What is is badly needed in BC and Canada is regional railways.
Local pundits have called for faster and faster rail transit, with some even advocating for high speed rail (HST) for the Fraser Valley as the only way to get people out of their cars.
The current cost for the Expo Line extension to Langley is now in excess of $350 million/km and a stand alone HST would cost much more, when one factors in land acquisition and the larger kinematic envelope needed for HST.
Funding please!
Today, with gas costing anywhere between $1.40 to $1.80 a litre, but for the future, especially when we are facing the whims of a American President, who presently seems hell bent tariffs, invading Greenland and Panama and making Canada the 51st state, alternative transportation is a must.
What is needed is a network of user-friendly rail line to entice customers to rail and those willing to try a modern DMU or EMU for a somewhat longer but far more comfortable trip may find a slower train far more enticing.
Rail for the Valley’s, Leewood Study sees a 90 minute trip time from Chilliwack to Scott Road Station, about 30 minutes slower than taking the car, in perfect conditions.
Perfect conditions is more and more a rarity on Hwy.1!
For many, the extra 30 minutes travel time will be well worth not dealing with gridlock and congestion and just enjoying the journey itself. With the added prospect of sipping a fresh coffee from a ‘Bistro Car’ could just seal the deal, taking the train.
A slow train to Chilliwack, just maybe, will be the fast train to success!
Famous for its high-speed TGV trains, France is now seeing the launch of a new rail revolution – slow trains. John Lichfield looks at the ambitious plan to reconnect some of France’s forgotten areas through a rail co-operative and a new philosophy of rail travel.
Published: 26 January 2022
The slow trains would better connect rural France. Photo: Eric Cabanis/AFPFrance, the home of the Very Fast Train, is about to rediscover the Slow Train.From the end of this year, a new railway company, actually a cooperative, will offer affordable, long-distance travel between provincial towns and cities. The new trains – Trains à Grande Lenteur(TGL)?– will wander for hours along unused, or under-used, secondary lines.The first service will be from Bordeaux to Lyon, zig-zagging across the broad waist of France through Libourne, Périgueux, Limoges, Guéret, Montluçon and Roanne. Journey time: seven hours and 30 minutes.Other itineraries will eventually include: Caen to Toulouse, via Limoges in nine hours and 43 minutes and Le Croisic, in Brittany, to Basel in Switzerland, with 25 intermediate stops in 11 hours and 13 minutes.
To a railway lover like me such meandering journeys through La France Profonde sound marvellous. Can they possibly be a commercial proposition?
Some of the services, like Bordeaux-Lyon, were abandoned by the state railway company, the SNCF, several years ago. Others will be unbroken train journeys avoiding Paris which have never existed before – not even at the height of French railway boom at the end of the 19th century.
The venture has been made possible by the EU-inspired scrapping of SNCF’s monopoly on French rail passenger services. The Italian rail company Trenitalia is already competing on the high-speed TGV line between Lyon and Paris.
The low-speed trains also grow from an initiative by President Emmanuel Macron and his government to rescue some of France’s under-used, 19th century, local railways – a reversal of the policy adopted in Britain under Dr Richard Beeching from 1963.
The cross-country, slow train idea was formally approved by the rail regulator before Christmas. It has been developed by French public interest company called Railcoop (pronounced Rye-cope), which has already started its own freight service in south west France.
Ticket prices are still being calculated but they are forecast to be similar to the cost of “ride-sharing” on apps like BlaBla Car.
A little research shows that a Caen-Toulouse ticket might therefore be circa €30 for an almost ten-hour journey. SNCF currently demands between €50 and €90 for a seven-and-a-half-hour trip, including crossing Paris by Metro between Gares Saint Lazare and Montparnasse.
Maybe Railcoop is onto something after all.
The company/cooperative has over 11,000 members or “share-holders”, ranging from local authorities, businesses, pressure groups, railwaymen and women to future passengers. The minimum contribution for an individual is €100.
SNCF DMU X74502 at Valencay after arriving with train RE61277 the 1402 from Salbris
The plan is to reconnect towns ignored, or poorly served, by the Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV) high speed train revolution in France of the last 40 years. Parts of the Bordeaux-Lyon route are already covered by local passenger trains; other parts are now freight only.
For the time being it plans to lease and rebuild eight three carriage, diesel trains which have been made redundant in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.
There will be no space for a buffet or restaurant car. Restaurants and shops along the route will be invited to prepare local specialities which will be sold during station stops and eaten on board.
What a wonderful idea: French provincial meals on wheels; traiteurs on trains.
Olivia Wolanin of Railcoop told me: “We want to be part of the transition to a greener future, which is inevitably going to mean more train travel.
“We also want to offer journeys at a reasonable price to people who live in or want to visit parts of France where train services have all but vanished. We see ourselves as a service for people who have no cars – but also for people who DO have cars.”
Full disclosure. I am a fan of railways. I spent much of my childhood at Crewe station in Cheshire closely observing trains.
The government commissioned senior civil servant, and rail-lover, François Philizot to study the problem. After many delays, he reported that much of the French rail network was in a state of “collapse”. Far from turning out to be a French Beeching, he recommended that a few lines might have to close but most could and should be saved – either by national government or by regional governments.
Since then the Emmanuel Macron-Jean Castex government has promised a big new chunk of spending on “small lines” as part of its €100 billion three year Covid-recovery plan. Even more spending is needed but, for the first time since the TGV revolution began in 1981, big sums are to be spent on old lines in France as well as new ones.
The Railcoop cross-country network, to be completed by 2024-5, will run (at an average of 90 kph) partly on those tracks. Can it succeed where a similar German scheme failed?
François Philizot suggested in a recent interview with Le Monde that a revival of slow trains might work – so long as we accept that a greener future will also be a less frenetic future.
“When you’re not shooting across the country like an arrow at 300 kph, you can see much more and you can think for much longer,” Philizot said.
One of the interesting things about this concept is that many but not all, DMU and EMU designs can also be used in diesel and electric LRT operations. Ottawa’s Line #2 & #4, Austin’s Capital Metro (a DMU which operates as a Diesel LRT/Commuter Rail Hybrid or SMART (Sanoma-Marin Area Rail Transit) operating as a long range diesel LRT. Instead of diesel or electric LRV’s, they use specially geared EMU’s &DMU’s as a vehicle that can operate at the close distances between stations common on LRT routes, due to higher acceleration /deceleration levels compared to most mainline railway vehicles (This is one of main the definitions for a Light Rail Vehicle). Distances of 500m to 800m between stops is possible without severe speed restrictions on Ottawa’s Line#2 using these types of vehicles.
Since they are mainline railway vehicles they can operate on much longer lines as well and are well suited to regional travel distances as well as being cheaper to operate at distances of 25 km up to 150km . Especially compared to the Skytrains, which will have excessive part wear and maintenance issues if they operate continually on lines exceeding 40km. They just aren’t designed for it. Whereas, Ottawa’s original O-Train using Bombardier BR643 Talent #1 DMU’s operated on a 12 minute schedule over just a 8 km long mostly single track line for 20 years, before the maintenance contract with Bombardier was ended, mainly due to spare part issues, vehicle availability issues and costs. Bombardier refused to build more Talent #1 and insisted on the Talent #2, which was a pure regional rail vehicle and not suited to our line.
DMU’S &EMU’S are cheaper to run because they require less infrastructure to operate. Ottawa’s new Line #2 & Line #4 was able to build 24 km of route, on existing rail lines and extensions to the existing rail lines, keeping some single track sections but adding many lengthy stretches of double track sections. Upgrade the 6 existing Alstom Coradia Lint 41 DMU’s plus purchase 7 upgradeable and modular Stadler FLIRT DMU’s and put them in a new yard and maintenance facility. While currently operating on a 12 minute, soon to be a 10 minute schedule, with all new station platforms that are all at the least, 85 m long. We did all this for $810 Million + a 27 year, $827 Million operating contract for a total of $1.6 Billion.
Oh boy, I was on a date while talking to some friends at a bar here in Ottawa, by itself that’s just dangerous and I should have really chosen my words more carefully.
What happened is that, someone within a group of people, all from Vancouver, didn’t like opinion of mine about the high costs of rapid transit construction, especially tunnels. Now they and one young man in particular, let me have it. Most were in their 20’s and early 30’s, many former UBC students and began squawking about many points like, Broadway is the busiest and other points to which I replied to in kind, one at a time. Now they went really quiet when my companion told them, “guys he’s actually a professional transit planner and he’s been doing this longer than many of you have been alive!” I told them about how many other cities are building many more km’s of track at less or the same costs. Even when paying very high prices in Montreal and Toronto, their subway and Metro tunnel projects are moving an order of magnitude more passengers than Broadway ever will.
When I pointed out that, even GO Transit’s $25 Billion to $30 Billion Regional Rail Expansion Project, a project 4 to 6 times the cost of the UBC expansion (believed to cost anywhere from $6 – $10 Billion), is currently building no fewer than 150+ km of electric mainline railways, with a 15 minute service frequency, all day everyday. Plus, 150+ km of improved diesel mainline railway service, with a hourly frequency, all day everyday, serving a population (The Greater Golden Horseshoe) of now more than 10.8 million people. You guys in Vancouver get 6km – 7km of Skytrain, where the GGH Region spends 4 times that but gets 300km+ of high capacity regional rail.
UBCx, with at most 6-7km of tunnel, will serve at most 50,000 people a day on opening day and probably be the last Skytrain line or the last one for a considerably long time. What I think made the young lad at the centre of the group mad enough to try and hit me was that the Millennium Line will only move 7,500 p/h/d max because of signaling limitations.
Where as existing Toronto & Montreal Metro & Subway lines easily move 3.5 times that per hour per direction. On top of that, the upgraded Line#1 in Toronto, thanks to its CBTC system, can currently move 4 to 4.5 times the Millennium Line. Toronto and Montreal Subway and Metro lines don’t cost that much more to build. Current tunnel costs put a tunneled Skytrain line between 60% & 80% of the capital costs of a deep tunneled, Toronto Subway line. “So who’s getting screwed?”, I replied.
The young lad then made fun of Ottawa’s LRT lines. “Yes, we have had issues with our LRT project here but we’ve only spent $6.7 Billion for Stage 1 & 2 of our network and we got 2 lines both with w branches, 6.5 – 7 km’s of tunnels, 64km of service, 72 LRV’s & 7 new DMU’s and 6 upgraded DMU’s.Our trains are bigger and our lines have more passenger cappacity than your Skytrain lines”
The group went silent. l continued, “you guys are spending $6 Billion+ on a 16 km long line to nowhere (Langley) and that doesn’t include the trains. Further, the cost of that line has gone up almost 4 times it’s original boasted cost and went over budget again. You are only just beginning the construction process and the Province of B.C. will have to cover the over run costs. Both the Arbutus and Langley Extensions are not being supported by any local money, its all federal and provincial money. It will be the same for UBCx as well because Translink is broke!. Where the City of Ottawa had to cover 38% of stage 1 & stage 2 of our LRT program. How’s that fair? We had to freeze local transit capital funding until 2031. So unless the province and the Fed’s are feeling generous, we won’t get anything until then”
Then the young lad swung at me, he thankfully missed.
One of the interesting things about this concept is that many but not all, DMU and EMU designs can also be used in diesel and electric LRT operations. Ottawa’s Line #2 & #4, Austin’s Capital Metro (a DMU which operates as a Diesel LRT/Commuter Rail Hybrid or SMART (Sanoma-Marin Area Rail Transit) operating as a long range diesel LRT. Instead of diesel or electric LRV’s, they use specially geared EMU’s &DMU’s as a vehicle that can operate at the close distances between stations common on LRT routes, due to higher acceleration /deceleration levels compared to most mainline railway vehicles (This is one of main the definitions for a Light Rail Vehicle). Distances of 500m to 800m between stops is possible without severe speed restrictions on Ottawa’s Line#2 using these types of vehicles.
Since they are mainline railway vehicles they can operate on much longer lines as well and are well suited to regional travel distances as well as being cheaper to operate at distances of 25 km up to 150km . Especially compared to the Skytrains, which will have excessive part wear and maintenance issues if they operate continually on lines exceeding 40km. They just aren’t designed for it. Whereas, Ottawa’s original O-Train using Bombardier BR643 Talent #1 DMU’s operated on a 12 minute schedule over just a 8 km long mostly single track line for 20 years, before the maintenance contract with Bombardier was ended, mainly due to spare part issues, vehicle availability issues and costs. Bombardier refused to build more Talent #1 and insisted on the Talent #2, which was a pure regional rail vehicle and not suited to our line.
DMU’S &EMU’S are cheaper to run because they require less infrastructure to operate. Ottawa’s new Line #2 & Line #4 was able to build 24 km of route, on existing rail lines and extensions to the existing rail lines, keeping some single track sections but adding many lengthy stretches of double track sections. Upgrade the 6 existing Alstom Coradia Lint 41 DMU’s plus purchase 7 upgradeable and modular Stadler FLIRT DMU’s and put them in a new yard and maintenance facility. While currently operating on a 12 minute, soon to be a 10 minute schedule, with all new station platforms that are all at the least, 85 m long. We did all this for $810 Million + a 27 year, $827 Million operating contract for a total of $1.6 Billion.
Oh boy, I was on a date while talking to some friends at a bar here in Ottawa, by itself that’s just dangerous and I should have really chosen my words more carefully.
What happened is that, someone within a group of people, all from Vancouver, didn’t like opinion of mine about the high costs of rapid transit construction, especially tunnels. Now they and one young man in particular, let me have it. Most were in their 20’s and early 30’s, many former UBC students and began squawking about many points like, Broadway is the busiest and other points to which I replied to in kind, one at a time. Now they went really quiet when my companion told them, “guys he’s actually a professional transit planner and he’s been doing this longer than many of you have been alive!” I told them about how many other cities are building many more km’s of track at less or the same costs. Even when paying very high prices in Montreal and Toronto, their subway and Metro tunnel projects are moving an order of magnitude more passengers than Broadway ever will.
When I pointed out that, even GO Transit’s $25 Billion to $30 Billion Regional Rail Expansion Project, a project 4 to 6 times the cost of the UBC expansion (believed to cost anywhere from $6 – $10 Billion), is currently building no fewer than 150+ km of electric mainline railways, with a 15 minute service frequency, all day everyday. Plus, 150+ km of improved diesel mainline railway service, with a hourly frequency, all day everyday, serving a population (The Greater Golden Horseshoe) of now more than 10.8 million people. You guys in Vancouver get 6km – 7km of Skytrain, where the GGH Region spends 4 times that but gets 300km+ of high capacity regional rail.
UBCx, with at most 6-7km of tunnel, will serve at most 50,000 people a day on opening day and probably be the last Skytrain line or the last one for a considerably long time. What I think made the young lad at the centre of the group mad enough to try and hit me was that the Millennium Line will only move 7,500 p/h/d max because of signaling limitations.
Where as existing Toronto & Montreal Metro & Subway lines easily move 3.5 times that per hour per direction. On top of that, the upgraded Line#1 in Toronto, thanks to its CBTC system, can currently move 4 to 4.5 times the Millennium Line. Toronto and Montreal Subway and Metro lines don’t cost that much more to build. Current tunnel costs put a tunneled Skytrain line between 60% & 80% of the capital costs of a deep tunneled, Toronto Subway line. “So who’s getting screwed?”, I replied.
The young lad then made fun of Ottawa’s LRT lines. “Yes, we have had issues with our LRT project here but we’ve only spent $6.7 Billion for Stage 1 & 2 of our network and we got 2 lines both with w branches, 6.5 – 7 km’s of tunnels, 64km of service, 72 LRV’s & 7 new DMU’s and 6 upgraded DMU’s.Our trains are bigger and our lines have more passenger cappacity than your Skytrain lines”
The group went silent. l continued, “you guys are spending $6 Billion+ on a 16 km long line to nowhere (Langley) and that doesn’t include the trains. Further, the cost of that line has gone up almost 4 times it’s original boasted cost and went over budget again. You are only just beginning the construction process and the Province of B.C. will have to cover the over run costs. Both the Arbutus and Langley Extensions are not being supported by any local money, its all federal and provincial money. It will be the same for UBCx as well because Translink is broke!. Where the City of Ottawa had to cover 38% of stage 1 & stage 2 of our LRT program. How’s that fair? We had to freeze local transit capital funding until 2031. So unless the province and the Fed’s are feeling generous, we won’t get anything until then”
Then the young lad swung at me, he thankfully missed.
Happy Thanksgiving Weekend everyone!