Category: Rail

Advocacy in Action

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The Cape Breton rail issue has occupied much of TAA’s attention in recent months. Several volunteers have devoted many long hours to the cause, participating in community events and appearing at a public hearing in Sydney.

Although the passenger rail outlook has greatly improved in recent months, we have been relentless in our efforts to maintain the momentum.  We believe that TAA has earned a measure of respect and credibility with the new management team at VIA Rail, and have had some very productive discussions with senior officers at the Crown corporation.  Our upcoming AGM will give members an excellent opportunity to meet VIA’s new general manager for the region.

We’ve also been involved with the statutory review of the Canada Transportation Act that’s currently underway.  Iain Dunlop and Michael Perry joined your president participating in a working session in Fredericton at the invitation of New Brunswick Transportation Minister Roger Melanson.  Our input hopefully will form part of a joint submission from the four Atlantic transportation ministers.  A key TAA recommendation was that the act should seek to maximize use of rail infrastructure to benefit all Canadians – in the safest possible manner.  Meanwhile, TAA director Clark Morris took the initiative to submit a personal brief to the review panel.  Information on the review process is available online at: http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/ctareview2014/discussion-paper.html.

Communication has been ongoing with elected representatives on the federal, provincial and municipal levels, as we seek to strengthen our voice on the myriad transportation issues confronting our region.  But the need to grow our membership base has never been more important.  More volunteers are urgently needed to fuel our efforts at reaching out to the general public.

– Ted Bartlett

The Annual General Meeting

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Please mark your calendar now, and plan to attend our AGM, to be held in Moncton on Saturday, 25 April, at 1400.  The CN Pensioners Association has offered the use of their facilities at 1 Curry Street.  Our featured guest speaker will be Susan Williams, recently appointed general manager of eastern services with VIA Rail Canada.  The agenda includes annual reports and financial statements, appointment of an auditor, election of a board of directors, and any other business that may arise.

Current members of Transport Action Atlantic may nominate (with their consent) any other member in good standing for a position on the board.  It is the board’s responsibility to choose the executive officers.  Nominations should be made in advance of the meeting, and may be submitted by mail to the TAA Nominating Committee, P.O.Box 268, Dartmouth NS  B2Y 3Y3, or by e-mail to donlinmacleod@ns.sympatico.ca.

The central location is a reasonable day trip from most communities in the Maritimes, and we are hoping for an excellent turnout.  It represents an excellent opportunity to engage in discussion of passenger rail with a senior VIA official.

VIA tightens Ocean Schedule

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There has been a slight improvement in the Ocean schedule, with the issue of a new timetable shortening the overall time between Montreal and Halifax by one hour.  Effective February 18, train 15 departs from Halifax at noon instead of 1100, and arrival of #14 will be an hour earlier at 1735.  Arrival and departure times at Montreal remain unchanged.

The schedule tightening is partially due to track improvements completed in 2014, but the dwell time built into the schedule to accommodate switching at Matapédia for the now-dormant Gaspé service has also been eliminated.  One permanent slow order that hasn’t changed is on the Bathurst to Miramichi segment, which still requires an hour and 41 minutes.  Sixty years ago the steam-powered Ocean Limited covered the 44 miles in well under an hour.

Last fall, Steve Del Bosco, chief advisor to VIA’s CEO, told Transport Action Atlantic that discussions were ongoing with CN regarding track speed.  (Mr. Del Bosco retired at the end of January after 36 years of service, having been with the company since its earliest days.)  Unconfirmed reports suggest that the new timetable is but an interim step, and that further improvements may be pending.

Fifty years ago the Ocean ran between Moncton and Campbellton in four hours flat, a time that changed little over the next four decades.  But the effects of deferred maintenance eventually came into play, as more and more slow orders were imposed, adding over two hours to the scheduled time by 2014.  The new schedule, while an improvement, still requires more than 5½ hours for the Moncton-Campbellton run.

The schedule change also restores some lost bus connections at Moncton and Truro for passengers to and from PEI, Cape Breton and the Newfoundland ferry.  While all are now theoretically possible assuming on-time arrivals, the situation at Truro is complicated by the unfortunate fact that Maritime Bus no longer calls at the VIA station there.