[crs1026]

... and they are worried about the undue traffic jams that 10 trains a day might cause.

It's a bit comical, but it's more disturbing..... one would think that there would have been outreach so that town councils are better informed and don't make this kind of misstatement to constituents. Would love to see the faces when they find out how HFR will impact those crossings.

If Ottawa intends to approve first, and consult second, and maybe slide some key details by in dark of night, they must be using the same PR consultants that Metrolinx uses.

- Paul

 

[kEiThZ]

The problem for VIA {besides too little funding and grotesque political interference} is that it has a HUGE financial burden it is going to have to overcome in the next 20 years............decarbonizing it's fleet.

20 years is a long time.

And in that time technology is going to improve substantially, contributing to a lower cost of electrification. Given how efficient trains already are and that carbon taxes, hurt driving and flying more, there's no need to even really look at electrification until they can have built out the whole corridor and demand is such that they have half-hourly service. That's probably 2035 or beyond. That said, the Liberals virtue signalling by spending $2B in HFR electrification isn't beyond them.

 

[kEiThZ]

The mayor of Perth hasn't given up on an HFR stop:

Mayor Fenik hopes VIA considers Perth as High-Frequency stop - Lake 88.1

Fenik described the idea as a "game-changer" for residents of Perth.

lake88.ca

I really hope VIA gets to pass on this. For every rider that Perth adds, they might lose 2-3 in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal from the train slowing down for Perth.

If they need a stop between Peterborough and Smiths Falls, put it near Kaladar to ensure even access all around.

It's a bit comical, but it's more disturbing..... one would think that there would have been outreach so that town councils are better informed and don't make this kind of misstatement to constituents. Would love to see the faces when they find out how HFR will impact those crossings.

I'm thinking they only talked to the towns getting service improvements. And maybe ones where lots of work, track relocation, etc may be necessary.

 

[lenaitch]

The entire stretch between P'boro and Perth, particularly Perth to Medoc, is so economically depressed that they probably got excited with 'we're getting train service . . oh, wait'. I suspect much of the initial enthusiasm of enroute communities will wane once they realize that the only impact will be trains running through.

Kaladar would be an odd choice. Other than somewhat geographically central (~80km to Perth, ~110 to P'boro), there is no there, there. Folks in communities east of there aren't going to travel upwards of 80km west to travel back east, considering Perth to Smiths Falls is only 20 km.

 

[Allandale25]

^ Express and local HFR trains. Is it really that hard? There's already a train that stops once a day in Napanee, isn't there?

 

[crs1026]

^ I seem to recall that someone (YDS?) had made noises about how Perth would be a good place for a stop, but that doesn’t imply every train needs to stop there. One or two a day in each direction would not create any big concerns. We don’t know how many will stop in Smiths Falls, for that matter, so maybe one stop would be offset by not stopping at the other town.

Perth does have enough people and traffic, and busy streets with grade crossings, that one would hope they know what may be coming.

- Paul

 

[ssiguy2]

This is where HSR/HFR become so political.

It's like Wynne's back-of-a-napkin HSR line to London. As soon as it was announced every little town wanted a stop essentially taking the high speed out of high speed rail. Of course the politicians in those ridings, despite most of them never even having set foot on a train in their lifetimes, oblige them with the prospect of a nice juicy ribbon cutting ceremony on their new HSR station just before the next election.

 

[kEiThZ]

The entire stretch between P'boro and Perth, particularly Perth to Medoc, is so economically depressed that they probably got excited with 'we're getting train service . . oh, wait'. I suspect much of the initial enthusiasm of enroute communities will wane once they realize that the only impact will be trains running through.

Train service isn't going to fix what ails them. And stopping at every town will only turn HFR into crap service that nobody in the metros wants to use. These towns of 5000 are generating something like 1-2 riders per train. Literally costs more stopping and accelerating back than they pay in fares.

Kaladar would be an odd choice. Other than somewhat geographically central (~80km to Perth, ~110 to P'boro), there is no there, there. Folks in communities east of there aren't going to travel upwards of 80km west to travel back east, considering Perth to Smiths Falls is only 20 km.

Kaladar creates two stretches of 100 km. This means nobody is more than 50 km from a train station. 40 mins on Hwy 7. They can run a shuttle van between stations if necessary.

That's if VIA is pressed. My preference would be for a new alignment between Peterborough and Smiths Falls that avoids most of these towns entirely, and increases the average running speed.

 

[kEiThZ]

It's like Wynne's back-of-a-napkin HSR line to London. As soon as it was announced every little town wanted a stop essentially taking the high speed out of high speed rail.

That is actually not what happened. Farmers between Kitchener and London protested the new alignment and were opposed entirely. When it became obvious their NIMBYism looked bad, they suggested that the existing line be upgraded and that they just wanted service at Stratford and Saint Mary's..... As long as no new alignment was built.

 

[crs1026]

Train service isn't going to fix what ails them. And stopping at every town will only turn HFR into crap service that nobody in the metros wants to use. These towns of 5000 are generating something like 1-2 riders per train. Literally costs more stopping and accelerating back than they pay in fares.

One or two Perth-Ottawa riders isn’t worth it but there’s a revenue threshold where even two Perth-Windsor riders per day may be worth the cost of a small platform. As noted, one or two trains making a stop (and skipping other stops) is not going to hurt VIA’s through ridership. ( A point that has been argued strenuously over the life of this thread whenever trip time and local/express concerns are raised )

VIA’s pre-covid corridor schedules are pretty clever at how they insert local stops in trains that don’t stop in that many places. I can see Perth/Smiths Falls as having the same duality as say Trenton Jct/Belleville. Perth has marketable attractions so of all the small towns, it’s one that I can accept. Sharbot Lake is a purely political proposition, although as a cottage country destination one might see a few summer telecommuters or weekend users. (I say this as someone whose family members made good use of the Highway 7 bus - parents spend the summer at the cottage, kids work but come up on weekends kind of thing). I can’t see any other places between Perth and Tweed (same pop as Perth) warranting a stop.

Consider also that Perth, Sharbot Lake, and Tweed will likely all have heavy speed restrictions due to curvature and awkward road-track angles. If the train has to slow to 30 mph anyways, a full stop is not that big a disruption.

Havelock-Toronto is a huge Pandora’s box in terms of political pressure for local rail service. I won’t cycle through that, except to say that Ontario’s destiny lies in planning development with discipline and not yielding to everyone’s desire to grow.

- Paul

That's if VIA is pressed. My preference would be for a new alignment between Peterborough and Smiths Falls that avoids most of these towns entirely, and increases the average running speed.

That’s when we get to HSR, some day. If the current government has decided to move that forward, then I’m reaching for my napkin and crayon to point out how Highway 7 is likely a more expensive route to build new track than other alignments. But I think HFR is still pretty much the plan, so that’s moot. If VIA can squeeze in some local stops for now, that’s good politics, considering that places like Tweed, Perth, and Sharbot Lake will be seriously impacted when track is laid and trains start rolling through twice an hour.

- Paul

 

[Allandale25]

HFR is noted by @crs1026 in his post here:

GO Transit: Construction Projects (Metrolinx, various)

Maybe send an email and ask? York.Region@Metrolinx.com Are you sure that's not an internal email? My email was blocked...

urbantoronto.ca

 

[MisterF]

Via Rail already serves several towns in the 5000 population ballpark in the Corridor. Casselman, Glencoe and Gananoque to name a few. Having barebones stations in towns of that size is hardly unusual. I don't know how many people use them but it's obviously more than 1-2 per train, and it's enough to make it worth having some basic service. That doesn't turn the overall service into crap at all; most trains just go through without even slowing down.

 

[roger1818]

Here are the populations and old CPR mileposts of the significant communities between Smiths Falls and Peterborough (I used this old schedule to calculate the mileposts).

Town	Population (2016)	Milepost
Smiths Falls*	8,780	0
Perth	5,930	11.6
Central Frontenac (Sharbot Lake)**	4,373	36.8
Addington Highlands (Kaladar)**	2,323	61.7
Tweed	6,044	77.9
Havelock	4,530	109.1
Peterborough	84,230	133.4

* Based on the location of the old Smiths Falls station. The new station is about 1km (0.6 miles) north of the old one.
** I couldn't get recent populations for Sharbot Lake and Kaladar, so I had to use the populations of Central Frontenac and Addington Highlands instead.

As @crs1026 said, Perth and Tweed have similar populations and they aren't that much smaller than Smiths Falls. Other than being the closest town to the half way point (within 5 miles), I really don't see any value in a stop at Kaladar. If a halfway stop is needed, Tweed is only 11.2 miles from the halfway point and it has almost triple Addington Highlands' population.

As for Perth, having some trains stop there instead of Smiths Falls might be doable. They can't really add additional occasional stops since the position of the passing tracks will be designed to have the trains meet at exactly the same time and a small delay to one train would be cascaded to all of the oncoming trains and the delays to those trains will be cascaded to the trains behind the initially delayed train, and so on. Moving a stop 11.6 miles up the track shouldn't have much effect, especially since they will likely effectively have double track between Smiths Falls and Perth, assuming they can use CP's track occasionally.

Alternatively HFR trains could skip Smiths Falls altogether (it will still be served by the Kingston regional trains) and have HFR trains stop in Perth instead.

As for Sharbot Lake, I think it was less of a political decision and more that it (in combination with Tweed, divide the route in thirds nicely. As @crs1026 said, while its population is small, it is cottage country and could get some tourist use. For reasons stated above, it could be difficult to add or remove seasonally.

Once we eventually get to the point where we have also built HSR, the HFR route could continue to provide regional service, not only to serve these communities, but to provide a more affordable intercity option for those who don't want to pay for an HSR ticket. Keeping that in mind when building HFR isn't a bad thing.

 

[crs1026]

As for Perth, having some trains stop there instead of Smiths Falls might be doable. They can't really add additional occasional stops since the position of the passing tracks will be designed to have the trains meet at exactly the same time and a small delay to one train would be cascaded to all of the oncoming trains and the delays to those trains will be cascaded to the trains behind the initially delayed train, and so on. Moving a stop 11.6 miles up the track shouldn't have much effect, especially since they will likely effectively have double track between Smiths Falls and Perth, assuming they can use CP's track occasionally.

I'm not so sure that CP will want any interconnection at all. I would be concerned if the siding locations are "designed" around a particular service pattern. That would tie VIA's feet to the floor in their whole operation. I would hope that the line is build with sufficient sidings, at a fairly close spacing, so that any variability in schedule (either by changing the plan, or through stuff that happens day to day) can be managed by moving meets ad hoc.

In the rougher areas, it makes sense to put the sidings where they were originally built - one would want to minimise the need for new grading that might imply blasting rock or adding fills. There were enough sidings in the steam era that there are wide, flat stretches where sidings can be restored at minimum cost.

If that's the case, then having trip times vary between runs is not such an issue, even without much double track.

- Paul

 

[lenaitch]

Here are the populations and old CPR mileposts of the significant communities between Smiths Falls and Peterborough (I used this old schedule to calculate the mileposts).

Town	Population (2016)	Milepost
Smiths Falls*	8,780	0
Perth	5,930	11.6
Central Frontenac (Sharbot Lake)**	4,373	36.8
Addington Highlands (Kaladar)**	2,323	61.7
Tweed	6,044	77.9
Havelock	4,530	109.1
Peterborough	84,230	133.4

* Based on the location of the old Smiths Falls station. The new station is about 1km (0.6 miles) north of the old one.
** I couldn't get recent populations for Sharbot Lake and Kaladar, so I had to use the populations of Central Frontenac and Addington Highlands instead.

As @crs1026 said, Perth and Tweed have similar populations and they aren't that much smaller than Smiths Falls. Other than being the closest town to the half way point (within 5 miles), I really don't see any value in a stop at Kaladar. If a halfway stop is needed, Tweed is only 11.2 miles from the halfway point and it has almost triple Addington Highlands' population.

As for Perth, having some trains stop there instead of Smiths Falls might be doable. They can't really add additional occasional stops since the position of the passing tracks will be designed to have the trains meet at exactly the same time and a small delay to one train would be cascaded to all of the oncoming trains and the delays to those trains will be cascaded to the trains behind the initially delayed train, and so on. Moving a stop 11.6 miles up the track shouldn't have much effect, especially since they will likely effectively have double track between Smiths Falls and Perth, assuming they can use CP's track occasionally.

Alternatively HFR trains could skip Smiths Falls altogether (it will still be served by the Kingston regional trains) and have HFR trains stop in Perth instead.

As for Sharbot Lake, I think it was less of a political decision and more that it (in combination with Tweed, divide the route in thirds nicely. As @crs1026 said, while its population is small, it is cottage country and could get some tourist use. For reasons stated above, it could be difficult to add or remove seasonally.

Once we eventually get to the point where we have also built HSR, the HFR route could continue to provide regional service, not only to serve these communities, but to provide a more affordable intercity option for those who don't want to pay for an HSR ticket. Keeping that in mind when building HFR isn't a bad thing.

It's pretty hard to get settlement populations in many rural areas because of amalgamation. Sharbot Lake is generally considered to be around 1400-1500 (wife used to live there). Kaladar was trickier but I did find a real estate profile that said around 500-600 which, from my observations, might be using generous boundaries.