Bob's Rail Rant!

Well, hey there! I’m delighted that you took time to spiral down from cyberspace to visit my little virtual café today! Don’t you wish Vial Rail was half as fast as the cyber network? Beam me to Toronto, Scotty! Well, that may not happen for a while but I have some thoughts I’d like to share with you as soon as you pour yourself a mug of coffee and get a virtual muffin or two to munch on as I bend your ear.

This past weekend we took VIA Rail from Cornwall to Oshawa to see my sister and my Mum (to celebrate her 95^th birthday). It was a good trip but we were in the second to last seats in the last car...kind of like the tail and you know how those whip around. The train was shaking side to side (as they all do and me too sometimes), making clanging noises as though some one was dropping metal pots and pans and it struck me that the rail bed could probably stand a makeover. I must plead ignorance as to how often it is looked at and how closely.

Then as we left Kingston, the conductor announced that we were travelling at a slow speed because we were following a freight train. Aha! The trouble is that VIA Rail (which originated as a combined passenger service of Canadian National Rail (CNR) and Canadian Pacific Rail (CPR) shares the rails with the freights.  

What they need is a set of dedicated passenger rail lines. (Oh, I can hear it now “The cost would be staggering!") True, it would...but it wouldn't have to be done in a day, would it? 

If the government stopped throwing money at every other country in the world that has its problems and threw it instead at things IN THIS COUNTRY that really need fixing (you know what they are...more help for seniors...more doctors and nurses and hospitals and less wait time for health services... serious help for our aboriginal people...more services for veterans and wounded warriors... and a special budget to get Canadians some decent, up-to-date, high speed rail service, etc...etc...)

Do you remember the Turbo? It was Via Rail’s attempt at a high-speed rail link between Montreal and Toronto...which is an extremely busy corridor connecting Canada’s top two populated cities and several smaller cities, universities and colleges in between.  It failed miserably  because the rail bed could not handle the speedy trains and assorted other problems such as scheduling and sharing with the freight services.

Speaking of freights, the last time we used VIA Rail, we were lucky enough to catch an earlier train which promised to deliver us to our station almost three hours ahead of our planned ETA...except that around Kingston again, we were told there would be a delay because...wait for it...there was a disabled freight ahead of us. Are you beginning to get my drift here?

Oh, there is one more piece to this puzzle...level crossings. England hasn’t had level crossings in 50 + years! Why do we still have them? Back to our trip this past weekend. We arrived on time but I heard on the news the next morning that the train from Ottawa to Toronto, which follows a rail line down to the main Montreal-Toronto line and then connects with that, had a disagreement with a car at Belleville. If we had been on a later train Sunday, we would have been caught in that mess. Thankfully nobody was killed this time but level crossings need to be gotten rid of... sure it is expensive up front to do that but one at a time, eh (pick the most dangerous ones first, right) and get it done. It will save lives and reduce to almost zero delays caused by accidents. Look at the seven (was it) killed when a VIA Train plowed into an Ottawa transit bus a couple years back because of faulty signals...at a level crossing.

Japan has its Shinkansen bullet trains that travel around 300 km an hour and they are working on 400+! These travel all over Japan and cut travel time by up to 75%  of the old time. China has the same. What about us? North America seems to be ridiculously archaic in its rail travel.

What would I do about it?

1. Dedicated rail lines for passenger travel.

2. Build a brand new rail bed designed to handle high speed trains. Start with the major corridors.

3. Hire a Japanese consulting company to tackle this. If we want the best, we need to get the best experienced help we can...and that would be from Japan.

4. Get a much more focussed maintenance program in force. Every night in Japan the trains stop at midnight. Immediately 6000 workers are out inspecting the trains, the rail lines, using the latest diagnostic equipment, making repairs and replacing rail beds, rails, signals, and rolling stock as needed. "But what about the people who need to be in Toronto early in the morning?" If we had high speed trains travelling at 300 km/hr, don't you think we could get them there quickly in the morning? 

5. Get rid of all level crossings...all of them. No more accidents. No more accident causing delays. More lives saved.

Our new federal government, together with our provincial governments could make it happen if they get their priorities straight. Helping refugees is a nice thing to do (I read where one of the ‘refugees’ entering Europe was caught with 40 + fake passports. For what purpose would that be, I wonder?) but shouldn't we be concerned with the needs of our own people first?

Rome wasn’t built in a day but as the classic joke goes, “How do you eat an elephant? Answer: “One bite at a time!” That is how a completely redesigned and rebuilt modern rail system would have to proceed : “One bite at a time!”

Speaking of these pachaderms, you could call them Very Immense Animals, right? Slow moving...plodding along the same way they did decades, even centuries ago with little change in character or speed. Sounds like another V-I-A we know, doesn’t it?

And the rant endeth here...

See ya, eh!

Bob