What we can learn about the future of rail from its past | CBC Radio

The prepare was a romantic and opulent mode of transportation, with firms competing for passengers. But within the final century, automobiles and airplanes have edged out an choice that — with the proper funding and infrastructure — could possibly be a less expensive and greener various in Canada. 

Cuts to Via Rail routes over time, nonetheless, imply that the funding must be vital, says Anthony Perl, a professor at Simon Fraser University and member of Via’s board from 2008 to 2012. 

As he factors out, a prepare may not even get you the place you need to go proper now resulting from finances and route cuts. And Canada does not have the excessive velocity trains — used throughout Europe and elsewhere — which have made the business aggressive elsewhere. 

“Passenger rail is a cheaper, more efficient, more environmentally friendly way to move people,” Perl stated.

But “the experience has ebbed and flowed,” with the golden age of prepare journey now near 100 years within the rearview mirror, due to public funding shifting to highways and the airline business. 

The golden age of the prepare dynasty

There was a time when firms have been competing for who might present essentially the most glamorous first-class expertise. 

In 1906, the Globe and Mail described the Muskoka Express, which took passengers from Toronto to cottage nation north of the town, as “a flying palace.”

“You were ushered to a seat pretty well immediately, with linen, with flowers, with people smiling and taking your order in English or French and generally showing you a good time,” stated Harry Gow, a passenger prepare advocate with Transport Action Canada. 

Local prepare journey was revolutionary, too. At the beginning of the twentieth century, a number of firms ran commuter trains between Hamilton, Toronto and the encompassing small cities — and far of the infrastructure was electrical, stated Ryan Katz-Rosene, a University of Ottawa professor who research rail infrastructure and local weather change.

“If we had just gone more in that direction, we would be living in an alternate universe where we feasibly could have decarbonized.”

The fall of the railroad empire

But as an alternative, governments invested in highways — and the auto grew to become king of the commute. 

As a outcome, passenger numbers began to plummet within the Nineteen Twenties. In 1920, in line with statistics printed within the Globe and Mail on the time, about 51 million folks took trains in Canada. Within 5 years, 10 million fewer folks have been using yearly.

People beloved the liberty that got here with proudly owning a automobile. But it was low-cost gasoline following the Second World War that cemented the demise of passenger rail, Gow stated, as a result of folks believed the automobile was the cheaper technique to journey.

“Maybe they forgot the overall cost, like insurance, oil maintenance, amortization of the loan that you took out to buy the car,” Gow stated. “But people didn’t count that. All they counted was the cost of gas, so they thought it was cheaper than the train.”

And the automobile had assist. In 1946, the federal authorities created a particular legislation to assist construct highways in provinces.

Still, small communities needed passenger trains — and Via Rail was launched as the general public answer. 

Enter Via Rail

The federal authorities established Via Rail as a Crown company in 1977. 

Before lengthy, each Liberal and Conservative governments made cuts to the rail firm. In 1989, federal Transport Minister Benoît Bouchard introduced roughly $1 billion in cuts to Via over 5 years, which translated into route cuts throughout the nation. 

And though some politicians supported the thought of rail service within the late ’90s and early 2000s, the sentiment wasn’t widespread, stated David Collenette, the Liberal transportation minister from 1997 to 2003.

“You’ve had a mindset … to say, ‘Oh well, people will drive and people will fly. So you can close that service. You can close that route,'” he stated. “And unfortunately, we are now playing catch up.”

Though Collenette pushed for Ottawa to speculate tons of of hundreds of thousands into Via over his tenure, he stated all of it went to upkeep and repairs — and nothing was carried out to enhance companies.

The privatization in 1995 of CN Rail, previously a Crown company, did not assist both because it acquired each trains and tracks, successfully making a monopoly since Via has to pay to make use of the rail line, Perl stated.

It’s one cause why Via trains might be late — the corporate’s trains are sitting on the tracks ready to yield to CN’s. And it reveals: the company’s on-time efficiency was 72 per cent in 2021. 

Is there any hope for Canadian trains?

Shoshanna Saxe says passenger prepare service is a essential piece of infrastructure for Canada, however its revival would require time and funding. 

“Good train travel can carry lots of people near and far distances quickly, affordably, in comfort, with very little pollution,” stated Saxe, an affiliate professor on the University of Toronto and the Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Infrastructure. 

But its future is much from assured, she stated.

“You can always change directions, but it’s like changing a big ship — if it’s a lot of momentum in one direction, it’s hard,” stated Saxe. “We’re not going to build a European-quality train system in one year, but the only way to fix the problem is to start fixing it.”