VIA Rail

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by roger1818

It is all relative. A delay of a couple hours on a 4 hour trip (about the Toronto-Ottawa travel time) is a 50% delay. That would be equivalent a 48 hour delay on the Canadian. Back in the 90's the fastest train between Toronto and Montreal was 3:59. Now, due to higher freight traffic, the fastest trip is 4:49. That is about a 20% reduction in speed. Not that far off the reduction in speed to the Canadian.

Around Christmas, the Canadian was actually 48 hours late at one point due to engine failures. Now, if they separated services at Winnipeg, they could have kept some of it on time.

Originally Posted by roger1818

Exactly. That is why I said (and underlined) "popular city pairs." We might have lots of cities within that range, but how much travel is there between them. The exceptions are the Windsor-Quebec corridor and Calgary-Red Deer-Edmonton. Even Vancouver-Calgary (a popular city pair) is approaching 1000 km and with all the mountains in between, anything approaching high speed would be very expensive.

Right now, Calgary is isolated from the passenger rail network. Even returning regular rail passenger service to it would be a good start.

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

I don't think anyone here was discussing a line from Calgary to Winnipeg in this conversation, it's been about re-establishing train service on the Alberta Corridor and from Calgary to Banff. Essentially Edmonton to Banff passing through downtown Calgary.

Actually, I am someone who will argue for a return of the old CP The Canadian route. Why should the cities in the Prairies be ignored?