chrisvazquez7
Active Member
So I was talking to somebody today who flew in from NYC. First time in Edmonton, and as I drove him in from the airport, he asked if there was a train between Edmonton and Calgary. He didn't believe me at first when I said no.
It really bothers me how VIA Rail, a crown corporation, does not service Western Canada the way it does in Ontario and Quebec. The Calgary-Edmonton Corridor could be profitable like the Windsor-Quebec City Corridor. The track is there, it's fast. CP owns it, but VIA runs on CP tracks in Ontario. Upgrade a few sidings, it could work. Every time trains are brought up in Alberta, people always find a reason to say no. But I think it's embarrassing that a corridor of 2.9 million people does not have a similar level of service as VIA has between Toronto and Windsor, for example.
If you had trains every hour, with a travel time between 2.5 and 3 hours, and cheap enough, I think it would be attractive enough. I'm sure this is all reasonable. Yes, freight trains get in the way. Reality is, the CP line is way overbuilt right now for the level of traffic on it. There's room. The infrastructure is pretty much there. We just need to get it going!
It really bothers me how VIA Rail, a crown corporation, does not service Western Canada the way it does in Ontario and Quebec. The Calgary-Edmonton Corridor could be profitable like the Windsor-Quebec City Corridor. The track is there, it's fast. CP owns it, but VIA runs on CP tracks in Ontario. Upgrade a few sidings, it could work. Every time trains are brought up in Alberta, people always find a reason to say no. But I think it's embarrassing that a corridor of 2.9 million people does not have a similar level of service as VIA has between Toronto and Windsor, for example.
If you had trains every hour, with a travel time between 2.5 and 3 hours, and cheap enough, I think it would be attractive enough. I'm sure this is all reasonable. Yes, freight trains get in the way. Reality is, the CP line is way overbuilt right now for the level of traffic on it. There's room. The infrastructure is pretty much there. We just need to get it going!