Northern MP Bets His Turkey Dinner on Passenger Rail

A week ago, just as the sky began to brighten over Toronto’s Union Station, Skeena-Bulkley Valley MP Taylor Bachrach boarded a passenger train and embarked on a cross-country journey home to northwest B.C.

That afternoon, his train passed through Sudbury. By dusk, he was travelling through Gogama, Ontario, population 277. As he slept, the 14-car passenger train rolled through whistle stops like Oba, Hillsport and Caramat, northern Ontario communities far away from any major thoroughfare. By the following afternoon, he was crossing the border into Manitoba.

His mission was a risky one: With Canada’s long-haul passenger rail service notoriously unreliable, would the parliamentarian make it home in time for Christmas dinner?

It’s not the first time that Bachrach, the federal NDP’s transportation critic, has embarked on unconventional travel methods. In summer, he takes a multi-day, 170-kilometre canoe trip to visit some of the more remote communities along the Skeena River in his northwest B.C. riding. His recent train journey was meant to raise awareness about threats to Canadian rail travel.

When The Tyee caught up with Bachrach at a rail yard in Saskatoon, he appeared relaxed.

“It’s by far the most beautiful way to travel across this country,” Bachrach said, settling into the brown pleather seats in one of three dome cars on the Canadian, Via Rail’s 5,000-kilometre route between Toronto and Vancouver. “It feels like stepping back in time to another era. You’re on a train that is 70 years old, that was built in the 1950s. It doesn’t go very fast, and the level of service from the crew on board is really top-notch.”

The Canadian generally takes four and a half days, travelling north through Edmonton before heading back south toward the Lower Mainland. But passenger rail travel in Canada can be notoriously slow with trains like the Skeena, the final leg of Bachrach’s trip, frequently behind schedule.

Bachrach switched trains in Jasper, continuing west through northern B.C., where he took a two-day stopover to visit his mother in Dunster before rolling into Smithers on Dec. 23.

The trip takes a full day longer than it did 20 years ago, Bachrach said, the result of Via “padding” schedules in an attempt to meet its timetable. Longer and more frequent freight trains that hog the tracks are just one factor that could be the death knell for long-haul rail travel.

Bill to improve train travel

On Dec. 13, Bachrach tabled a private member’s bill aimed at improving train travel. Bill C-371, known as the Rail Passenger Priority Act, would amend the Canada Transportation Act to give passenger trains priority over freight.

The United States has had a similar law in place for more than 50 years, but Amtrak says the law is difficult to enforce and often ignored by freight companies.

“One of the main reasons that passenger rail isn’t as viable a transportation option in Canada as it is in other countries is because the passenger trains constantly have to pull off and make way for freight trains,” Bachrach said.

That hasn’t always been the case. In the not-so-distant past, Via Rail was considered the “Queen of the Tracks” and freight had to step aside and allow it to pass.

That’s changed in recent decades. Canadian National, the country’s largest railway company, owns 83 per cent of the tracks that Via trains run on, and passenger rail operates at the “whim” of giant railway corporations, Bachrach said.

“What’s happened over the years since CN was privatized, and since the federal government deregulated a lot of aspects of passenger rail, is that now freight is king and the passenger train is the poor cousin that gets pushed onto the side,” he said.

Being regularly sidelined makes it hard for Via to maintain a schedule. On-time performance outside the popular Toronto-Quebec City corridor sits at about 60 per cent, “which means four out of 10 trains run late,” Bachrach said.

That’s having a snowball effect on the viability of passenger rail. As ridership drops, so does revenue.

At the same time, Canada is facing an urgent need for investment in passenger rail if trains are to continue running.

Most of the trains on Via’s long-haul routes were built in 1954. This adds a certain charm to the experience — the nostalgia of feeling as if travellers have stepped back in time to an era of slow travel and lumbering locomotives.

But the aging infrastructure also means that passenger rail could be about to fall off a cliff as trains reach the end of their lifespan.

“We had a pretty close call this past year,” Bachrach said about concerns that the 70-year-old railcars were no longer safe. Transport Canada has since cleared them to continue running. But questions remain about what will replace the cars when they need to be retired in about a decade.

Via Rail, a crown corporation, recently invested $989 million into replacing the trains on the Toronto-Quebec City corridor. Four years elapsed between announcing the contract for 32 new trains in 2018 and putting those trains into service last year.

If Canada is going to keep long-haul passenger rail running, it needs to take steps immediately to begin the procurement process, Bachrach said. He hopes to see a budget commitment in the new year.

But as the federal government is being asked to invest in passenger rail, it also appears to be stepping back from it. High-frequency rail proposed for the Toronto-Quebec City corridor would create a new rail line where conventional trains could run at slightly faster speeds — but the public-private partnership would see the corridor’s profits, which account for roughly 80 per cent of Via’s total revenue, going to private interests.

“Essentially, what that looks like is bringing in private investors to put up the financing, to build the new infrastructure and then to run it for the next 50 years or more. That is essentially privatizing the busiest passenger rail corridor in Canada,” Bachrach said.

Bachrach welcomes the investment into rail infrastructure. But he said he wants to see it done in a way that increases, not decreases, Via’s capacity.

Fighting privatization

Last Monday, while stopped in Winnipeg, Bachrach hosted a virtual town hall meeting from his train cabin.

Nearly 100 people tuned in to hear from rail advocates like Terence Johnson, president of Transport Action Canada.

“We are a little bit shocked that in the last year or so the government decided that what had been a Via Rail project has suddenly become an effort to, in fact, outsource that whole operation to a private partner,” Johnson said, referring to high-frequency rail. “We do not believe that the government has provided a justification for why bringing in a private sector operator to take over the existing corridor, including that new fleet of trains the taxpayer just paid for, is going to create a better service for passengers or value for money for Canadians.”

High-frequency rail is the right way to go, Johnson added. But he questions the procurement model put forward.

Christopher Graper, national campaign organizer for Unifor, spoke about the union’s Get Canada Back on Track campaign, which is aimed at fighting government’s plans to privatize Via Rail.

“We’re expecting to see privatization perhaps as early as January 2025, which is extremely worrying,” Graper said. He said federal Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez plans to “hand over the existing operation,” but it’s unclear if that means just the busy Toronto-Quebec City corridor or if it includes more remote routes, which are heavily subsidized by government.

If the feds intend on divesting Via Rail of its most lucrative route, subsidies for the less frequented corridors will rise exponentially.

“Our concern is what will happen to Via Rail if it loses such a huge percentage of its current revenue,” Bachrach said. “In particular, what will happen to the rural routes that it serves, like the Skeena in northwest B.C., because it’s hard to see how Via Rail would be viable with so little revenue.”

The struggling Skeena train, which travels several times a week between Jasper and Prince Rupert, is one of several in Canada that have been declared an essential service.

But ridership through northern B.C. has dropped considerably in recent years, from more than 16,000 passengers in the year prior to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to just 7,385 passengers in 2022. Over the same period, the amount government subsidizes the Skeena route doubled — from about $500 per passenger in 2019 to $1,000 per passenger in 2022. Currently, it costs 14 times as much to run the line as ticket sales bring in.

While the Skeena train has seen declining ridership for nearly 20 years — around the time the port in Prince Rupert began to pick up steam, leading to increased freight traffic — it has dropped sharply since 2020, when the route was shut down much of the year. Service stopped initially due to railway blockades and remained down in the months following as CN Rail said it needed to catch up on shipping backlogs. Then the pandemic hit, prolonging the suspension.

For some people who use it, the Skeena train is a lifeline. It services remote communities established before the highway went through and provides public transportation along the Highway of Tears.

But it’s also notoriously slow. Travelling through northern B.C. by train takes, on average, about twice as long as driving.

Until passenger rail becomes more reliable, it seems unlikely that it will be a frequent choice for commuters. Most of the 170 or so passengers travelling on the Canadian last week were tourists, Bachrach estimated, with a few short-haul commuters mixed in.

“What we’ve seen since the 1950s is a steady move towards a more car-centric culture and airplane-centric culture,” he said. “Our passenger train service is a shadow of its former self, and the fear is that if that trend continues, the quality of life in rural communities is going to continue to fall behind.”

Home for Christmas

As Bachrach’s train travelled through Manitoba and into northern Alberta last week, it fell behind schedule by close to three hours. It arrived in Jasper about an hour and a half late on Wednesday morning — in time for Bachrach to make his connection to the Skeena train a few hours later.

After his two-day stopover in Dunster, Bachrach hopped back on the Skeena and continued west on Friday, overnighting in Prince George and arriving in Smithers the day before Christmas Eve.

He said he has no regrets.

“Compared to air travel, which has become a bit of a nightmare for many people, the train is an incredibly civilized way to get from point A to point B,” Bachrach said.

He hopes more Canadians will get on board in order to make passenger rail not just viable but an enjoyable and environmentally responsible part of Canada’s transportation network.

He’s optimistic we can. In fact, he’s willing to bet a turkey dinner on it.

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