I`m starting to think that VIA should just be sold to the highest bidder.
And what sort of private investor exactly would pay the government money to acquire a business unit which requires $265.3 Million per year [1] in federal subsidies just to cover its operational expenses? What kind of assets would they sell to recover the acquisition price? An
obsolete fleet which is between 23 and 75 years old? Trust me, if VIA owned any assets which the federal government could gain significant privatization revenues from, they would have already sold them in 1990...
The whole system is so political now that, that I think the public would be better served.
Why should a business which relies on the federal taxpayer to cover 42% of its operating expenses [2] not be political? The taxpayers need to be assured that such a company is accountable to the Nation which ensures its existence and rightly expects a reasonable level of service in return...
VIA would be a cash cow for Ottawa which could then turn around and put that money into urban infrastructure and needed highway expansion that people will actually use.
These "splinter line" only account for 46.6% of VIA's deficit [3], meaning that more than half of VIA's operating subsidies (and a much higher share of its operational funding) go to the Corridor.
VIA would be a cash cow for Ottawa which could then turn around and put that money into urban infrastructure and needed highway expansion that people will actually use.
Can you name one country in the world where the passenger railway system is profitable from a government/national point of view and allows them to cross-subsidize other modes? Also, how would the federal government be able to extract these profits from VIA if they follow your recommendation to privatize it?
The Canadian and other lines could be bought by private companies for tourist routes.
Why would a private operator buy a service like the Canadian which currently looses $41.2 million per year (representing a deficit of 35.2% of its operating costs) [3] for any other reason than to terminate the competition to its own tourist operations and how would this benefit this country as a major tourist destination? By the way, the other non-Corridor routes even lost $97.95 million last year or 84.1% of their operating costs [4]...
As it stands right now VIA offers passable service to a few and abysmal service outside The Corridor...……...no one gets served well where selling it would provide far superior service to a smaller area to people who actually use it.
How would a private owner of VIA circumvent the challenges under which VIA operates, such as the very constrained frequencies, travel times and punctuality its host railways are willing to provide?
I am a Vancouverite so I certainly can`t be accused of being biased [...]
Why exactly would you residing in a certain corner of this country exempt you from any suspicion of bias? Quite on the contrary, it's difficult to understand VIA's national importance if you are living so peripheral to this country's population and rail passengers...
[..] but the reality is that if VIA was to stop all service in Western Canada, 99% of the population wouldn`t even notice and even fewer would care. People here would far rather have VIA sold [...]
Then how do you explain that VIA Rail is regarded as
most trusted,
most sustainable and environmental responsible and
most socially responsible and ethical among transportation providers in the Dalhousie's Social License to Operate (SLO) ranking if non-users (which are admittedly the overwhelming majority of Canadians in any given year) don't care about it?
Source:
Dalhousie University (2017, pp. 6+8)
[..] and the portion made by the sale in their province go towards the infrastructure they will use as opposed to subsidies they won`t.
How many km of Subway could you actually build every year if you were to somehow remove VIA's operating subsidy of $265.3 million and why would it matter on a national scale ($7.31 per Canadian)?
[1]
2017 Annual Report, p.8
[2] 2017 Annual Report, p.8: Operating loss ($265.3 million) divided by Total Operating expenses ($631.0 million)
[3] 2017 Annual Report, p.9: Shortfall ($41.23 million) divided by Costs ($117.17 million)
[4] 2017 Annual Report, p.9: Shortfall ($265.33-$141.74-$41.23=$82.35 million) divided by Costs ($631.00-$415.87-$117.17=$97.95 million)
A grade separation or bypass would be required in Smiths Falls, I'm sure if the dedicated route through Peterborough is ever used. I still remain very skeptical of the idea - there are several reasons why CP built the Belleville Sub one hundred years ago for its through trains and abandoned the Havelock Sub - its original mainline - in the 1980s.
I've read this claim (that CP saw the Belleville Sub as much superior to the Havelock Sub for passenger operations) quite frequently, but I struggle to back it up with actual timetable data: as you can see below, the number of inter-city trains operated via Belleville was only higher than those routed via Havelock around the 1920s, while passenger service was abandoned on both routes on the same day (
January 23, 1966) and service between Toronto and Havelock still survived (with one interruption in the 1980s) until the fatal 1990 cuts. Also, even though the trains routed via Belleville tended to take less travel time than those via Havelock, the record set by the October 1965 CP timetable (i.e. the last timetable for this service) for both routes are only 5 minutes apart.
Sources: official Canadian Pacific Railway timetables from
1913/06/01,
1915/06/27,
1920/04/01,
1930/05/18,
1939/02/05,
1945/06/25,
1950/04/30,
1955/04/24,
1960/04/24,
1962/04/29 and
1965/10/31.
