VIA Rail cuts services in Southern Ontario

[smallspy]

I've always thought it was dumb to have three nearly-identical services between Niagara Falls and Toronto (VIA, GO and Amtrak), so I'm not to upset to see VIA go.

There aren't three services - there are two. The Amtrak train is run on a VIA schedule, stopping at VIA stations and operating with VIA crews. It happens to use Amtrak equipment because (a) switching trains/equipment at the border would be a pain that would turn customers away, and (b) VIA's isn't certified/regulated for use in the US.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[dunkalunk]

Concerning a Kitchener-Hamilton link, I think the best option would be to run frequent GO bus service between Kitchener and Hamilton via Aberfoyle and Aldershot (401 and Highway 6). A new rail corridor between Kitchener and Hamilton would likely require quite a bit of tunnelling to get down the escarpment at a reasonable grade and this is money that can be better spent on track upgrades and electrification of the Kitchener and Lakeshore West GO lines. It would also be much easier to create different routes based on final destination (since Hamilton is not on the way to Oakville from Kitchener)

 

[flonicky]

On the other hand, I'm disappointed to see the other cuts.
Southwestern Ontario is the perfect area for intensive rail services, akin to the Randstad region or the Rhine-Ruhr region. The reason VIA is so unpopular is that it's slow, expensive and infrequent.

With a bit of investment to increase rail speeds (especially on the Toronto-Kitchener-London and London-Sarnia lines), we could get into the positive feed back loop of increased ridership and increased service.

Sadly, I don't think it's possible to increase ridership the way things stand. London, Sarnia & Windsor are very suburban, car-dependent cities with weak downtowns, so when you arrive at those destinations you still need a car. Downtown London is improving but still has a long, long way to go.

 

[Hipster Duck]

The Capitol Corridor and Surfliner are operated and funded by Amtrak California, which is a subdivision of Caltrans rather than the US Feds' Amtrak. Thus they can kind of do whatever they want re: funding and service. Kind of lends credence to the idea of Ontario and Quebec taking over VIA and operating services in Central Canada, though I don't see either premiers getting into fights to de-federalize VIA.

Ontario could still take over intercity regional routes entirely within Ontario, such as Toronto-Ottawa, Toronto-Kingston, Toronto-Windsor, Toronto-Niagara, Toronto-Kitchener-Sarnia, etc. Quebec could take over Quebec City-Montreal.

Toronto-Montreal and Ottawa-Montreal service would need some kind of agreement, but it's possible. Amtrak Cascades is jointly run by WSDOT and ORDOT, if I remember correctly, and even extends into Canada.

re: Hamilton-Kitchener

Isn't there a line between somewhere near the Bayview Jct and Campbellville? It's windy and probably in rough shape, but it could probably be upgraded and a DMU could run back and forth on the line.

This is actually another area where Americans have become much more creative than us. They have a few regional DMU services - almost like an interurban for the 21st century - between mid-size cities on spur lines, particularly in California (Sprinter and SMART) and in Texas.

 

[liamdevlin02]

Ontario could still take over intercity regional routes entirely within Ontario

Ontario, at least the present government and the Official Opposition, is not interested in operating any rail that isn't commuter/feeder into Toronto (see: destruction of Ontario Northland). Which is shame, because the idea has a lot of merit.

 

[unimaginative2]

This is very sad but entirely expected. The western and eastern routes are clearly being prepared for a future as a Rocky Mountaineer-style cruise train, which has been the objective since the early days of the Reform Party. I understand the problem with GO and VIA competing in the Kitchener and Niagara markets, but I'd prefer to see more co-ordination to share the route rather than VIA unilaterally cutting.

 

[EnviroTO]

VIA Rail Cuts - Poor Leadership

The rationale for Southwestern Ontario cancellations is ridiculous. Of course it has some of the poorest performing routes... it has the slowest corridor trains. You can't run a train slower and slower and expect ridership to remain constant or climb. After the cancellations VIA will likely find that miraculously ridership on the remaining Sarnia train will also drop... who knew that people planning trips require train schedules which align with their plans and with only one choice there aren't going to be many times when the train is operating at the perfect time for your plans. They cut the 5:30pm Friday train to Chatham and Windsor but kept the one that gets there at a god awful time of night, and on the reverse trips cut the 5:30am train on Saturdays. So if your plan was working in Toronto the train that leaves soon after work is canceled making it less likely that you will find a schedule to your liking, and on Saturday morning they eliminated the leisure trip that leaves in the early morning to get you into Quebec.

I have a reservation on a canceled trip. I wonder if the people that would call to inform you that your train has been canceled and to provide alternatives are the ones fired.

 

[unimaginative2]

Are you sure the trip will be cancelled? Most of the cuts don't come into effect for a few months. That might explain the lack of a call. If the trip is cancelled, then it's pretty bad that you haven't even been notified!

 

[dowlingm]

First off, I think Amtrak California and Amtrak Illinois should be examples of how to fund VIA in the future. Proportionately most VIA travel is within rather than between provinces and that should be reflected by Provincial support. Instead you have the clown Bartolucci declaring that "all the other provinces have got out of rail which means they're right and Ontario is wrong".

So you want to get to Sarnia and you pull up ReserVIA and ask it for options. It returns outward and return trips of 4h30m+. This is because it prioritises no-change service and all service to Sarnia is routed via the Kitchener line (slow). There are times when it is faster to change trains at London which could save 30-40mins, but VIA's Reservation System doesn't tell you about them... unless you specify Oakville rather than Toronto as an origin/destination in which case the change appears. There are other places in the system where these sorts of time savings are possible but VIA dissuades you because of the risk of missed connections. The best outcome for Sarnia would be a pair of Rail Diesel Cars operating a shuttle to and from London, and if that is successful ultimately replace it with one of the trains Metrolinx will be using on the Pearson link.

Whatever about Cobourg, look at the money VIA has been dropping on Halifax, Winnipeg and Vancouver Stations, each of which doesn't even see one train a day. If those cities want better rail service they should relieve VIA of the responsibility of paying for these edifices and concentrate on rolling stock and acquiring more track. VIA should also put a capital plan in place to replace some of its rolling stock with low-floor boarding cars if they can't afford to reconfigure their stations with high-floor platforms and through tracks for freight (since it is the freight lines who veto the higher platforms since it would conflict with oversized freight cars).

As for Niagara Falls and Stratford, I can't help but feel there is an announcement to come from Metrolinx stepping into the breach in at least the former case.

 

[unimaginative2]

Municipal partnerships for station reconstructions make a lot of sense, especially in cities that don't see many trains. On the other hand, there's a regional equity issue that might push for more investment in some sparsely used stations. British Columbians pay just as much for VIA as Ontarians do, yet they receive comparatively minimal service. I can't understand why VIA doesn't invest at least in the Esquimault and Nanaimo, the Edmonton-Calgary line, and maybe the Regina-Saskatoon line. All three would be solid markets for passenger rail and would make VIA a more national service than it is today. I know that it would require some substantial track reconstruction, but we've been seeing that on routes like the Alexandria Sub already, and I'm sure VIA could pry more funding out of this government if more of it was going to their Western Canadian base.

 

[reaperexpress]

While VIA is in the "cut, cut, cut" mode, why don't consider getting rid of some underperforming intermediate stations?

For example, all but one of the Windsor-London trains stop in Glencoe Ontario, a tiny town in the middle of nowhere.

Decommissioning service to that station would eliminate the station's operating costs, increase ridership to and from Windsor due to shorter trip times, and save a bit on train operating costs due to shorter trip times.

 

[ShonTron]

Except that Glencoe is unstaffed so the marginal costs are minimal for serving it, and perhaps only 5 minutes are lost serving it. Glencoe itself is about 1,000, but does serve a much larger region that isn't served by Greyhound. Sarnia, a city of 70,000 and a much a larger region, lost its Greyhound service, VIA and super-expensive Air Canada Express are all that's left unless you count Aboutown's airport shuttle.

 

[reaperexpress]

Except that Glencoe is unstaffed so the marginal costs are minimal for serving it, and perhaps only 5 minutes are lost serving it. Glencoe itself is about 1,000, but does serve a much larger region that isn't served by Greyhound. Sarnia, a city of 70,000 and a much a larger region, lost its Greyhound service, VIA and super-expensive Air Canada Express are all that's left unless you count Aboutown's airport shuttle.

5 minutes was my guess too. That would cut the trip times between London and Windsor from 1h49 to 1h44, upping the average speed from 96km/h to 101km/h. Yes it's only a few clicks, but it's at that crucial point where the train becomes faster than driving, so every bit counts.

If Glencoe needs service, what about the hundreds (or thousands?) of other little communities accross the country? Where do we draw the line in what VIA serves? I see VIA as a competitive transport option between Canada's urban centres, before it is a social service providing uncompetitive service to little communities.

It's not surprising that there's no Greyhound service to Glencoe, because it wouldn't be able to compete with the heavily-subsidized train service.

 

[smallspy]

It's not surprising that there's no Greyhound service to Glencoe, because it wouldn't be able to compete with the heavily-subsidized train service.

As opposed to Greyhound running - for free - on the publicly subsidized roads, and operating into municipally-owned bus terminals?

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[reaperexpress]

As opposed to Greyhound running - for free - on the publicly subsidized roads, and operating into municipally-owned bus terminals?

There's no doubt that Greyhound is subsidized. I'm just saying that it's less subsidized than VIA. VIA can operate routes at as much of a loss as it wants, but Greyhound can't.

It's the same thing we're seeing on the Kitchener Corridor. VIA is subsidized, but it sill can't compete with GO, because GO offers a nearly identical service at half the price.