I have two sons involved in high school band, and it’s turned out to be a pretty good gig for them. The band takes a major (fly somewhere) and a minor (bus trip) trip in opposite years. Trips are performance centered, with cultural and fun activities for the students built-in. Keeping the band going just doesn’t work without parental help and I pitch in when I can. I have chaperoned these trips in the past but I’m sitting this one out to see my son perform in his senior year without having to worry about loading and unloading tubas and rolling kettle drums in and out of trucks and doing bed checks. I also wanted to play tourist and was desperately in need to get out-of-town for a few days.
This year, the trip was to Toronto, which is about a 4-hour ride by car. But there is no way I’d be going by car, because you can train it to Toronto from Windsor, Ontario, just across from Detroit via the Windsor Tunnel. And why would any reasonable person not do that, right?
Round trip with taxes for 3 of us is about $290 dollars (US) . I calculated, however, that I could drive there and back for about $80.00 or so on gas, then you have to add parking to that ($39/day at the hotel) and cabbing or Uber’ing around town. No matter how you slice it, it’s still far cheaper to drive but the train is very convenient. And I absolutely wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to take a train trip.
Christmas Morning 1975’s Big Surprise
Since I was a young boy, among all other things that move, I’ve been fascinated by trains. I had an up and running HO layout on and off through my childhood, and I still have my Spirit of 76 train set from Christmas 1975 packed away somewhere. When I was a kid in the summer months I’d often bike about a mile east of my parents house to watch the Grand Trunk & Western freight train running south at 7:30 PM sharp every weekday evening. Or sometimes I’d pedal 5 miles west to watch the much busier two-line tracks in downtown Royal Oak, MI, running coal gondolas and car carriers up and back to service the GM plants in Pontiac, Flint and Saginaw.
Given that train travel is generally very far removed from the average American’s consciousness unless perhaps you live in the northeast, it wasn’t until I was almost 50 that I took a trip on one as a passenger. This was for a quick family trip to Toronto in 2016. This would mark trip #3. I went to Chicago last June on Amtrak, which has a station just 10 minutes from my house.
The only choice for passenger train travel nationwide in Canada is Via Rail. It is the national passenger rail carrier of Canada, and is a crown corporation owned by Canadian government. It was formed in 1977 out of the decline of the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific passenger service. It was formed in much the same way Amtrak was formed to keep passenger rail service going in the US. Like Amtrak, it is mandated to run as a business and has had its share of financial and other assorted ups and downs over the years.
The newer Via Rail station in Windsor sits just off Riverside Drive on Walker Road. This is truly literally the end of the line for the Via trains as you can see above. After unloading inbound passengers, the train has to back up a few miles through a series of switches into an actual “Y” rail section to turn around and reverse into the station to point the train to east to Toronto. For a city of its size, Windsor has a surprisingly large network of railways and yards to support the industrial base that still exists in the city, including the FCA minivan plant. There is even a rail tunnel underneath the Detroit river. At one time there was a rail ferry to take cars that were too tall to fit into the tunnel, but with the tunnels expanded and enlarged at some point, I can’t find evidence that this service still exists.
The check in process is pretty simple, just show your pass at the door. There isn’t a lot of wait time like in an airline to taxi to take off. At 5:45 sharp, off we went. The locomotive appears to be a General Electric P42DC and date back to late 2001. Amtrak uses the type as well.
The economy class ticket offered adequate comfort and amenities for the average person. Most of the train is configured in 4 seat pods , face to face, with trays that come out of the armrests. Business class tickets priced out close to airfare prices so I ruled that out. The coaches both ways were a bit old and worn, but comfortable enough. There was WiFi which worked OK for basic browsing, though Via offered streaming in-journey movies and shows. Sandwiches (which were really good actually), snacks and drinks were served.
Union Station -The Great Hall
In certain spots in rural areas where there is improved track, you can feel the engineer putting the spurs to it, and I clocked the train going close to 95 MPH on my phone GPS. Last year on my Chicago trip, likewise, there were some spots where we were over 100 MPH in spurts. I would say track quality overall was better on the Via lines over Amtrak. I cannot imagine how a bullet train would be in Japan or Europe, but I’d like to try one someday. We had about 6 stops along the way, in places like Chatham, London, and Ingersoll, Ontario, but came in right about on time into Union Station in Toronto. a very handsome structure. The journey took a bit over 4 hours, a bit longer than it would take you to drive the 230 miles, but you come out off the train feeling a bit more refreshed and less stressed than if you were driving.
The View from Roundhouse Park, Downtown Toronto
This is my third time in Toronto in the last three years, and its a great city to visit. Someone called it “New York run by the Swiss” and they’d be about right. Long ago it overtook Montreal as the business and cultural capital of Canada. Each time I’ve went, I’ve been very impressed. It’s safe, clean, prosperous, cosmopolitan, multicultural and buzzes with energy. The economy, centered around finance, the provincial government, and tech/IT is booming. There are endless residential and commercial skyscrapers everywhere, even outside the downtown area, with more going up and construction cranes visible off in the distance. I’m told from some locals I know that the issues for common folk is the high cost of residential and commercial real estate, which is among the highest in North America, making Toronto a very expensive place to live.
Toronto mass transit is excellent, inexpensive and we took full advantage of it. Mass transit is virtually non-existent outside of limited bus service in Southeast Michigan, so we were almost giddy with excitement to make use of it. We needed to get to the North York for two performances, at the outer limits of the city, and took a GO regional commuter train then switched over to a subway to get us the last bit. We were total fish out of water around the station, but the mass transit app made it easy and told us step by step how to get to where we needed to go. The cars were extremely clean and left on time, and at peak hours were nearly at capacity. I had not been on a subway this modern before. There are no connecting doors between cars like the ones I rode a few years back in New York. There is a flexible connection point between cars and train length was impossibly long…long enough to notice the bend when the train was in turns. We wondered how much user fares paid for all of this, and how much of it was subsidized by the local and regional governments.
As far as cars go? Well, if you lived in the heart of the city, you wouldn’t really want or need one. Like any major city, cars are not really needed and inconvenient and expensive to park. Mass transit can take you just about anywhere. And when that fails…taxis, Uber, Lyft are your backups. My lone observation about cars here is that the Detroit 3 brands are very thin on the ground.
At the end of my journey, I definitely could see how a modern, economical and efficient train network could make sense in the U.S. I personally would love to see a European or Japanese style high speed rail system linking the major cities of North America. It makes a lot of sense. But does the political will exist to spend the money to make it happen? Not likely, at least not in my lifetime. I think we’ll have to settle for little teases of what it could be at best.
One of the reasons Toronto is so appealing is that they truck their trash back to the US. I see numerous trash trucks with Ontario plates on I-94 westbound to the dump at I-275 every day.
Overall, I agree that Toronto is a great place to visit.
Glad you enjoyed the trip from Windsor on VIA. The track between Windsor and London is very rough but smooths out considerably thereafter. As a resident of Toronto, I can report that traffic is appalling. Unfortunately, we have also been underinvesting in the subway system and therefore it is considerably overloaded during peak periods and has poor coverage over large parts of the City. The system actually covers much more of its operating costs from the farebox than other transit systems in North America, partly because usage is high and partly because governments here underfund it.
Given the concentration of people living in the Montreal-Toronto-Windsor corridor is one of the highest in North America, it would be a prime location for a dedicated high speed system. But since the 1970s there has been much talk, but no commitment and follow through, by successive governments.
From the late 1960s until the early 1980s, Canadian National/VIA ran the US designed United Aircraft Corporation Turbo Train between Toronto and Montreal. Cutting the duration of the trip from earlier express trains. However, because the trains crossed around 240 public road crossings (and many more private crossings), top speed was limited to 95 mph (153 km/h). Though one set a Canadian rail speed record of 140 mph (226 km/h) in 1976.
More here: http://spacing.ca/toronto/2015/12/09/53711/
I never rode the Turbo Trains as a kid, but I spotted them on a couple occasions at the VIA Station in Kingston back in the late 70s. And my grade school lunch pail featured the earlier CN version. 🙂
I visited Toronto in 1991 with my best friend after his graduation at NTID in Rochester. My first impression of Toronto was ‘…how American it looked!’ I guess I was so accustomed to Vancouver, BC, that looked more European.
I rode Amtrak from Denver to Los Angeles via Albequerque then from Los Angeles to San Francisco. I vowed I would NEVER ride with Amtrak ever again! It was definitely hellish and nightmarish experience for me. At some points, we had to be set aside while the freight trains cruised by for eternity.
I guess I was totally spoilt by European high speed trains, namely Deutsche Bahn ICE, SNCF TGV, and ÖBB Railjet. Cruising at 300-320km/h felt very smooth and relaxing while watching the countryside slides by quickly.
During the holiday rush, I watched lot of vehicles stuck on the Autobahnen in either direction heading Munich or Nuremberg while our train whooshed by at 300km/h.
Living in Toronto with a car I can say that it turns into only a weekend fun machine. Recreational driving only.
I have a 24hr streetcar outside my door (literally) and the car whisks us out of our very busy city and into the cottage areas like Muskoka 2hrs north where the real woods start. We question often whether its still worth having a car here and have decided it is.
Night time we can drive around the city easily and we often do but another great advantage of transit is it can get you home drunk! Weed’s legal here too!
I recently stumbled across a film that I found quite interesting that might interest you. It’s viewable on YouTube and runs for about 25 minutes. It’s called “The Railrodder” (yes, that spelling is correct) and it stars Buster Keaton on a very comedic train ride across Canada. It was released in 1965 and is one of his last films made and was the last silent film that he did before he died.
That film was made by the National Film Board, and is well known to many Canadians as a source of nostalgia. Both for being one of Keaton’s last films, but the short also documents so much of Canada’s landscape that has changed since then.
There is a scene where Keaton is riding his handcar alongside the Rideau Canal in Ottawa, when only a few years later the tracks were permanently removed and replaced to this day by green space and bike paths.
https://www.nfb.ca/film/railrodder/
Great photo!
My aunt and uncle in Ottawa live in a condo almost where that train is along colonel by drive.
I went to school in Windsor and took the train home regularly, with the students discount it was the Same price as greyhound
The only hassle was the station is on the far side of the city from the University
We use the Thalys to Paris (we start in Rotterdam,Netherlands) at least once a year, actually were there two weeks ago ( and visited the Notre Dame 5 days for the fire) and it is faster from city center to city center then it would be flying. Plane is a little cheaper, but going 300 km/h at ground level is much cooler.
From a tourist perspective I prefer the slow trains as I can see more. High speed trains = blurry scenery.
I vaguely recall that the reason Toronto is so expensive is that it’s a place where wealthy foreigners can easily dump and convert the cash they’ve made in less than honorable methods (or something like that).
Here in Houston there is a big spat going on with a private business trying to build a high-speed line between Houston and Dallas, with one other stop about 90 miles outside of Houston. The builder is convinced they have the right to emminent domain as a railroad; a few hundred families whose lives and large acreage properties, some generational, would be deeply impacted by the elevated tracks running through disagree. Many as well moved out of the big cities to enjoy the peace and quiet of the rural area (part of my 5 year plan). Outside of the Houston and Dallas local politicians (and of course the Governor etc), the rural politicians are dead set against it.
So far the state courts have ruled no, the company has no given right to enter properties and survey those along the planned route. And the Emminent Domain issue has not been resolved by the courts. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. Personally I love the idea of a high-speed train but fully back the land-owners right to choose not to sell. Too bad they couldn’t use the existing tracks between the two cities.
In the mountain west passenger trains are quite useless for any intercity travel. There is simply no inter-city service between the major centers and the western cities are ones where a car or truck is needed once one gets to Phoenix, Boise, Albuquerque or any of the smaller cities.
There is a commuter rail service between Santa Fe and Albuquerque and south to Belen. Don’t know much about it but I do pass the “Rail Runner” when driving north/south in the Rio Grande valley on I-25.
Denver is fascinated with light rail service. There are some lines and decreasing ridership. The front range is not served – though there is bus service. There is a terribly political impetus to spending money on this light rail service. This works to the detriment of car drivers on the major freeways; they are only grudgingly attended to though clearly in the Denver metro area cars are mandatory for reasonable transit.
Salt Lake has an urban light rail system that connects to another regional line that runs from Ogden in the north to Provo in the south.
Phoenix, Mesa & Tempe have one and only one light rail line. It is of very limited use and locals are objecting to a proposed second line south of downtown. The Phoenix line suffers from criminal activity and undesirable patrons.
In my life I have used Amrtak two times. One was Seattle-Portland. The train hit a truck at a crossing about ten blocks from the Portland station and the trip was accordingly delayed while the event was attended to by whomever. The second trip was likely easier than it would have been driving – Penn Station in New York to Providence. The coaches were dirty and the there were many stops but it is possible that the train trip from Manhattan was less taxing on me than driving a rental car would have been. But for me too – no more Amtrak.
I just returned a week ago from a work trip to Toronto, my first time there. I flew from LA but took the express train from Pearson airport to Union Station in downtown and walked to my hotel. I was very impressed with the train – quick, comfortable, and very inexpensive (less than $5 US for senior fare).
I agree that Toronto is a very impressive city and I thoroughly enjoyed my brief time there. However, there were homeless people begging on York Street on my walk to the hotel and more in the Toronto PATH underground shopping complex. Apparently Canada has not conquered some of the same social safety net problems we face in the US. During my visit there was an article in the local media about the disappearance of private pensions and the inadequacy of public pensions that sounded all too familiar.
I got news for ya: there are homeless folks everywhere. Why should Toronto be different from Zurich or Tokyo?
I agree with you the train is a nice way to travel but the price just doesn’t justify it on a regular basis.
We live about 75 miles east of Toronto and my son lives in the city.
His car was totalled a couple weeks ago and while we fight with the insurance I have been travelling on weekends to bring him home and take him back.
Even with double trips it is cheaper for him to pay my gas than use public transit.
The idea is sound but financially here in Ontario it has a way to go.
Great article and I am glad you took the trip. The whole St Lawrence corridor has been woefully neglected when it comes to infrastructure. The 401 highway is one of the busiest roads in North American and there hasn’t been a new subway line in Toronto in fifty years. Every time a politician makes a transit plan he is booted out at the next election and said plan is cancelled. I just happened again.
I will say nothing compares to the poor road infrastructure we have in Michigan. You dont know how good you have it over there. At least Ontario seems to know how to build and maintain roads very well. Ours are just pothole nightmares. Worst in the US. I credit it to a decades of shoddy low bid contract awards and poor road specifications that likely haven’t changed much in 75 years, and a pass the buck culture in the DoT. Until that changes it will be more of the same.
I hear you, but in general, infrastructure is better kept in Canada than in the USA. But then again, we do pay higher taxes that our American neighbours.
If you want better roads then you have to be prepared to pay for them, not someone else.
With the cheaper Canadian Dollar against that of the US, I would have expected more American travellers to Toronto than I seem to have noticed. Lots of movies are shot here, and have been for some years now. Your shot of Union Station reminded me of a scene from the Gene Wilder and Richard Prior movie, the Silver Streak. Photo below.
Also, the closing scene from the Fugitive was shot outside the Royal York Hotel, right across the street from the train station.
I believe that transit in Toronto is broken. There are far too few rail options, and car traffic on the highways (or freeways if you prefer) is far too congested. Not just in rush hours, but all through the days and often at night as well. As others have commented, every time there is a transit option proposed, the next incoming city or provincial government nixes it for their own plan, and nothing ever happens.
I’m glad you found your visit here enjoyable.
Yeah, I can’t take further discussion on Toronto transit, that part of my brain is now full.
When they start on CBC I have to change the station, at least NPR doesn’t go on and on about Buffalo transit 😊
Attending a public meeting on Hamitlon’s LRT is out of the question for you then. The whole project reminds me of the Monorail episode of “The Simpsons” It will be the reason not to go near downtown anymore.
The 13% Ontario HST wipes out a lot of the positive exchange rate the US Dollar has, so it’s not a bargain trip. We liked the Kensington market neighborhood vibe… something for everyone. Canadians always wonderful, hospitable and polite, right down to the cabbies and Uber drivers.
Toronto is a planning disaster and has been for decades. Successive populist governments only make the matter worse. It is just amazing how Canada’s largest metro area does not have a centralised planning body.
In the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, all transportation is controlled by one Crown Corporation called Translink. That means a bus in Surrey is the same as a bus a UBC, so the entire system is integrated.
Creating Translink took big political will. Locals complain about it all the time, but one trip to Toronto is all it takes for that to stop!
I live in Buffalo and have seen how over the past 30 years traffic in Toronto is intolerable…That being said I have taken the VIA train from Niagara Falls ON to Toronto Union Station…I left my car in the lot in Niagara Falls no charge…A pleasurable trip.
Conversely Amtrak is horrible. A trip from Buffalo to NYC can take anywhere fro 8-12 hours…yes that is how much the trip can vary…Seems the tracks are owned by CSX freight and Amtrak must pull to a siding to let freight trains through…This can add hours to the trip. We have so regressed in the US…100 years ago multiple companies owned their own tracks..NY Central, Pennsylvania, Lehigh Valley, I’ve travelled on Taiwan’s superb rail system that runs the length of the island and France’s TGV…both fast, modern roomy and quite pleasant
Sounds like a good trip.
The rail barges between Windsor & Detroit stopped running about 1994 when they completed enlarging one of the tunnel bores.
I’ve got a few videos here that show what Windsor rail traffic was like about 25 years ago. They include shots of the barges, the tunnel and the older station.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtUTnXXiEhU&t=20s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqeB4yDnr2I&t=3s
Trains done well are a wonderful way to travel. Growing up in Germany we had one car, which my Dad took to work. If we wanted to go to the big city (Freiburg) during the week, we’d walk to our village station, grab the small two-compartment train with integrated driver cell (Das Baehnle) to the next larger town, then transfer to a larger train to Freiburg. Cheap, efficient, and dropped us off in the center of town. Then reverse to come home. We’d do that every few weeks IIRC.
Then the intercity’s all over Germany and Europe are generally excellent, with plenty of VERY fast trains all over, such as the German ICE trains and the French TGV. Of course EuroStar through the Chunnel is an event as well and while not always cheaper than a plane ticket, it drops you in a city center rather than WAY outside such as any of the London and Paris airports.
And Japan is just as good if not better. China too had a lot of very nice trains the last time I was there including a bullet train.
All in all it’s just a much lower stress way to travel than either car or airplane, especially for intermediate distances of several hundred miles. I’m glad to hear you enjoyed your trip!
“..small two-compartment train with integrated driver cell (Das Baehnle)..”
Do you mean that type of train, called Schienenbus (rail bus)?
Glad to see that VIA Rail still fuctions well. The changes to the GO train system have made it so inconvenient that I no longer use it to go to downtown Toronto anymore. I only ever go for special events and always used GO. Now I drive and pay for parking. The traffic and extra expense is offset by not having to deal with the BS built into the system. I suppose if I had never owned a car I would not have noticed anything different. I avoid Toronto now and have come to despise the whole Idea of going anywhere near it.
In the Roundhouse park picture there is a GO coach on the far left, I remember riding those on the MBTA commuting into Boston in the early 80s. They rode rough, almost like the gauge was slightly off. The T had a real assortment back then also with buddliners, old new haven steam coaches, and some new pullmans.
We did a car-free vacation from Indianapolis to Chicago in the summer of 2006. We were nudged into it by obscene fuel prices and a mechanical issue on our aging van. It turned out to be a great time. Amtrak got us there/back and transit passes got us where we needed to go in Chicago.
The only problem was inconvenient train times that got us home at something like 2 am. While I loved the experience, my realistic nature understands that even a place with the population density of Chicago has trouble paying the bills for transit, and this with much of the infrastructure/right of way in place before the modern era of red tape. Outside of the northeastern corridor it is hard to see where overall density would make the system work.
I like train travel, although it’s expensive out west. If you have the dollars to travel from Vancouver, BC through the Rockies to Jasper, Alberta you will not be disappointed.
Many years ago we took the train from Prince George, BC to Edmonton. The kids were really young so we paid extra for a sleeping room. The views were at times breathtaking from North of McBride, BC to Jasper. I shudder to think what that train trip would cost inn today’s dollars, yet Via Rail continues operate out here and many foreign tourists enjoy riding the rail from the west coast through British Columbia. With our low Canadian dollar this is an ideal time to do it.
My primary source of income is from a company in Brockville, Ontario, which affords me the opportunity to use VIA to get to / from Toronto to see other business relations. I’ve found it rather civilized to either open the laptop to get work done or just watch the country go by, and usually pick up enough (US)$ flying home from Toronto rather than Ottawa to mostly cover the rail fare. My last trip I added the GO train to Barrie, Ontario which knocked a good chunk off a trip to Honey Harbor on Lake Huron.
I have memories of train travel with my Grandparent’s back in the early ’70’s, but other than a Geneva Verbier trip several years ago rarely get the chance to enjoy travel via rail.
I love travelling by train. Of course, as I am on Canada’s east coast, it’s not an option. There is one route in my area that goes from Halifax to Montreal. It’s more expensive than a flight too.
I’ve been to Toronto a number of times over the past couple of years (my wife works for an airline, so we fly really cheap) and I love how easy it is to use the TTC. We only used Uber once on our last trip, but used the subway, streetcars, and buses to get everywhere else.
I think the Montreal – Windsor corridor could use some high speed rail line. A large percentage of the Canadian population lives in that area, and traffic can be insane.
I rode the Frecciarossa from Rome to Florence and back a couple of years ago. It was so smooth and quiet. I loved that they had the current speed on displays in every car. I’ll never forget the boom when another high speed train would pass us going in the opposite direction.
4 hours for 230 miles? Even In the UK, on lines dating back 150 years, not the shiny new TGV or ICE of the European mainland, you can reliably do the 400 miles from Edinburgh or Glasgow to London in little more than 4 hours -trains every 30 minutes from Edinburgh, every hour from Glasgow. And right to central London – if you fly, you spend longer on the tube from Heathrow to the centre than on the plane from Scotland. Rail’s market share is rising every year, and nobody flies from Manchester, Leeds or Newcastle (200 – 300 miles) to London except to connect at Heathrow. Our domestic airlines are all going bust – BMI and Flybe this year alone.
In France, because of the TGV network, domestic air is even less important. And nobody, and I mean nobody, not even the Prime Minister, flies to Paris.
Environmentally better too. America, look around you and get your finger out.