Why better London-to-Toronto rail service always seems to have stopped in its tracks

For Paul Langan, the failure of the slow GO Train to Toronto wasn't a surprise, but rather the latest in a long line of  "one step forward, another step back" measures for Londoners who see their city and region growing rapidly, while passenger rail service stagnates. 

"We're over half a century behind the rest of the world with our train service," said Langan, pointing to other countries that offer multiple departures and affordable fares between similarly-sized cities.

Langan has spent 30 years pushing for better passenger rail service and operates the website High Speed Rail Canada.

He was reacting to news that a two-year pilot project that brought a daily Toronto-to-London GO Train via Kitchener with a return trip will end in 2023. Langan said the trip was bound to fail because it took four hours to travel one-way. It's a travel time that eliminated it as an option for most business and leisure travellers who want to come back the same day without wasting half their day on the train. 

"There is no better example of the decline of passenger rail in this country than between London and Guelph and Kitchener," he said. "It is abysmal." 

Via has committed to bringing back trains No. 82 and 83. That will add an early morning departure that can get London passengers to Toronto before 9 a.m. and back in the evening. Langan points out the move isn't much of an upgrade because it just restores a service that was cut during the pandemic.

So why can't we do better in a fast-growing region just two hours away from Canada's largest city? Langan and Clarence Woudsma, a University of Waterloo professor who specializes in transportation policy, listed these barriers to improving passenger rail service in Canada. 

Older track

The  so-called "northern main line" is an older route with speed restrictions for passenger rail, particularly the section west of Kitchener. Langan said train speed and frequency along the route can't improve without significant upgrades in spending for either a new line or major improvements to the existing one. 

"If you ride that line it's like rocking back and forth like you're in the 1940s," said Langan. "I'm not talking about high speed trains, you can't even have fast, efficient trains. It's just not going to get any better unless there's major infrastructure money spent."

Freight rail ownership of tracks

Woudsma points out that in Canada, the government no longer owns the rail lines that stitched the country together during the Confederation era. CN and Canadian Pacific got out of the passenger business decades ago because it doesn't break even on ticket sales.

"That's the No. 1 problem in Canada. We sold our railways, we privatized them," said Langan. "So we [passenger trains] don't have priority on the railways." 

Langan said in most other countries, the government owns the track and shares out its usage between passenger and freight companies through lease agreements. 

"CN and CP are private entities, with a focus on their shareholders," said Woudsma. "That's always been a major impediment." 

Lack of political will 

Langan said Ontario's current PC government was able to put the brakes on capital funding for the Wynne Liberals high-speed rail plan, in part because their support base is rural Ontario, where farmers had concerns about rail expansion.

Langan sees it as part of a wider issue: That high speed rail isn't always a top issue for voters.

"The public is not making it an election issue so we're stuck with what we've got," he said. "Those mayors along the line, those MPs and MPPs along the line ... we have to say to them 'This has to happen.'"

Woudsma points to the $13 billion in federal money that went toward bringing a Volkswagen EV battery plant to St. Thomas as evidence that rail isn't always the top-priority for Canadian governments at any level, regardless of the political stripe.

"We need to get serious about providing alternatives for people other than relying on their automobiles," said Woudsma.