Regional New England Rail (Amtrak & State DOT & NEC)

[riptide]

Passenger rail: Looking ahead | Vermont Business Magazine

vermontbiz.com

A full draft of Vermont’s State Rail Plan update was posted online within the last month. Recommended Initiatives are listed beginning on p.56.

Restoring passenger rail service to Montreal is described as “the top priority of the state,” but the article linked above notes the lack of progress on building the customs preclearance facility in Montreal’s Gare Centrale. One of the state’s more prominent rail advocates is quoted in the article suggesting that if the state doesn’t see a breakthrough on Gare Centrale in another year or so, they should think about building the facility near the border in Lacolle (Cantic), Quebec.

That idea doesn’t really make sense to me. Would it even be preclearance anymore if it’s not happening at the beginning/end of the route? The border check already happens in Lacolle, so what kind of time savings would be realized by maintaining the border check in its current location?

As for extending the Valley Flyer northwards (as @themisssinglink was asking about a few posts up), the article points to lack of available cars as the first reason an extension to White River Junction probably has to wait, but they seem more optimistic that Brattleboro is within reach in the near term even with Amtrak’s currently reduced fleet.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Passenger rail: Looking ahead | Vermont Business Magazine

vermontbiz.com

A full draft of Vermont’s State Rail Plan update was posted online within the last month. Recommended Initiatives are listed beginning on p.56.

Restoring passenger rail service to Montreal is described as “the top priority of the state,” but the article linked above notes the lack of progress on building the customs preclearance facility in Montreal’s Gare Centrale. One of the state’s more prominent rail advocates is quoted in the article suggesting that if the state doesn’t see a breakthrough on Gare Centrale in another year or so, they should think about building the facility near the border in Lacolle (Cantic), Quebec.

That idea doesn’t really make sense to me. Would it even be preclearance anymore if it’s not happening at the beginning/end of the route? The border check already happens in Lacolle, so what kind of time savings would be realized by maintaining the border check in its current location?

As for extending the Valley Flyer northwards (as @themisssinglink was asking about a few posts up), the article points to lack of available cars as the first reason an extension to White River Junction probably has to wait, but they seem more optimistic that Brattleboro is within reach in the near term even with Amtrak’s currently reduced fleet.

It wouldn't be pre-clearance, it would be the a 'normal' one-hour border stop like existed on the last incarnation of the Montrealer. It would be an overt concession to the fact that the Canadians haven't held up their end of the preclearance treaty signed in 2017 and that the U.S. Federal government (for all its tariff bluster of late) can't be arsed to get its hands dirty trying to hold the Canadians accountable for not living up to their promises. As a state-level actor, Vermont almost has to state that as a Plan B because it's the only thing they have any measure of control over. They can lobby the feds for a funding stash to open a local Customs stop at their border; they already host a huge regional Customs office in St. Albans, and Customs funding is plentiful in this current political climate. They can't as easily lobby the feds to get tough with Canada over being delinquent on the 2017 treaty.

Frankly, that's only the start of their problems with the Montrealer. Canada won't intervene either on Canadian National's negligent maintenance of the Rouses Point Subdivision's Class 2/30 MPH tracks, which is why the Adirondack has been suspended the last 2 summers (though so far not this one) for heat restrictions. The Adirondack runs out of crew hours if they have to crawl 10 MPH between the border and the Montreal suburbs, and the Montrealer would likely be in the same boat. PM Carney hasn't been in office long enough to leave a mark, but Justin Trudeau...despite talking a good game about public transit through much of his tenure...was basically an unrepentent shithead when it came to withholding funding for transit works. A relatively minor sum of grant money sent CN's way could fish that shared Adirondack/Montrealer trackage out of the gutter and a Class 3/59 MPH uprate would lop a no-foolin' hour off the schedules (to go along with the hour saved at the border by preclearance), but inept Transport Canada refuses to do it. I definitely don't see anything happening for the rest of the Trump Administration given how frosty international relations are right now, and the Carney Administration kind of has to show it's a different animal than its predecessor and tend to the optics of the obstruction of that preclearance treaty and letting the Rouses Point Sub. tracks rot on the vine. Vermont can pretty much only do what it's doing...keep the NECR mainline tracks in tip-top condition to the border with incremental freight grants, and try like it is here to goose the top line of the whole corridor with things like the Valley Flyer Brattleboro/WRJ extension so Montreal looks even more duh-obvious than it already does.

 

[Stlin]

It wouldn't be pre-clearance, it would be the a 'normal' one-hour border stop like existed on the last incarnation of the Montrealer. It would be an overt concession to the fact that the Canadians haven't held up their end of the preclearance treaty signed in 2017 and that the U.S. Federal government (for all its tariff bluster of late) can't be arsed to get its hands dirty trying to hold the Canadians accountable for not living up to their promises. As a state-level actor, Vermont almost has to state that as a Plan B because it's the only thing they have any measure of control over. They can lobby the feds for a funding stash to open a local Customs stop at their border; they already host a huge regional Customs office in St. Albans, and Customs funding is plentiful in this current political climate. They can't as easily lobby the feds to get tough with Canada over being delinquent on the 2017 treaty.

To be fair to the Canadians, funding the construction of a US preclearance facility in Gare Centrale would primarily be a US responsibility, even if CBSA would also have to sign on to operate their side - after all, it's a US outpost. To date, my understanding is that CBP hasn't committed to it, but my understanding is that, as of May, the provincial government of Quebec was doing new planning studies and potentially coordinating the parties. While I share your opinion that politics are getting in the way, I think it's something thats still moving forward and new CBP funding may help move that along.

 

[riptide]

To be fair to the Canadians, funding the construction of a US preclearance facility in Gare Centrale would primarily be a US responsibility, even if CBSA would also have to sign on to operate their side - after all, it's a US outpost. To date, my understanding is that CBP hasn't committed to it, but my understanding is that, as of May, the provincial government of Quebec was doing new planning studies and potentially coordinating the parties. While I share your opinion that politics are getting in the way, I think it's something thats still moving forward and new CBP funding may help move that along.

Thanks for linking that presentation. It's good to see the agencies are apparently meeting monthly as a working group; they wouldn't be doing that if they'd officially given up on the Gare Centrale preclearance facility idea.

Much as I'd love to gripe about how long it's taking and claim it's being studied to death, I honestly don't blame them for doing a second feasibility study last year, because in the time since they did the first one in 2014, the REM cannibalized multiple platforms/tracks as well as the entire Mount Royal Tunnel. Gare Centrale's heavy rail throughput is probably much-reduced from what it was pre-REM, so I could understand them wanting to make sure they could spare one of the remaining platforms/tracks solely for international trains' use.


Brief semi-off-topic sidebar: for anyone interested in wrapping their heads around how insane the Quebec government was to give away the Mount Royal Tunnel, this technical paper by transit advocate Anton Dubrau is a great read. He argued that Montreal would have been better served by upgrading its existing commuter rail system along Regional Rail principles. Just as Montreal's metro drew inspiration from Paris, they could have built their own version of the RER for vastly less money than they spent to build an automated light metro that, even at 90-second headways, couldn't move as many passengers as an RER system could. He went through the math to demonstrate it.

Go to the transit threads on Canadian forums like agoramtl.com and you'll find rich discussions on where/how to build a new heavy rail tunnel so Gare Centrale can offer through-running. Nothing like dreaming about multi-billion-dollar transit projects when the Canadian government can't even get CN to maintain the tracks into the city!

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Brief semi-off-topic sidebar: for anyone interested in wrapping their heads around how insane the Quebec government was to give away the Mount Royal Tunnel, this technical paper by transit advocate Anton Dubrau is a great read. He argued that Montreal would have been better served by upgrading its existing commuter rail system along Regional Rail principles. Just as Montreal's metro drew inspiration from Paris, they could have built their own version of the RER for vastly less money than they spent to build an automated light metro that, even at 90-second headways, couldn't move as many passengers as an RER system could. He went through the math to demonstrate it.

Go to the transit threads on Canadian forums like agoramtl.com and you'll find rich discussions on where/how to build a new heavy rail tunnel so Gare Centrale can offer through-running. Nothing like dreaming about multi-billion-dollar transit projects when the Canadian government can't even get CN to maintain the tracks into the city!

Exo got royally ratfucked by the major reorganization of Montreal transit agencies about 8-9 years ago. Their predecessor agency AMT once housed the mighty planning arm for all Greater Montreal transit, but that function was stripped away from them at exactly the time the private group behind REM was lobbying the province for permission to steal away the tunnel. Lots of slimy backdoor dealing involved, which from my limited understanding of Quebecois transpo politics is apparently par for the course up there. What emerged from the blender...Exo, just a lowly suburban bus and CR operator...was an agency that was the shell of its former self and which lacks the wherewithal to even buy up its own lines from CN and CP to be able to self-determine running more frequencies. AMT, before its dismemberment, had a long-term vision of self-ownership so they could pursue a Regional Rail transformation akin to what GO Transit in Toronto is trying (falteringly, but trying) to implement. As first salvo in that effort they bought the Deux-Montagnes line and the tunnel in 2014...a mere 2 years before the province gifted those assets to the REM consortium. Now those expansion plans are no more. They're basically just treading water now with their shredded network, trying to keep things status-quo with equipment renewal while their freight landlords give not an inch, and with a retreat from a number of service expansion studies that were kicking around prior to the great ratfucking. Even their new name--"Exo" = exurban--is a de facto mark of surrender, an afterthought.

REM might yet end up a good thing for the city, but the politics behind it were all kinds of wrong. Transit expansion shouldn't be modal warfare, but that's exactly what happened here. Commuter rail had to be explicitly defeated...subjugated...so a private consortium could lock up a bunch of extremely lucrative build and operation contracts.