I have to admit, as a Western Canadian, I am beyond sick and tired of hearing about the corridor's HFR project that is getting so much attention and support from politicians and media. What many folks in Ontario & Quebec fail to realize is that there are Canadians that live and pay taxes in other parts of the country, and the federal government continues to ignore us. When Greyhound pulled out of Western Canada, the feds literally fell silent; when Greyhound pulled out of Central Canada a couple years later, the feds gave a song and dance about how unfortunate this is.
The QC/ON corridor doesn't deserve any passenger rail improvements until the rest of Canada can catch up. Alberta's population has doubled since Mulroney made huge service cuts, and Parks Canada continues to cry every Spring about the influx of cars entering our National Parks. Guess what? -it's because there is literally no other option to visit. A dedicated line between Calgary & Edmonton and Calgary and Banff is a must. We've done without it for over 30 years, our population has now doubled and now is clearly the time for the government to make investments in infrastructure. We don't want a train to Toronto, we need regional trains that will keep locals and tourists moving provincially.
We've all been told to pay a carbon tax to green the economy. What is the tax for if it's not actually going to any infrastructure improvements to literally green the economy? As a Westerner, I want attention - I want our needs prioritized over the citizens of Ontario & Quebec. And BTW, this isn't a partisan smear opinion against the Liberals, the Harper Conservatives were just as lousy in this portfolio as the Liberals are. It's great we're getting rid of single use plastics, but I need something with more substance, and no, the HFR project literally has no affect on me or the people around me. It's no wonder Western Canadians are alienated; there is much more to Canada than Ontario & Quebec - it would be fantastic if our federal politicians put in a but of effort to learn the national geography.
As someone who lived in Manitoba for 8 years and got to know Western Canada well, I totally understand what you are saying. There are parts of the Prairies, Alberta and BC where you look and say "there is definitely potential here". A rail service from Calgary to Banff is an absolute no brainer, and though it would still be a couple billion to do right, that's still a relatively decent price for a starter project and to tackle some not insignificant tasks like re-opening the rail station in Calgary (I also think that it shouldn't be a private endeavour, its just way to valuable a corridor for that and if there is going to be any federal agency that takes the lead on this project, let it be Parks Canada).
Having said that one of the challenges is that there isn't the same degree of municipal or provincial support and enthusiasm for intercity rail projects. And that is critical because as you said intercity rail is regional. It is no longer a national affair because people have no interest in taking a train from Calgary to Toronto unless they are well off retirees. Trains are about serving regions, sometimes crossing provincial borders but often staying entirely within a single province. And as much as VIA or the feds aren't doing anything in the west, they really aren't doing anything in central Canada or the maritimes either.
In Southwest Ontario GO is slowly supplanting VIA service. You already see it on the Niagara Falls to Toronto route. It is almost certainly going to happen on the London-Kitchener-Toronto line. Even the bus route from Winnipeg to Thunder Bay is now handled by Ontario Northland, a provincial agency. And it makes perfect sense. The rail projects in Ontario that are planned by Ontario are the only ones that are getting any traction because they are the ones that actually understand the needs of people in the GTA or northern Ontario.
At this point, unless there is some radical change, VIA is never going to execute a major project. Not HFR. Not just in the short or medium term, but ever. Maybe the agency made sense in the late 70's when passenger rail was in free fall and the government simply had to do anything to stop it from totally collapsing. But aside from maintaining its premium long distance services, and some remote services, it is no longer a relevant way to plan intercity rail in Canada. And I will probably bang that drum for a while because I want people in western Canada and the maritimes to know that VIA is dying in central Ontario as well and that the pressure needs to land on the provincial governments to take over the task, just as Ontario is seeing.
And I get that this is a tough pill for people in western Canada to swallow because there are provincial governments that are outright hostile to any form of public transport period. But the best role for the federal government is to take the same approach as they do with urban public transport and simply help with funding once everything is planned and ready to go. Even if a provincial government uses a 1990's Quebec tactic and says "you pay for it all" using vague threats of economic sepratism the feds should probably just cave and do it so that something can get kickstarted in the region.
The last thing I will say is that I think there are very politicians who actually hold a malicious contempt for one part of the country or another. Just as there are there aren't that many Canadians who hold genuine regional animosities. A lot of it is really just the result of Canada being so big and massive and diverse that even doing a holiday that requires you to travel 3000km one way can be tough, so people simply dont connect as much as they might if Canada was even just the size of Ontario. Most of the perception of "regional hatreds" is just bullshitting and small talk over morning coffee that people actually start to believe. The problem is that many federal politicians, from across the whole political spectrum, are just trapped in their own elite lifestyles and social circles and are absolutely clueless about anyone outside of them, no matter what part of the country they are from. There are politicians who are completely clueless about Ottawa, the literal place where the federal government is located. Who knows, maybe there can be a collective Canadian action as people from east to west unite to just put VIA out of its misery and get some cash for the provinces to do intercity rail themselves.
There is a key role for the federal government in rail planning: regulation. Our existing regulations require staffing and rolling stock appropriate for the corridor, far less for cheap infrequent lines to rural areas.
Thank you for the response! I agree with much of what you have said. The only thing I would note is that municipalities usually get funding from the feds on civic mass transit projects like buses, LRTs and subways. I think the same approach could be taken with passenger rail, particularly with a Calgary - Banff route. It's pretty contradictory to have the federal government complain about the successes of Banff with all the vehicles entering the park each year and then providing no alternatives while continuing to market Banff as an international bucket list tourist destination. It is federal/crown land so I feel that for anything to happen, it needs a) support of the government literally and financially. Alberta won't want to fund this on it's own for Canada's most iconic and successful park.
Also, fair points on your remarks of VIA Rail in SW Ontario; I recognize it's not all high profile success there. As a Westerner who occasionally uses Via Rail in the corridor when travelling, it's simply infuriating that we can't have functional things like this out West. It's not perfect, but at least the stock is getting replaced and the HFR is going forward (albeit in a bastardized way for it's original plan). It gives me the impression that the service will still be around for decades while we've been told we must do without for decades prior (and likely ahead).
What we need is a national transportation strategy. Unfortunately, I don't think any federal politician has the balls to propose this. Transportation Minister Alghabra certainly doesn't. He doesn't reply to correspondence if you live outside of Ontario or Quebec.
As far as HFR goes, and I could be wrong but, I think its dead in the water. It may have been able to survive if they hadn't have turned into a scheme to privatize VIA in the corridor. But unless there is some absolutely brilliant behind the scenes plan that they are just waiting to reveal, it seems to be falling apart very quickly.
I will say that there are some good things that the feds have done. Letting cities and regions move forward with urban transit projects because they can now get serious funding from Ottawa for them has been absolutely critical in getting so many of them off the ground and that is a great thing. And when it has come to negotiating with freight railways, they have been the reason that Canadian Pacific is now open to their corridors being used. The Banff proposal wouldn't have gotten as far as it did without that development, as is the case with the Bowmanville GO train extension, and likely upgrades to the Milton GO line. And that's part of what makes it so frustrating is that they are actually capable of enabling change when they stick to the roles that they are best at and let others sort out the rest.
And that leads into the idea of a national transportation strategy and I dont know, I have mixed thoughts about that. I know there are some in Canada who look at the US approach to Amtrak where they have essentially said "here is a bunch of money, so go nuts". But is that going to produce the best outcomes, or just result in spending for spendings sake that is going to lead to some services just getting axed in 5 years when they perform poorly? The Canadian approach where projects have to get local support and approval, then provincial support, and ultimately federal money (which at least in the past 7 years is never really a question, more just a formality), seems like a more sensible approach to developing projects.
With Western Canada, I will wade into that minefield a bit. Part of the problem is that VIA was axed without a real fight in parts of western Canada, and in particular in Alberta. In 84 there were public meetings about potential cuts held in Calgary that attracted 2 people. There were federal MPs from Alberta who's attitude was essentially "good riddance". It might just be that because VIA was a creation of papa Trudeau and because of the NEP anything attached to him became instantly hated. That indifference has created different attitudes towards passenger rail than in other places. As a side note so far as I can tell the only serious opposition to the cuts came from Banff and Jasper because they knew it would have a serious impact on them if they lost service. So it is not surprising then that it was Banff that bucked the trend in recent years and began to get vocal about advocating for rail service and that that this is where the first signs of action started to happen. So it isn't as though support can't grow, in case you think I am dunking on Alberta because I do think public opinions could absolutely change.
The areas where you actually see some signs of progress are places where the pressure never fully let up. The most extreme example is Peterborough who have lobbied and harassed every single provincial and federal government for the return of rail service since they lost it in 89. And if you look at other examples, like Vancouver Island or the Gaspe region, there has been continual advocacy that has ramped up in recent years. And the progress they have made (in the case of Gaspe it has been a little over 200 million towards repairing the line, and for Van Island it was a study into the cost of the service) was all because of the provincial governments footing the bill.
All that to say for western Canada there is a lot more work to be done to bring public support up to the levels seen in other parts of Canada, to build enough of a baseline public support to get the ideas discussed by local and provincial politicians. But far more important than that is realizing that a lot of places have given up on the feds already and moved on. When service returns to Vancouver Island and Gaspe, it won't be VIA. Any improvements in Northern Ontario will be because of Ontario Northland (the one existing dedicated Northern Ontario VIA service from Sudbury to White River will probably be handed over to ONR in the next 5 years). Better service in SW Ontario is increasingly looking to be a GO project. And for the prairies, this is probably a good development. It would be a lot easier to sell a rail project by taping into the current energy and saying "we are going to build trains, and Ottawa is going to pay for it" then have the feds "interfering in the provinces role of planning transportation". In short, call out 45 years of stumbling and bumbling by VIA and all the various federal governments. Make it clear you either get your shit together or the next step will be sunsetting VIA by the end of the decade. Despite the perception that Ontario and Quebec are doing well by VIA, they are not and a lot of western Canadians would probably be surprised by how much support there would be in the rest of Canada for moving on to post-VIA solutions for intercity rail. Hell my money would be on Ontario and Quebec being the ones to kick it off.
And this is why passenger rail will never improve in Canada.
The public's willingness to invest in passenger rail is proportional to their benefit. And the bulk of the population that is economically serviceable by rail in Canada, lives in several large and small metros in Quebec-Windsor corridor.
And you can still drastically improve service between major metros and mid-sized cities without leaving people in between completely out in the cold. Doing that is a choice and its something lots of people see and dont like. If people want high speed rail lines between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, then that's fine, people can think what they want. But every urban public transport project has to go through the court of public opinion and intercity rail is no different. If the public keep rejecting the proposals, then its probably time to come up with better plans. And if someone is absolutely committed to dying on the hill of high speed, major metro to major metro only intercity rail plans, then they either need to come up with a better pitch, or work on getting politicians in power who will do those projects even if the public isn't on board. At some point proponents need to stop blaming the rubes who dont live in big cities, and simply dont get it, and have an honest look at why no one has cared about the projects so far.
This is the contempt for big city transportation needs I was referring to. Apparently in your world the court of public opinion doesn't include the opinions of millions who live in big metros? Come on now.
VIA is losing relevance by the day. This is not happening because it doesn't service small towns enough. This is because nobody in the major centres of our population and economy really even consider VIA when they make travel plans. Unless they are students or retirees....
Also, it's not the public rejecting proposals. It's simply politicians who realize that $20B (HSR cost for example) can buy a lot more votes spent on other things. This is exactly why HFR has morphed into a privatization effort. They want to minimize federal investment.
If this was the 80's or 90's saying there is contempt for cities would be legitimate. Public transport was being squeezed and any major transport investments were all happening in suburbs or elsewhere. Today though cities are more popular than they have ever been, are seeing no shortage of investments, and would probably have a lot more Canadians living in them if moving to them wasn't so unaffordable for those not making serious bank.
The idea that VIA is becoming irrelevant assumes that it was ever relevant in the first place. And actually had it not been for the pandemic VIA likely would have broken the 5 million ridership mark in the Q-W corridor for the first time in 40 years, and that is with reduced service in some parts of SWO, no service to Peterborough or the multiple routes between Ottawa and Montreal and Montreal to Quebec. VIA has always been kind of a subpar service and calls of it being irrelevant have been going on since the 80's.
So if you had VIA seeing increasing ridership despite being a bad service, record investments in urban and regional public transport, and a continually urbanizing population and strong population growth throughout the entire Q-W corridor, then the is no reason why a good intercity rail modernization plan should not gain support. None. Proposals can be developed that greatly improve metro to metro service and dont entirely ignore the people in between (or people who live in cities that want to go to other places are that are not Ottawa, Toronto, or Montreal). It is not the publics fault that bad ideas keep getting proposed. And those that keep fucking it up should be held accountable for making bad decisions. The fact that ideas get more public support when they benefit more people is not a bug, its a feature.
If the public is that much a concern, then big city folks who really want their high speed metro to metro rail service should find a politician who likes that idea but has the same regard for the public the UCP, CPC or PPC have. If urban people in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa let Pierre Poilievre know that they could have his vote if he promised a high speed train, he might well be shameless enough to do it. Helping him get elected would be terrible for much of the corridor (and the country), but if this isn't about them, then that shouldn't really matter anyways.
That's all I have to say about that. Personally I think its time to hold people accountable for bad ideas and make it an issue to address why intercity rail proposals have failed over the past decades, because there is zero why it shouldn't happen in this social and cultural climate. But if someones view is that the problem is the public is anti-city and that politicians are being weak and pandering to the public at large, then find politicians who dont care about the public and use the promise of sweet, sweet urban riding votes to get them onboard to the idea of metro to metro intercity rail. Whatever your view it all boils down to doing something that is not the same, tired, beaten into the ground, status quo strategies that have failed for decades.
You've hit the nail on the head. HSR without a strong network of conventional services underpinning it is a bad idea, akin to planting a telegraph pole and expecting it the magically transform back into a tree. It would also cost about $60bn build a new 380 km/h Detroit-Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec line while shafting every other city and town in the corridor. Frequency and performance on conventional lines - up to 200 km/h - is economically viable and politically reasonable in both the Windsor-Quebec and Calgary-Edmonton corridors. That our federal government isn't doing this is mind-boggling. They talk about attempting to tackle the climate crisis and improve quality of life, but ignore the lowest hanging fruit.
If from Oshawa to Dorion you could design a passenger only corridor (along the existing routes) that allowed 200km/h running throughout the majority, and the urban sections through the GTA and the West Island allowed at somewhat reasonable running speeds (in the 120 - 150kmh range), you could probably have some TO-Mtl trains do the trip in 3.25 hours and TO-Ott could probably be around 2.5 - 2.75 hours. Local service milk runs would probably be the same travel time as driving.
Combine that with trains that are actually going to be on time and more frequent, and the opportunity for some of the fares on the slower trains to be a bit closer to GO's prices, and you will capture a shedload of people. There will still be some pouty people who dont take it because its still 35 minutes slower than flying, or because they are not going to give up flying for a "regular" train. But there is no reason a project should cost twice as much just to satisfy the discerning needs of 1 or 2% of the population.
There were clearly some people at VIA in 2015 that understood the secret recipe. How federal politicians and policy makers since then have totally lost the plot since then is beyond me.
To say VIA has done nothing with the tracks around Ottawa it was made to acquire, because the freight railways were pulling out, is not exactly fair. Before VIA took that segment over, the trip north of Brockville was slow and rough. Since being taken over by VIA, significant amounts of work have been done to improve those tracks, fixing slow orders, raising the level of maintenance, improving crossings, and increasing capacity. That contributed to them being able to run almost hourly Toronto-Ottawa services in 2019. The track west of Chatham, also owned by VIA and maintained by RailTerm/Siemens is similarly smooth running.
That is a fair point. And to add on too that there probably isn't a lot else for them to do that would make sense unless there is a more capable network for those sections to plug in to. And unless you had equipment that could take advantage of it (ie if they did a more agressive grade separation program on some sections, like Smiths to Fallowfield), there wouldn't even have been trains that could go above 177km/h until the new fleet enters service in the next 6 months.
But that also points to some of the larger issues. VIA owned a good portion of the track for the Ottawa to Montreal trip. Trying to find a way to improve a passenger corridor from Coteau to Montreal CS would have allowed them to have at least have one corridor they could really start to properly modernize. Of course there are dozens of factors at play, and maybe they even did try that it was just never able to happen for one reason or another. But at the end of the day even if you do assume there were genuine, continuous efforts to keep expanding their own dedicated network it was ultimately never successful.
Did I miss the part where the author talks about how train tracks are actually built and kept running. This was a brutal read, alot of whining. European style trainways won't ever come to Canada, the train has left the station, roads are faster to build, and more cost effective. Roads may not be able to transport people and cargo as efficiently, but the convenience of roads is what sold Canadians. Furthermore electric cars just make roads even more cost effective , especially with auto pilot tech on the way.
The fact is, trains are 19th century technology. We are now seeing a world of electric, self driving cars.....and no one would choose a train over a private car. More roads are always the answer. I suspect that 30 years from now, a substantial portion of those cars will fly. Trains are too inflexible and expensive to build and maintain.
This is a rather ridiculous hit piece that effectively amounts to whining about the attention that large cities get.
VIA has had decades of supporting regional routes to far flung places all over Canada. From Prince Rupert to White River to Gaspé. And has this worked to galvanize national support for passenger rail? Hell no.
It's simple math. A third of Canada's population stays in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. Over half stay in the Quebec-Windsor corridor. If you can't make VIA relevant to the average Torontonian or Montrealer, you will never get the funding and support to make it relevant to the average Calgarian or Haligonian. Contempt for large metros isn't going to change that calculus. And let's be clear, VIA is mostly irrelevant in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. Still mostly seen as a service for students and retirees.
It has nothing to do with contempt for large cities. Big cities are great and most Canadians like them just fine even if they dont live in them. Consider all of the money being poured into rapid urban public transport projects, and electrifying and all those sorts of projects. There are tons of places that dont see any direct benefit from them (if anything even smaller cities are starting to see the benefit of being a more urban and having better transport options). And no one really cares because most people know that's what they need to function and at the very least they will get some benefit from it when they go and visit. Of all the issues in Canadian politics right now, that is probably one of the least divisive ones (of course not in all places, Alberta is still having a rough time despite it being popular but that's a situation unto itself).
And yeah, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal are important places. Which is it isn't just people from those cities who like to go to them. Its people in Cobourg, Belleville, Peterborough, Carelton Place, Kemptville, Hawkesbury, etc, as well.
And thast exactly the point. Lots of people like travelling to or between the bigger cities in the corridor. Lots of people think trains are just fine and would take them if they actually had service, or service that they could rely on and the cost was reasonable. Lots of people would like to get in on a modernized intercity rail system. Now for the first 20 to 25 years of VIA's existence there was probably little them or anyone could have done to make the public fall in love with trains again instead of the continual shift towards driving and flying. Without billions of investment to modernize passenger rail, which was probably a political no-go, it was always going to be about managing decline.
But given how Canada has changed I the last 20 years there is no reason why someone, anyone, should not have been able to get some level of a modernized intercity rail system underway in the corridor at this point. And that is the whole crux of the article. Stopping, taking a moment to reflect, and asking how the fuck did everything go so badly that nothing has happened. And its something that the public deserves answers on. VIA's progress has been marginal at best. The federal governments have bungled things, with the current feds having totally torpedo'd the original HFR vision. There have been shedloads of ideas and proposals, almost none of which have gained any kind of public traction beyond the train enthusiast circles. At this point enough is enough and if the system and ideas are fundamentally broken, which in many ways they seem to be its time to deal with and let someone competent get a move on. That's not being whiny. that's just realizing that trying to do the same shit that has failed over the past decades is crazy and it going to lead to the exact same result again, more failure.
This misses the point. Relevant service to a lot of people in between cities is about fast travel between metros. 5 hrs from Ottawa to Toronto and 6 hrs from Toronto to Montreal, at $80 each way, is just not relevant to most people in big cities.
Should people in Hawkesbury and Coburg get rail service? Sure. But if their service comes at the cost of VIA's ability to connect metros efficiently, what you end up with is a system that is irrelevant to the majority of the public. This is exactly where we are today.
HFR was an attempt, smartly, at separating inter-metro and regional services. Putting them in different corridors ensured there's be no pressure on HFR to add stops, reducing average speed. It's unfortunate that the Liberals bungled it with their lack of interest and increase in scope.
And I agree that whatever gets proposed absolutely needs to meet a higher standard of service and modernity than what has existed in the past. Trains should be faster, and have their own dedicated infrastructure (in the more urban corridors like Q-W, remote corridors are obviously quite a different story).
And in that regard the original HFR plan was a step in the right direction. It's travel times were better than existing service (3 hours from Ottawa "centre" to Toronto centre, and 2.75 hours if you left from a suburban station is a decent service). And because adding stations doesn't mean adding stops to every single train, and because the line was going to go through lots of communities anyways, all they had to do was actually care just a little bit about the communities along the way. Let them know the trade off for having 30-40 (or more) trains whipping through their areas was that a couple of those would stop and provide service, and they probably could have sold this as an entirely publicly funded project instead of going through all the complicated schemes they are trying to use to avoid that.
Having improved travel times between metros, and offering some limited services to the communities along the way do not have to be incompatible ideas. If your underlying philosophy is the Brightline paradigm of revenue not passengers, then yeah, of course none of those people matter. And that has become the HFR model, and that has been the model for HSR proposals in the past. And given that its been 20 years of failures get anything off the ground (almost 40 if you go back to the '84 VIA high speed proposal) it seems totally reasonable to question if the Brightline approach is part of the problem. That along with the role of the feds, the relevance of VIA, and really any status quo ways of thinking that have ultimately lead to nothing for metro to metro intercity.
I would also add that the value of having a rethink and honestly looking at why ideas are not catching on can be seen in late 90's/early 00's Ottawa. The first decade of the LRT debate largely focused around ideas that were designed to be relatively low cost. The 2005 LRT plan, that was approved and had some contracts signed for it, had the entirety of the downtown segment on the street. It was not particularly popular and even became a part of Larry O'Briens mayoral platform (a campaign he won). It wasn't until the 2005 plan was partially scrapped, a downtown tunnel was added, and the entirety of the plan actually became a lot more ambitious, which also meant a much higher price tag, that there was the kind of public support to call the debate over (aside from a few fringe people) and simply move along to the business of getting it built.
Of course the opening was a total failure, but that's a separate issue and the public inquiry should help determine who was at fault so that mistake can hopefully not be repeated again. But intercity rail absolutely needs that same kind of reflective, honest, often heated debate that Ottawa had in the mid-00's about LRT to actually find a plan that makes its something the public is onboard with and wants to make a priority.
You forgot to mention the Trudeau The First Liberals cutting back Via services , some 40 percent in the 1981 Budget. Biased much? That was one of the main reasons that Mulroney was elected in 1984; he promised to restore a number of services such as the second transcon train.
And then Mulroney had his turn at the meat axe in 89 when close to half the services were cut. Chretien and Martin were also no friend to VIA. Harper cut some routes in Gaspe, Vancouver Island and Southwest Ontario. It was the Ontario Liberals that cut ONR service to North Bay in 2012. It doesn't matter what political party was in charge from the 1980's onward (you could argue since the 1960's onward), they all had their turn at either granting CN or Canadian Pacific the ability to cut services, or cutting VIA's budget.
I certainly wouldn't say Im biased. Im somewhere between a social democrat and a liberal and called out the current federal Liberals for continuing the 40 year trend of federal governments being absolute shit when it comes to intercity rail and said that the Ontario PC's have actually shown one possible strategy for making progress.
I have to admit, as a Western Canadian, I am beyond sick and tired of hearing about the corridor's HFR project that is getting so much attention and support from politicians and media. What many folks in Ontario & Quebec fail to realize is that there are Canadians that live and pay taxes in other parts of the country, and the federal government continues to ignore us. When Greyhound pulled out of Western Canada, the feds literally fell silent; when Greyhound pulled out of Central Canada a couple years later, the feds gave a song and dance about how unfortunate this is.
The QC/ON corridor doesn't deserve any passenger rail improvements until the rest of Canada can catch up. Alberta's population has doubled since Mulroney made huge service cuts, and Parks Canada continues to cry every Spring about the influx of cars entering our National Parks. Guess what? -it's because there is literally no other option to visit. A dedicated line between Calgary & Edmonton and Calgary and Banff is a must. We've done without it for over 30 years, our population has now doubled and now is clearly the time for the government to make investments in infrastructure. We don't want a train to Toronto, we need regional trains that will keep locals and tourists moving provincially.
We've all been told to pay a carbon tax to green the economy. What is the tax for if it's not actually going to any infrastructure improvements to literally green the economy? As a Westerner, I want attention - I want our needs prioritized over the citizens of Ontario & Quebec. And BTW, this isn't a partisan smear opinion against the Liberals, the Harper Conservatives were just as lousy in this portfolio as the Liberals are. It's great we're getting rid of single use plastics, but I need something with more substance, and no, the HFR project literally has no affect on me or the people around me. It's no wonder Western Canadians are alienated; there is much more to Canada than Ontario & Quebec - it would be fantastic if our federal politicians put in a but of effort to learn the national geography.
As someone who lived in Manitoba for 8 years and got to know Western Canada well, I totally understand what you are saying. There are parts of the Prairies, Alberta and BC where you look and say "there is definitely potential here". A rail service from Calgary to Banff is an absolute no brainer, and though it would still be a couple billion to do right, that's still a relatively decent price for a starter project and to tackle some not insignificant tasks like re-opening the rail station in Calgary (I also think that it shouldn't be a private endeavour, its just way to valuable a corridor for that and if there is going to be any federal agency that takes the lead on this project, let it be Parks Canada).
Having said that one of the challenges is that there isn't the same degree of municipal or provincial support and enthusiasm for intercity rail projects. And that is critical because as you said intercity rail is regional. It is no longer a national affair because people have no interest in taking a train from Calgary to Toronto unless they are well off retirees. Trains are about serving regions, sometimes crossing provincial borders but often staying entirely within a single province. And as much as VIA or the feds aren't doing anything in the west, they really aren't doing anything in central Canada or the maritimes either.
In Southwest Ontario GO is slowly supplanting VIA service. You already see it on the Niagara Falls to Toronto route. It is almost certainly going to happen on the London-Kitchener-Toronto line. Even the bus route from Winnipeg to Thunder Bay is now handled by Ontario Northland, a provincial agency. And it makes perfect sense. The rail projects in Ontario that are planned by Ontario are the only ones that are getting any traction because they are the ones that actually understand the needs of people in the GTA or northern Ontario.
At this point, unless there is some radical change, VIA is never going to execute a major project. Not HFR. Not just in the short or medium term, but ever. Maybe the agency made sense in the late 70's when passenger rail was in free fall and the government simply had to do anything to stop it from totally collapsing. But aside from maintaining its premium long distance services, and some remote services, it is no longer a relevant way to plan intercity rail in Canada. And I will probably bang that drum for a while because I want people in western Canada and the maritimes to know that VIA is dying in central Ontario as well and that the pressure needs to land on the provincial governments to take over the task, just as Ontario is seeing.
And I get that this is a tough pill for people in western Canada to swallow because there are provincial governments that are outright hostile to any form of public transport period. But the best role for the federal government is to take the same approach as they do with urban public transport and simply help with funding once everything is planned and ready to go. Even if a provincial government uses a 1990's Quebec tactic and says "you pay for it all" using vague threats of economic sepratism the feds should probably just cave and do it so that something can get kickstarted in the region.
The last thing I will say is that I think there are very politicians who actually hold a malicious contempt for one part of the country or another. Just as there are there aren't that many Canadians who hold genuine regional animosities. A lot of it is really just the result of Canada being so big and massive and diverse that even doing a holiday that requires you to travel 3000km one way can be tough, so people simply dont connect as much as they might if Canada was even just the size of Ontario. Most of the perception of "regional hatreds" is just bullshitting and small talk over morning coffee that people actually start to believe. The problem is that many federal politicians, from across the whole political spectrum, are just trapped in their own elite lifestyles and social circles and are absolutely clueless about anyone outside of them, no matter what part of the country they are from. There are politicians who are completely clueless about Ottawa, the literal place where the federal government is located. Who knows, maybe there can be a collective Canadian action as people from east to west unite to just put VIA out of its misery and get some cash for the provinces to do intercity rail themselves.
There is a key role for the federal government in rail planning: regulation. Our existing regulations require staffing and rolling stock appropriate for the corridor, far less for cheap infrequent lines to rural areas.
Thank you for the response! I agree with much of what you have said. The only thing I would note is that municipalities usually get funding from the feds on civic mass transit projects like buses, LRTs and subways. I think the same approach could be taken with passenger rail, particularly with a Calgary - Banff route. It's pretty contradictory to have the federal government complain about the successes of Banff with all the vehicles entering the park each year and then providing no alternatives while continuing to market Banff as an international bucket list tourist destination. It is federal/crown land so I feel that for anything to happen, it needs a) support of the government literally and financially. Alberta won't want to fund this on it's own for Canada's most iconic and successful park.
Also, fair points on your remarks of VIA Rail in SW Ontario; I recognize it's not all high profile success there. As a Westerner who occasionally uses Via Rail in the corridor when travelling, it's simply infuriating that we can't have functional things like this out West. It's not perfect, but at least the stock is getting replaced and the HFR is going forward (albeit in a bastardized way for it's original plan). It gives me the impression that the service will still be around for decades while we've been told we must do without for decades prior (and likely ahead).
What we need is a national transportation strategy. Unfortunately, I don't think any federal politician has the balls to propose this. Transportation Minister Alghabra certainly doesn't. He doesn't reply to correspondence if you live outside of Ontario or Quebec.
He doesn't reply if your from Ontario as well...
As far as HFR goes, and I could be wrong but, I think its dead in the water. It may have been able to survive if they hadn't have turned into a scheme to privatize VIA in the corridor. But unless there is some absolutely brilliant behind the scenes plan that they are just waiting to reveal, it seems to be falling apart very quickly.
I will say that there are some good things that the feds have done. Letting cities and regions move forward with urban transit projects because they can now get serious funding from Ottawa for them has been absolutely critical in getting so many of them off the ground and that is a great thing. And when it has come to negotiating with freight railways, they have been the reason that Canadian Pacific is now open to their corridors being used. The Banff proposal wouldn't have gotten as far as it did without that development, as is the case with the Bowmanville GO train extension, and likely upgrades to the Milton GO line. And that's part of what makes it so frustrating is that they are actually capable of enabling change when they stick to the roles that they are best at and let others sort out the rest.
And that leads into the idea of a national transportation strategy and I dont know, I have mixed thoughts about that. I know there are some in Canada who look at the US approach to Amtrak where they have essentially said "here is a bunch of money, so go nuts". But is that going to produce the best outcomes, or just result in spending for spendings sake that is going to lead to some services just getting axed in 5 years when they perform poorly? The Canadian approach where projects have to get local support and approval, then provincial support, and ultimately federal money (which at least in the past 7 years is never really a question, more just a formality), seems like a more sensible approach to developing projects.
With Western Canada, I will wade into that minefield a bit. Part of the problem is that VIA was axed without a real fight in parts of western Canada, and in particular in Alberta. In 84 there were public meetings about potential cuts held in Calgary that attracted 2 people. There were federal MPs from Alberta who's attitude was essentially "good riddance". It might just be that because VIA was a creation of papa Trudeau and because of the NEP anything attached to him became instantly hated. That indifference has created different attitudes towards passenger rail than in other places. As a side note so far as I can tell the only serious opposition to the cuts came from Banff and Jasper because they knew it would have a serious impact on them if they lost service. So it is not surprising then that it was Banff that bucked the trend in recent years and began to get vocal about advocating for rail service and that that this is where the first signs of action started to happen. So it isn't as though support can't grow, in case you think I am dunking on Alberta because I do think public opinions could absolutely change.
The areas where you actually see some signs of progress are places where the pressure never fully let up. The most extreme example is Peterborough who have lobbied and harassed every single provincial and federal government for the return of rail service since they lost it in 89. And if you look at other examples, like Vancouver Island or the Gaspe region, there has been continual advocacy that has ramped up in recent years. And the progress they have made (in the case of Gaspe it has been a little over 200 million towards repairing the line, and for Van Island it was a study into the cost of the service) was all because of the provincial governments footing the bill.
All that to say for western Canada there is a lot more work to be done to bring public support up to the levels seen in other parts of Canada, to build enough of a baseline public support to get the ideas discussed by local and provincial politicians. But far more important than that is realizing that a lot of places have given up on the feds already and moved on. When service returns to Vancouver Island and Gaspe, it won't be VIA. Any improvements in Northern Ontario will be because of Ontario Northland (the one existing dedicated Northern Ontario VIA service from Sudbury to White River will probably be handed over to ONR in the next 5 years). Better service in SW Ontario is increasingly looking to be a GO project. And for the prairies, this is probably a good development. It would be a lot easier to sell a rail project by taping into the current energy and saying "we are going to build trains, and Ottawa is going to pay for it" then have the feds "interfering in the provinces role of planning transportation". In short, call out 45 years of stumbling and bumbling by VIA and all the various federal governments. Make it clear you either get your shit together or the next step will be sunsetting VIA by the end of the decade. Despite the perception that Ontario and Quebec are doing well by VIA, they are not and a lot of western Canadians would probably be surprised by how much support there would be in the rest of Canada for moving on to post-VIA solutions for intercity rail. Hell my money would be on Ontario and Quebec being the ones to kick it off.
And this is why passenger rail will never improve in Canada.
The public's willingness to invest in passenger rail is proportional to their benefit. And the bulk of the population that is economically serviceable by rail in Canada, lives in several large and small metros in Quebec-Windsor corridor.
And you can still drastically improve service between major metros and mid-sized cities without leaving people in between completely out in the cold. Doing that is a choice and its something lots of people see and dont like. If people want high speed rail lines between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, then that's fine, people can think what they want. But every urban public transport project has to go through the court of public opinion and intercity rail is no different. If the public keep rejecting the proposals, then its probably time to come up with better plans. And if someone is absolutely committed to dying on the hill of high speed, major metro to major metro only intercity rail plans, then they either need to come up with a better pitch, or work on getting politicians in power who will do those projects even if the public isn't on board. At some point proponents need to stop blaming the rubes who dont live in big cities, and simply dont get it, and have an honest look at why no one has cared about the projects so far.
This is the contempt for big city transportation needs I was referring to. Apparently in your world the court of public opinion doesn't include the opinions of millions who live in big metros? Come on now.
VIA is losing relevance by the day. This is not happening because it doesn't service small towns enough. This is because nobody in the major centres of our population and economy really even consider VIA when they make travel plans. Unless they are students or retirees....
Also, it's not the public rejecting proposals. It's simply politicians who realize that $20B (HSR cost for example) can buy a lot more votes spent on other things. This is exactly why HFR has morphed into a privatization effort. They want to minimize federal investment.
If this was the 80's or 90's saying there is contempt for cities would be legitimate. Public transport was being squeezed and any major transport investments were all happening in suburbs or elsewhere. Today though cities are more popular than they have ever been, are seeing no shortage of investments, and would probably have a lot more Canadians living in them if moving to them wasn't so unaffordable for those not making serious bank.
The idea that VIA is becoming irrelevant assumes that it was ever relevant in the first place. And actually had it not been for the pandemic VIA likely would have broken the 5 million ridership mark in the Q-W corridor for the first time in 40 years, and that is with reduced service in some parts of SWO, no service to Peterborough or the multiple routes between Ottawa and Montreal and Montreal to Quebec. VIA has always been kind of a subpar service and calls of it being irrelevant have been going on since the 80's.
So if you had VIA seeing increasing ridership despite being a bad service, record investments in urban and regional public transport, and a continually urbanizing population and strong population growth throughout the entire Q-W corridor, then the is no reason why a good intercity rail modernization plan should not gain support. None. Proposals can be developed that greatly improve metro to metro service and dont entirely ignore the people in between (or people who live in cities that want to go to other places are that are not Ottawa, Toronto, or Montreal). It is not the publics fault that bad ideas keep getting proposed. And those that keep fucking it up should be held accountable for making bad decisions. The fact that ideas get more public support when they benefit more people is not a bug, its a feature.
If the public is that much a concern, then big city folks who really want their high speed metro to metro rail service should find a politician who likes that idea but has the same regard for the public the UCP, CPC or PPC have. If urban people in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa let Pierre Poilievre know that they could have his vote if he promised a high speed train, he might well be shameless enough to do it. Helping him get elected would be terrible for much of the corridor (and the country), but if this isn't about them, then that shouldn't really matter anyways.
That's all I have to say about that. Personally I think its time to hold people accountable for bad ideas and make it an issue to address why intercity rail proposals have failed over the past decades, because there is zero why it shouldn't happen in this social and cultural climate. But if someones view is that the problem is the public is anti-city and that politicians are being weak and pandering to the public at large, then find politicians who dont care about the public and use the promise of sweet, sweet urban riding votes to get them onboard to the idea of metro to metro intercity rail. Whatever your view it all boils down to doing something that is not the same, tired, beaten into the ground, status quo strategies that have failed for decades.
You've hit the nail on the head. HSR without a strong network of conventional services underpinning it is a bad idea, akin to planting a telegraph pole and expecting it the magically transform back into a tree. It would also cost about $60bn build a new 380 km/h Detroit-Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec line while shafting every other city and town in the corridor. Frequency and performance on conventional lines - up to 200 km/h - is economically viable and politically reasonable in both the Windsor-Quebec and Calgary-Edmonton corridors. That our federal government isn't doing this is mind-boggling. They talk about attempting to tackle the climate crisis and improve quality of life, but ignore the lowest hanging fruit.
If from Oshawa to Dorion you could design a passenger only corridor (along the existing routes) that allowed 200km/h running throughout the majority, and the urban sections through the GTA and the West Island allowed at somewhat reasonable running speeds (in the 120 - 150kmh range), you could probably have some TO-Mtl trains do the trip in 3.25 hours and TO-Ott could probably be around 2.5 - 2.75 hours. Local service milk runs would probably be the same travel time as driving.
Combine that with trains that are actually going to be on time and more frequent, and the opportunity for some of the fares on the slower trains to be a bit closer to GO's prices, and you will capture a shedload of people. There will still be some pouty people who dont take it because its still 35 minutes slower than flying, or because they are not going to give up flying for a "regular" train. But there is no reason a project should cost twice as much just to satisfy the discerning needs of 1 or 2% of the population.
There were clearly some people at VIA in 2015 that understood the secret recipe. How federal politicians and policy makers since then have totally lost the plot since then is beyond me.
To say VIA has done nothing with the tracks around Ottawa it was made to acquire, because the freight railways were pulling out, is not exactly fair. Before VIA took that segment over, the trip north of Brockville was slow and rough. Since being taken over by VIA, significant amounts of work have been done to improve those tracks, fixing slow orders, raising the level of maintenance, improving crossings, and increasing capacity. That contributed to them being able to run almost hourly Toronto-Ottawa services in 2019. The track west of Chatham, also owned by VIA and maintained by RailTerm/Siemens is similarly smooth running.
That is a fair point. And to add on too that there probably isn't a lot else for them to do that would make sense unless there is a more capable network for those sections to plug in to. And unless you had equipment that could take advantage of it (ie if they did a more agressive grade separation program on some sections, like Smiths to Fallowfield), there wouldn't even have been trains that could go above 177km/h until the new fleet enters service in the next 6 months.
But that also points to some of the larger issues. VIA owned a good portion of the track for the Ottawa to Montreal trip. Trying to find a way to improve a passenger corridor from Coteau to Montreal CS would have allowed them to have at least have one corridor they could really start to properly modernize. Of course there are dozens of factors at play, and maybe they even did try that it was just never able to happen for one reason or another. But at the end of the day even if you do assume there were genuine, continuous efforts to keep expanding their own dedicated network it was ultimately never successful.
Did I miss the part where the author talks about how train tracks are actually built and kept running. This was a brutal read, alot of whining. European style trainways won't ever come to Canada, the train has left the station, roads are faster to build, and more cost effective. Roads may not be able to transport people and cargo as efficiently, but the convenience of roads is what sold Canadians. Furthermore electric cars just make roads even more cost effective , especially with auto pilot tech on the way.
The fact is, trains are 19th century technology. We are now seeing a world of electric, self driving cars.....and no one would choose a train over a private car. More roads are always the answer. I suspect that 30 years from now, a substantial portion of those cars will fly. Trains are too inflexible and expensive to build and maintain.
This is a rather ridiculous hit piece that effectively amounts to whining about the attention that large cities get.
VIA has had decades of supporting regional routes to far flung places all over Canada. From Prince Rupert to White River to Gaspé. And has this worked to galvanize national support for passenger rail? Hell no.
It's simple math. A third of Canada's population stays in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. Over half stay in the Quebec-Windsor corridor. If you can't make VIA relevant to the average Torontonian or Montrealer, you will never get the funding and support to make it relevant to the average Calgarian or Haligonian. Contempt for large metros isn't going to change that calculus. And let's be clear, VIA is mostly irrelevant in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. Still mostly seen as a service for students and retirees.
It has nothing to do with contempt for large cities. Big cities are great and most Canadians like them just fine even if they dont live in them. Consider all of the money being poured into rapid urban public transport projects, and electrifying and all those sorts of projects. There are tons of places that dont see any direct benefit from them (if anything even smaller cities are starting to see the benefit of being a more urban and having better transport options). And no one really cares because most people know that's what they need to function and at the very least they will get some benefit from it when they go and visit. Of all the issues in Canadian politics right now, that is probably one of the least divisive ones (of course not in all places, Alberta is still having a rough time despite it being popular but that's a situation unto itself).
And yeah, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal are important places. Which is it isn't just people from those cities who like to go to them. Its people in Cobourg, Belleville, Peterborough, Carelton Place, Kemptville, Hawkesbury, etc, as well.
And thast exactly the point. Lots of people like travelling to or between the bigger cities in the corridor. Lots of people think trains are just fine and would take them if they actually had service, or service that they could rely on and the cost was reasonable. Lots of people would like to get in on a modernized intercity rail system. Now for the first 20 to 25 years of VIA's existence there was probably little them or anyone could have done to make the public fall in love with trains again instead of the continual shift towards driving and flying. Without billions of investment to modernize passenger rail, which was probably a political no-go, it was always going to be about managing decline.
But given how Canada has changed I the last 20 years there is no reason why someone, anyone, should not have been able to get some level of a modernized intercity rail system underway in the corridor at this point. And that is the whole crux of the article. Stopping, taking a moment to reflect, and asking how the fuck did everything go so badly that nothing has happened. And its something that the public deserves answers on. VIA's progress has been marginal at best. The federal governments have bungled things, with the current feds having totally torpedo'd the original HFR vision. There have been shedloads of ideas and proposals, almost none of which have gained any kind of public traction beyond the train enthusiast circles. At this point enough is enough and if the system and ideas are fundamentally broken, which in many ways they seem to be its time to deal with and let someone competent get a move on. That's not being whiny. that's just realizing that trying to do the same shit that has failed over the past decades is crazy and it going to lead to the exact same result again, more failure.
This misses the point. Relevant service to a lot of people in between cities is about fast travel between metros. 5 hrs from Ottawa to Toronto and 6 hrs from Toronto to Montreal, at $80 each way, is just not relevant to most people in big cities.
Should people in Hawkesbury and Coburg get rail service? Sure. But if their service comes at the cost of VIA's ability to connect metros efficiently, what you end up with is a system that is irrelevant to the majority of the public. This is exactly where we are today.
HFR was an attempt, smartly, at separating inter-metro and regional services. Putting them in different corridors ensured there's be no pressure on HFR to add stops, reducing average speed. It's unfortunate that the Liberals bungled it with their lack of interest and increase in scope.
And I agree that whatever gets proposed absolutely needs to meet a higher standard of service and modernity than what has existed in the past. Trains should be faster, and have their own dedicated infrastructure (in the more urban corridors like Q-W, remote corridors are obviously quite a different story).
And in that regard the original HFR plan was a step in the right direction. It's travel times were better than existing service (3 hours from Ottawa "centre" to Toronto centre, and 2.75 hours if you left from a suburban station is a decent service). And because adding stations doesn't mean adding stops to every single train, and because the line was going to go through lots of communities anyways, all they had to do was actually care just a little bit about the communities along the way. Let them know the trade off for having 30-40 (or more) trains whipping through their areas was that a couple of those would stop and provide service, and they probably could have sold this as an entirely publicly funded project instead of going through all the complicated schemes they are trying to use to avoid that.
Having improved travel times between metros, and offering some limited services to the communities along the way do not have to be incompatible ideas. If your underlying philosophy is the Brightline paradigm of revenue not passengers, then yeah, of course none of those people matter. And that has become the HFR model, and that has been the model for HSR proposals in the past. And given that its been 20 years of failures get anything off the ground (almost 40 if you go back to the '84 VIA high speed proposal) it seems totally reasonable to question if the Brightline approach is part of the problem. That along with the role of the feds, the relevance of VIA, and really any status quo ways of thinking that have ultimately lead to nothing for metro to metro intercity.
I would also add that the value of having a rethink and honestly looking at why ideas are not catching on can be seen in late 90's/early 00's Ottawa. The first decade of the LRT debate largely focused around ideas that were designed to be relatively low cost. The 2005 LRT plan, that was approved and had some contracts signed for it, had the entirety of the downtown segment on the street. It was not particularly popular and even became a part of Larry O'Briens mayoral platform (a campaign he won). It wasn't until the 2005 plan was partially scrapped, a downtown tunnel was added, and the entirety of the plan actually became a lot more ambitious, which also meant a much higher price tag, that there was the kind of public support to call the debate over (aside from a few fringe people) and simply move along to the business of getting it built.
Of course the opening was a total failure, but that's a separate issue and the public inquiry should help determine who was at fault so that mistake can hopefully not be repeated again. But intercity rail absolutely needs that same kind of reflective, honest, often heated debate that Ottawa had in the mid-00's about LRT to actually find a plan that makes its something the public is onboard with and wants to make a priority.
You forgot to mention the Trudeau The First Liberals cutting back Via services , some 40 percent in the 1981 Budget. Biased much? That was one of the main reasons that Mulroney was elected in 1984; he promised to restore a number of services such as the second transcon train.
And then Mulroney had his turn at the meat axe in 89 when close to half the services were cut. Chretien and Martin were also no friend to VIA. Harper cut some routes in Gaspe, Vancouver Island and Southwest Ontario. It was the Ontario Liberals that cut ONR service to North Bay in 2012. It doesn't matter what political party was in charge from the 1980's onward (you could argue since the 1960's onward), they all had their turn at either granting CN or Canadian Pacific the ability to cut services, or cutting VIA's budget.
I certainly wouldn't say Im biased. Im somewhere between a social democrat and a liberal and called out the current federal Liberals for continuing the 40 year trend of federal governments being absolute shit when it comes to intercity rail and said that the Ontario PC's have actually shown one possible strategy for making progress.