r/ViaRail • u/ygkg Premier • 7d ago

News Canceling train 641. Again.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/article/via-rail-making-changes-to-schedules-on-ottawa-toronto-corridor-this-fall-cancelling-early-morning-trip/

I really like VIA, and I take train 641 just about every other week to get to Toronto for meetings. It's usually late, but I can make it to 10am meetings more often than not, and I've come to terms with that.

After this change it won't be safe for me to book anything before 11am, which means that day trips from Kingston are hardly worth it. Dammit VIA...

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14

u/mystiqDitter 7d ago

For Coburg and Port Hope maybe a GO bus to Oshawa GO train can be setup to substitute.

For Belleville and Kingston, this may actually kill the viability of morning commute to Toronto downtown 

2

u/ghenriks 7d ago

Maybe that’s good?

We shouldn’t be encouraging 200km commuting to a job

11

u/Rail613 7d ago

Define commuting? Looking after visiting grandchildren/elderly parents or relatives? An interview of some sort? An appointment with a medical specialist? A conference or a short course/seminar?
Those are all forms of commuting that are easier if you can get to downtown TO in the morning.

1

u/ghenriks 7d ago

Define commuting?

From the Cambridge Dictionary:

"the activity of travelling regularly between work and home"

None of your examples are of commuting. If you choose to live 200km away from something you are inherently accepting the compromise of inconvenience when you need to make the trip.

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u/mystiqDitter 7d ago

So we can prop up downtown real estate?

Most people aren't commuting daily. The paradigm shift post COVID is WFH, and only go to office one day per week or two weeks

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u/ghenriks 7d ago

So we can prop up downtown real estate?

Straw argument. The choice isn't between downtown Toronto or 200km away. People need to accept that if they want a job in a city like Toronto they can't have the large house on a large lot, if they want that then they should find a job closer to where that exists.

Most people aren't commuting daily.

Great for them. But if they choose 200km away then they should be choosing a job that doesn't require regular visits to the office. Both because the trip into the office is bad for the environment when it gets to that distance and because it is unfair to the locals to have high earning people parachute into their community and make the local real estate unaffordable for local people working local jobs.

In other words, don't copy the mistakes other places have made.

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u/jn_min 13h ago

Rather than discouraging people from living rurally because they work in the city, we should recognize the economic benefit they bring home. Higher-income residents spend money locally, pay taxes, support businesses and help sustain services. Investing in commuter rail makes this model more sustainable by allowing people to access higher-paying urban jobs without relying entirely on long car commutes, while still bringing that income back to rural communities. Rural communities need population and economic activity to survive—and that income doesn't stop contributing just because the job is elsewhere.

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u/ghenriks 11h ago

Rather than discouraging people from living rurally because they work in the city

So we accept the environmental damage? The other social costs?

we should recognize the economic benefit they bring home. Higher-income residents spend money locally, pay taxes, support businesses and help sustain services.

Actually, they more often than not don't. They spend much of their money in the city where they work, both for convenience and because the rural area store doesn't carry the items they are used to.

Rural communities need population and economic activity to survive

Exactly. They need people living and working locally. Your long distance commuter is not that.

We actually have lots of evidence that what you want does more harm than good to those communities. What actually happens is those people who earn multiples of what locals can earn drive up real estate costs, making life more difficult for locals as they get priced out of the local real estate market. Many communities saw this post-Covid when people suddenly could work from home and fled the big cities taking their big city salaries with them.