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lexande

@lexande.bsky.social

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lexande @lexande.bsky.social · Jul 25

Travel threads I have posted:
Antarctica-Boston without flying
Nicosia-Lisbon without flying
Boston-DC by local buses
Berlin-Chisinau via Kyiv
Austin-Quebec City without flying
Berlin-Sicily by local/regional trains
Berlin-Lagos without flying
Berlin-Tromsø without flying

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lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 2d

Be the change you want to see?

lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 3d

If the projects were more efficient and better planned they could be built without federal funding and then you wouldn't need to convince Republicans! It's the status quo that leaves them vulnerable to Republican whims.

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lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 4d

Yeah but if the cities are able to use the street running concessions to force the streetcars to offer ruinously low fares, then that makes it much harder for the mainline RRs to profitably compete for the local-travel market.

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lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 4d

That's an instance of "regulated federally". But if cities were forcing streetcar operators etc to keep local fares unprofitably low, then that could contribute to it not being worth it for the mainline RRs to try to compete for that market.

lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 5d

They'd settled into hourly clockface schedules (plus a few extra peak trains) in the 1980s and apparently didn't think it was worth making the jump to half-hourly.

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lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 5d

AIUI the essential point of an interurban is to undercut the steam railroads by street running to reach urban cores without paying them trackage rights, & the point of steam RRs "investing in them" (buying them out) is to stop them doing that. So it's odd to expect them to "pay off" directly.

lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 5d

Conversely it's notable that China is even more extreme than Canada here, essentially nothing resembling commuter service until the 21st Century.

lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 5d

Yeah the question is why in Canada they didn't bother to run commuter service (or only barely bothered), while commuter service was much more developed much earlier in some similar-seeming places like Australia, South Africa, South America, and India.

lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 5d

The graph is total for both directions (and so peaks at 84 rather than 42), yes.

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lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 5d

Earlier timetables often leave out the Cartierville branch so I have fewer data points than I'd like but as far as I can tell Mont-Royal Tunnel traffic peaked in 1960 at just 42 trains per direction per day, despite having an electrified line with minimal freight or long-distance interference.

Total inbound+outbound trains per weekday through Montreal's Mont-Royal Tunnel, peaking at 84 in 1960. Data at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-KEAi1hUd8006E8SNh4iPK-kRN4vR7DxFNX2C9844DE/edit?gid=1292992841. Until the 1970s about half the trains through the tunnel terminated at Cartierville near Bois-Franc, but uncertainty about the exact number of such trains in the 1930s and 1940s means the chart has no data points between 1924 and 1950.

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lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 5d

The relevant distances are those of the suburban services that people can use every day & build their lives around. The cost of crossing the outback or prairies is irrelevant to whether you run decent service to Parramatta & Penrith or Candiac & St Jean sur Richelieu, which are similar distances.

lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 5d

What other trains? As of c. 1930 CNR were running like twelve local trains per day to Vaudreuil, ten per day to St Eustache, five per day to Ste Hyacinthe, and even less on their other lines. Meanwhile there were over 100 trains per day from Sydney to Parramatta and even more on some other lines.

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lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 6d

The original 1918 electrification was just to Val-Royal (Bois-Franc) and they did locomotive changes there; electrification was extended to St Eustache (Deux Montagnes) by CN in 1925.

lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 6d

There was a loop just past Madureira so the frequent local steam trains could turn around without having to change ends.

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lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 6d

Rio actually had frequent mainline service even before electrification; in 1936 local "suburbios" to Campinho (near Madureira) ran every 15 minutes alongside semi-fast trains to Deodoro (or beyond) also every 15. (Much better service than SuperVia today!)

1936 Rio de Janeiro-Nova Iguassu-Paracambi timetable; roughly hourly trains as far as Nova Iguassu, mostly at :15. From https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.996965303770506

1936 Rio de Janeiro-Santa Cruz-Mataduro timetable; roughly half-hourly trains as far as Moça Bonita, mostly at :00 and :30. From https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.996965303770506

1936 timetable listing Rio de Janeiro-Deodoro trains in addition to those on the previous two tables; roughly hourly trains mostly at :45. From https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.996965303770506

1936 timetable of Rio de Janeiro-Campinho "suburbios" local trains; service every 15 minutes all day. From https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.996965303770506

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lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 6d

Buenos Aires, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro also ended up with local-travel-focused frequent electric rail networks, pretty early by US standards (Buenos Aires 1916, Rio de Janeiro 1937, São Paulo 1950).

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lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 6d

Cape Town also electrified in the 1920s, and in the 1980s had more frequent suburban rail service than anywhere in North America outside NYC timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.p...

Timetable World

timetableworld.com

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lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 6d

I think this is most of it, but doesn't predict how Mumbai (port for a major hinterland) is closer to the Australian than the Canadian model in this context

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lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 6d

Did Canada have something like the dynamic where cities would demand low fares for local service but longer distance fares were regulated federally & allowed a better profit margin?

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lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 6d

I'm dubious about regulation being the reason when it was pretty common for electric interurban trams and steam mainline/freight trains to share tracks all over North America in the 1920s when the Australian electrifications happened. Or what sort of regulation are you thinking of?

lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 6d

The divergence is much much older than Via Rail, Australia already had much better suburban rail service than Canada in the 1920s.

lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 6d

Sydney and Melbourne already had much better suburban rail service than Montreal and Toronto in 1930, before any significant abandonments.

lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 6d

But those factors also apply in Australia...

lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 6d

Those generally ran in or alongside the street so once they were bankrupt there was pressure to take them over for car lanes. In Australia the trams were also torn out but the electric suburban mainlines remained. Montreal had one of these, to Deux Montagnes, but why not more?

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lexande @lexande.bsky.social · 6d

"Being planned" for 20 years and counting...