Getting People Back on Trains, After the Pandemic Turned Many to Cars

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/22/world/canada/passenger-trains-construction-pandemic.html

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The sleek stainless steel cars that Via Rail Canada uses for its cross-country trains and on some other routes have gained an embarrassing visual indication of their very advanced age. Under orders from the federal transport minister, empty coaches now sit at the front and the back of the trains to act as safety buffers during collisions.

Passengers having a drink within the curved rear windows of bobtailed observation cars at the back of the transcontinental Canadian trains will eventually again get to watch the rails recede into the distance, rather than stare at an empty coach. The buffer cars will only be in place until Via strengthens the cars, which date to the middle of the last century and which mostly came from the Canadian Pacific Railway. However, when I asked Via how long that might take, it did not offer any estimate.

The pandemic has been a disaster for all forms of travel except cars and bikes. Greyhound shut down its bus operations in Canada, most of the country’s airlines are only still around because of government aid, and cruise ships all but vanished from Canadian ports.

But while airlines have seen a resurgence in passengers — one that has sometimes overwhelmed the carriers and some airports — Via’s passenger train service has been slow to recover.

“Truth be known, transit and intercity passenger train services got really whacked with the pandemic,” Malcolm Cairns, a railway consultant who previously worked with the federal regulator and Canadian Pacific, told me. “People are just sticking by their cars.”

The government led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has arguably done more to boost passenger rail service than any other in recent history. Passenger trains fit with both its early commitment to developing the nation’s infrastructure and its efforts to combat climate change.

Nadine Ramadan, a spokeswoman for Omar Alghabra, the transport minister, told me in an email that the government had given Via 300 million Canadian dollars to fix up its aging fleet, like the stainless steel cars, and 900 million to buy new trains for its service between Quebec City and Windsor, Ontario. The first of those trains is expected to go into service by the end of the year, she said.

But the biggest announcement by Mr. Alghabra came last year. After decades of debate over whether Canada should emulate much of the rest of the world and build a high-speed rail line between Quebec City and Windsor, he announced that the government was committing to a multibillion-dollar compromise it calls high frequency rail.

When Via took over passenger rail service from Canadian Pacific and the Canadian National Railway in 1977, an unwelcome burden was put on its back. With a few small exceptions — notably, the route into and out of Ottawa — it must run its trains on those two railways’ tracks. As anyone who has ever traveled on Via knows, its trains are second priority to the railways’ freight trains. That situation often leads to delays or forces Via to schedule some routes around freight movements rather than its passengers’ needs.

The high frequency rail plan would build a line solely devoted to passenger trains, eliminating those delays and allowing Via to operate more trains at any time it wants. And while it wouldn’t try to match the speeds of high-speed lines in places like France, China and Japan, the dedicated line would allow trains to run at higher speeds than it currently can.

Mr. Cairns said running trains on dedicated tracks rather then going for the fastest possible trains was the best approach for improving rail service — at least for the country’s most populous corridor.

But don’t plan on booking tickets anytime soon. The government’s high frequency rail website is largely devoted to outlining a very bureaucratic procurement process that will take years to complete before any final decision can be made to go ahead and start laying tracks.

It’s a stark contrast with the plans for a new expressway through farmland near the Niagara Escarpment that Doug Ford, the Progressive Conservative premier of Ontario, is championing and which is estimated to cost 6 to 10 billion Canadian dollars. It is opposed by most of the municipalities along its route, is being challenged on environmental grounds and may run into issues with Indigenous communities. But during that province’s elections this spring, Mr. Ford repeatedly said that it was “time to start pouring the concrete, it’s time to get paving.”

High frequency rail, by contrast, is at least 10 years away. And maybe much more.

“Is this something that we think will actually be completed in nearly a decade from now?” Daniel Béland, the head of the McGill University Institute for the Study of Canada, asked me. “There are so many different things that could happen between now and then, like a change of government.”

With comparatively high inflation continuing and a possible recession looming, the Toronto Star obtained a letter from Chrystia Freeland, the finance minister, to other cabinet ministers telling them that any new spending would have to be offset by cuts.

Mr. Cairns said that getting people back on trains would be critical to making high frequency rail a reality.

“I can’t imagine that people are really anxious to get this moving very quickly,” he said. “There’s no demand for this service at the moment.”

Professor Béland does not foresee the current government abandoning its commitment, whether or not people are taking trains right now, in part because polls suggest that better rail service is popular among urban voters in Ontario and Quebec.

“But delays are likely and fiscal priorities, of course, can change over time,” he said. “It will be a long process and there might be delays, just like you have quite a few delays when you take Via Rail.”

In Travel, join Richard Rubin along the St. Lawrence River to tour the Gaspé Peninsula. The region is captured in stunning photographs by Nasuna Stuart-Ulin of Montreal.

The University of New Brunswick has retained two independent academics to review its procedures to ensure that its granting of doctorates meets “the highest standard.” The move came after other academics assailed the scholarship of Doug Mastriano, a Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, who earned a Ph.D. in 2013.

The International Real Estate column takes a look at a four-bedroom, three-bath home on five hilltop acres that is now for sale in Halfmoon Bay, along the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia.

A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.

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