Expropriate the rails back. They never should have been in private hands.
this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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It's really unfortunate that we've spent the last 30-40 years deleting a lot of the passenger-specific rail infrastructure outside of metro Vancouver and the Toronto-Montreal corridor. At this point it would be a major breakthrough to even bring a serious passenger service into existence. There's nothing I would like more, but it seems impossible.
Passenger rail needs to be competitive in time, cost and convenience to truly rival car dependancy. It would be really nice to see passenger rail priority and plans to make seperate dedicated tracks in busier areas.
Via Rail is a complete disaster imo. They take the bad from air travel and bring it to rail. They act like their service is a premium luxury one, with huge numbers of staff per train, multiple checks of your tickets, etc.
One example of how bad their operations are (not to get into reliability which is a whole other problem) is that when arriving at a station they ask that you remain seated until the train is fully stopped, and then slowly help people get off. Contrast this with trains in Japan as an example, where the announcement says a stop is coming up soon, please be ready to get off as soon as the train doors are open.
In my opinion we don't just need politicians riding Canadian trains. I want them to travel to Europe and Asia and then come back and suffer on via rail. It's not just new dedicated tracks that are needed, it's a complete restructure of the passenger experience!
It was always nonsense that the freight trains always had priority as they were 12 times longer.
Good luck making it through the prairies on passenger rail. Do we even have any stations left? I never see passenger trains. Only freight.
To my knowledge most passenger trains try and time their crossings in the prairie's so it happens at night. You might be in an area where they always pass through at odd times.
There is a station in Saskatoon for sure. I'm sure many other places too.
In the year 2000 I looked into a train trip from Vancouver to Quebec City for two adults and and a child. The cost was $10,000.00. We chose to stay home.
The Canadian is Vancouver to Toronto and a sleeper cabin for 2 is a few grand I think. Idk how you got $10k in 2000 unless you were booking the night before or looking at the prestige cabin
His journey will probably start by driving past the old rail station in downtown Ottawa (a couple blocks from parliament) out to the boonies.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
That journey could be complicated by the fact that passenger trains in Canada are often delayed when they have to give right of way to cargo traffic travelling on the same tracks.
And that's exactly the point: Bachrach's journey is part of a quest to build support for a bill he introduced in Parliament this week.
"Any passenger service proposal must demonstrate that freight capacity to handle current and future anticipated volumes can be preserved, which is essential to support Canada's economy," Brazeau said in an emailed statement to The Canadian Press in October after Via Rail chief executive Mario Péloquin called on the federal government to give passenger trains right of way on the tracks.
Both Bachrach and Péloquin pointed to U.S. regulations that give Amtrak passenger cars priority over freight as a model for the proposed legislation.
He spoke to CBC Daybreak North host Carolina de Ryk about the upcoming journey.
I think the biggest thing right now is that the passenger train has to make way for freight traffic and that has resulted in Via's inability to keep a consistent schedule.
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