Rail services in the Quebec City-Windsor corridor
 

Since the official VIA Rail thread is now an endless discussion about more trains out West, hopefully this thread can be a discussion about rail services in the Corridor. Be that VIA, Amtrak, regional GO services, or proposals like VIA's High Frequency Rail and Ontario's proposed Southwestern Ontario High Speed Rail.

All welcome. But hopefully we can keep the fantasy posts about Prairie rail services and conspiracy theories out of this thread.

Corridor services as of September 11
 

Thank you for this laudable initiative, which is very timely, as VIA Rail is adding today a fourth weekend-only frequency (operating Mondays, Fridays and Sundays only) on its Montreal-Toronto and Ottawa-Toronto routes - in addition to the third (Toronto-Windsor: second) frequency, which has already been added across the Corridor on September 1:

Quebec-Montreal (and v.v.)

• leaving QBEC at 08:00 (#35), 15:00 (#39) and 17:45 (#29)
• leaving MTRL at 08:56 (#22), 12:45 (#24) and 18:25 (#28)

Montreal-Ottawa (and v.v.)

• leaving MTRL at 09:00 (#633), 12:04 (#35) and 18:50 (#39)
• leaving OTTW at 06:30 (#22), 10:15 (#24) and 16:15 (#28)

Montreal-Toronto (and v.v.)

• leaving MTRL at 08:55 (#63), 11:05* (#65), 13:28 (#67) and 18:30 (#669)
• leaving TRTO at 08:35 (#62), 11:32 (#64), 15:15 (#66) and 17:02* (#68)

Ottawa-Toronto (and v.v.)

• leaving OTTW at 08:40 (#643), 11:40 (#53), 15:23* (#55) and 18:26 (#59)
• leaving TRTO at 08:35 (#52), 12:17 (#42), 15:32* (#46) and 18:40 (#48)

Toronto-Windsor (and v.v.)

• leaving TRTO at 06:45 (#71) and 17:30 (#75)
• leaving WDON at 09:05 (#72) and 17:45 (#78)

Toronto-Sarnia (and v.v.)

• leaving TRTO at 17:40 (#84)
• leaving SARN at 06:10 (#87)

Trains with asterisk (*) only operate Mondays, Fridays and Sunday.

The full PDF schedule can be found here:
https://www.viarail.ca/en/plan-your-...rain-schedules
(Click on “temporary timetable due to Covid-19”)

Good to see VIA is slowly bouncing back. I wonder if Covid has delayed testing and acceptance of the Siemens trains at all?

Getting on the train (corridor) should be like getting on public transit (or rather, like hopping on a train in many European countries). Tickets should be easily bought from kiosks and from mobile phones, with the little difficulty. Frequent routes and inexpensive fares are "the ticket" to weaning people out of their cars and off of air flights. Via's eye-watering prices are almost as high as the service is slow/delayed. There should be service between Montreal and Toronto at least once per hour from 6am-10pm, with service through Ottawa on half of those services. And between QC and Montreal, Windsor/London/KW/Guelph and Toronto/Hamilton every second or third hour.

So pretty much exactly what HFR would enable?

Unfortunately what this implies though is Canada essentially has to start from scratch to build passenger rail systems. If something like Network Rail existed in Canada and owned the track, then years ago they would have upgraded the track between Toronto and Montreal and had CN, CP, VIA, GO, whatever all run on the same track.

But it is what it is. Hopefully now it is clear that it is futile trying to work with the rail monopolies and the only viable path is to build new infrastructure.

Yep. We made our bed decades ago. Time to move on. I really hope we can get HFR going and get train service that the rest of the developed world considers normal.

Thanks for starting this but Please rename to 'Passenger rail services in the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor'....or I'm afraid we're going to be discussing a Regina-Moose Jaw-Calgary Corridor!!

...and if this is just a regional thread then it shouldn't be in the national section.

What about the Senneterre-Hervey Jonction corridor?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...Senneterre.png

It pertains to at least 2 provinces.

We can still ask an admin to change the name once swimmer_spe or GoTrans show up here, but for the time being, I believe it would be sufficient to just make these precisions in the opening post of this thread...

You mean like the “VIA Rail network developments” thread, which is in the Ottawa section for no apparent reason? As milomilo has already explained to you: this topic covers multiple regional sections (Ontario and Quebec) and therefore belongs into the National section...

Just because you add the word “Corridor” behind a railway route doesn’t make it a rail corridor. If you want to have a discussion about that route without watching your comments drowned with “Western Canada ought to have daily passenger rail service” trolling, I suggest you create a “remote VIA Rail services” thread, which would of course belong into the national section as well...

:haha:

At one time that train went to Cochrane, ON.

I thought this was about the Maple Creek-Okotoks Corridor. I'm disappointed for a number of reasons.

I thought it was patently obvious that I was joking when I spoke of the Senneterre-Hervey Jonction "corridor". It is just extremely strange to see such a line, when so many other places are lacking.

Just like the aforementioned Maple Creek-Okotoks corridor, where there are a number of things to do.

I agree it is unfortunate, but as someone I knew once said, "The best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago. The second best time is today." Since we can't go back in time to get the best solution, don't let that stop you from trying for the second best solution today.

As for the risk of people using this thread to discuss other routes, the "Quebec City–Windsor Corridor" is often abbreviated as "The Corridor." That should be the definition we use.

:haha: I'm fuuucking dying! :tup:

The feds regulate the railways, they can set whatever track prioritization rules they want.

The real obstacle is the amount of rail freight in Canada is so large. Canada carries more tonne km of freight than the entire EU.

In theory yes. In practice, the railways are the economic lifeline of many industries and putting obstacles in the way of the movement of freight will hurt more than just the railways.

That is the thing that is often overlooked by many rail enthusiasts. The last thing we want is to switch rail freight to trucks.

According to this report, CN moved 2.7 million metric tonnes of grain in the month of June. If you consider in the US (I assume the regulation in Canada are similar but haven't confirmed) regulations limit the maximum weight of a truck to 80,000 lbs (36.3 metric tonnes). That includes the weight of the cab and the trailer but even if we assume those are weightless, that means CN transported the equivalent of 74,380 truckloads of grain in the month of June. That is 2,479 trucks a day.

That is only CN. CP also carries a lot of grain (though not as much as CN). It also doesn't include all the other goods and materials that they transport.

The only other geographically and statistically defined corridor in the country is the Calgary - Edmonton corridor, with the other one of course being the purpose of this thread. No one in their right mind would think Regina to Calgary is any sort of densely populated corridor.


Specifically only two provinces. But yes, there's no other section for it to be in, so it makes sense to be here.