New Era for Train Travel?
Global warming might make rails sing again.
Via's Silver and Blue dining car.
Not long ago, my wife and I went from Vancouver to Ottawa on Via Rail. The three-day first stage of our journey was on Via's Silver and Blue service: individual roomettes, superb food, and endless hours in a dome car. The second stage, from Toronto to Ottawa, was on a regular train taking four hours.
I'd taken short train trips before -- in Canada, the U.S., and China -- but nothing this long. Yes, the romance of the rails was a factor: the last spike, Gordon Lightfoot, even Murder on the Orient Express. How many British films and TV shows take place on trains? How many of our ancestors rode swaying across the Prairies to take possession of their own quarter section?
Compounding that romantic feeling was an anxious sense that flying can't last. A generation has grown up accustomed to cheap airfares and frequent flights. But our sudden understanding of global warming has made us more than nervous. Jet after jet dumps greenhouse gases at 38,000 feet -- the equivalent of what each passenger might emit in a year of routine highway driving.
George Monbiot, in his book Heat, confesses he can find no solution for air travel as a contributor to global warming. Other transportation systems can reduce their emissions, but airliners are locked into burning kerosene at high altitudes. At least one airline, Ryanair, reports a slowdown in ticket sales thanks to media condemnation of low-cost air travel as an environmental problem.
Train travel nostalgia trip?
So could we go back to train travel for business trips, tourism, and family reunions? Could we hand air travel over to the minorities: the very rich, the very powerful, and the military?
It wouldn't be easy. According to a StatsCan survey of domestic travel, Canadians made 175.1 million person-trips in 2004. Of those, 160.8 million were by car, 7 million were by plane, 4.6 million were by bus, and only 1.3 million were by train. (Train trips that year jumped by 17 per cent over 2003.)
What's more, government policies since the 1970s have deliberately discouraged train travel. Both Liberal and Conservative governments have cut subsidies for passenger trains. According to Wikipedia, 80 per cent of our current train travel is in the Windsor-Quebec City corridor. Via Rail's #2 train, the one we took, runs just a couple of times a week, carrying no more passengers than an average Air Canada flight from Vancouver to Toronto.
Via's passengers, rich or poor, need patience. You can ride fairly cheaply, and miserably, by sitting up day and night in "comfort class." Or you can sit in an open compartment during the day and sleep in a berth at night. Or, as we did, you can sleep in a fairly comfortable roomette with your own toilet, sink, and door.
Freight trains outrank passengers
Whatever class you travel in, you soon realize that every freight train outranks you. The #2 slows down or stops several times a day to let freights go by. It's exciting, at first, to sit on a siding as the freight cars whiz by just a metre or so away. Then it's just noisy and boring.
Living in a rolling hotel, passengers soon focus on mealtimes, and the meals are very good. But depending on when you're booked for a sitting, you may eat lunch at 11:00 or dinner at 8:00. Once fed, the berth passengers retreat to their seats for naps; the Silver and Blue passengers go to the dome or back to their roomettes. Some people use the activity car to play cards or bingo. On our trip, many of the passengers ignored the scenery and talked about other places they'd traveled.
To run a similar service for double or triple the number of passengers would require an enormous investment in infrastructure: double- and triple-tracking, more trains, more stops, split-second scheduling. Costs would have to come down dramatically, requiring a dramatic boost in subsidies.
Moreover, passengers would have to change their attitudes and expectations. Most of today's train travellers are affluent seniors, in no rush to get anywhere. They travel for pleasure, not for urgent business or family matters.
Most air travelers, by contrast, would go crazy on a long-distance train. They're used to being cramped in an aluminum tube for a few hours, maybe with a video screen on the seat back in front of them. It's not as comfortable as the train, but it's brief. The idea of taking three days and nights just to attend a wedding or graduation, or a business meeting, would seem intolerable by comparison.
An airliner on wheels
The second stage of our trip was sharply different from the #2. The train from Toronto to Ottawa was, in effect, an airliner on rails.
Seats were extremely comfortable, even more than the seats in our roomettes. We could stow our luggage in either a special section at the front of the car, or in an overhead compartment. Snacks and drinks were available from carts pushed down the aisle. We'd brought our own lunch, and used airline-style pull-down tables.
Equally important, this train was fast. We stopped at a few stations along the way, but most of the time we rolled through the Ontario countryside at well over 100 km/h. So I can see why 80 percent of Canada's train traffic is in this Windsor-Quebec City corridor. Destinations are close, and you can generally go from downtown to downtown. It's actually cheaper, in money and time, to take the train than to fight traffic out to an airport, park, get on the plane, and then reverse the process at your destination. The same is almost true of cross-Canada train travel. Maybe you'd save a couple of hundred dollars if you drove, but it would be a costly saving. To drive from Vancouver to Toronto in three days would be impossible. You'd have to stop for meals, for sleep, for gas. Food, fuel and accommodations would all cost plenty. And you'd arrive exhausted and stressed.
When air travel is not an option
It seems likely that at some point air travel will cease to be an option for most of us, unless dirigibles make an unexpected comeback. Whether for long or short trips, we will have to travel by surface transport. Maybe it will be buses, moving in huge convoys down Highway 1. Maybe it will be hybrid cars, with computers keeping them at a safe distance from one another. But it could be trains.
Imagine a train like the Toronto-Ottawa shuttle, but with even better seating -- like that in airline business class, able to stretch into something like a bed. Imagine the train running on a dedicated track from Vancouver to Kelowna to Revelstoke and then to Calgary and points east.
Some trains would make scheduled stops along the way. Others would rocket from Vancouver to Calgary, then to Regina or Saskatoon, then to Winnipeg, and on to Toronto. Long-distance travelers could sleep in their seats, watch video or go online, and enjoy simple but tasty food.
Passengers would need to consider their journey as important as their destination -- an opportunity for fun, relaxation, and socializing. They would certainly be pleasanter than the aluminum tube that brought me home to Vancouver from Ottawa in five cramped hours.
Related Tyee stories:
- Confessions of a Polar Bear Killer
My travel guilt, and how I deal with it. - Jets Stay Home?
Video meetings a hot idea amidst global warming. - The Dangerous Lives of Train-hopping 'Yohos'
Illegal and risky, it's an adventure for some kids.
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
murdock
05-09-2007
Rail vs Air
The last time I traveled Via Rail the leg through the rockies was at night! This was so that the timing into Winnipeg would be at about dinner time. Via gets a big fat ZERO for tourist viewing the best scenery. I was certainly unimpressed with the seas of grain all day long across the prairies so that I could just glimpse the rockies at sunset.
The time factor for Air will still trump that for Rail for a very long time.
The wide-open spaces in Canada will not likely be covered in 'bullet trains'. More likely are coal fired throwbacks that crawl along at a snails pace. Creature comforts? Not likely, you are just as likely to see a greyhound bus equivalent cattle car stuck between the grain cars, with grease and coal smoke smeared windows, no food or water and no stops for 5 hours.
The cost factor will be what puts air travel back into the 'jet setters' again and leaves the rest with either puddle jumping (in normally aspirated engines like Cessna-152's) or accepting the time delay and riding the rails. It may take another 20 years but the price of fuel will kill mass air travel in the end, and put it only in the hands of the 'jet setting' rich.
The reality that regular cargo gets priority over passengers should come as no surprise, the cargo was paid for long ago and regularly and there is no passenger rail service anywhere any time that was not subsidised by cargo shipments.
Grumpy
05-09-2007
It's not long haul trains we should be planning for...........
it is medium to short haul trips. since the early 90's AMTRAK has been running TALGO pendular (tilt) trains from Vancouver to Seattle and Seattle to Portland. Because the trains 'tilt', they are able to take curves faster and because they have a lower centre of gravity, they are more stable.
Until this year, BC reneged on a promise for track improvements to increase capacity (red herring) to allow a second train up to Vancouver instead of it terminating in Bellingham.
Such short haul trips could include Vancouver to Whistler; Calgary to Edmonton; Medium haul trips (over night) Vancouver to Kelowna; Vancouver to Calgary; etc.
By using tilt trains, one can decrease journey times by up to 40%. We are not talking TGV or bullet trains here, but proven technology, increasing passenger trains performance, without staggering costs.
If one wants to see real improvements to our rail system, ban bureaucrats and politicians from flying and force them onto the rails.
Rhea
05-09-2007
A lot of business travel isn't necessary
Something everyone forgets with "business meetings" is that a lot of them aren't strictly necessary. Yes, it's nice to be able to meet face to face every so often, but for routine meetings and conferences technology
I work for a software company and all our training and long-distance meetings are conducted via video or phone conferencing and screen sharing. It's extremely effective and also saves the company immense amounts in travel time and costs. I can see traveling to something like a conference or a yearly or quarterly meet-and-greet, but F2F isn't always necessary for everything. I know there's the old argument about "people need face time", and this is true to an extent...but not when you balance it against global warming and the fact that we are rapidly running out of oil.
jwstewart
05-09-2007
Costs more
If you check Via Rail ticket prices (SuperSaver) versus discount airlines, they are usually higher. Higher classes of service also cost more.
If one assume's that trains are more fuel efficient, it's tough to get over paying more to get there slower, while saving fuel.
Also take into account the trains don't run daily, and your scheduling flexibility is toast.
A Greyhound bus costs half the price and is faster, with daily service.
Vancouver-Edmonton Round Trip, Nov 7-11
ViaRail 24hrs $368.88
WestJet 1.6hrs $321.54
Greyhound 16hrs $150.00
I think there are more buses in our future.
southdeltawalker
05-09-2007
New era-Ethical choices or......?
It is not the question whether to travel by train or not but whether to travel at all.
Our so called vacations have become earth destroying missions. We have driven, flown, cruised without a thought of what it is doing to the planet because after all "we deserve a vacation!".
Even environmentalists fly and or travel to meetings and conferences!
Travel for business can be handled by the technology available.
I have decided not to fly or take vacations anymore due to envionmental concerns. I park my car for months and walk or take transit whenever possible. I only have a car 'cause out here the local bus stops at 8 p. m.
I heard a theologian on the radio and he stated thst plane travel is now "a sin".
Although i'm not religious- he is right.
Call it a sin or reckless or just plain stupid-the days of hopping on a plane or driving for thousands of kms. have to come to a "crashing" stop.
We cannot save the planet without changing our habits. Stay home, go for a walk and the next time your group, politcal party or friends feel the need to hold a gathering that requires travel-speak up...how necessary is it? Don't go and try to persuade others to do the same.
Working Man
05-09-2007
My Favourite Mode of Travel
Train is by far my favourite mode of travel. When I was working in Korea and Japan it did the vast majoirty of my travelling by train.
However, both countries have one thing in common: small land area and large population density. Both are essential to make train travel economically viable. This is why the Windsor-Quebec corridor is the only profitable line in Canada.
Train travel requires huge infrastructure compared to air travel and with a population as small and diffuse as that of Canada, it cannot compete with air.
skeptikool
05-09-2007
Let's hope this may inspire action
Reported, today, a shaving of 30 minutes off the London Paris run by high speed train. The 492 km (306 mile)The journey took 2hr 4mn.
With so much happening in Europe and Asia, with electrically-powered high speed rail, N. America appears positively primitive:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070904/wl_uk_afp/britainfrancetransport_070904192515
James Burns
05-09-2007
Maglev in evacuated tunnels
Crawford, I'm surprised at you. A sci-fi guy like yourself should be able to come up with something better than dirigibles. One of my favorite illustrated book series as a little kid was about future technologies. One of the technologies the books on travel mentioned were Maglev trains in the near frictionless environment of evacuated tubes. You could get speeds of close to 5000 kmph, all powered by electricity, at a tiny fraction of the energy required by jet aircraft. However, you'd be talking enormous initial infrastructure costs. You can check out the ideas behind the technology at the following links.
One is under development in Switzerland:
http://www.swissmetro.ch/
A website about the technology:
http://www.et3.com/index.html
A rather technical discussion of the technology:
http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/suppes.htm
If we really do start to have serious shortages of oil, a transport technology like this may become vital. Although I really like the ideal of dirigibles for certain types of short haul cargo transport, and for cruise air liners. Imagine floating over the Rockies in the warm comfort of a dirigible.
Stump
05-09-2007
profitable rail lines
Better not tell Rocky Mountain Railtours. I wonder if they know they're losing money?
Working Man
05-09-2007
Rocky Mountain Railtours
Stump, Rocky Mountain Railtours is just that, a tour. It is not meant to be A to B transportation. The Banff trip, for example, stops and lodges its passengers in a hotel in Kamloops so they can do they entire run in daylight. It also starts at $789 per person, based on double occupancy plus taxes and goes up to $2493 for the best package.
Think of the population denisty versus North America. The only place that high speed electric rail could possiblybe profitable in North America would be from New York to Washington DC. Western Europe has 300m people alone. There are 100m between Tokyo and Osaka. South Korea is the size of Vancouver Island and has 45m people.
Even at an average speed of 200 km/h it would take 25 hours to reach Toronto from Vancouver and the cost of laying and maintaining the track would be astronomical considering it would have to be laid across the Rockies and the Canadian Shield.
snert
05-09-2007
Don't bother
Use buses instead. The cost of upgrading the track to any meaningful speed is prohibitive.
rac
05-09-2007
High-Speed Rail
Because high-speed rail is so fast, it can cover often cover its operating costs or even make an operating profit. Less employee time per trip and each train can make more runs.
Really need to build new tracks though. On many corridors in North America, the tracks are nearing capacity with all the freight being shipped around so there is not the track time to run much passenger rail effectively. Hopefully even more will be shipped by rail to get rid of some of the trucks on the road.
California is seriously considering high-speed rail from San Diego to Sacramento. Unfortunately, in spite of his recent "greening", he wants to spend money on road expansion instead of high-speed rail and transit. He is pushing the Hydrogen Hypeway as his solution. What a joke. Unfortunately, Gordo feel for it.
Here, it is time to start looking at a line from Vancouver to Portland so we are really when peak oil happens. It could eventually be connected to the California Line.
Florida would have had high-speed rail by now if it was not for Jeb Bush. They actually had written high-speed rail into the state constitution but Jeb ran a misinformation campaign to get it voted out.
skeptikool
06-09-2007
It's what can be rather than what is
jwstewart:
With this, you make a compelling argument and as things are, if I were to make the trip it would have to be by bus or car.
It seems to me that ViaRail is exploiting a nostalgia factor, with its appeal to riders in no particular hurry, and that its pricing, or over-pricing, is keeping many from the service who would otherwise use it.
I'm more interested in what could and should be, than what is.
Stump
06-09-2007
Rait tours
Yes. I know. I've ridden it twice now. An amazing trip.
Some people aren't in a hurry to get from A to B and are willing to pay a premium for great food and great views. Sounds like a plug, but I don't work there, althought I was working when I took those trips.
No doubt their Whistler run will be as profitable. That money could have been going into public coffers instead of private, but Kevin Falcon botched that file too.
Regarding population density, I think it's safe to assume Canada's will rise. It would be nice to plan ahead for a change. Total cost accounting of the current system with its attendant costs for deaths, enforcement, etc makes highway travel more expensive than it appears IMO.
Air travel is a luxury the planet can ill afford anymore. We need to adjust our thinking instead of off-loading the problems onto our children (as usual).
jwstewart
06-09-2007
Density-Schmensity
Canada's population density is highly concentrated on a narrow east-west axis such that trans-national rail only requires one or two rail beds to connect the major cities in each provice.
If it was feasible to do it once, it should be feasible to do it again.
Measure the money spent on air travel between Candian cities, it would easily support high speed passenger rail.
But, it would be too slow compared to air travel, so it would fail.
It would take equal GHG taxes to effect peoples travel choice.
In fact, there's no limit to the amount of gasoline a Canadian can burn, is there? Ever see a gas pump that had a limit?
Following that logic, you should be able to get more than 2 beers at a football game.
skeptikool
06-09-2007
Did it fall or was it pushed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
Whatever one believes of the destruction of urban rail systems - Los Angeles's system of old is a favorite of conspiracy theorists - there is little doubt, in my mind, that the passenger rail systems across this continent were "sabotaged" as an aid to build an airline industry.
We are now paying the heavy environmental costs. A most important consideration is that, coupled with the production of "green" electricity, affordable electrified, passenger rail systems would add tremendous improvement to our air quality.
skeptikool
06-09-2007
I wonder about that
jwstewart:
Not necessarily so. Given today's airport hassles and the need to show oneself considerably before flight departure, and getting to and from airports usually quite distanced from the city centres one is destined for. On the shorter trips, I don't doubt the train traveller would reach his/her destination ahead of the flying passenger.
In any event, it will be worth it for many to arrive more relaxed and less white-knuckled - even though a trip may take longer.
The important thing is that this affordable, cleaner option is there.