Good-bye to Train Travel?

I like travelling by train. I think I always have. My father worked for CNR and therefore train travel for my family was free. Until I was eleven and we got a car, the train was our only way of travelling long distances. I can remember when I was about six, being on a train, going from Montreal to a lake in the Laurentians and as we went around a curve - looking out seeing the engine pulling the train, belching smoke. I remember my family getting on the train to go to Old Orchard in Maine  for our week's holiday. I can remember the numerous trips I took as a university student from Montreal to New Brunswick. I think they put on a few older cars just for all of the students who went from Montreal to one of the Maritime universities. It always felt as if they put us in the cars, closed the doors and ignored us for the next day or so. It was wonderful! My affection for trains started early and in spite of the countless hours I have spent sitting on a stopped train waiting for a freight train to pass, the uncomfortable, sometimes all-too-well worn seats, the lack of decent food for non-meat eaters and the train being consistently late,  I still like trains. But I am not taking the train this year.

For the past few years it has been my practice to, just after Christmas, take the train from Sudbury to Vancouver . It is never an exciting journey. Quite frankly much of the Northern landscape covered as it is by ice and snow is not that inspiring. At the few places that the train stops at for any length of time, it is frequently too cold or too boring to get out. But travelling by train is a wonderful chance to relax, to listen to music, to read, to sleep and to chat to one's fellow travellers. There is a special feeling one gets travelling across the country with a handful of people, a sense that we are all in this together and that we are glad of it. Yes, we all groan about how often the train is forced into a siding while we wait, sometimes for up to an hour, while a freight train passes us by; we all quietly moan when some bored child and frustrated parent publically exhibit their respective manipulating  and parenting skills and we all expel a collective sigh of thankfulness as the train pulls into the Vancouver train station but I look forward to the experience every year. It is my private time where there are no phones, where there are no expectations of me, when I do not have to do anything.

This year however, I am not travelling from Sudbury to Vancouver by train because it is too expensive. I went on-line yesterday to buy my ticket - two months in advance - and found out  that a ticket to Vancouver, for a senior, in the economy class was  $934.00! I called an agent, he confirmed that that was the price. I called back, spoke to someone else who confirmed the price and suggested that the train was almost full and that is why the ticket was about over $400 more expensive than last year. I told both of the Via employees about my disappointment and outrage of such a high price (the cost of a ticket on the same train three days later was only $426). While the second agent acted more empathetic than the first, there was little they could do.

Train travel as always been slower than both air travel and Greyhound bus, it is now more expensive than either of those options. While there are some advantages to train travel, there are some real disadvantages including being confined to a box on wheels for up to 24 hours at a time and sitting on seats that while there is a lot more leg room than buses or planes, are just as hard and uncomfortable after a few hours.  To be asked to pay just under a $1,000 for this privilege seems more than outrageous. One would either have to be really afraid of flying or else getting off at some remote place that is not serviced by planes or buses. At best it is price gouging, at worst it is taking advantage of people who do not have a choice.

Via Rail is suppose to be a national train service. Every time I use it I have to wonder if it is a service managed by people whose real mandate is to destroy it.