"There may be up to 5 round trips on this line, back up to the level before the Mulroney cuts of 1990. It's worth noting that the excellent and improving Boston-Portland Amtrak line (5 round trips/day) took 10 years of work by the Trainriders NorthEast advocacy group. The latest word there is an application has been made for stimulus funding to build a 30-mile extension northeast through Freeport to Brunswick," Pearce reported.
"(Pearce said) 'Also, Acadian has or is planning terminal moves to suburban or industrial locations in Saint John, Fredericton, Moncton (future) and Dartmouth. These moves fly in the face of attempts to have faster, more convenient and frequent service between major cities. Nothing is to be gained by fast express trips if you must board or disembark at obscure locations on the edge of town or in industrial parks not well served by city transit,'" Chronicle-Herald Business Reporter Tom Peters wrote.
« Cynthia Patterson, de Percé, coordonnatrice de Dignité rurale, critique d'ailleurs VIA Rail pour avoir débaptisé le train, une façon de miner sa mise en marché. Elle dénonce les effets du retrait du chef cuisinier à bord du Chaleur sept mois par an, et le manque de wagons pour la période des Fêtes. «VIA a remplacé le restaurant par un comptoir lunch. La qualité des aliments est médiocre. Il n'y a pas d'aliments santé. Les gens mangent à peine la moitié de ce qui est servi. En plus, la billetterie de Montréal n'avertit pas les gens qu'il n'y a plus de cuisinier à bord depuis le 17 octobre. Les passagers embarquent avec une couple de friandises. C'est long, Montréal-Gaspé [17 heures] quand on n'a rien de bon à manger», Gilles Gagné, collaboration spéciale du Soleil a écrit.
He cites the interconnect with Greyhound Canada Service and Algoma Central Rail and notes that while the expanded service is part of the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT)-sponsored U.P. service, "the extension is being operated without any increase in MDOT-subsidized taxpayer dollars."
"Transportation is the source of one quarter of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. The draft regulations announced by Environment Canada mark the first regulatory action taken by the federal government to reduce GHG emissions", says Mr. Oliver. A comprehensive backgrounder on this topic is presented in Pollution Probe's Primer on Fuel Efficiency and Emissions, launched in partnership with the Canadian Automobile Association on Nov. 6," CNW reported.
http://www.pollutionprobe.org/Publications/AutoPrimer.pdf
The 4000-word Dec. 8 article did not say who funds the Cato Institute. It did not address basic holes in its proposition. If public transit was discontinued and current users switched to cars and taxis, who'd pay for the additional road capacity needed? Where would all the new cars park? How do we mitigate the environmental impacts of more cars, more roads and parking? What is the health and public safety impact of adopting complete car dependence?
For a critique of the Cato "critique", as it applies to the rail transit, see Todd Litman's Victoria Transport Policy Institute article at: http://www.vtpi.org/railcrit.pdf
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2314363
It was not pretty.
The crowd control actually achieved its purpose in spreading out the load on the southbound platform, but the service was a complete mess. The TTC had signal problems, service interruptions due to smoke at track level (more about this later) and a number of passenger assistance alarms (PAAs) brought on by people feeling unwell or fainting in crowded trains. A log of my observations shows the wide gaps in service with headways rarely below 4 minutes. During the two-hour period from 0800 to 1000, the TTC managed to get only 26 trains through the station, slightly fewer than they would normally operate in the peak hour.
"The unions appearing in Ottawa last week had an answer as to the effect. SMS, they said, has resulted in federal aviation inspectors so inundated with paperwork that they never leave the office to do hands-on inspections anymore. If that's the case, Transport Canada needs to re-jig its priorities. Hands-on independent inspections are vital to ensure that what the paperwork says is being done is, in fact, being done. If there's an accident due to a lack of inspections, Canadians will hold Ottawa ultimately responsible," the Chronicle Herald said.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Editorial/1156393.html
"(This) is a picture of inter-city rail service in the most densely populated corridor in Canada: delays, infrequent service, tired carriages, few amenities. It sends commuters between Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto into the air. There is a reason that Porter Airlines, which flies to and from Toronto Island some 30 times a day, is surging; you can leave your home in Ottawa and arrive in downtown Toronto within two and a half hours," the Citizen op-ed said.
"Let's get real. The industrialized world is serious about rail, but Canada is not. When we decided to bail out automakers with $10 billion, we missed an opportunity to retool automotive plants and retrain workers, constituting a massive investment in public transit. High-speed rail itself may not be the answer but better, faster service is. This is the land that bound itself in a ribbon of steel and called itself a country. Can we find the will to do the same today?," Andrew Cohen, president of The Historica-Dominion Institute wrote in the Citizen.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/todays-paper/serious+about+rail/2315216/story.html