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Aldershot is there because it’s Via trying to serve Hamilton, not Burlington. Hamilton just doesn’t have a train station on the line.
Indeed, VIA consolidated its existing stations at Hamilton, Dundas and Burlington at Aldershot on May 25, 1992.

Just a short operational history of these 4 stations:

Hamilton
Hamilton's CN Station at James Street North was used by almost all its Toronto-Brantford-London trains until April 1962:
1639365342460.png

Source: CN timetable effective 1961-10-29

On April 29, 1962, all such trains dropped Hamilton as a stop (thus saving approximately 20 minutes in travel time), except for eastbound westbound trains 77 (the morning Toronto-London train), 9 (the Toronto-Windsor night train) and 15 (the Toronto-Chicago night train called "International Ltd."):
1639366084226.png

Source: CN timetable effective 1962-04-29

Train 77 had its last scheduled run on December 31, 1964, the "International Ltd." its last scheduled stop in Hamilton on October 29, 1966 and the night train Toronto-Windsor ceased operation on June 30, 1967.

Nevertheless, the Toronto-Niagara Falls service continued to serve Hamilton until April 24, 1992:

1639366843375.png

Source: VIA timetable effective 1992-04-26


Dundas
Dundas had always been a minor stop for CN, but initially, they tried to ensure connectivity between London and Hamilton, by rerouting terminating its Niagara-Toronto services via at Dundas (the schedule indeed seems to suggest that the RDCs from Niagara-Hamilton were attached to London-Toronto trains, but the fact that they arrived only a few minutes before they returned towards Niagara suggests otherwise):

1639368135376.png

Source: CN timetable effective 1962-04-29

However, within months that experiment was dropped in favor of having passengers connect at Burlington or running a connecting bus between Hamilton and Dundas. VIA inherited that connecting bus service to selected departures of the Toronto-London service and rerouted it first to Brantford (in April 1977) and soon after to Burlington (in October 1978), before discontinuing it in November 1987.

Nevertheless, the stop at Dundas survived until May 24, 1992:

1639368582097.png

Source: VIA timetable effective 1992-04-26


Burlington

Most, though not all CN services stopped at Burlington and VIA continued to do so until May 24, 1992.


Aldershot

Aldershot was only used by 1-2 of CN's Hamilton-Toronto commuter trains until the stop disappeared with the timetable change on 1965-10-31 (after which the station was not used by any intercity trains until VIA decided to consolidate its Burlington/Hamilton/Dundas stops on May 25, 1992 at GO’s new station which had been built approximately 0.3 miles East of the old location):

1639373326589.png

Source: CN timetable effective 1965-04-25


***


With all of that said, I can see VIA returning to stop at GO's West Harbour Station, but only if CN allows GO to build a connection from GO's platforms to its main tracks (which would shave quite a few minutes off GO's weekday commuter service from/to Niagara Falls) and obviously only for the Maple Leaf, as for Toronto-London-Windsor trains, the penalty of going via Hamilton will always be too much of an inconvenience. This is why I struggle to imagine that they would move their stop back to Burlington, as it would be quite a bit further from Hamilton, but in the end, Hamilton is located at the wrong rail corridor...
 
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With all of that said, what's the implication here? The only thing which holds VIA's Corridor services in the red is the massive amount of overheads and other non-direct costs it absorbs. The growth path shown between 2014 and 2019 demonstrates that there clearly is a way for VIA to outgrow its non-direct costs by increasing its services further - without the need for massively reducing its travel times at a great expense. All it needs is the infrastructure access and fleet to do so - and these are exactly the gaps which HFR would fill...


Have a good night!
Being a CPA, I almost cried reading your post (in a good way)

FP&A teams have access to pretty incredible data that would never make it's way in a publicly reported publication (such as an annual report) and they're pretty amazing at working with network planning. It's the same thing with airlines, and trust me they do it pretty efficiently with a lot more uncertainty than Via.
 
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...one of the most central differences between both philosophies is the treatment of overhead and other fixed costs (Financial Accounting seeks to somehow allocate them across the various activities in the least arbitrary way possible, ...)

That one phrase says a lot. While some fixed costs are easy to allocate to a specific service (ex. costs associated with a station that is used exclusively by corridor trains can be attributed to corridor service), costs that are shared by multiple (or all) services can be more difficult to allocate in a fair way.
 
That one phrase says a lot. While some fixed costs are easy to allocate to a specific service (ex. costs associated with a station that is used exclusively by corridor trains can be attributed to corridor service), costs that are shared by multiple (or all) services can be more difficult to allocate in a fair way.
Typically you'd allocated using a prorated value like ridership and that would provide a strong basis for auditors. However, Via doesn't present segmented information by service in their audited financial statements. The annual report mentions it, but it's a grey zone from an accounting standpoint since it's unaudited (which means that they basically can say whatever they want provided that it's generally in line with what the audited FS say). They can use managerial accounting notions in the MD&A portion of the report if they so choose.
 
Typically you'd allocated using a prorated value like ridership and that would provide a strong basis for auditors. However, Via doesn't present segmented information by service in their audited financial statements. The annual report mentions it, but it's a grey zone from an accounting standpoint since it's unaudited (which means that they basically can say whatever they want provided that it's generally in line with what the audited FS say). They can use managerial accounting notions in the MD&A portion of the report if they so choose.

Do you use the number of passengers boarding/alighting each train, the revenue generated from those boardings/alightings, or the total revenue from the train(s), or some factor of the perceived value? Things get even more complicated when you look at trains like the Ocean, which serves as an additional corridor train between Montreal and Sainte-Foy. The passengers that travel east of Sainte-Foy generate more revenue, but their direct costs are also higher, so is it fair to assign a higher percentage of the in-direct costs to it?

One thing to consider is having VIA transfer ownership and responsibility of stations that they own outside of the corridor to the local government. Those non-corridor stations are underutilized and the local government is better able to find alternate uses for the station when not needed by VIA.
 
So, guess they missed the promise for "launching the HFR procurement process" in the Fall.

True, but I think that promise was made before the federal election. Is it possible that VIA had to delay it because of the election and while they waited for a new Minister to be sworn in?
 
True, but I think that promise was made before the federal election. Is it possible that VIA had to delay it because of the election and while they waited for a new Minister to be sworn in?

It was a promise made in the run up to the election. Basically an election promise. If they didn't have the ability to meet it, why make the promise? Alghabra could have easily pledged a January launch.
 

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