What really killed the VIA service?

[seaclock22]

Is declining ridership really an important factor in the end of the VIA service in 1990? That's cited as a reason for the demise of the service, and ultimately the DAR, but does anyone have passenger numbers from, say, 1989 that would justify this claim? As I mentioned elsewhere, I rode the train from Halifax to Yarmouth for the last time on December 1, 1989 and that train was busy. Sure, it's just one trip but it would be slightly coincidental if I just happened to hit it on a busy night. It seems to me that the real cause was mostly that the government had decided to slash service across the country -- everything in the Maritimes went except the Ocean -- plus the ruling that CP could abandon the line. Even if numbers had stayed high, I don't think that would have affected VIA's decision.

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If you check the schedules on the wiki you will see that the CPR adopted a schedule that arrived later in the morning than previously such that a 1 day round trip was impossible. Then they used the declining ridership to justify cancellation. When VIA took over they introduced such a convenient schedule again that it took on many occasions two Budd cars to carry the passengers. However as soon as they wanted out, they used the same tactic as the CPR to reduce ridership to justify cancelling the service. Same thing you see VIA doing with The Ocean right now.

I also think that the liability of the right of way and especially the bridges was also an underlying factor in deciding to end the service on both CPR and VIA's part although that is speculation that I have no evidence to float that on presently.

[seaclock22]

When you say the liability of the right of way, do you mean the legal liability if someone got hurt or just the cost of maintaining it? I guess if CP wasn't making any money on it that's the only reason they needed to abandon it though the government could have assumed the cost of minimum maintenance if they wanted to keep the passenger service going. No disrespect to the crews who worked on the line but I think even in the '80s no one would claim that the condition of the track was first class. I'm guessing, and I could be wrong, that CP maintained it enough that it could be called safe but not at a level that would make it attractive.

I've wondered whether the problem with the bridges -- thinking mainly of Weymouth, Bear River, and Clementsport -- was the piers or the decking. I'm no engineer but it would seem to me that the steel would present a more pressing problem than the masonry/concrete. Were any of the steel components ever replaced?

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I meant the cost of maintaining it. It's clear for the revenue generated that the margins were not high enough for the railway in comparison with unit trains. Passenger revenue had dropped significantly and industry had died or moved out. It was clearly a downward spiral that with such expensive infrastructure in place and I'm talking about the bridges, that CPR felt is was no longer feasible and the government was not going to subsidize to the amount required. Railways are, after all, very expensive.

https://iea.org.uk/blog/rail-versus-road

[seaclock22]

I can't really dispute what the author of the linked article wrote; I'm not an economist. At least some of what he said may be specific to the UK or European context and to the time it was written, however. For example, I know that the amount of freight moved by rail in Europe is a fraction of what it could be and certainly much lower than what is normal in North America. No one here would suggest that it would make sense to move all our rail freight to trucks. The current system is very efficient.

But still, I'm not sure we can really make an equal comparison between the UK and here and between rail and road. For one thing, almost all track in North America is privately owned. Amtrak and Via each own a tiny, almost negligible amount of the network. But other than that, the rest has to be maintained by private companies. (I couldn't quickly find out what Via pays in fees to the railroads.) Railroads generate revenue by attracting customers.

On the other hand, the government isn't really constrained by costs or profits. People want their roads! If they want to build a road, they pay for it with our money or borrow someone else's. And then they have access to a continuous revenue stream pretty much guaranteed by law. First there are license, registration, and inspection fees. Then there are fuel taxes, sales taxes on vehicles, auto parts, labour for repairs. Given the size of the county and the low population, it's probably not accurate to say that roads make money for the government but the system at least guarantees a steady source of financing. Not to mention all the ancillary industries that cars and trucks require (sometimes also by law, like insurance) which also bring in money for the government. And then there is the cost of municipal roads which are paid for out of property taxes. (I'm sure the railroads and Via would love to have that kind of system for raking in money courtesy of the government. )

One of the reasons that revenue on the DAR started to decline was that the construction of the 101 in the late '60/early '70 transferred freight business from rail to road. It's interesting that competition from a publicly funded highway helped to drive a private company out of the market. And it also essentially forced everyone to be completely reliant on the automobile. It's almost unthinkable that anyone would try to get around without one. I know there's no going back, not in my lifetime anyway; sooner or later we would have had to get with the times and upgrade our highways. (By the way, after fifty years neither the 101 nor the 103 is actually finished.) I'd like to think there was some way the two could have co-existed.

[stem]

I was think about what you said and one wonders why the province maintains highways but why railways were not owned and maintained by the same government with usage fees charged to the company(s) on a flat or percentage base? After all, they paid subsidies over and over again.

[seaclock22]

Time only for a short reply tonight (implying a longer one might be coming) but I think a lot has to do with culture. Roads seem kind of basic and everybody wants them, though maybe not in their back yard. It just doesn't occur to people to say, "Hey, if roads are such a good deal why don't you build your own?" But railroads were a new technology and the potential for profit meant private investors got in on the act early and that set the precedent for assigning railroads to the private sector. Mind you, I watched a video the other day which mentioned that Denmark was building state railroads in the 1860s so even then the idea occurred to someone. In some European countries the state railways owns the tracks and other operators are allowed to use the infrastructure to run private passenger and, I presume, freight services. In North America the big railways make a fortune on long distance freight operations so why would the government even need to take it over? That would never fly, I don't think. I know the government used to own CN but I don't see the clock ever turning back on that sort of thing. So even if there is a kind of inconsistency in our attitude towards roads versus other modes, I think it's just so much a part of our culture that you can't make people see it.

I'm not, by the way, arguing that the government never had a role to play in preserving the DAR or -- just imagine it -- reviving it; I'm just stating why I think people would see it very differently from roads.

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I see it like the shift in utilities that the infrastructure was opened to private concerns to use.

Whatever the case, it's probably too late to turn any heads on the idea. Apparently paying for everybody's daycare is more relevant.

[seaclock22]

The other day I went looking to see if the NTA decision allowing CP to abandon the route was online. Fortunately the NTA put up its decisions starting in 1988. There are some numbers about losses for a few years in the mid-80s and the cost of maintaining or replacing the three big bridges (Weymouth, Bear River, Clementsport). While not cheap the figure was less than I would have expected ($20 million to replace all three in 1988 dollars, about $43 million in 2022 dollars). I think the whole story is more complicated than a simple reference to the numbers would indicate but I'll hold off on that right now. I'd be interested in what others have to say. Here's the link:

https://otc-cta.gc.ca/eng/ruling/350-r-1989

[stem]

Without freight revenues, a Dayliner each way every day simply wasn't enough of an ROI. With the government competing against the railway by supplying highways that delivered freight and passengers at almost zero cost compared to railway fees, who wouldn't shift from rail to truck and bus?

[seaclock22]

Just a few thoughts inspired by a FB post I saw about the Dayliners from a few days ago.

1) I keep hearing and reading that VIA's ridership had declined and that the schedule was once again inconvenient by the time the service was axed. Does anyone have any numbers? I used the train throughout 1989 right up until a month before it ended. In fact, I took the train from Halifax to Yarmouth on 1 December and my travelling companion and I could not find seats together until later in the trip because the train was so packed. (Which reminds me of a similar early-December trip I made in 1986 when we left Halifax with four RDCs and there were people standing in the aisles.) I don't recall any change in the schedule, either. Still left Yarmouth in the early morning and returned late at night.

2) I think a lot of politicians really don't get trains. In fact, a lot of people don't. High speed rail is an expensive distraction when all most Canadians need is good, relatively fast, dependable rail service. (By relatively fast I mean around 80 mph which is by no means unreasonable even in places like Nova Scotia.) It doesn't have to leave cars in the dust, just be a viable option for travellers. Yes, the old service was slow but it was also comfortable (buses do not even compare). It didn't die because people were choosing the bus; people ended up using the bus (for a while) because they no longer had a choice.

3) As much as we may feel nostalgic about the Dayliners, by the 1980s VIA should have been actively engaged in a program of fleet renewal. RDCs were dated by then. Even if they had been replaced, by now their successors would be past replacement age if the service had been maintained. Not to mention that the track needed to be upgraded to allow faster service.

4) I agree that the loss of the track itself was a loss of more than just passenger service. There's no question that in more foreward-thinking places there would have been a more co-operative effort to get the province and local governments to establish a plan to build commercial and industrial infrastructure around the rail line, ideally long before the demise of the DAR was ever even a possibility. For example, how many towns have to contend with large tanker trucks snaking around their narrow streets to reach bulk fuel plants? In Yarmouth, for example, there is a plant located right next to the old ROW (it looks like there was once a siding there) on a residential street. If fuel could still be transported by train there would be no tankers in that neighbourhood. And the same with other fuel plant locations in the area. That's just one example. Continued coordination of schedules with ferries in Yarmouth and Digby (and since the Sydney service should have been maintained as well, with the ferried to Newfoundland) should have been a priority.

5) This is kind of tangential but VIA's plan should have been, and should be in the future, to establish an interconnected system of regional passenger networks. Our "national" passenger service pretty much serves Ontario and Quebec. NS and NB are the perfect size for a renewal of its passenger rail system. Most of the cities on the Prairies are about the same distance apart (or less) as Toronto and Montreal. In Europe night trains have become hugely popular again, so much so that you have to book months in advance and they actually have trouble finding enough sleeper cars. There's no reason that The Ocean should be reduced to a couple times a week and take, what, 21 hours to travel 800 miles. Now that CP is running freight again between Saint John and Montreal maybe we could see someone open up that line again. The red herring that Canada is too big and our population too small doesn't cut it. No one is suggesting running ten daily trains between Toronto and Vancouver. And anyway, our population is much larger now than when trains ran everywhere.

6) And finally, there are plenty of people younger than 80 who remember taking the train. Anyone who was a university student in the 1980s relied on the train and we're nowhere near 80 yet!

[stem]

I thought I remembered via changing up schedules towards the end but without researching that again, I probably am wrong based on your memory. I believe it was at one point that you could get to Halifax and back in a day but the schedule changed that to an overnight to accomplish the same thing.

I went across Canada from Alberta to Nova Scotia three time at least from Edmonton and Winnipeg to Nova Scotia in the 60s. I took the Ocean from Halifax to Montreal in the same time frame. Air Force family being transferred.

Great memories.