Ottawa

The more human way to travel

A couple days before he questioned Christy Clark, Conservative MP Brent Rathgeber wrote about a train trip he took and questioned VIA’s value as a publicly funded service.

All of which raises a question as to why Canadian taxpayers are subsidizing a rail service that so few Canadians, especially in Western Canada, ever use.  And why would we, when it takes longer and costs more than comparable commercial travel?? In the more densely populated central Canadian corridor (Windsor-Quebec City), the train is actually quite popular and with enough customers, presumably could be operated without taxpayer subsidy.

However, so few people are using the VIA service from Toronto-Vancouver that it was recently announced that the service was being cut back from three to two times per week in each direction.  This announcement went so unnoticed that our MP office received not a single call or e-mail complaining about this service reduction.  If VIA disappeared all together in Western Canada, would anybody even notice??   If VIA Rail Canada really is “A More Human Way to Travel”, why are so few humans actually travelling via VIA??  And is this good value for the Canadian taxpayer??

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