The recent decision by VIA Rail to allow Sleeper Plus passengers access to the Canadian's Park Car for 3.5 hours daily during the high season is the beginning of the end for this once great train. There are a maximum of 27 passengers in Prestiege Class paying a tremendous amount of money for the experience. They certainly deserve a special experience. How about a dining car that caters exclusively to Prestiege Class passengers - something akin to first class dining rooms on Cunard ships? VIA has the equipment to do that. Add a special on board lounge exclusively for Prestiege Class passengers - think an enhanced Skyline Cafe car. As someone who has made 15 or more trips on the Canadian I can safely say that it is the Park Car that makes the journey. There are typically 200 plus customers in Sleeper Plus during the high season. To restrict their experience to the Skyline cars fails to differentiate their experience from that of passengers in economy class. And, to be fair, the Skyline Cafe Cars need to be brought up to a much higher standard - they are quite plain and pedestrian. Yes, I know that the new rules will not apply during the low season, but VIA is not going to make any friends with this decision. Does anyone know how successful VIA is in selling prestiege class space?
I agree, the "Prestiege Class" was one of VIA's dumber ideas, probably a holdover from the Harper administration efforts to have tax payers pay for the "improvements" and then declare the Canadian too big a economic failure and sell it to a private tour train operator. We have traveled cross Canada on her annually for about ten years but this change has soured the attractiveness of the train and we probably will not go this year.
Considering that the ordinary Canadian taxpayer subsidizes the wealthy foreign tourists who can afford the "Canadian" to the tune of about C$30 million a year, making it any more exclusive would be a travesty. How about making foreigners pay the FULL COST of their trips instead of giving them luxury at our expense? And how about cutting the fares for Canadians? Right now a discounted roomette from Toronto to Vancouver costs almost C$1800, but a coach fare on Air Canada is C$350. I can see adding C$300 for the "hotel" costs, but the C$1500 premium is outrageous.
Well, as it's been a very, very long time since I've been able to afford to travel sleeper class on VIA, this new development doesn't make much difference to me. I think anything VIA can do to improve cost recovery on its transcontinental service is a good thing.
I have to say that as a tax-payer who is a VIA supporter, ardent railfan and lover of the Canadian, I am beginning to wonder why we are continuing to subsidize this service. A train that takes four days to cross the country and runs two or three days a week isn't providing a useful or essential service to anyone. It is sucking up so much money in subsidy that it may even be inhibiting VIA from meeting its mandate, which is to provide useful, attractive, and efficient rail transport service in Canada.
If VIA could be released from the burden of running the transcontinental service, perhaps resources could be freed up to run more frequent regional services such as Sudbury-Toronto, Calgary-Edmonton, or to improve service to the Maritimes. There is a place for non-tourist, non-corridor train travel in Canada, to serve smaller markets and remote communities, but it can't be met by one very expensive train trying to fill three different roles (cruise train, inter-city travel, and remote transport) all at the same time.
I believe VIA should concentrate on meeting local and regional transport needs, and let the high-priced tourist crowd pay its own way.
For more than thirty years I have been telling myself that someday I am going to ride the Canadian, or whatever the name is of the grand trans-Canada train that is an important part of my idea of what Canada is all about. To think of riding this train is to evoke visions of the Canada of Sgt. Preston of the Yukon, Chateau Frontenac, Lake Louise, a proud red flag with a Union Jack in the canton, grain elevators, flannel shirts, people singing "The Maple Leaf Forever", even Roger Williams playing a song about sunset. Canada without its eponymous train is simply unthinkable! You might as well think of Canada without its monarchy!
This Yankee hopes that somehow, some way will be found to keep this train going and serving its many and varied passengers. I venture to say that this train is on the Bucket List of many of us, and its friends are legion.
Viev la Canadienne!
Dayliner ... There is a place for non-tourist, non-corridor train travel in Canada, to serve smaller markets and remote communities, but it can't be met by one very expensive train trying to fill three different roles (cruise train, inter-city travel, and remote transport) all at the same time.[empahsis added]
... There is a place for non-tourist, non-corridor train travel in Canada, to serve smaller markets and remote communities, but it can't be met by one very expensive train trying to fill three different roles (cruise train, inter-city travel, and remote transport) all at the same time.[empahsis added]
Why not?
Fred Frailey, who calls the train his favorite in North America -- I'd use the name, with italics, but this site won't let me -- has described the modern experience, and it isn't attractive. Trains that are not hours, but days, late -- etc. (Kind of like the Trains forum.)
I'll save my money for a train that can command better service from its unwilling host.
What good is on-board "luxury" when operationally you're treated like a tramp freight? I'd feel like a sucker, paying that money and being treated that way.
Do you not have a choice of Bold, Italics and Underline, and as well as formatting, Font Family, Font Sizes, and Text Color?
Johnny
DragomanWhy not?
Because the requirements of the different kinds of service are too varied to be met by one train, and because a delay hundreds or thousands of miles away will effect the travel plans of people who are depending on the train service two or three days later in a completely different part of the country.
The cruise train doesn't need to run on time--at least, not precisely to time. If you are taking four days out of your life to enjoy the trip of a lifetime and see Canada up close and personal, you're not going to mind if you're two, four or even twelve hours late at your end point, as long as you are comfortable along the way, and you've been prudent enough not to plan any tight connections to get you back home. You're taking the time to enjoy the trip, and you've probably got enough money to build some slack into your itinerary by booking a night or two in a hotel at either end of the train journey.
The cruise train does, however, need a lot of amenities that the shorter-distance "utility" traveller doesn't--domes, bedrooms, fancy diners and lounges. Those all increase costs and decrease potential seat-mile revenue.
Time-keeping, and scheduling, are going to be more of a concern to the local and regional traveller. The service needs to be at least once a day, or it isn't a service, and it needs to be reliable. And, it needs to arrive and/or depart at a time that isn't three in the morning. Just ask the good people of Farlane, or Minaki, or Rice Lake in northern Ontario, who need to get into town and are probably not going to consider the train because it only runs two days a week in the winter and is scheduled to come through at some ridiculous hour of the early morning, if it's on time. They need a train that isn't going to be a day and a half late because of some dispatching snafu in British Columbia. The Canadian was supposedly switched to the route through northern Ontario in order to maintain transcontinental connections for those communities when VIA cut back to one transcontinental route instead of two, but it can't be providing much of a service to those communities.
Similarly, on the prairies, inter-city travel in, say, the Winnipeg-Saskatoon or Edmonton-Saskatoon markets is hampered by inhospitable arrival or departure times at one of the end points, and by unreliable time-keeping over the whole route. Reliable, basic daily trains with simple food service on each of those segments, with good connecting services to Regina and Calgary, would provide the skeleton of a good and usable passenger rail service on the prairies.
By all means, run the fancy streamlined luxury name train that everybody loves, but run it at rates that cover its costs, and let the people who ride it pay for it. Use the money that we are currently spending on that train to support usable daily trains for the rest of us.
Deggesty Do you not have a choice of Bold, Italics and Underline, and as well as formatting, Font Family, Font Sizes, and Text Color?
'Deed I do; they just don't work right. The italics, for instance -- among its other tricks -- likes to undo itself where applied as soon as I resume regular typeface. Or persist even after I have knocked it off. Etc., ad nauseum.
I may be an IT dummy, but I do learn from experience when something has been pounded into my head often enough, and I'll find a way around this latest demonstration of Trains' own IT incompetence sooner or later. It just makes me impatient and tired.
northeaster I agree, the "Prestiege Class" was one of VIA's dumber ideas, probably a holdover from the Harper administration efforts to have tax payers pay for the "improvements" and then declare the Canadian too big a economic failure and sell it to a private tour train operator. We have traveled cross Canada on her annually for about ten years but this change has soured the attractiveness of the train and we probably will not go this year. I agree with "northeaster" about the silliness of Prestige Class, although not with his spelling. But it is regrettable that he had to include a hostile reference to a previous prime minister, a reference that is unsupported by any facts and merely reflects the writer's political bias.
I think Toronto Fan's post was about Sleeper Plus passengers not being allowed free access to the tail end Park car, only Prestige Class will have free access. I hear Sleeper Plus passengers saying they will not take the trip if restricted to the Skyline domes.
Don´t really know what to say. Last year, my wife and me, we took the Canadian to Winnipeg. The Hudson Bay to Churchill & back and after 2 days on to Vancouver on N°1 agan.
As it was brand new, I wanted to try prestige class before the regular prices would come into effect.
We "ended" up in a compartment right above the bogie of a Chateu Sleeper.
At "speed" parts of the interieur started vibrating. A panel underneath the window became extreemly noisy, even for me it was hard to fall a sleep. After a two hours late departure from Toronto, the only comment from an on board employ was. "Someone" will take care of it tommorrow. I tried to get it silent with cardbord.
We asked if it was possible to change the room to something closer to the middle of the car but where told, that they are fully booked.
Might have been a better idea to leave the roomettes where they where and rebuild the bedrooms in the centre of the car into Prestige class? And perhaps replace the sections by a handicap room.
Otherwise the bigger bed for two is really a good thing and the warm colours make You feel good. The larger window was a good idea, too. And it does not spoil the exterieur look that much.
On our two trips, the Park Car was always full, occupied mostly by the same people. So we spend most of the time in the Skyline car a few sleepers ahead.
I can understand that, once the regular prices came into effect, prestige car passengers started to complain.
Toronto Fan has the right idea. A lounge for prestige class passengers. Be it an extra diner or a refurbisched Skyline, may be turned arround with the staircase to the rear?
But something should be done.
I have ridden The Canadian regularly for over 45 years for all or some portion of its route. As has been noted the Park Car is crowning jewel of the train. I will not travel in high season without full access to that car.
However, I do not see the Prestige Class as a huge mistake in and of itself. It should make a positive contribution to cash flow. Fares are substantially more than double sleeper plus, if memory serves me. On-board staff tell me this service is heavily booked for three years although not necessarily sold-out.
Although it sounds like a lote of money, the entire VIA subsidy is one of more minor line items in the federal budget and the subsidy for this train might cost $1/citizen. How much urban road could be built for the VIA susidy? I don't have the exact answer at hand but the general answer is, not much.
VIA Rail said it has handled this poorly and is reversing its decision for 2016 at least and Sleeper Plus passengers will have full access to the Park car.
Perhaps VIA could fix up a Skyline dome exclusively for the Prestige class, there are several Skylines on the train during rhe summer.
Instead of trying to figure out ways to treat first-class passengers like peasants, VIA should be concentrating on getting better service out of Canadian Pacific. I don't know if they have any avenues open to them -- as Amtrak does, theoretically -- but their present treatment by CP, as related by Fred Frailey, is a scandal. Even by U.S. standards.
Don't know why an American would ride, especially at those prices. If it was the Canadian scenery I was after, I'd drive first.
Great to hear! The Park Car is a truly unique window back to the era of the great streamliners, and to limit that experience to prestige passengers would truly be a loss. I for one very much look forward to riding the Canadian again, and spending much of my time in the Park Car. They are especially nice since the prestige rebuilding program.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
The Canadian travels over the Canadian NATIONAL, not
the Canadian PACIFIC for virtually all of it's run.
Ouch, right; thanks. I must have caught a dose of the hate-Harrison bug.
dakotafred Ouch, right; thanks. I must have caught a dose of the hate-Harrison bug.
Harrison-hating works equally well for CN or CP, considering it was the changes (cultural and physical) he put into motion that now cause VIA to run late.
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