this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2024
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Renting a 3 bedroom house in Toronto is more expensive than a similar house in Belleville + $1500 in monthly VIA Rail tickets. Plus lots of jobs are partly remote which makes the equation even more appealing.
Have you already tried to use VIA Rail to go somewhere once in a while? It's absolutely not a commuter service. Tickets have to be booked days in advance, and the cheapest ones are non-refundable and non-changeable. So a person commuting to and fro would need two very specific tickets every day, or pay more to have "flexible" ones that can be used with any departure. Otherwise if a person has a cheap ticket and misses their train, that ticket is now useless.
The argument of living in a suburb where housing is cheaper can be understood if there are real commuter services, like trains from GO or Exo, but otherwise, commuting regularly with VIA Rail sounds like a real nightmare. They are rarely on time, there are even fewer departures than commuter trains, and their ticketing system is totally inappropriate for every day users.
I had to make a similar choice many years ago, with a job in Montreal and me living 60 km away. There were commuter buses in the suburb but it was taking nearly 2 hours to go to work, and 2 hours to come back. To each their own but I most certainly prefer paying more to live closer to work, than having to deal with commuting with Exo or heavens forbid, VIA Rail.
Seriously, I want to reiterate/ask again, do you use VIA Rail often? Because as someone that has to use it a few times a year, the idea of commuting with them, even just a few times a month, is horrifying.
I work remote, live in Belleville, and visit our Toronto offices every couple of months. My experience with VIA Rail has been positive though I appreciate that I have a lot of flexibility. I can work while on the train so the commute isn't wasted time for me. Working while commuting is not something I could do if I drove or took a bus. The train can be late so I wouldn't organize an in-person-meeting within an hour of the scheduled arrival.
I agree that the ticketing system should be improved to encourage commuting, it would be a headache to buy tickets individually weeks in advance if I were using the service more frequently.
I just got back from living in Japan recently, and the boiling-frog syndrome of Canadian rail is palpable. I once got to the train station ~90 seconds before the last train to my home city was to depart, and was able to run in and buy the fare all in time to be able to run to the platform just as the train was pulling in.
If you bought a ticket with a non-reserved seat, you can take any train (or combo of trains if transferring) at any time you want between your 2 selected stations. Only if you choose to get a reserved seat and miss that departure is that portion of the ticket price lost (you can always just take a non-reserved seat on the next departure or likely get some leniency if you ask for a new reserved seat on a subsequent departure). Plus, there are always large discounts available for commuter passes.
I don't expect that level of rail in Canada, even in the Quebec City-Windor corridor, but holy hell we're so far behind.