Investing in passenger rail will do a lot more for the environment as a whole than investing in electric vehicles and more highways. The rail will promote denser housing development along its corridor as well. If Canada wants to get serious about the climate and housing crises, we need to get serious about rail and transit.
Honestly, Canada would need to build a second dedicated line just for passenger trains to make it anywhere usable. Currently, passenger trains are last priority on the tracks to freight trains, so consequently they take forever to go anywhere. I just double checked on the website, to travel from Toronto to Vancouver it takes roughly 5 days and costs $1050, and to return it takes roughly 4 days and costs $700, for a total of 9 days travel and $1750.
The same trip dates on westjet will take roughly 10 hours and cost $1450.
It’s just not feasible if the train takes longer and costs more, who would take that option?
That is a huge part of the problem with our rail. We either need a second line or to prioritize passenger rail over frieght.
We need transit to be faster and ideally more convenient than a car for people to really shift. It would be nice to get national service running more competitively with airlines but i think the prioirty should be on improving regional rail first.
Signed
The Quebec-Windsor corridor is the one part of the Via system that gets close to breaking even. Sure, VIA rail’s service approach is still mostly set in the 1970s but privatization is a one-way ticket to shittier service, even if it might try to appear better for some time.