Thread: Via rail
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  #271  
Old Posted Feb 20, 2019, 6:28 PM
Taeolas Taeolas is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Fredericton
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Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire View Post
Most people riding through on The Canadian don't care if the train is late, it's basically a land cruise for fun as opposed to a transportation system that people rely on.

The handful of people who still ride it as a local train (e.g. Melville-Saskatoon) are used to this shortcoming and are generally well prepared when it comes to checking to see if the train is on time.

You chop up The Canadian into a bunch of small segments and you lose nearly all the big spending tourists, and gain a small handful of people who start buying cheap tickets to ride from Wainwright to Edmonton. Doesn't add up.
The solution is to maintain the Canadian as the Tourist-focused "Land Cruise" through western Canada, while setting up more regular sublines to connect the Prairie cities.

The Canadian would benefit from the improved reliability of the daughter routes with such a plan, and we would finally start seeing a bit of a train passenger network linking the Prairie and BC populations.
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