Alto High Speed Rail

[Richard Eade]

I agree. If High-Speed Rail (HSR) is to succeed, it has to be almost like taking a bus – but not like Ottawa’s random public transit bus service. It needs to be like it is in, say, Italy, where I just arrived at the station, scanned my ticket to get to the platform, and waited a couple of minutes for the train to pull in. It was as easy as boarding an inter-city bus was; back in the days of the Catherine St. Bus Station.

That said, this is a different time and place. ALTO will be Canada’s FIRST (and only) HSR, and, thus, it could become a terrorist target just for that reason. And, of course, VIA Rail has been working for a while to make passenger train travel seem more like taking an airplane. At Ottawa Station, VIA has been holding people back from the platform in long queues; and more generally, implementing restrictions on the number of pieces of luggage, and even their weight.

(I liked my Amtrak experience better than VIA for the fact that I just dropped my suitcase at the Baggage desk and it was transported in a baggage car to the platform at my destination. It was SUPER fast and easy. I didn’t like that, even being an hour from the start of the route, the train was 5 hours late arriving – but that is a different problem. At least VIA Rail is usually less late.)

Air Canada’s involvement in ALTO is a bit worrying for me. Air Canada’s experience in the travel industry is in making travel as cumbersome and unpleasant as possible. And I’m expecting that it will add those special touches to the design of ALTO, and how it is accessed.

(I recently returned from a long trip involving flights on Cathay Pacific, Etihad, Emirates, and Air Canada. As a Canadian, I had usually flown Air Canada and had accepted that air travel was just uncomfortable (to say the least). What an eye-opener to travel on those other airlines. When I finally got onto my last flight – Air Canada, AC889, from London to Ottawa – it was like being hit in the face with a wet cod. The look and feel of the Air Canada plane was, well, embarrassing. And why could I sit for a 14-hour flight on Etihad and feel OK on arrival; while after an hour in an Air Canada seat, my butt and back were really complaining. And I could only move like a crippled, hunch-back as I painfully made my way to Arrivals, after the 7-hour flight to Ottawa. In fairness, the staff on the Air Canada flight was good. There was just no comparison on all of the other aspects.)

I am excited that Canada will finally get a High-Speed Rail line, but my enthusiasm is tempered by the fear that it will be turned into something that is low frequency, slower-than-promised, onerous to take, too expensive for what it provides, and look and feel like the cheapest possible option.