February 26, 2020

“… the First World’s most dysfunctional train: The Canadian, which in theory links Vancouver to Toronto”

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Railways — Tags: Absurd, Subsidies, Tourism, Travel, ViaRail — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley fires all his guns at the pride of VIA Rail Canada’s passenger services, The Canadian:

VIA dome observation car, on The Canadian in 2007.
Photo by Savannah Grandfather via Wikimedia.

With the Ontario Provincial Police somehow finally roused to action in Tyendinaga, Ont., it seems the CN railway blockade may not last its third week. This outstanding achievement in law enforcement will come as a relief in particular to the nation’s business community, people who enjoy staple foods, and the propane-dependent. The minority of travellers along the Windsor-to-Quebec City corridor who ride VIA Rail were not as imperilled: most essential, tight-budgeted VIA trips can also be made by bus, with only moderate time lost and with money saved as a consolation. But they too will be pleased. As maddening as VIA’s corridor services can be, with their ancient rolling stock, outrageously stale food, mostly theoretical wi-fi, schedules that get slower rather than faster and reliable delays regardless, trains are just genetically superior to buses.

Or at least, most are. The Windsor-to-Quebec City services are practically Japanese in comparison to what must be the First World’s most dysfunctional train: The Canadian, which in theory links Vancouver to Toronto. It has been shut down almost since the blockade began, and hardly anyone has noticed. It’s time we talk about this crazy thing.

What, you may ask, is the most ridiculous thing about The Canadian? Some might point to the astonishing level of subsidy: In 2018, the average corridor passenger enjoyed a subsidy of $32, or 17 cents per mile. The average passenger on The Canadian: $596, or 48 cents a mile, for a total of $49 million.

But never mind the price for a second; look what it’s buying. Fifty years ago, CN’s Super Continental was scheduled to take 67 hours. Today The Canadian, plying the same route and giving way to every freight train, is budgeted a mind-boggling 85 hours eastbound and 97 westbound.

[…]

For all the subsidies, The Canadian is eye-wateringly expensive. For the full one-way trip, a cabin for two will set you back $3,824, meals included. You can take a five-day mid-range Caribbean cruise for that, and that’s no coincidence: The Canadian is essentially a cruise ship on rails. It’s just that, well, Canadian taxpayers don’t subsidize cruise lines. Because that would be nuts.

I’ve always wanted to ride The Canadian, but I never could afford both the time and the money at the same time. (I have the time now, but I’m struggling to pay my bills, so even a GO Train trip into Toronto needs to be carefully budgeted … a trip on The Canadian would be a very significant percentage of my gross annual income!).

Canadian Pacific FP7 locomotive 1410 at the head of The Canadian stopped at Dorval, Quebec on 6 September, 1965. The Canadian was Canadian Pacific’s premier passenger train before VIA Rail was formed.
Photo by Roger Puta via Wikimedia Commons.

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February 15, 2020

Disrupting railways as an activist tactic appears to work really, really well

Filed under: Cancon, Environment, Government, History, Politics, Railways — Tags: CanadianNational, ClimateChange, FirstNations, Hypocrisy, Protest, ViaRail — Nicholas @ 05:00

As Colby Cosh writes, for all the issues Alberta has with the government in Ottawa, nobody seriously suggested messing up the railways to get attention. Perhaps they should have:

“DSC02285” by Bengt 1955 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

It never occurred to us to mess with the rail network in Eastern Canada — to inconvenience the precious commuters of the Golden Horseshoe — as a means of gaining negotiating leverage. Actually, I’m sure some people must have suggested it, but they would have been written off as selfish, dangerous idiots advocating counterproductive tactics.

The economic impact of the rail protests is big, but surely comparable, at the moment, to that of a big storm. Yet because a B.C. Aboriginal community is carrying its fight with the B.C. government to the guts of Canada, the clamour over whether large public works are now possible at all in Canada has instantly achieved new and unfamiliar volume levels.

The Coastal GasLink that is the source of the strife is a provincially regulated work running from Dawson Creek to the coast; unlike the vastly more expensive problems Alberta has encountered, this technically isn’t an issue for the wider federation at all. Except, whoops, it is! Because someone decided to make it one!

The levels of irony dazzle the imagination. The Canadian West was settled by means of passenger rail, which is supposedly one reason it was chosen as a target by the radicals supporting the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs in their pipeline fight. But intercity commuter rail no longer really exists between the West Coast and Hamilton. The West is ultimately as dependent on rail freight as the East, and maybe more so, but it was that commuter inconvenience that gave rise to an immediate sense of national crisis, while Calgary and Saskatoon and Winnipeg snoozed.

And climate-change activists found themselves blocking rail lines in “solidarity” with the Wet’suwet’en, even though the chiefs’ fight is a question of territorial principle rather than carbon sins. This put the greenies in the position of opposing and thwarting actual rail travel. They admit this is anomalous; nobody likes to attach the word “hypocritical” to himself.

One of the protesters pointed out to the Star‘s Alex Boyd how dependence on rail — dependence of the sort that they spend 364 days a year advocating for intra-city commuters — facilitates unlawful, obstructive protest as a means for the self-anointed to “put pressure on decision-makers.” It is a little harder to block paved roads than railroads, and much harder to sabotage them, if it comes to that — which it might have if the police had used force to immediately disperse the protests. For some, this counts as a feature of rail, not a bug.

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February 14, 2020

The reaction to the Mohawk blockade near Belleville shows that VIA Rail isn’t a serious company

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Politics, Railways — Tags: CanadianNational, FirstNations, Infrastructure, Police, Protest, ViaRail — Nicholas @ 03:00

Mohawk protesters began blocking the main CN and VIA line between Toronto and Montreal near Belleville nearly a week ago. The police, having learned so often that the government and the courts won’t back them up, did little to try to get the blockade lifted other than to prevent active confrontations with the First Nations activists. Canadian National announced that they were being forced to park trains all over Eastern Canada as a result of the blockade and that deliveries of goods would be snarled for quite some time even after service is allowed to resume. VIA rail, on the other hand, seems to care not a bit about the thousands of travellers who have been stranded mid-journey and made no apparent efforts to bring in buses or any other arrangements. Chris Selley says this proves that VIA is not an essential service even in their own minds:

“The 6424” by Stephen Downes is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Of all the bad news to befall VIA Rail this week, with the cancellation of all its trains between Toronto and Ottawa and Toronto and Montreal — that’s roughly 50 per cent of its ridership and 60 per cent of its revenues — the worst news might be just how little news it has made. Mostly, the Mohawk blockade of the CN main line near Belleville, Ont., has been treated as a side story to the anti-pipeline protests and arrests in the British Columbia interior.

That’s what it is in the grand scheme of things: The battle between Wet’suwet’en members and chiefs and the federal government speaks to much larger, existential questions about the future of the Canadian economy, about the Liberal government’s reconciliation agenda, about the very nature of the Canadian federation and the rule of law. This blockade, launched in the name of solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en, just means people have to take the bus, or fly, instead of the train.

But that’s no small inconvenience, no small expense. Canadians in general are not quick to anger, but very few of the VIA refugees interviewed by various news outlets sounded even slightly furious, which they had every right to be. When protesters from the same First Nation blockaded the same set of tracks six years ago, VIA properly exhibited some concern with getting their customers to their destinations and put on replacement buses.

This time around, no buses. No suggestions. No response to media inquiries asking why there are no buses. Just a cancellation notice on the website and a fare-thee-well. At a time when VIA is seeking untold billions from the federal government to build a new Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal route and run vastly more trains, this does not bespeak a company that takes itself very seriously.

[…]

And never mind VIA, what sort of country lets a few people close down a key piece of national infrastructure, in violation of a court injunction — not for an hour or a day, but literally indefinitely? For a time it wasn’t even clear whose job it was to enforce the injunction: On Sunday an Ontario Provincial Police spokesperson told Global News it was up to the CN Police Service. On Tuesday, a CN spokesperson told the National Post it was up to the OPP, and indeed, late Tuesday OPP officers warned protesters to leave or they would be forced out. Perhaps the threat of massive economic disruption finally lit a fire under them: earlier in the day, CN had said it was considering shutting down huge parts of its freight network across the country. Had it just been rail passengers, though, the idea of this side-protest dragging on for weeks or even months seems absurdly plausible.

VIA Rail 918, a General Electric model P42DC locomotive, at Belleville, Ontario on 23 December 2008.
Photo by Martin Cathrae via Wikimedia Commons.

While VIA may not be serious, others are extremely serious:

Left-wing blogs have been offering instructions and maps during the #ShutDownCanada protests on how to blockade and destroy train tracks and other pieces of Canada’s infrastructure, according to True North.

Two websites in particular, these being North Shore and Warrior Up, have instructed demonstrators how to damage Canada’s pipelines, roads and railways.

In some of North Shore’s posts, for instance, they told their readers to stand in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en tribe by destroying train tracks. In this article, the author makes it perfectly clear that he wants to damage Canada’s economy at large.

More absurdly, however, the article then went on to instruct the reader on how to compose a chemical mixture that destroys steel rail tracks — taking particular care to describe how not to leaving fingerprint or DNA evidence.

Thursday evening, VIA Rail announced their whole passenger network would be shut down until further notice: Service cancellation notice.

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August 15, 2019

Amtrak is considering reviving at least one Chicago-Toronto passenger train

Filed under: Cancon, Railways, USA — Tags: Amtrak, Chicago, Toronto, ViaRail — Nicholas @ 03:00

Lauren O’Neill reports on an Amtrak service extension proposal:

Amtrak P42DC locomotive #29 with a Blue Water or Wolverine train waits on a siding for a train in the opposite direction to pass in Comstock, Michigan.

The largest passenger railroad service in U.S. is considering a proposal that, if approved, would see trains running directly from Chicago to Toronto and back.

As discussed at the Michigan Rail Conference in East Lansing last week, Amtrak wants to extend its Wolverine line — which currently sees trains moving back and forth between Pontiac, MI, and Chicago, IL, three times per day — all the way up to Canada’s largest city.

A presentation slide shared by an official Michigan Department of Transportation Twitter account on Thursday shows that Amtrak wants to extend “at least one” Wolverine train into Ontario, “where it could continue as a VIA Rail Canada corridor service from Windsor/Walkerville to Toronto.”

It won’t happen overnight, and there’s plenty of work to be done in order for the train service to work, including the construction of a new border processing facility.

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July 17, 2019

October 10, 2018

December 18, 2017

May 20, 2017

On board The Canadian

Filed under: Cancon, Railways — Tags: CanadianNational, CPR, Subsidies, ViaRail — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Toronto Star‘s Jennifer Bain takes a trip on VIA Rail’s premier passenger train from Toronto to Vancouver:

VIA dome observation car, 2007. Photo by Savannah Grandfather (Wikimedia)

ABOARD THE CANADIAN-That first overnight on the train was a gloriously sleepless blur disrupted by clickety clacks, rumbles, grinding squeals and ding, ding dings. Alone in F-130 in the Château Cadillac car on a Murphy bed pulled down from the wall to fill the room, I stared mesmerized through an extra-large window into the dark depths of northern Ontario and thought deeply Canadian thoughts.

Happy 150th birthday, Canada. This year cries out for a celebratory road trip. I use the term road loosely. A train track will do just fine. Let someone else drive. For four nights on the Canadian, Via Rail Canada’s iconic train from Toronto to Vancouver, I relaxed and watched boreal forest become prairie and then mountains.

Somewhere north of Sudbury that first morning, I threw on clothes and tiptoed down the narrow hall, hands outstretched to brace for sways and lurches, through the Château Dollard sleeping car to the end of the train.

The Laurentide Park car is tricked out with a downstairs lounge and upstairs domed seating area. The DIY tea and coffee station became my watering hole.

Routes of The Canadian: the original 1955 route is in red (on CPR trackage) and the current route is in blue (mainly on CN tracks). VIA took over operation of The Canadian in 1978 and changed to the current route in 1990.

You are in your own world on the Canadian, but not necessarily alone. Work on the lost art of small talk in the dining car when you’re seated with strangers. Play a board game with fellow passengers since there’s no Wi-Fi and often no cell service.

This 4,466-kilometre journey is a throwback to simpler times.

Jason Shron — a train nut from Thornhill that I met through Box — has done the Canadian upwards of 40 times and found “there’s a tendency for people on the train to spill their guts to strangers,” especially if they’re on divorce tours, which can become awkward the next day. “There’s a certain magic to that,” he admitted. He was taking his three kids to Winnipeg to meet his wife and other family for Passover.

Shron owns Canada’s largest model train company, built a section of a full-size Via car in his basement, is restoring two train cars and is writing a book about Via for its 40th anniversary next year. The Crown corporation “doesn’t celebrate its own history and doesn’t celebrate its own people” nearly enough, he lamented, and so he’s “like this one-man Via fan club.”

Make that two. Shron and Box love trains for different reasons — the actual machines and the art of train travel — but they are anomalies. Too many Canadians have never been on a train, much less slept on one.

Trains are not a part of our modern lives or lexicon, so my learning curve is steep. Passenger trains don’t have cabooses, conductors are obsolete and drivers are called engineers. Freight trains have priority in Canada when there’s one line, so passenger trains like the Canadian have to wait on the siding, causing delays.

There are economy-class seats that you sleep upright in, and banks of seats that convert into upper and lower “berths” at night with just a curtain for privacy. There are private rooms, some with a toilet that gets covered when the bed comes out, and a shared shower down the hall. I was lucky enough to experience “Prestige class” in a room with an L-shaped couch, Murphy bed and private en-suite washroom, with access to a trio of concierges, reserved seating at the front of the dome car, meals, booze and all the Earl Grey I could drink.

Part of the reason “many Canadians have never been on a train” is that there are a lot fewer trains running today than in years past: when VIA took over most intercity passenger service, it rationalized a lot of the routes (but not enough to become profitable, hence the federal government’s ongoing subsidies to VIA). Even with those subsidies, passenger trains aren’t a bargain for the average traveller, and usually compare poorly to bus or air travel in both cost and frequency. Most of VIA’s trains lose money, as this table from 2014 shows:

So, how expensive is the trip that Ms. Bain took? I went to the VIA website to find out. Booking a trip from Toronto (in my case, Oshawa) to Vancouver on The Canadian to leave today (Saturday) would cost an eye-watering $9,684.10 per person in Prestige class (including a $500 service fee, but not including HST [Harmonized Sales Tax] of $1,114.10). There are cheaper fares — booking in advance, not taking the Prestige class ticket, other available sales, etc. — but a quick Google search shows return flights in the $600 range (but I could save $226 off that if I booked for tomorrow instead of today).

For a potted history of The Canadian there’s a useful Wikipedia page.

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