{"id":41648,"date":"2021-02-04T19:00:53","date_gmt":"2021-02-05T00:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/?p=41648"},"modified":"2021-02-09T18:28:26","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T23:28:26","slug":"railroaded-strange-bedfellows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/2021\/02\/04\/railroaded-strange-bedfellows\/","title":{"rendered":"Railroaded – Strange Bedfellows"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Vic Fedeli has dug himself into a pit with endless promises to restore Ontario Northland Railway (ONR) passenger service \u201cbefore the next election.\u201d \u00a0He\u2019s now appealing for help from Liberal Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota.\u00a0 Politics, passenger trains, and ill-advised promises make strange bedfellows.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The good news is MP Anthony Rota has offered to assist the former Ontario Minister of Finance, although he did refrain from agreeing to provide the funding required to give Fedeli his requested \u201cGet Out of Jail \u2013 Go Free\u201d Monopoly card.\u00a0 But isn\u2019t it heartwarming to hear Fedeli suggest that North Bay boys from different political clubs play nice with their choo choos?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In fact, Rota can help Fedeli, his government, and the lamentable ONR out of the pit they\u2019ve dug for themselves by adopting my quick and easy solution:\u00a0 Restore the Northlander<\/em> by axing a dying VIA train in Southern Ontario.\u00a0 This would release its two locomotives and four Light, Rapid and Comfortable (LRC) cars for a new train from Toronto to North Bay and Timmins.\u00a0 Actually, South Porcupine with a bus connection to the downtown Timmins station that\u2019s now a bus depot.\u00a0 That\u2019s because some provincial boneheads long ago ripped up the tracks to this historic and conveniently-located station.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As much as it pains me to say this, there is no longer any point in maintaining VIA\u2019s rump service on its North Main Line from Toronto to Sarnia via Kitchener, Stratford, and London.\u00a0 It was once a thriving CN service linking Toronto and Chicago, but that time is long past.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I was under contract to VIA in 2010, we had a plan to reboot this service using ex-VIA Budd rail diesel cars rebuilt by an innovative firm in Moncton.\u00a0 There would have been six trains in each direction, coordinated with improved GO Toronto-Guelph commuter service.\u00a0 The two publicly-funded railways would have shared the infrastructure upgrading costs to benefit both agencies and all passengers under this thrifty plan.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At the last minute, I was told to halt the speech, press release and backgrounders I was writing for respected and experienced VIA President Paul C\u00f4t\u00e9 to unveil at a Kitchener business breakfast.\u00a0 The next thing I knew, Paul had been \u201cretired\u201d and replaced by a Conservative duo: One an unemployed railway exec and the other a lawyer with ties to the Harper and Mulroney governments.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What followed is too lengthy and complex to repeat here, but it sure wasn\u2019t good, especially the VIA service cuts on this and other routes in 2012.\u00a0 In the midst of this mess, provincially-funded GO suddenly expanded west from Georgetown to Kitchener for purely political reasons and immediately chewed into VIA\u2019s ridership.\u00a0 GO\u2019s subsidized tickets were half the price of VIA\u2019s subsidized tickets.\u00a0 Passengers voted with their feet and their wallets, shifting to the slower GO trains, even though they paled by comparison with VIA\u2019s trains.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Constant politically-motivated tinkering with the GO service has destroyed VIA\u2019s ridership.\u00a0 So has the new van service funded by the Fordies on the London-Sarnia route segment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is but one VIA train left on this once bustling route.\u00a0 It heads west to Sarnia at dinnertime, soldiering on with few passengers and high costs, returning to Toronto at the crack of dawn and making many \u201crolling stops,\u201d where it blows through towns without stopping because no one gets on or off.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So, axe this sad little VIA train and transfer it to a useful Toronto-North Bay-Timmins service.\u00a0 A second identical trainset, plus a baggage car for each of them, can easily be obtained from VIA, which is using only two-thirds of its LRCs on its reduced Quebec-Windsor Corridor. You\u2019d have two new Northlanders<\/em> and, just as Fedeli has mused, they\u2019d be nothing like the clapped-out, 54-year-old former GO commuter equipment previously used on the Northlander<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mind you, this would only be a stopgap measure until Ford Nation releases its definitive northern rail passenger plan.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been told they have one \u2026 and then they don\u2019t have one, but are working on it \u2026 or do have one and don\u2019t want to let All Aboard Northern Ontario founder Eric Boutilier see it under his pending Freedom of Information request.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Northeastern Ontario requires some urgent action to reconnect its towns with each other and Toronto by rail.\u00a0 ONR bus service has dwindled.\u00a0 When it does run, it is too often a virus carrier.\u00a0 Nor has air service returned, which never met the needs of the numerous points along the rail lines that are way off the air service grid.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the end, a system approach is required to produce a comprehensive and affordable northern rail solution, not just a single train on an isolated route that doesn\u2019t connect with any others.\u00a0 Coordination with the subsidized ONR buses \u2013 not a repeat of the bus competition that existed for most of the Northlander\u2019s<\/em> life \u2013 needs to be addressed squarely.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

With Rota\u2019s help, I\u2019m certain my emergency action plan will succeed and help to \u2013 using an already overused political buzz phrase \u2013 \u201cbuild back better\u201d as we grapple with the needs of a post-pandemic world.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And there\u2019s a bonus in my plan for Fedeli, who recently said he won\u2019t be \u201crushed\u201d into any solutions and he expects the train to be different from the flea-bitten Northlander<\/em> of old: \u201cI see it as a modern-looking service, not unlike transportation in Southern Ontario.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Vic\u2019s in luck.\u00a0 Not only does my Northlander<\/em> replacement look like a Southern Ontarian train, it is a Southern Ontarian train!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You\u2019re welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vic Fedeli has dug himself into a pit with endless promises to restore Ontario Northland Railway (ONR) passenger service \u201cbefore the next election.\u201d \u00a0He\u2019s now appealing for help from Liberal Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota.\u00a0 Politics, passenger trains, and ill-advised promises make strange bedfellows.   The good news is MP Anthony Rota …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":41341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216,2870],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorials","category-rroaded"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 08:19:31","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41648"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41651,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41648\/revisions\/41651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}