Via Rail cars are so old they need 'buffer cars' in case of a collision
Taxpayers should not be funding cruise ships on rails — or any rail service that's as unnecessarily terrible as Via
Chris Selley, Ottawa Citizen
Oct 27, 2022 • 5 hours ago • 4 minute read
A seemingly obscure little news item popped up recently in the rail-fan blogosphere: Via Rail had begun running “buffer” cars at the front and rear of trains using Via’s mid-century stainless-steel passenger cars. This was
ordered on Oct. 19 by Transport Canada’s director general of rail safety, and the reasoning may explain why Via did not seem eager to publicize the development. (
Rail fans noticed it first.)
“As recommended by (a) third-party engineering firm,” Via’s media relations department told me in an email, “the corporation has added buffer cars … to reduce the consequences in the unlikely event of a train-to-train collision.”
Essentially, these cars are so old and possibly structurally compromised — the latter having been discovered during an ongoing refurbishment project that Via calls the “Heritage Program” — that they require crumple zones. The buffer cars are supposed to absorb the impact, or at least lessen it, before it bursts any human meatbags.
Luckily for Via, this is not a serious problem on the Quebec City-to-Windsor corridor that 94 per cent of its passengers travelled in 2019: Those trains almost all use much newer rollingstock, soon to be replaced by newer-still. But it’s an existential threat to Via’s money-hemorrhaging long-distance routes, and it may finally force a long-overdue reckoning in Ottawa over Canada’s terrible-in-every-respect passenger-rail system.
For the poor souls who really do rely on Via, the main effect of this buffer business is to prevent them from bringing pets aboard: Dogs and cats travel in the baggage car, and must be fed and watered along the way; now, those “buffer” cars must always be empty except for baggage.
For tourists it’s just as bad, if not as existential: In some cases Via has designated its iconic dome cars at the rear of long-distance trains, where you can watch the scenery go by, as buffers. And in some cases, you can’t get so much as a cup-o-noodles along the way.
“Unfortunately access to the Park car with dome and panoramic view will be temporarily suspended,” very fine print explains if you try to book passage on the Skeena, which runs from Jasper, Alta., to Prince Rupert, B.C. “The sale of snacks and beverages will also not be available.”
That’s roughly 20 hours on a very slow train without so much as a hot coffee to perk you up or a nice perch to view the scenery. Driving is much quicker and cheaper, obviously.
A short-term partial solution involves installing buffer cars behind the existing final cars. Via claims this is already happening on the “vast majority of routes.” Eric Gagnon, a rail blogger and author based in Kingston, Ont., who helped me wrap my mind around these issues — Via is not at all forthcoming with details — has documented empty sleeper cars serving as those rear buffers, including behind dome cars on The Canadian. That’s the supposedly “iconic” train that now takes a mind-melting 97 hours to reach Vancouver from Toronto — almost a full day longer than in the 1950s.
If the old-timey cars are indeed structurally unsound, however, they will need to be renovated or replaced; and the existing “Heritage Program” is only budgeted for a fraction of the cars of that era. If Via’s long-distance routes are going to continue, the Crown corporation will need to find a heck-ton of taxpayer money — certainly in the hundreds of millions. That means the federal government’s train-minders will finally have to either drop their rousers and get down to business or vacate the restroom: Are Via’s tourist-focused long-distance routes — the Canadian, the Skeena, the Ocean (between Montreal and Halifax) — worth spending serious money on, or aren’t they?
As a huge fan of rail travel I hate to say this, but by any objective standard, they are not. In 2019, the average passenger on the Canadian was taxpayer-subsidized to the tune of $595, or 39 cents per kilometre; on the Ocean $535, or 61 cents per kilometre; on the Skeena, $515 or $1.01 per kilometre. Add on massive capital costs for new rollingstock, and Canadian taxpayers are quickly going to start noticing that they’re subsidizing what are essentially cruise ships on rails. Despite the huge subsidy, the cheapest one-way ticket from Toronto to Winnipeg that will feed you and give you a bunk to sleep over the 35-hour trip is $615. The cheapest such ticket from Saskatoon to Vancouver, a 47-hour trip, is $695.
Flying is cheaper and quicker, obviously. These trains should be the private sector’s business, if they’re anyone’s.
Furthermore, the feds are mulling over a $10-billion-plus “high-frequency rail” project that should provide much more reliable and frequent service between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal — because Via would own almost all of the tracks instead of deferring to freight trains at every siding as it does now. Whether that can be a game-changing proposition is very much an open question, however: Flying would still be unambiguously quicker between Toronto and Montreal, for example. Via would have to sweeten the deal with excellent, business-centred service, wi-fi that actually works and food that doesn’t require three minutes of chewing and a $50 dare to swallow.
There is little reason to believe Via is capable of delivering that, no matter how lavishly resourced it is. For no obvious good reason, between Quebec City and Windsor, it has made riding its always-late and always-slow trains as miserable as possible. By rights, any long-term vision of taxpayer-subsidized rail travel in Canada should involve winding down this wretched, failed Crown corporation and starting over.
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/ch...d-1680c3e78eb3
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