ALL ABOARD THE SUBSIDY EXPRESS
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May is certainly one of Canada’s most dedicated and well- known advocates for passenger rail. I’m not sure she’s one of the most effective, though. Consider her question to Transport Minister Marc Garneau in the House of Commons Wednesday, about former cabinet minister David Emerson’s review of the Canada Transportation Act.
“Shockingly, it recommends that the Liberal government kill passenger rail service between Toronto and Vancouver,” May exclaimed. “This transcontinental train, the Canadian, is an essential part of Sir John A. Macdonald’s national dream.” Would Garneau “confirm that the government will protect Via Rail, and restore and invest in our trans- Canada rail service?”
Here’s the thing: if you want to advocate for better passenger rail service in Canada for regular folks, you do not start with the Canadian. Emerson’s report does not recommend “killing” it; it recommends “considering the elimination of the subsidies” for it, which are considerable in aggregate ($55 million in 2014) and quite staggering per capita — $591 a passenger.
That does not result in affordable travel: at time of writing, the cheapest ticket on Saturday’s train from Toronto to Vancouver was nearly $700; from Sudbury to Winnipeg, $ 234; from Kamloops to Vancouver, $ 105. In every case, the bus is much cheaper and faster — 20 per cent faster and 60 per cent cheaper for the whole journey. Air Canada will fly you to Vancouver from Toronto on Saturday for $ 545, and you’ll have an extra three days, nine hours and 29 minutes to burn once you arrive.
If the Old Chieftain were around today, you might see him in business class.
The Canadian is a cruise ship on rails, and the Crown shouldn’t operate or subsidize cruise ships — especially, Emerson’s report argues, when they compete with privatesector outfits like the Rocky Mountaineer, which runs luxury trains in Western Canada.
May’s intervention might lead you to believe otherwise, but Emerson’s report is certainly not antipassenger rail. It accepts as guiding principles, without discussion, that “passenger rail has an important place in the public consciousness” and that “the train that carries us from coast to coast is a symbol of our nationhood” — in both cases (ahem) “despite the small percentage of Canadians who use it.”
It certainly does not recommend swingeing cuts to Via Rail — not even to another clearly non-essential, long-distance service between Montreal and Halifax. In 2014, taxpayers subsidized the Ocean to the tune of $ 36 million, $ 480 a passenger. It has no private-sector competitor, however, and Emerson’s gang seem to have been convinced by Atlantic Canada’s transport ministers that “passenger rail service may be the only viable transportation option for many residents.”
It is rather confusing. Every community of reasonable size served by the Ocean is served by intercity buses that offer wheelchairaccessible vehicles. Those buses also serve many more sizable communities that seem to make do with no train service: Fredericton, Saint John, N. B., Sydney, N. S. The same is true across the country, of course: for every community whose only intercity transit connection is a train, there are scores more where it’s a bus — or no connection at all.
Romance aside, the real hope for passenger rail as a practical matter is in the Toronto- OttawaMontreal corridor. Via believes that if it owned its own track network, instead of having to use parts of CN’s and CP’s, it could vastly improve reliability, ramp up frequencies and attract many more customers. In a fit of ambition, the Crown corporation has been trying to sell pension funds on a $ 2- billion investment in such a network.
It is also asking the feds for $1.3 billion to buy new rolling stock. You can see why the Liberals might like the idea: they have pledged to boost infrastructure, rail travel is climate-friendly, and there is a certain Quebec company that makes train cars that could sure use some good news right now. Garneau recently made encouraging noises about Via’s corridor plan to the Ottawa Citizen, but allowed the government would be “looking at it in-depth.”
That’s a good idea. Via’s plan is far from a sure bet: 77 per cent of trips in the Windsor- Quebec City corridor are by car, and only 7.7 per cent by train, and that will be a tough habit to break without some “in-depth” ideas.
Luckily, the Emerson report offers the feds (and the Ontario and Quebec premiers by extension) an elegant possible solution. Via currently has to pay CN and CP directly to use their tracks, it notes, which “contrasts with the use of roadways and highways, where the principle of direct user-pay is generally not in effect.”
“If it were,” the report posits, “perhaps travellers would see passenger rail as a more attractive option and ridership might increase.”
Toll a road, save a railway. Over to you, federal and provincial politicians!
THE CANADIAN IS A CRUISE SHIP ON RAILS, AND THE CROWN SHOULDN’T OPERATE OR SUBSIDIZE CRUISE SHIPS.
— CHRIS SELLEY ELIZABETH MAY IS CERTAINLY ONE OF OUR MOST DEDICATED BOOSTERS OF PASSENGER RAIL. BUT NOT AMONG THE MOST
EFFECTIVE.