The Inside Track on Train Travel in B.C.

Vancouver’s Pacific Central Station | BCBusiness
The fresh face of Vancouver’s historic train station after a $6.9-million renovation.

Last year VIA posted nominal increases, but B.C.’s public rail system still faces a steep grade.

In the imagination of some fiction writers, such as J. K. Rowling and Suzanne Collins, train travel is alive and well. Jump the tracks to reality, however, and the tale about rail transportation in B.C. is chugging through a plot that both thickens and thins.

We catch up with that story at the $923-million investment VIA Rail has received over the past five years from the Government of Canada, $6.9 million of which was spent renovating Vancouver’s 93-year-old Pacific Central Station and another $22 million of which went into modernizing locomotives and passenger cars on the Canadian, its route between Vancouver and Toronto, which sees approximately 100,000 passengers a year, primarily between May and September.

According to VIA’s annual report, from 2010 to 2011 passenger ridership on the Canadian increased 2.5 per cent and revenues increased 6.4 per cent, contributing $41 million to VIA’s $282.6 million in total revenues. The upgrades bring infrastructure up to par and the aim is to refuel excitement for train travel, explains Lynn Lefebvre, product manager for what VIA designates its long-haul services. Meanwhile, VIA will adjust its schedule, reducing its weekly round trips between Vancouver and Toronto from three to two between October and April, due to a drop in demand during the off-peak season.

Trains account for only 0.3 per cent of passenger transportation in Canada, planes for 16.8 per cent and automobiles for the majority. Yet rail travel is consistently cited as more fuel efficient than air, so if the government is thinking green, there’s a case to be made for why such monies didn’t go to, say, Air Canada. But VIA’s Canadian route is no high-speed line like we see in Europe or Japan – that would require significantly more capital to execute across our mountainous province. And VIA’s passenger routes within B.C. have stalled: Jasper to Prince Rupert was downgraded due to decreased demand, and Victoria to Courtney was halted in 2011 because of the major maintenance required.

Sharing some of VIA’s tracks (though not viewed as a competitor) is privately owned passenger rail service Rocky Mountaineer Vacations Ltd. In August 2013, it will introduce a new route from Seattle to Vancouver – the Coastal Passage – because 47 per cent of Rocky’s highest service-level guests tie their train journey to an Alaska cruise. “We wanted to find a way to open up that market into the Rockies,” says Rocky Mountaineer spokesperson Ian Robertson. “In order to have a sustainable business, we need to invest significantly in innovation.”

A lack of freedom to innovate has slowed VIA down. As a Crown corporation, it’s held captive to federal mandates and budgets. There’s also competition with freight operators CNR and CPR for track, which a November 2011 Library of Parliament report on the future of passenger rail identified as a real obstacle, saying VIA has only a limited ability to establish the service schedules that would best serve its own commercial interests. Peter Williams, director of SFU’s Centre for Tourism Policy and Research, agrees, saying that transporting resources trumps tourists. “As long as we do that kind of business in this province, which is going to happen for a long time, passenger travel for leisure purposes will remain in the backseat.”

So if rail travel in B.C. is to see significant gains, the little train could stand to do more.