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Discussion of Canadian Passenger Rail Services such as AMT (Montreal), Go Transit (Toronto), VIA Rail, and other Canadian Railways and Transit

Moderator: Ken V

 #1486745  by Mark0f0
 
If I read the numbers correctly, performance of The Canadian fell drastically in Q2. Blamed on the terrible on-time performance.

On that note, and recently confirmed on Facebook, for peak season 2019, The Canadian will be a 2X Toronto-Vancouver service, and 1X weekly Vancouver-Edmonton roundtrip.


No details on the Vancouver-Edmonton roundtrip scheduling, or whether there will be any integration with the Skeena so true same-day connections could be made. My hunch is, "no", they will not do anything to allow a same-day connection to the Skeena. Which means that the Jasper connection will end up adding $200-$300 to every trip to stay in a Jasper hotel on-peak.

Also unfortunately such scheme throws Saskatoon, Winnipeg, and Northern Ontario customers "under the bus". At a time no less when they actually had the chance to pick up more traffic from the demise of Greyhound services.

Also operating what effectively is a service directly aimed at the Vancouver-Edmonton tourism market, rather than just an extension to an existing transcontinental service, VIA opens themselves up to increasingly legitimate consideration from the Rocky Mountaineer operation that they are operating as a direct public sector competitor. The argument that VIA is providing a transcontinental travel service that just happens to, on one leg (Jasper-Vancouver), pick up sightseeing tourists, at a terribly unpredictable schedule, is increasingly incredibly weak.