Wonder if Amtrak will follow suit?( at least VIA isn't Cancelling Trains for Months @ a time like Amtrak is doing!( with more to come per posts on Rail Forums).
Because serving alcohol transmits COVID but non alcoholic beverages don't?
I wonder if VIA passengers were going as bonkers as US air passengers. Allegedly that was the reason for withdrawing alcohol service on several airlines.Because serving alcohol transmits COVID but non alcoholic beverages don't?
Sipping a glass of wine over a period of 30 minutes of continuous mask removal vs. taking off your mask for 15 seconds to take a big gulp out of your water bottle.Because serving alcohol transmits COVID but non alcoholic beverages don't?
| Service | Pre-pandemic | Ramp-down | Ramp-up |
|---|---|---|---|
| MTRL-HLFX (Ocean) | 3 times per week | suspended on 2020-03-13 | once per week as of 2021-08-11 2 times per week as of 2021-12-08 |
| MTRL-HERV-JONQ/SENN | 3 times per week | once per week, as of 2020-03-23 | |
| TRTO-WNPG-VCVR (Canadian) | 2 times per week (3 times per week during summer between Edmonton and Vancouver) | suspended on 2020-03-13 | once per week (WNPG-VCVR only) as of 2020-12-11 once per week (TRTO-VCVR) as of 2021-05-17 |
| SUDB-WHTR | 3 times per week | once per week, as of 2020-03-23 | |
| WNPG-CHUR | 2 times per week (3 times per week between The Pas and Churchill) | full service maintained throughout the pandemic | |
| JASP-PGEO-PRUP | 3 times per week | already suspended in February 2020, due to blockades by indigenous protesters | once per week as of 2020-07-05 |
Hmmm. Beer through a straw. Maybe not grade school, but...
Sounds exactly like
) that Canadian politics realizes that retaining infrequent service to remote and low-population areas is one essential element of maintaining national unity in a country as large and geographically diverse as Canada.
I believe they are required to maintain a minimum service to those remote locations regardless of the level to other destinations. VIA and Amtrak are quite different in that regard.
Which is, indeed, why I am pointing the finger at the Canadian federal government for this policy (VIA's management has no control).
What exactly should VIA (on behalf of the federal government) be doing in your opinion? Cutting the last remaining weekly (as in once every seven days) service to communities without road access, just because the demand is currently not there to offer the cities along the Quebec-Windsor corridor (paralleled by the 401 Highway) the up to 10 departures daily of the full pre-Covid schedule?
What he said. And daily service to Halifax too.
I'm not one to defend many government decisions, however the two examples you've chosen are defensible. In both cases those trains exist to serve remote (and sometimes otherwise inaccessible) communities, whether the endpoints or the stops in-between. The fact that these routes are able to attract occasional riders from outside their service areas (e.g. tourists during non-pandemic times) is a bonus as opposed to their "raison d'etre". Connections are not a concern. The fact that VIA allocates the minimum resources to the Sudbury train (refurbished RDC's) indicates how little it is valued and they would likely stop operating both if permitted, perhaps maintaining a summer-only train to Churchill at inflated prices like the Canadian. The Churchill train has a disproportionate benefit to indigenous communities (and in fact partly runs on native-owned rails), so even if discontinuance was once a possibility it's not going to fly in a time of reconciliation.
Whereas I do agree with the rest of your post, I am struggling to understand how you imagine running Sudbury-White River with anything else than the RDCs: Given that a) there remains only one place in Canada which maintains expertise in how to maintain RDCs and that happens to be located in Sudbury, b) there is no other corner in VIA's network from which it is so labor-intensive to retrieve fleet for maintenance than that route (where you need to call in a crew to DH the equipment to Capreol, where it can be attached) and c) there is no longer a wye available at White River, why would you assign anything else than your RDCs (which happen to be bidirectional and only require to see one of VIA's maintenance centers on an annual basis) on that route?
