Quote:
Originally Posted by GoTrans
The beauty of the trains versus air travel is that you can pick up passengers at intermediate spots which adds revenue but very little expense to the journey between major centres. Cancel the Canadian as a transcontinental service and replace it with the following trains;
1. Toronto to Sudbury - Sault Ste Marie - Thunder Bay- Kenora-Winnipeg
2. Winnipeg- Portage la Prairie - Brandon- Regina-Moose Jaw - Swift Current - Medicine Hat- Brooks - Calgary
3. Winnipeg - Portage la Plraire- Regina - Saskatoon - North Battleford - Lloydminster-Fort Saskatchewan - Edmonton
4. Calgary - Banff- Golden - Revelstoke - Kamloops - Vancouver
5. Edmonton - Jasper - Kamploops - Vancouver
6. Edmonton - Calgary
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Buses can also pick up passengers en route. And yet most of these routes can't sustain bus service without subsidies.
Expecting a train to do better is absurd. When you're losing money, you don't make it up in volume.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoTrans
Running train # 1 via Sault Ste Marie adds another 73,000 potential customers and being close to the US border would attract more American tourists. Adding Thunder Bay adds another 173,000 potential customers. Let's run trains where people live and not to suit the whims of the railroads.
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It's funny you say this while referring to cities of 73k and 173k that are 700 km apart. How much traffic do you think towns and cities of this size are actually generating between each other, let alone to the major metros that are even further away?
To be clear, I'm not against train service between these places. I just think there will never be a case for more than the 1 mandated train. Hopefully we can at least make these daily services. What I would like to see though is an effort to improve services to Sudbury and North Bay. Both should be able to support multiple dailies (albeit with shorter trains). But these are probably jobs for Ontario Northland. Not VIA.
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