About thirty hours into the trip from Toronto to Vancouver, the Canadian travels through a region in northern Ontario where there are no settlements or highways visible from the window. In the early morning light, the lake region rolls by, with water and boreal forest, water and more forest, and the occasional heron standing in the shallows. People who came up early for this have already filled half of the dining car. No one is hurrying. That has nothing to do with the experience. That’s the idea.
Instead of being a post-pandemic blip, cross-Canada train travel is experiencing a moment that appears to be a sustained shift. In its most recent reports, VIA Rail handled 4.4 million passengers and generated income of $514.8 million CAD, a record for the Crown business. These figures show more than just pent-up demand for travel. They represent a portion of tourists who have consciously chosen how they wish to navigate the nation.
In ways that would have been more difficult to foresee ten years ago, VIA Rail has profited from the slow travel movement—the notion that the journey itself is the thing, not simply the destination. The Canadian’s four-night transcontinental voyage from Toronto to Vancouver, which travels 4,466 kilometers through some of the continent’s most striking scenery, is precisely the kind of experience that proponents of slow travel have been talking about. It cannot be rushed. You doze off on it. You consume it.
As the Prairies glow gold outside the windows at sunset, you converse with strangers in the observation car. An increasing percentage of travelers appear to be realizing that the experience is truly apart from anything a flight can provide.
The flagship transcontinental run is just one part of VIA Rail’s network. The Ocean, a multi-day coastal route that links Montréal and Halifax along the Maritimes corridor, has a devoted following among tourists who wish to experience Atlantic Canada at a speed that permits it to register. Between Jasper and Prince Rupert, the Skeena winds through territory that is both undetectable from an airplane and impossible to reach from a car. Recent nonstop pilot projects between Montréal and Toronto aimed at making downtown-to-downtown rail genuinely faster than the combined experience of airport security, boarding, and ground transport at the other end have made the Corridor routes between Windsor and Québec City more competitive.
The long-term investment responsible for the ridership figures is the VIAction 2030 fleet renewal program. A significant increase in network capacity and a 50% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions are the goals of new locomotives, accessible carriages, and infrastructure improvements supported by the federal government. That capacity component is important because the current fleet limits expansion; well-traveled routes have been selling out well in advance, and without additional train capacity, demand that exists on paper cannot be translated into passengers.
With itineraries that currently include Edmonton, Jasper, Calgary, Lake Louise, and Banff, Rocky Mountaineer operates in a distinct tier, offering exclusive, opulent, glass-roofed carriages throughout Alberta and British Columbia. The experience is positioned in accordance with the significantly greater pricing compared to VIA Rail. The fact that both Rocky Mountaineer and VIA Rail are experiencing high demand at the same time indicates how popular rail travel has grown in Canada.
It’s still unclear if VIA Rail will be able to maintain this momentum over the fleet transition phase because new carriages take time to integrate and renewal projects frequently cause interruptions. However, it appears that the demand side of the equation is stronger than it has been in decades.
