Montreal City Weblog

Kate 14:28 on 2023-06-29 Permalink Reply  

• Mitchell 05:44 on 2023-06-30 Permalink

  I got caught in this mess when it began last Saturday – arrived in Newark on a United flight from France. And couldn’t go any further. United sent me to Air Canada, then flights were delayed and delayed and delayed then cancelled. Then AC sent me to La Guardia, same story. Hundreds if not thousands were spending the night in the airports — and it’s gotten worse from what I have read.

  The scary part about it was that there was no way out of the New York area: as Kate said, the Adirondack Amtrak has been cancelled, there were no rental cars, no flights — and hotel rooms, if you could afford them, were scarce.

  Even Greyhound seats were scarce. I finally got a seat on Greyhound on Wednesday and got back to Montreal at midnight (partly because the driver insisted we stop at Duty Free at the border . . .).

  And now friends in Denver are telling me the cascade has reached there.

• Meezly 13:09 on 2023-06-30 Permalink

  I didn’t realize the Amtrak Adirondack route got scrapped… apparently “Amtrak rail partner Canadian National (CN) has implemented reduced speed regulations in Canada due to heat, impacting the Amtrak Adirondack route”. Is this related to fire risk..?

  And if I’m to infer correctly, it seems like many airports (not just YUL) are continuing its pattern of chaos similar to last summer due to various factors related to lack of staffing & resources, climate unpredictability, etc.?

• Kate 14:07 on 2023-06-30 Permalink

  Meezly, officially the train can’t run at more than 10 km/h when it’s over 30°, once it’s inside Canada, and this means the trip takes so long that “the situation would push crews over their federally mandated workday limit” – this from this article but also mentioned in others.

  i don’t know whether “federally” refers to Canada or the U.S. here but I suspect probably the latter.

  One quick way get around this would be to convert the train to a night run during the summer. Not very often does it get above 30° here at night. Mind you, you’d lose the nice views over Lake Champlain and the Hudson Valley in the dark.

• Meezly 16:17 on 2023-06-30 Permalink

  Yes, there are definitely workarounds so it’s really disappointing to hear this. But what is the reasoning behind why a train can’t run at more than 10 km/h when it’s over 30°? Does the train get overheated?

• Kate 16:22 on 2023-06-30 Permalink

  The rails risk warping, apparently.

• Meezly 19:58 on 2023-06-30 Permalink

  That makes no sense to my layman’s mind. It’s the same train going northsouth. Why would the same train going a little faster north of the border warp the rails? Do we use subpar steel for our railways or something?

• MarcG 20:40 on 2023-06-30 Permalink

  I would guess better safety regulations.

• Kate 20:45 on 2023-06-30 Permalink

  It may be something to do with differing engineering standards on opposite sides of the border, or maybe different approaches to track maintenance. We need a rail geek to advise us here.

• carswell 20:47 on 2023-06-30 Permalink

  @Meezly Not sure about the line north of the border but there are — or were (it’s been 20 years since I’ve set foot in the States) — longish stretches south of the border until you got to Schenectady where the maximum speed was 20-30 mph because the track bed and rails were in such poor condition.

  Was once told by the conductor that the president of Delaware and Hudson when it owned the line and, before Amtrak took over, ran the Adirondack, was a bon vivant who spent profits on maintaining a super-lavish lifestyle instead investing them in maintaining decades-old track. He and the subsequent buyer (CPR?) could get away with it because it’s mainly a fairly low-volume freight line that doesn’t require higher speeds. And upgrading it would be very expensive, making the investment hard to justify.

• Meezly 10:46 on 2023-07-01 Permalink

  Thank you for the responses. Looking into Amtrak vs CN for the regulations angle, both are also quasi-government/privatized entities too. No clear answers…

• carswell 13:09 on 2023-07-01 Permalink

  “Looking into Amtrak vs CN for the regulations angle, both are also quasi-government/privatized entities too.”

  Not sure what you’re getting at. CN is a fully private company and has been since 1995. And while Amtrak is a quasi-public corporation, the only sections of the Adirondack line it owns or leases are in Manhattan and between Poughkeepsie and Schenectady. The D&H line, from Schenectady to the border, is owned by Canadian Pacific Kansas City. CN owns the Rouses Point and St-Hyacinthe subdivisions, the 76 km section from Rouses Point, NY, to Montreal. CPKC and CN are freight rail companies that don’t give a damn about passenger rail, view it as a nuisance. Both sections are used for freight that isn’t time-sensitive (chemicals, oil and other raw materials, not fresh produce). From a freight carrier’s standpoint, the status quo is fine.

  Probably the only way for the track bed and rails to be significantly upgraded would be for government to subsidize it. But due to the less challenging terrain and higher population density, almost every plan for a high-speed rail link between Albany and Montreal has the line going up the east side of Lake Champlain, via Rutland and Burlington, so there’s not much inducement for government to do so. Maybe having customs and immigration facilities set up in Central Station would embarrass the feds and Quebec to invest in the line but I wouldn’t hold my breath on either happening.