Excellent read. I am curious if you've considered whether there is a plausible future for VIA as a competitor for US air travel. For certain corridors (Toronto to Detroit/Chicago, Toronto to NYC, Vancouver to Seattle/Portland) the rail wouldn't even have to be particularly fast in order for travel times to beat out the hassle of air travel. Given the shift in public opinion in both the US and Canada towards favoring rail infrastructure, these projects don't seem as politically unfeasible as they once might have. If we allow control of most VIA rail passageways to be shifted over to the provinces and adapted into their regional systems, then perhaps the purpose of VIA could become one of very specific inter-province and international trips?
I did touch on this a bit in a previous article on VIA's HFR project, but I will expand a bit more.
I think improved cross-border rail service as a mid- to long-term goal is fine. But even services that are competitive with the car (let alone airlines) they are going to require substantial investments. And yes public opinions are shifting, but they are shifting towards investments in domestic services and right now both countries have so, so much that needs to be done in that regards. I find it hard to believe that the public would get on board with big public spending to improve cross-border services when there is so much to do at home first.
I do think there are a few routes that might make sense, and could be done in a way that would have public support. In Ontario, Buffalo to TO and Detroit to TO could potentially make sense to have a few trains running between them each day. In the former case you have GO continually making its way towards Niagara Falls in terms of modernizing infrastructure, so once it has that complete (or nearly done), the cost of a service to Buffalo might be relatively low (assuming Buffalo is good to go on their side). Same is true of improved infrastructure between Windsor and TO which could open up service into Detroit (though the Detroit station is a big hurdle, as is the fact that VIA's current station doesn't line up with a cross border route).
In BC Vancouver to Seattle could be a worthwhile investment. But with 75% of that route running in the US it is a tough situation. To make it useful they need to do some degree of modernization of the line which means them footing the bill for the majority of the project, or Canada paying more than 25% of the costs to try to get the Americans on board. Compounding the difficulty is that any real interest on the US side in that corridor has been through the lens of a privately run operation.
Then you have other factors to consider, such as the need for pre-clearance in order to avoid the painful wait of passport control on the train. Add in security checkpoints and you have an experience which is getting closer to that of flying, only a lot slower. And that is assuming that entering the US doesn't become any more difficult and time consuming than it already is.
Even in the high speed mecca of Europe the high speed/modernization campaigns that began in the 80's focused on domestic services first and then as networks grew and as modern services could be implemented relatively easy international trips started to be brought into the fold. Toronto to Chicago is a perfect example of how a similar approach would work. Amtrak might still run a TO-Chi service, but it will be slow and ridership is probably going to be questionable so who knows how long it would actually last. However, if in a decade or two you had a situation where VIA had upgraded its running speeds from Toronto to Windsor to 177-200km.h, and Amtrak had done the same from Chicago to Detroit, then it makes sense to make whatever final investments are needed to link the two networks together (if need be), and actually create an attractive service.
The TL;DR would be that cross border rail service isn't a bad idea. But there is a long way to go, and a lot for Canada and the US to do in their own countries first, before investing in a modernized version of international rail service that would actually be attractive to people is going to be on the table.
Currently, VIA/Amtrak international trains have 1.5-2 hours schedule layover at Ontario & Quebec US border crossings. So even if the Customs checks are completed in 20 minutes, the train stays put. That's a serious time penalty, and it drives most people to drive or fly. Notably, this is not the case for the Amtrak train between Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, on which the border agents board & proceed through the train as it slowly crosses the border. However, that train has pre-boarding checks in Vancouver (can't recall if there are any in Seattle).
Some partnering with the provinces needs to occur, like some US states funding Amtrak services, or more coordination between provincial commuter rail systems and VIA Rail, such as the provision of more frequent GO trains on the Toronto-London corridor, while keep one VIA train per day. However, as VIA is faster and more comfortable, there should operate more runs on this segment - with more frequent VIA & GO service, it should take some driving mode share, as the 401 highway gets increasingly congested and unreliable.
VIA doesn't necessarily need to go away completely. There are people out there who travel on expense accounts, or don't mind paying extra for posher trains. It is is always going to have its customer/fan base to keep in going in some form or another.
A lot of what people think about VIA and what its future should be will depend on what they actually want improved intercity rail to be. There are plenty of people who simply want a nicer, faster, more reliable VIA (even if they pretend and say its also about the environment, sustainability, and other greenwashing slogans). And that is fine. But that also means advocating for a service that is at best going to pick up some extra riders at the fringes because VIA ignores the cost factor relative to driving.
Case in point is someone who is looking to go from Kingston or London to Toronto. Even if gas was $3/litre someone in a Fiat 500 or VW Golf or pretty much any hybrid or EV can simply drive to a GO train station in Oshawa or Aldershot and take the train in the rest of the way and do so at half the cost of the cheapest VIA fare (and with the growth of EV's and hybrids set to sore that cost differential will only become a bigger problem for VIA). At $3/litre two people could drive an F-150 into Toronto cheaper than what it would cost them to take VIA. If you already own a car, VIA is not great value for money and unless gas hits $4/litre that is unlikely to change and it is hard to see how even a modernized VIA service with their current fare structure will actually be affective at pulling people out of cars.
Or consider this scenario. You have an improved VIA service from London to Toronto via Brantford that covers the trip in 1.5 hours. However, the London to Toronto line via Kitchener has also been upgraded, and modernized, so that they can offer a 2.5 hour GO train between the two cities (and with existing upgrade plans from TO to K-W, and with a dedicated track from K-W to London that would be a very achievable time). GO fares will be at least 40% cheaper than the lowest VIA fare (and 60-65% cheaper if the lower cost economy fares are sold out), and that GO fare is available all day every day, even a few minutes before departure. Which of these services is going to attract the most customers? Which one will be the most affective at getting current drivers off of the roads and into trains (if that is genuinely the goal)?
5 years ago the idea of GO trains being electrified seemed a long shot, and having GO services extend to London or Kingston would have been laughed at. But now that those options and realities are on the table, it is easy to see how other agencies are likely to be way more effective at providing effective, affordable, accessible passenger rail services, at least on a regional scale or maybe even mid-distance intercity scale. HFR would potentially be fine if lower fares and improved accessibility were part of its plan, but it just seems to be more of the same maximizing revenue before passenger count mentality towards IC service that has been its hallmark for decades.
I could be wrong but with life getting back to normal after a few years where attention was undestandably focused elsewhere, and with HFR entering procurement and now hitting 1 billion in public funding, the attention is going to start shining on VIA in a big way and quite frankly asking what the hell they are up to. And now is the time to question whether the VIA model is really the right model to drastically change travel patterns. It wouldn't be an overnight change, and it wouldn't be applicable everywhere, but if tomorrow there was a debate about putting the funding and control over improved IC rail service in SW Ontario in the hands of Metrolinx or VIA, the choice would take about 2 seconds.
Excellent read. I am curious if you've considered whether there is a plausible future for VIA as a competitor for US air travel. For certain corridors (Toronto to Detroit/Chicago, Toronto to NYC, Vancouver to Seattle/Portland) the rail wouldn't even have to be particularly fast in order for travel times to beat out the hassle of air travel. Given the shift in public opinion in both the US and Canada towards favoring rail infrastructure, these projects don't seem as politically unfeasible as they once might have. If we allow control of most VIA rail passageways to be shifted over to the provinces and adapted into their regional systems, then perhaps the purpose of VIA could become one of very specific inter-province and international trips?
I did touch on this a bit in a previous article on VIA's HFR project, but I will expand a bit more.
I think improved cross-border rail service as a mid- to long-term goal is fine. But even services that are competitive with the car (let alone airlines) they are going to require substantial investments. And yes public opinions are shifting, but they are shifting towards investments in domestic services and right now both countries have so, so much that needs to be done in that regards. I find it hard to believe that the public would get on board with big public spending to improve cross-border services when there is so much to do at home first.
I do think there are a few routes that might make sense, and could be done in a way that would have public support. In Ontario, Buffalo to TO and Detroit to TO could potentially make sense to have a few trains running between them each day. In the former case you have GO continually making its way towards Niagara Falls in terms of modernizing infrastructure, so once it has that complete (or nearly done), the cost of a service to Buffalo might be relatively low (assuming Buffalo is good to go on their side). Same is true of improved infrastructure between Windsor and TO which could open up service into Detroit (though the Detroit station is a big hurdle, as is the fact that VIA's current station doesn't line up with a cross border route).
In BC Vancouver to Seattle could be a worthwhile investment. But with 75% of that route running in the US it is a tough situation. To make it useful they need to do some degree of modernization of the line which means them footing the bill for the majority of the project, or Canada paying more than 25% of the costs to try to get the Americans on board. Compounding the difficulty is that any real interest on the US side in that corridor has been through the lens of a privately run operation.
Then you have other factors to consider, such as the need for pre-clearance in order to avoid the painful wait of passport control on the train. Add in security checkpoints and you have an experience which is getting closer to that of flying, only a lot slower. And that is assuming that entering the US doesn't become any more difficult and time consuming than it already is.
Even in the high speed mecca of Europe the high speed/modernization campaigns that began in the 80's focused on domestic services first and then as networks grew and as modern services could be implemented relatively easy international trips started to be brought into the fold. Toronto to Chicago is a perfect example of how a similar approach would work. Amtrak might still run a TO-Chi service, but it will be slow and ridership is probably going to be questionable so who knows how long it would actually last. However, if in a decade or two you had a situation where VIA had upgraded its running speeds from Toronto to Windsor to 177-200km.h, and Amtrak had done the same from Chicago to Detroit, then it makes sense to make whatever final investments are needed to link the two networks together (if need be), and actually create an attractive service.
The TL;DR would be that cross border rail service isn't a bad idea. But there is a long way to go, and a lot for Canada and the US to do in their own countries first, before investing in a modernized version of international rail service that would actually be attractive to people is going to be on the table.
Currently, VIA/Amtrak international trains have 1.5-2 hours schedule layover at Ontario & Quebec US border crossings. So even if the Customs checks are completed in 20 minutes, the train stays put. That's a serious time penalty, and it drives most people to drive or fly. Notably, this is not the case for the Amtrak train between Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, on which the border agents board & proceed through the train as it slowly crosses the border. However, that train has pre-boarding checks in Vancouver (can't recall if there are any in Seattle).
Some partnering with the provinces needs to occur, like some US states funding Amtrak services, or more coordination between provincial commuter rail systems and VIA Rail, such as the provision of more frequent GO trains on the Toronto-London corridor, while keep one VIA train per day. However, as VIA is faster and more comfortable, there should operate more runs on this segment - with more frequent VIA & GO service, it should take some driving mode share, as the 401 highway gets increasingly congested and unreliable.
VIA doesn't necessarily need to go away completely. There are people out there who travel on expense accounts, or don't mind paying extra for posher trains. It is is always going to have its customer/fan base to keep in going in some form or another.
A lot of what people think about VIA and what its future should be will depend on what they actually want improved intercity rail to be. There are plenty of people who simply want a nicer, faster, more reliable VIA (even if they pretend and say its also about the environment, sustainability, and other greenwashing slogans). And that is fine. But that also means advocating for a service that is at best going to pick up some extra riders at the fringes because VIA ignores the cost factor relative to driving.
Case in point is someone who is looking to go from Kingston or London to Toronto. Even if gas was $3/litre someone in a Fiat 500 or VW Golf or pretty much any hybrid or EV can simply drive to a GO train station in Oshawa or Aldershot and take the train in the rest of the way and do so at half the cost of the cheapest VIA fare (and with the growth of EV's and hybrids set to sore that cost differential will only become a bigger problem for VIA). At $3/litre two people could drive an F-150 into Toronto cheaper than what it would cost them to take VIA. If you already own a car, VIA is not great value for money and unless gas hits $4/litre that is unlikely to change and it is hard to see how even a modernized VIA service with their current fare structure will actually be affective at pulling people out of cars.
Or consider this scenario. You have an improved VIA service from London to Toronto via Brantford that covers the trip in 1.5 hours. However, the London to Toronto line via Kitchener has also been upgraded, and modernized, so that they can offer a 2.5 hour GO train between the two cities (and with existing upgrade plans from TO to K-W, and with a dedicated track from K-W to London that would be a very achievable time). GO fares will be at least 40% cheaper than the lowest VIA fare (and 60-65% cheaper if the lower cost economy fares are sold out), and that GO fare is available all day every day, even a few minutes before departure. Which of these services is going to attract the most customers? Which one will be the most affective at getting current drivers off of the roads and into trains (if that is genuinely the goal)?
5 years ago the idea of GO trains being electrified seemed a long shot, and having GO services extend to London or Kingston would have been laughed at. But now that those options and realities are on the table, it is easy to see how other agencies are likely to be way more effective at providing effective, affordable, accessible passenger rail services, at least on a regional scale or maybe even mid-distance intercity scale. HFR would potentially be fine if lower fares and improved accessibility were part of its plan, but it just seems to be more of the same maximizing revenue before passenger count mentality towards IC service that has been its hallmark for decades.
I could be wrong but with life getting back to normal after a few years where attention was undestandably focused elsewhere, and with HFR entering procurement and now hitting 1 billion in public funding, the attention is going to start shining on VIA in a big way and quite frankly asking what the hell they are up to. And now is the time to question whether the VIA model is really the right model to drastically change travel patterns. It wouldn't be an overnight change, and it wouldn't be applicable everywhere, but if tomorrow there was a debate about putting the funding and control over improved IC rail service in SW Ontario in the hands of Metrolinx or VIA, the choice would take about 2 seconds.