If you’re travelling a long distance by train in Ontario, then Via Rail’s service offerings are fairly well suited, with reserved seating and limited stops. And if you’re travelling a shorter distance, GO Transit’s service is well suited, with turn-up-and-go ticketing, and fairly frequent stops. But for intermediate distances between 100 and 200 kilometres or so, neither company offers a particularly attractive option.
Via Rail’s tickets are for a particular seat on a particular train, and the prices fluctuate wildly depending on when the ticket is booked. So in practice to get an affordable ticket, you need to book far in advance. For long distances that’s not as big of a deal since people tend to know in advance when they’ll travel. But if you’re only heading somewhere two hours away, you often won’t know weeks in advance exactly what time you’ll want to depart.
GO Transit offers fixed ticket prices and unreserved seats, so you can just show up at the station and take whichever train shows up next, without facing a harsh financial penalty like you would on Via Rail. They currently operate some longer services from Toronto such as to Barrie (101 km) Kitchener (103 km), Niagara Falls (130 km) and they between 2021 and 2023 they also ran 185 km to London. But the problem with those services is that they are not fast enough to be particularly attractive for such long distances. Outside of peak periods, most trains on those routes make all stops, which makes them too slow to be attractive for such long trips.
The ideal solution for these medium distances is what I call “Regional-Express” – a service approaching the speed of an intercity service (Via Rail) but while still maintaining the operating style of a regional service (GO Transit).
I took the name from Deutche Bahn, who will be taking over operations of the GO Transit system in January 2025. In Germany, “Regional Express”, or “RE”, is the fastest stopping service offered by regional operators such as DB Regio and they have similar operating practices to GO Transit such as relatively fixed ticket prices. The faster service types (Intercity, and Intercity Express) are operated by DB Fernverkehr with operations more akin to Via, with variable ticket prices.
An example of a Regional Express service is the off-peak GO Transit service from Toronto to Niagara Falls, which makes limited stops for the portion of the route where it overlaps with other services. However, the frequency, and the track speeds between Hamilton and Niagara fall short of a proper Regional Express service.
If we accept that there should be an intermediate service type between GO’s local services and Via’s intercity services, the question is then which company should operate it.
For such a service to be politically viable, I think it needs to be funded at the provincial level. Federal funding for VIA service expansion is perpetually put on the backburner due to the competition between the provinces, notably because VIA has negligible political relevance outside of Ontario and Québec. But GO Transit is a strong and growing political force within Ontario. Its service area already covers the majority of Ontario’s population. With about 8.9 Million people, the GO service area has a larger population than Switzerland. If GO were to expand into longer-distance services it could conceivably reach as much as 62% of Ontario’s population. With 9.7 Million people, the GO service area would be more populous than Hungary:
We’re never going to get federal operating funding for relatively short-distance travel within Ontario like commuting by train from Stratford to Kitchener. Which is fair enough because the main competition is highways which are also funded at the provincial level.
So either we introduce more intercity-style services to GO, or we introduce more regional-style services to VIA that are funded by the Province of Ontario. In the latter case it would presumably be similar to Amtrak California, a State agency that is integrated with the national Amtrak ticketing system. Personally I think that it makes sense to just expand the scope of GO Transit rather than to create a new ‘VIA Rail Ontario’ agency. It is more useful to integrate the Regional-Express trains with the existing GO regional trains which would also have similar operations, than to integrate with VIA’s intercity servic which would still have reserved seats, variable princing and low frequency.
A concept for GO Regional Express
I have drawn up a concept to illustrate what GO Transit’s off-peak services could look like with the addition of a Regional Express service type. There are three
S – Suburban services make all stops within the urban area. These would generally be electric and operate at high frequencies (4+ trains per hour)
R – Regional services make limited stops where they overlap with S services, but make all stops outside of the core network, serving many smaller outlying communities
RE – Regional Express trains connecting major cities across Southern Ontario, stopping only at major hubs while they overlap with S or R services.
Regional Express trains would use our existing diesel locomotives and BiLevel coaches, but the coaches would be renovated to be more suitable for long distance travel. Train lengths would be limited to at most 8 coaches (typically 6) to ensure that trains can reach their 150 km/h top speed relatively quickly, and to reduce the required size of platforms outside of the core network. This would also help limit surge loads which currently overwhelm stations such as Niagara Falls. Changes to the coaches would include: more comfortable seats, arranging the upper level with airline-style row seating to increase legroom and enable seatback traytables, and providing charging ports at each seat. There would be no difference in fare collection or ticketing. You’d still just tap on and tap off at the standard Presto rate, and there would still not be any reserved seating. To reflect the improved long-distance service offerings, the fare system would become a bit more distance-based, with a lower flat fare and higher zone fares than today.
RE1 is basically just the continued evolution of the existing off-peak Niagara service. Tracks would be upgraded between Hamilton and Niagara to reinstate double-track and increase track speeds. There is one train per hour across the Welland Canal lift bridge, with both directions crossing simultaneously to minimize impact on shipping. There is also one train per hour from Hamilton Centre to Toronto, providing a half-hourly RE service along the LSW corridor.
RE3 is similar to the former London pilot service, but with tracks upgraded to enable a 2h30 travel time from London to Toronto, and trains every hour.
RE9 would be GO taking over the Kingston commuter service that VIA currently operates. Initially there would only be two trains in the peak period and one train off-peak, but when many VIA trains shift to a new HFR/HSR line, service can be expanded. GO would be the sole operator at Port Hope, Trenton, and Napanee stations, while the remainder continue to be shared with VIA’s intercity services.
GO Transit’s service expansion plans will definitely include all-day express services on the longer train lines, with Regional trains making limited stops where they overlap with Suburban trains. But it’s not clear whether they would operate a third all-day stopping pattern that also skip the minor outlying stations to bring down travel times between major cities such as Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener, Guelph, St. Catharines, and Niagara Falls. GO has historically tended to underestimate the importance of travel times on generating ridership, as evidenced by their ratio of local to express services on long train routes such as the Lakeshore West line and bus routes such as Route 88 Oshawa – Peterborough. We have also not heard any talk yet of renovating some BiLevel coaches to improve their comfort for longer journeys.
Ontario Traffic Man 