensive?" and Does "VIA Rail (have) any concrete plans to make its services more affordable
to Canadians in the coming years. If so, what are they?" The train is available, but it's not very price accessible for many.
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Metrolinx is a policy tool, which is not expected to run without a subsidy. VIA’s Corridor services (unlike its Remote or Transcontinental seevices) are run on a commercial basis with an expectation to fully recover their direct operating costs.

littlewill1166 said:
Zero on-train service staff (except the driver) is not unprecedented on a federally regulated railway in Canada. Both the Trillium Line and the Confederation Line in Ottawa are federally regulated railways (operating as Capital Railway).
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My understanding is that both, the Trilium and Confederation Line are concessioned as Light Rails rather than Heavy Rail and that this allowed them to get around the two-drivers requirement.

littlewill1166 said:
I'm not saying VIA should get rid of all their onboard staff, but staffing levels should be commensurate with the level of service offered and whether it can be done safely. GO operated the Toronto-London and the Toronto-Niagara routes with one onboard CSA, VIA could choose to do the same if they want to offer a low-cost service.
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Refer to the 2012 Burlington derailment report, where the practice of VIA operating with only one OTS member was identified as a risk factor (I guess the difference between VIA and GO is that unassisted evacuation is much easier with a much lower boarding height):
IMG_3301.jpeg


littlewill1166 said:
I hate to say it, but I'm not sure the on-board staff were able to do much last year during the snowstorm according to this article: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/loca...ronto-via-rail-trip-into-a-winter-horror-show
Click to expand...
In most other countries (especially developped ones), coordinating a disaster-response would be the responsibility of the authorities and not of private or public companies, as hardly any company has the required scale to justify maintaining such capabilities…

littlewill1166 said:
This is somewhat common even on this forum😉.
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I don’t know if this was a dig at me, but I’m not saying that ideas proposed here are impossible, as I rather raise the issues which need to be addressed before an idea might become something which would actually be implementable…
 
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Urban Sky said:
This really makes me wonder what you got to say about evacuating a 12- car bilevel GO train (i.e. 2000 seats spread across almost 50 seperate passenger areas) with one single attendant…
Click to expand...
And this is a key point in why I don't think a reg would make a whole lot of sense right now. To come up with a single number, either per car or passenger, that makes sense for intercity days trains, sleepers, commuter service and regional trains providing near subway level service really doesn't strike me as realistic. At the same time actually distinguishing begs the question of just what is supposed to distinguish the type of incident each type of train is exposed to. I suppose that if we MUST regulate this I'd suggest something akin to what's done with airline's internal rulebooks, wherein the book itself is subject to approval and breaches of company policy are in and of themself themselves a regulatory issue.
 
crs1026 said:
This really isn't much different a standard than on airplanes, where safety briefings address the emergency exits and the people sitting in the extra legroom seats by the emergency exists are enlisted to assist other people out the exit in an emergency. (I'm not actually confident that they always would, and that includes myself - hopefully we never find out.) Worst case, there may or may not be a flight attendant available to manage the evacuation.
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Ummm what?

Airlines are very different. There's maximum ratios (50 pax per flight attendant) and usually a manning requirement for the doors with at least one attendant per pair of doors. Most long haul widebody flights (over water) have one attendant per main door. The likelihood of a passenger having to man the emergency exits themselves is actually rather low.
 
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