I would like to publicly thank MP Chris Malette for whatever role he played the postponement of a plan to completely ignore the Quinte Region when it comes to mass transit.
VIA Rail announced Monday that they have postponed a pilot project that would have seen local stops removed over a three-month trial period.
If it was used, the original plan would have removed Belleville and Kingston stops for four trains heading from Montreal to Toronto and a fifth going from Toronto to Ottawa.
Trial period or not, the reasoning for this was both puzzling and a little insulting.
The stated reason was to speed up the process, but standard VIA trains are a long way from what we usually refer to as “high-speed rail” and the 30 to 40 minutes gained (by estimate) was certainly not cutting the time in half.
Also, you would have lost on the current and potential future ridership for a service that is struggling financially and is still racking up large deficits.
The only way it would have made sense at all is if you gained more riders going the entire way than you were sacrificing by ignoring stops where the service is very much needed, like ours.
VIA Rail is one of the things that connects communities over great distances, while offering more green options than endless passenger traffic and alternatives for those who can’t or don’t drive.
So thank you to Bay of Quinte MP Chris Malette for whatever words of wisdom he shared to help them postpone the plan. Next time, I hope they encourage more people to take the train and help support the system, as opposed to putting big cities first and leaving everyone else stuck at the terminal.
I’m Paul Martin and that’s what I see looking Beyond the Headlines.
