nfitz
Superstar
Because it would take 14-hours to get to New York City, rather than the current 13:55.
Obviously trains are going to stop in Hamilton.
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- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
Obviously trains are going to stop in Hamilton.
micheal_can
Senior Member
The issue is you will be running the wrong way for part of that route which complicates matters. There is no way to go west from Hamilton without going back down the way they came.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
This is so obviously silly that it‘s not clear to me why it would merit a serious response...
Adding a stop is a decision made by comparing the incremental costs with the incremental benefits to determine whether the latter can possibly offset the former.Because it would take 14-hours to get to New York City, rather than the current 13:55.
Obviously trains are going to stop in Hamilton.
The cost of stopping at Hamilton is that only the tracks laid by Metrolinx have a platform at West Harbour GO station and that you therefore limit the number of possible routings in the Hanilton area. The only benefit of stopping at Hamilton is to passengers travelling beyond the border, as for all possible destinations on the Canadian side, GO provides a more frequent, less expensive and more reliable service.
In other words: would you risk seeing Train 97 being regularly delayed by 5-15 minutes at Hamilton Junction waiting for a path to clear into West Harbour GO station just to pick up 2-3 passengers which would have otherwise (been) driven to Aldershot instead?
The calculation becomes very different once Hamilton can actually be served by a usable intercity rail service (or platforms are added to the outer CN track), but until then, adding this stop would likely make the service even less and not more attractive…
nfitz
Superstar
No - that's not how it's done.
Adding stops and trains invariably happens when a politician puts their boot up someone arse. And keeping in minds where politicians brains are - it is a no-brainer.
VIA had stops in all three of Oakville, Burlington, and Hamilton (for both Niagara Falls and Welland trains) before this station location in Hamilton was closed. If Aldershot is really too close to Hamilton, then move the VIA stop back to the previous VIA Burlington station.
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cplchanb
Senior Member
currently on the 669 en route to toronto. they intentionally pushed back 69s dept so that they can join the 2 together to form a J train. so itll be a double venture set to toronto.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
Yeah, I only worked 6 years at VIA HQ, half of which in the very department which does the schedules, so I clearly need someone explaining to me my previous job…
Nobody in Hamilton cares about cross-border passenger rail service, especially not in the current political climate. There are many political fights and pork barrels taking place at the moment, but this is none anybody will pick.
That would mean that Toronto-Windsor trains would stop even further from Hamilton or do you want to also reopen Dundas again?
Seriously, none of the reasons which motivated the consolidation of the stations in Burlington, Hamilton and Dundas has disappeared so far or will disappear until GO starts frequent service to West Harbour…
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nfitz
Superstar
What's more concerning is that you were there for 6 years, and don't actually understand how the real world works! Do you think the extension of GO services from Kitchener to London came from their scheduling clerks?
Exaggerate much? It's about 4-km. And makes service closer to many parts of Hamilton.
Until? I guess you aren't aware that GO already started frequent service into West Harbour.
VIA stopped serving Dundas because it was underutilized - with one flag stop a day long before Aldershot was conceived. I'm surprise you'd think VIA stopping there was an option.
VIA's Aldershot promises have been long broken, with the cancellation of Aldershot to Montreal and Aldershot to Ottawa train and most of the Aldershot to Niagara Falls trains. Different times. Different politicians. And surely you can see how downtown Hamilton has changed since last century.
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bearcat
Active Member
Yeah, I only worked 6 years at VIA HQ, half of which in the very department which does the schedules, so I clearly need someone explaining to me my previous job…
Nobody in Hamilton cares about cross-border passenger rail service, especially not in the current political climate. There are many political fights and pork barrels taking place at the moment, but this is none anybody will pick.
That would mean that Toronto-Windsor trains would stop even further from Hamilton or do you want to also reopen Dundas again?
Seriously, none of the reasons which motivated the consolidation of the stations in Burlington, Hamilton and Dundas has disappeared so far or will disappear until GO starts frequent service to West Harbour…
In the linked post you said "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..."
So you no longer think that?
Urban Sky
Senior Member
The second paragraph was actually a quote of mine and obviates the first paragraph: Politicians care about commuter-focused services towards the nearest big city (because this is what its constituents care about), like those pushing hard (and in the end successfully) for a stop for the morning train Train #51 (now: #31) in Casselman or (more recently) the restoring of morning Trains #651 and #82 which had been suspended at the onset of the pandemic. The „GO from London“ experiment falls into the same category, as a morning train focused on commuters heading towards Toronto (though its schedule made more sense for commuters working in Guelph or Brampton).
The Maple Leaf is a Counter-Peak train and too unreliable, infrequent and expensive to be relevant for any frequent users and with its ridership potential shrinks the political attention on this service…
As long as GO‘s bus shuttle from Hamilton GO Centre (GO Route 11/18) terminates in Aldershot and not Burlington, that will be the obvious connection point for passengers from Hamilton to connect.
Sorry, I meant to frequent service to Confederation. Once GO has expanded frequent passenger service beyond West Harbour, it will become much easier to sneak a VIA train into that stream of passenger trains, but until Metrolinx/GO has forced that door open, it will not be worth the effort for VIA to fight for a stop in Hamilton…
A Dundas Station is of course not an option and that was exactly the point I was trying to make.
What "Aldershot promises" are you talking about? VIA only started operating Corridor East services out of Oakville in January 2000 and this practice was only extended to Aldershot a year later (October 2001) and thus almost a full decade after Aldershot was opened. Its sole purpose was to compensate for the (at that time) spotty GO Lakeshore West service, but as GO's schedule became denser and denser over the years, the Aldershot-Toronto segment of the early morning train to Ottawa/Montreal (today's trains 50/60) were removed in May 2009 (though it survived as a separate, connecting service until October 2012), whereas the 5pm Montreal-to-Toronto (today's Train #69) train's extensions to Aldershot survived until December 2019. The main reason Train #69 to Aldershot survived so long was more due to operational than commercial considerations, as the train needed to get turned at Bayview anyways (due to its length exceeding the wye at TMC), which meant that the incremental cost of operating it in revenue service until Aldershot (rather than deadhead move) was rather marginal...
I still believe that it's inevitable that intercity trains will one day stop in Hamilton again, but I severely doubt that this is on anyone's mind when VIA negotiates with CN or Metrolinx these days. There are simply far more pressing issues to discuss with them at this point, so that bringing up that comparatively trivial topic now would be a distraction from the real issues...
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reaperexpress
Senior Member
The stop at Aldershot is not an unchangeable law of the universe. Train 82 currently skips Aldershot, so it's not unreasonable to ask whether trains 97 and 98 could skip Aldershot as well. The question therefore becomes whether West Harbour is a more useful stop than Aldershot.
Like you said, the primary purpose of the train is to serve Niagara and cross-border travel, and for those trip purposes people from Hamilton would need to backtrack to go to Aldershot. The fact that Hamilton residents wouldn't need to take a GO shuttle bus to access the Via train is precisely the advantage of the more central station location. Aldershot is definitely better for Burlington customers, but given the relative size of the cities, there are almost certainly more customers from Hamilton who would benefit from the move than customers from Burlington who would disbenefit.
Moving the Maple Leaf away from Aldershot would separate it from the other Via services: which could have two potential downsides:
1. loss of transfers from London/Windsor Via trains
2. loss of common facilities
The Niagara-bound Maple Leaf departs Aldershot at 09:01 but the first Via train from London doesn't arrive there until 09:31, so it is already impossible to transfer to the Maple Leaf towards Niagara.
The Toronto-bound Maple Leaf arrives at Aldershot at 19:04, and the last Via train departs at 20:23 so a transfer is possible in that direction. However, given that the transfer is only possible in one direction, I doubt many people are making it.
The Maple Leaf only runs once per day, so I doubt that any dedicated Via facilities would be constructed for it at West Harbour. The stop would be an unstaffed station similar to the Grimsby and St. Catharines stops. The most I could see is Via sending one or two Aldershot-based staff members to West Harbour from 08:00 to 09:00 to assist with boarding and customer information. So there would definitely be a reduction in facilities for Via customers compared to Aldershot.
The elephant in the room for West Harbour is that it seems to be acting as an unsafe injection site, which would make it a dramatic step down in passenger comfort from Aldershot. But as Hamilton's main train station, that issue should be addressed regardless of whether the Maple Leaf stops there.
Despite those limitations, it seems like a move from Aldershot to West Harbour would be worthwhile, since it would significantly improve travel times to/from Niagara for customers to/from Hamilton.
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nfitz
Superstar
This isn't correct. I rode VIA trains from Montreal to Aldershot in the early-mid 1990s. Also, where's the 5 VIA trains a day from Aldershot to Niagara Falls; a bit redundant in the last few years with GO service; but that promise long since broken.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
Here is my VIA timetable archive. Please let me know which trains operated directly from Montreal to Aldershot prior to January 2000, so that I can correct the searchable database I maintain…
When was what promise made and by whom? VIA inherited 3 frequencies to Niagara Falls from CN, of which the midday and peak frequencies werecut during the 1990 and 2012 cuts, respectively…
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nfitz
Superstar
Hard to remember - though I do clearly remember riding it in Spring 1994. And I don't see schedules for a few years after Aldershot opened in 1992. I didn't ride as much after 1996.
I'd suggest checking newspaper archives from the period around when and before Aldershot opened. Closing Hamilton wasn't particularly well received. I could look in a few days, once I have more time.
micheal_can
Senior Member
The issues between Aldershot and Hamilton downtown reminds me of discussions of using the North Toronto Station and Union Station and the existing Ottawa Station and the former station that is currently being used as the House of Commons.
Imagine if back a few decades it was decided that Via would use the North Toronto Station only and not use Union. Sounds ridiculous right? That is because it is. Yes, it could be argued that the North Toronto Station is still 'downtown', but really it isn't. The Ottawa Station could have been downtown Ottawa. In fact, it was. But through a master plan, it and the tracks to it have been removed. It is doubtful that any intercity rail will ever return to Ottawa's downtown. You may want to argue that the O train does go there, but as of recent, it requires a walk in whatever weather is going on to get between the 2.
And then we have Aldershot.While GO does serve this station, it is in the middle of nowhere. It is not within Hamilton's CBD. It does not have TOD near it. It is effectively Ottawa's Station. The difference is that there is a station in the CBD of Hamilton that could be used. The interesting thing is, in order to do the Toronto - London route, it would end up doing something similar to what would have had to be done at the downtown Ottawa station. Unless the southern route through SWO is used for a futre HSR, I do not see the usage changing anytime in the future. This does not mean it should not be used. It just means it won't.
Imagine if back a few decades it was decided that Via would use the North Toronto Station only and not use Union. Sounds ridiculous right? That is because it is. Yes, it could be argued that the North Toronto Station is still 'downtown', but really it isn't. The Ottawa Station could have been downtown Ottawa. In fact, it was. But through a master plan, it and the tracks to it have been removed. It is doubtful that any intercity rail will ever return to Ottawa's downtown. You may want to argue that the O train does go there, but as of recent, it requires a walk in whatever weather is going on to get between the 2.
And then we have Aldershot.While GO does serve this station, it is in the middle of nowhere. It is not within Hamilton's CBD. It does not have TOD near it. It is effectively Ottawa's Station. The difference is that there is a station in the CBD of Hamilton that could be used. The interesting thing is, in order to do the Toronto - London route, it would end up doing something similar to what would have had to be done at the downtown Ottawa station. Unless the southern route through SWO is used for a futre HSR, I do not see the usage changing anytime in the future. This does not mean it should not be used. It just means it won't.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
Whereas it indeed makes sense for some Toronto-based tourists to take the Maple Leaf for trips to Niagara Falls, the only utility it would provide for Hamiltonians to use it is to travel across the border, which minimizes the number of passengers which could possibly benefit from adding a stop in Hamilton.
I'm reminded that VIA has no station staff at the Aldershot station...
Again, I can't think of any reason why Hamiltonians would use VIA rather than GO to get to Niagara Falls.
Sorry, I fixed the Dropbox link, but this just sounds to me like the usual MT-to-TW train connection, where you could simply stay on board the train while it changed its train number at Union Station, just like you can still today when you book 65-to-75 (or 70-to-64 in the opposite direction).
The expectation is that if you make claims and tell other people that they are wrong, you should be prepared to back them up when challenged. I'm certainly not going to search some newspaper archives for something you claim to recall to have seen a few decades ago, but there actually is a reference in VIA's Summary of the 2016-2020 Corporate Plan (p.24) which indeed mentions plans for 5 frequencies to Niagara Falls:
However, it should be clear that VIA currently lacks the operating funding, fleet and infrastructure access to enact on these frequencies and that it does not control any of these constraints. It therefore was no "promise", but an inspiration to the general public and their political and business leaders to imagine what could be possible if they lobby the federal government in support of HFR and a general expansion of VIA's operations in the Q-W Corridor...
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