Freight and Passenger Rail Services

An article yesterday “ Back on track: NDP bill aims to make train passengers a priority ”. The idea is worth discussion.

The day that I was born, I was the centre of the known universe. Within a few days my universe had expanded to include my breast-feeding mother. Around that time my father and sister appeared on the scene, and by the time I was ten years old my universe had expanded to stretch from the Lancashire Pennines (think moist and cool for cotton mills) to The Yilgarn (think 10 inches of rain and one hundred inches of evaporation, four bags of wheat per acre, and so on)

I am still the centre of the known universe, and the centre is located in Bonavista Newfoundland. Each one of us lives at the centre of our known universe (because the universe is omnipresent) so we should not be surprised to find that as passengers we insist on being assigned the highest priority. ‘Twas ever thus; we do not like slow speeds and delays.

Now a bit about railways in general: railways as we know them were designed for moving freight, inanimate stuff, not love-struck humans.

Freight Rail Services

The best railways are those owned by private companies in the iron-ore rich north of Western Australia, where two-mile long trains of wagons loaded with iron ore travel 450 kilometres.

The trains, fully loaded, are truly robotic. No personnel aboard, and no remote control. There is not a controller in shirtsleeves in a cubicle in Perth, 1,600 away to the south, manipulating a joy stick. A few years ago one of the robotic iron-ore trains up there ran away, and the solution was to land a team of engineers ahead of the train and unfasten the rail line to derail the train, spilling its load of iron ore. Robotic.

I wrote “The best railways” and I should define “best”. In this sense, best means economics; dollars. A robotic train (or pre-programmed if you prefer) runs without paying drivers/engineers to sit bored to death in a cab, and to be housed in a remote (1,600 Km) location in the hottest part of the state, being flown-in-flown-out (FIFO) on rotation, with high cost of living (fresh food flown in twice a week, …)

Freight trains are good because they are a supremely economical (cheap!) way of shifting thousands of tons with minimal labour.

Convince yourself by looking at YouTube videos of freight trains. This one has four locomotives at its head. This one claims to have seven locomotives, three at the front, … Count the number of containers on that first train, multiply by the internal volume of a 53’ container, divide by the column of a simple toaster, to get the number of toasters that train can carry. Divide by an average size of family (4) to determine the population that this train could serve.

That’s what I mean by “best”, and no matter the number of locomotives, they are all controlled by two engineers in the leading locomotive.

Passenger Rail Services

Passenger trains, especially inter-city passenger trains are labour intensive. Besides the two engineers up front (four in the case of the VIA rail service that splits itself at Coburg(?)) we have conductors checking tickets, seat allocations, reminding passengers to get ready to descend, and we have cabin staff with little trolleys of colas and crisps.

Think unions and labour costs, training costs, sick leave, vacations, …

Who wins?

In terms of economics, passenger trains will always be a loss. You can ride the rails from Halifax NS to Vancouver BC (and you still won’t be in the provincial capital of BC) in four-and-a-half days, or you can go by air in just over eight hours.

Train staff must prepare and serve twelve meals for each person, and the preparation is labour intensive even if it is performed off-train (the trolleys are wheeled aboard in Montreal, Toronto, Chicago, …)

That’s a huge labour cost. This was brought home to me before the mid-1960s, when immigrants from the UK arrived by aeroplane instead of ship. By ship was a three-and-a-half week trip (we did it in 1956), whereas by plane is was but twenty hours or so.

Freight wins hands-down.

Now in Canada “VIA Rail only owns three per cent of the 12,000 km of rail lines it uses”, which means in practical terms zero percent. Owning 260 Km of track somewhere in Canada is not your strongest link, It is the weakest link in tour chain.

Whether you like it or not, passenger services are arguing from an extremely weak point.

How will VIA rail negotiate more use and a higher-priority use of the rails? By money!

VIA rail will have to pay huge sums to convince the freight lines to subordinate their extremely profitable business (2 engineers, 600+ wagons) to hauling food and 200+ humans.

And “VIA rail will have to pay huge sums” translates directly to “Higher fares for passengers”. I invite you to do the mathematics, but you already know the answer.

Scheduling

Assume that we can negotiate a workable price (I believe that we can not do that), then how do we mix the two services? Your fright train wants to run non-stop from Halifax to Vancouver (well, almost non-stop) whereas your passenger train wants to stop every twenty miles or so.

Ouch?

Visualize a passenger train slowing down and pulling into Belleville Ontario for a five-minute stop. (FWIW GO Trains between Union Station and Port Credit take 3 m 20s per stop at each of Exhibition, Mimico, Long Branch)

Now visualize timing a mile-long freight train to adapt to the real-time movements of the passenger train ahead of it, and negotiating a passing-loop, then adapting its speed to the next passenger train ahead of it.

Good luck with that!

Conclusion

Humans like me are intensely self-centred. Travelling by railway train is economically futile compared to air-travel, especially for 1,000+ kilometre distances.

Go by air.

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