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VIA signs station, car contracts worth $4.5 million
@William D Hays: Toronto Union Station is in the middle of an $800million+ renovation. Plus the Toronto/Montreal/Ottawa triangle just had a massive $300million upgrade. Not an insignificant sum.
Perhaps VIA is looking forward to a brighter future with a new government that supports passenger trains. It’s a great building and it could become a great station again, if there was political support.
That’s a lot of money for 2-, or 3-day/week service in Winnipeg. Not the Windsor-Quebec City corridor, but that’s politics.
A lot of money perhaps, but the alternative is to do nothing, let the station deteriorate, then maybe passenger service can stop altogether. Would that make the conservatives happy? Then what would be their response to increased highway traffic?
"TONY SCHEDLBAUER from OREGON said:
A lot of money perhaps, but the alternative is to do nothing, let the station deteriorate, then maybe passenger service can stop altogether. Would that make the conservatives happy? Then what would be their response to increased highway traffic?"
This might not be too far-fetched. As one retired railroader I know says, “When they start painting, I start packing.” This is in reference to numerous occasions when facilities were upgraded just before they were shut down. Example with VIA was the last Saint John, New Brunswick station which was placed in service only about a year before the train was discontinued (with other examples in The Maritimes).
Don’t worry about increased highway traffic if the passenger trains stop coming through/to Winnipeg. This time of year there are two semi-weekly trains. VIA has already downgraded the meal service on the train to Churchill, and it’s no secret that VIA would like to just make the Churchill service a local operation whose south end is The Pas. As for the “Canadian,” it serves mostly tourists who wouldn’t drive all the way across Canada anyway. With the Winnipeg-The Pas segment an inconvenient necessity to ferry equipment for servicing for the time being, and the transcontinental train lacking any utility for people who live along the route, a passenger train-free Winnipeg (with its station upgrades) is not out of the question.
Submitted: 10/22/2013 4:44:42 PM (CST)
According to the Conservatives, highways are KING. Never mind they become increasingly more crowded and air quality levels continue to deteriorate thus leading to more respiratory ailments including lung cancer; evidently, they just don’t care.
What’s going to happen to the rail road museum that’s in the Winnipeg Station?