I love trains. I had a train set when I was a kid. I remember calling VIA rail when I was 15 years old asking if we were allowed to sit on top of the box car for our next train ride; they said no for safety reasons, but I could tell they were smiling on the other end of the phone. When I lived in Ontario the first time, I’d take the VIA train back and forth to Kingston from Toronto during school breaks. Since those years, I’ve been on a couple VIA trains between Toronto and Montreal with 3-4 hour delays, which I assumed were anomalies or just what to expect when travelling by rail. My VIA rail experience in the prairies in 2018 however, really opened my eyes to current long distance train travel in Canada, especially in the prairies. You may not know but Greyhound cut their bus services to Western Canada in 2018 due to lack of ridership. I had just moved to Wainwright Alberta in October for a job as Environmental coordinator and used a rental car from the airport in Edmonton to get to Wainwright. I needed to return the rental to Edmonton as I didn’t realize when I booked the car that there is only one car rental in Wainwright and the car I had rented wasn’t from that rental company! Therefore, I figured I’d drive to Edmonton on a Saturday, drop off the rental car, bus to the VIA rail terminal and take the train back to Wainwright. Easy peasy right? I arrived at the VIA rail station in Edmonton for a 2PM train to Wainwright. The trip was supposed to be 4 hours and cover 206kms. At 2PM VIA rail let us know that the train would be “delayed a bit” due to electronic issues. At 4PM we were told the train would arrive soon and we were told something similar until 7PM when the train arrived at the station. I remembered the stories one of my old friends in university told me about trains in India when she was living there; she had said two things were always certain about train travel, 1) you never knew when you were going to leave and 2) you never knew when you were going to get there! We boarded and left the station around 8PM (2 hours after we were supposed to arrive in Wainwright). Now, I’d potentially be arriving in Wainwright at midnight. I felt frustrated, but I had a book to read and Sunday morning to sleep in a bit before cooking and getting ready for work on Monday. The train pulled out of the station and rumbled along for 5 minutes, stopped, and started to reverse back into the station! I flagged down a VIA rail representative and asked what the issue was. They said there was another train coming the other direction so we needed to move back and let the other train pass. Twenty minutes later we resumed leaving the station only to stop 45 minutes later, reverse and stop again. I turned and started a conversation with my neighbor. They said to me “Oh, yes, this is quite normal. Passenger trains do not have priority on cross country lines in the prairies. Freight, oil and gas take precedence". Anytime a passenger train encounters a freight train, the passenger gets out of the way and waits before moving on. I also found that in my case, when my passenger train was sitting and waiting, VIA turned off the heat. I was freezing! October isn’t one of the coldest months in the prairies, but it is sure not one of the warmest! VIA gave me a blanket as I had only brought a light jacket, not expecting to be sleeping in a train overnight. The time was 11PM and we weren’t even half way. I tried to get some sleep, but I was too cold to sleep so I asked for another blanket and tried to get comfortable. I arrived in Wainwright at 8AM Sunday morning (14 hours after the predicted arrival time). I couldn’t wait to get out of the train. The 20 minute walk to my place from the train station was a relief; I was finally on solid ground. The walk got some of the kinks out of my back. At home I started asking myself questions. If I had known before I bought the train ticket that it would take 18 hours to travel 206km, I would have found another way. Had I known at 2PM the train would be arriving in Wainwright at 8AM the next morning, the predictability likely would have been soothing. In other circumstances, I would love a 206km 18 hour train ride if I wasn’t expecting to be somewhere and have a follow-on schedule. So was my inflexibility and expectations really why I had a bad taste in my mouth? Likely, but I think what ultimately made me feel disappointed was that passengers, who were taking public transportation, a more sustainable form of transportation, were given a backseat to commodities. In addition to closing its operations in Western Canada, Greyhound bus services officially ended in Ontario and Quebec as of May 2021 again due to lack of ridership and subsidized competition (e.g VIA rail). VIA rail, in it’s 2018 ridership summary press release, has admitted that even with schedule modifications, it’s Vancouver to Toronto passenger rail line (the one I took between Edmonton and Wainwright) continues to experience significant delays due to prioritizing freight. Now with COVID health measures discouraging unnecessary travel, communal transport ridership and therefore train ridership has decreased. Hopefully only in the short term. Despite my disappointing experience on VIA between Edmonton and Wainwright, I believe in train travel as a safe, relaxing, reliable and sustainable form of public transportation. I look forward to my next trip on a train where I can feel the rhythm of the train clacking over the tracks as I look out at the scenery without having to navigate vehicle traffic. I will, however, think twice about getting on a train anywhere in the prairies unless I have unlimited time and a very warm blanket. :)
1 Comment
Mike
10/31/2021 09:13:42
I enjoyed reading your account on traveling by train. You turned frustration into a learning experience.
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