America by rail | The Press

Hop on a train in Montreal or Quebec to travel to Los Angeles, via Chicago or New Orleans, before heading up the Pacific coast to return home via Vancouver and Toronto, with a detour to to Hudson’s Bay, anyone? Of course, you have to have a lot of time in front of you, but even if they are slower or less frequent than in Europe, North American trains still go a long way!

Simon Chabot
The Press

“I must have traveled about 300,000 miles on a train in my life! “says Jim Loomis, 85 years old and author ofAll Aboard – The Complete North American Train Travel Guidethe fifth edition of which is due out in 2023.

“Most people have no idea what’s in store for them on big train trips in America,” says the man who now lives in Hawaii but still makes many trips each year. For them, the train is good for short distances and to avoid traffic jams. It’s a shame, because it’s an unforgettable experience to cross the country by rail. »

French by birth, Perrine Roiné moved to Vancouver six years ago. The 33-year-old woman decided to go there by train to take the measure of her new country. “I really wanted to cross Canada by train,” she says. It allowed me to arrive slowly in Vancouver. This is the most memorable trip of my life. »

However, very few people seem disposed, like her, to praise the slowness of the railways. “In Canada, people see the train as an underdeveloped mode of transport, which is always late,” notes the one who runs the blog Pensées voyageuses.

Statistics confirm this perception. In 2019, just 68% of VIA’s trains arrived on time. The carrier mainly uses tracks that do not belong to it and its trains must generally yield to those carrying goods. So much for punctuality.

VIA passengers also seem to limit themselves to fairly short trips. In 2019, 96% of the 1.7 billion kilometers traveled on VIA trains by 5 million people were in the Quebec City-Windsor corridor alone.

Go on an adventure

However, VIA’s network has more than one dream trip on some 12,500 km of track.

Among them is the Skeena, which connects Jasper, Alberta, to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, in a fairly wild section of the Rockies. Or the train between Winnipeg and Churchill, in Hudson Bay, which attracts crowds of tourists every year to meet polar bears (in the fall) and beluga whales (in the summer). The train that connects Montreal to Jonquière and Senneterre, in Quebec, notably serves outfitters, including the Seigneurie du Triton, in Haute-Mauricie, and can stop almost anywhere in the woods to drop off or board passengers.

There are also private trains in the country. The best known are undoubtedly those of Rocky Mountaineer, which offers luxurious rail cruises between Vancouver and Jasper or Banff, for example. In northern Quebec, Tshiuetin Rail Transport has just reopened its Sept-Îles–Schefferville link, much less touristic, but unique in its kind: it is the first line owned by a First Nations group. There is also the Charlevoix train, which this year will run along the river between Quebec City and La Malbaie, from June 17 to October 10.

The American dream

Departing from Montreal, travelers can suddenly broaden their horizons thanks to the 34,000 km of tracks crisscrossed by Amtrak by climbing into the Adirondack, which shuttles between the metropolis and New York. The service has been interrupted since the start of the pandemic, but should resume shortly, assures Amtrak. In 2019, 65,000 passengers boarded this train, which notably gives access to several transcontinental lines.

The California Zephyr, which does Chicago-San Francisco, is the most popular of the trains that cross the United States. Less popular, the Empire Builder, which approaches the Canadian border en route to Seattle or Portland, also has its share of vast horizons and dizzying passes. Further south, you can stop at the Grand Canyon with the Southwest Chief, between Chicago and Los Angeles. The Sunset Limited runs between New Orleans and Los Angeles along the Mexican border… Lines also run along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts from north to south.

A promising future

In 2019, 32 million travelers rode Amtrak trains, although they are rather slow and often have to yield to commercial convoys as well. However, fast trains are beginning to prove themselves. The Acela, which attracted 3.6 million passengers in 2019, makes Boston-Washington in seven hours, with peaks at 240 km / h. Other trains, even faster, are being built in Florida, California and Texas…

In Canada, continued ridership growth (+32% from 2014 to 2019) convinced the federal government to move forward with its high-frequency train project between Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, somewhere in beginning of the 2030s. At 200 km/h, the Montreal-Toronto trip would take a little less than three hours (rather than nearly 3 h 30 min currently) on largely reserved lanes.

“The demand for more trains exists”, observes François Rebello, owner of the Train-Hotel agency, which organizes trips in chartered cars to Toronto or New York, sometimes with a jazz singer, for which demand is picking up these days. -this.

The potential for developing new lines is also enormous, adds Mr. Rebello, who notably worked on a train project between Montreal and Sherbrooke. “The REM here and the Brightline project in Florida demonstrate the profitability of train projects. With the earnings and commissions on the real estate projects around the stations, someone who launches a train where people want to go is going to ensure a good income. »

Damaged at XX^and century with the arrival of the car, then the plane, the train seems to have a promising future ahead of it again. And that’s good, because its carbon footprint is much lower, especially if it’s electric. Of course, both for a trip next summer and for its development on a continental scale, we have to be patient.