Progress towards freer flow of passenger trains across the US-Canada border

This week’s announcement that the United States and Canada have reached an agreement that will allow US Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) agents to pre-screen US-bound rail passengers at Montreal’s Central Station — and potentially at other stations in Canada — is certainly welcome news. It means that passengers on Amtrak’s Adirondack, and on a future northward extension of the Vermonter, will no longer have a scheduled delay of an hour or more at the border to allow both countries’ customs and immigration inspections to occur on-board. However, plenty of questions and ample room for improvement remain before the North American passenger train network can be more completely integrated across national borders.

Before this week’s agreement, the biggest obstacle to extending the Vermonter to Montreal was the prospect of building new border inspection stations and adding an additional hour or so to the train’s schedule to accommodate the traditional screening at the border, which would have made the extension more expensive and less attractive to passengers. The agreement removes this obstacle, meaning that the only things standing in the way of extending the Vermonter (or perhaps reinstating the overnight Montrealer) are obtaining the necessary operating funding, track upgrades and reaching an agreement between the state sponsors, host railroads, and Amtrak (or possibly another operator). However, there is reason for optimism that the extension will occur, as Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin and Lt. Gov. Phil Scott spoke enthusiastically in favor of it at the Vermont Rail Action Network’s annual meeting in St. Albans on November 13, 2014.

However, conducting prescreening at Montreal Central Station precludes the possibility of adding additional station stops north of the border, as once passengers are cleared for entry into the US, a southbound train will have to run “sealed” to the border. Likewise, northbound passengers will not be cleared to enter Canada until they reach Montreal and are processed by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). Therefore, once pre-clearance is implemented, the Adirondack will no longer stop at St. Lambert, Quebec (a suburban station across the St. Lawrence River from Montreal) in either direction. This would be the case for any other cross-border route on which pre-clearance is used, making pre-clearance impractical for routes like the Maple Leaf, which serve other populated locales in between Toronto and the border at Niagara Falls. But until on-board inspections at the border can be accomplished as expeditiously as they are elsewhere in the world, pre-clearance is the only way to effectively condense the schedules of cross-border trains.

It will be interesting to see how much the future border crossing procedures for the Adirondack and extended Vermonter will resemble current practice for the Cascades trains between Seattle and Vancouver, BC. In an arrangement in place since 1995, while all northbound Canadian customs and immigration inspection takes place at Vancouver Central Station, the southbound process is split into two steps: immigration clearance at Vancouver and a short stop (usually about 15 min) for customs clearance at Blaine, WA (usually involving USCBP agents simply collecting a customs declaration form from each passenger by passing through the aisle). A 2009 Amtrak report prepared in advance of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver recommends consolidating all USCBP activity at Vancouver, and seems to suggest that the 1995 agreement between the two countries permits this. Perhaps USCBP will learn from its experience in Montreal to streamline the process in Vancouver and create procedures that could then be applied in places like Winnipeg. (In the Cascades’ case, the issue of not being able to stop between Vancouver and the border would be eased by adding a passenger stop just south of the border at Blaine, WA, an addition long sought by local passenger advocates but opposed by the Washington State Department of Transportation (sponsor of the Cascades service) on the grounds that adding stops increases the travel time and thus hurts ridership.)

In the long run, the US and Canada should be able to reach the point where crossing the border is as hassle-free as crossing the borders between European countries. Even outside of the European Union (where there is no border inspection for those traveling between member nations), countries that have had cross-border train services for decades have figured out how to streamline the process and only minimally delay trains. Unfortunately, post-9/11 security concerns have made for unnecessarily lengthy border inspections.  This is what did in the joint Amtrak/VIA Rail Canada International, which connected Chicago with Toronto until 2005. That train’s timekeeping got progressively worse after 9/11 due to border inspection delays at Port Huron, MI and Sarnia, ON, particularly US-bound. But even today, the southbound Maple Leaf usually dwells at Niagara Falls, NY for 2 hours while each passenger coming from Canada gets off the train at the rear door and is interviewed by USCBP in a secured room inside the station. 

While we may never return to a pre-9/11 attitude towards border security, both the US and Canada would benefit from not having border security be an obstacle to efficiently running services like the International (where Amtrak still serves Chicago-Port Huron and VIA still serves Sarnia-Toronto), or restoring service between Montreal and Atlantic Canada across Maine, or connecting the Twin Cities to Winnipeg. This will require USCBP and CBSA working together with Amtrak, VIA, states/provinces and host railroads to balance border security interests with the convenience of passengers and the easy flow of commerce between each country and its biggest trading partner.