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).
Ontario Traffic Man 