VIA Rail

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

VIAs problem go far beyond the CN & CP issues because the premise of VIA itself is wrong. VIA is strictly a rail service but what it needs to be in order to be a viable transportation option for all Canadians is a TRANSPORTATION service.

As it stands now, VIA is completely useless for anyone outside The Corridor because train travel is not financial viable outside of it save the Cal/Edm corridor. If VIA was to cancel all passenger rail service in BC and not tell the media, 99.9% of BCers wouldn't even notice the difference. In BC VIA is as much part of our transportation system as the Maid of the Mist is to Niagarans.

VIA should be a complete system using both trains and buses where appropriate. So buses in nearly all of Western Canada save Cal/RD/Ed, continue the Corridor but not to Subdury or Chicotomi or AC. It should work as a system. Currently there are hundreds of thousands of Ontarians and Quebecers who live with 50 to 100 km of a VIA station but can't access it because they can't get to the stations. People in Sarnia can't get to Windsor without going completely out of their way and transferring back at London. Hell, there are 100,000 people in Elgin county that are within a short trip to London and can't get to the train station making the service useless to them. You can't even get from Hamilton to Kitchener on VIA yet they are only 30km apart. VIA should not only provide long distance trips but also regional ones to connect cities/town that have no service and use as fedder routes to the cities that do.

Maybe I dreamt this up but it seems to me that VIA in the past may have had some type of bus service. Am I right?