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VIA Rail
- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
kEiThZ
Superstar
My Toronto based parents and some relatives decided to travel abroad from Montreal. Coming home, they get to Dorval and get hit with the bag weight rules. They ended up leaving some stuff with brother in Montreal and took perishables and urgent items on the train. It was only a few pounds worth but they couldn't fit it in. The experience has them reconsidering whether it's worthwhile to use VIA to access deals like this in the future. Airline style baggage rules on a train is going to hurt VIA.
lead82
Senior Member
Too late. VIA is already hurt by negligence and incompetence. It’s really an irrelevant service for most Canadians sadly. If long distance trains disappear no one will care except for the few hundred folks directly impacted.
I agree the baggage rules for VIA are just plain dumb. So is their booking/pricing engine. Instead of making trains cheap they have gotten ridiculously expensive for a mediocre to horrible product that is slow and always late, has terrible wifi and food options.
The HFR is a pipe dream. It will never happen at this rate, much like all the previous other proposals.
I agree the baggage rules for VIA are just plain dumb. So is their booking/pricing engine. Instead of making trains cheap they have gotten ridiculously expensive for a mediocre to horrible product that is slow and always late, has terrible wifi and food options.
The HFR is a pipe dream. It will never happen at this rate, much like all the previous other proposals.
micheal_can
Senior Member
I'd like to see this as part of the next federal budget.
SamStar
New Member
VIA states one can bring up to 75 lb on economy (1 medium bag 50 lb + 1 smaller item 25 lb. Extra large bag up to 50 lb can be purchased prior to departure) and up to 125 lb in business.
Were your parents bringing more than 150 lb of baggage combined?
kEiThZ
Superstar
I don't have the full details. But they were told that their bags can't weigh more than 23 kg. It was actually my uncle who had more stuff. They couldn't fit it in to my parents bag and meet weight limits. They had all gotten off an international flight. So really their bags weren't going to be more than 23 kg/50 lbs anyway.
In the end it was only a few pounds worth of stuff. What they didn't appreciate was the treatment, where they had to open and rearrange bags in the station.
Again though, what's the rationale? They can easily insist that anybody with overweight luggage must load it themselves.
crs1026
Superstar
I can understand some limit on size/number of bags, but weighing bags on a train seems very anal.
- Paul
nfitz
Superstar
at 125 lbs? That limit is so insanely high that it shouldn't impact.
The Dorval story sounds suspect. They wouldn't even know how much someone is on until they actually tried to get on the coach. What did they do, hold the train while they repacked? No ...
Bordercollie
Senior Member
So this would provide better connections to the airport in Dorval?It has to be for works which are useful for HxR (which excludes London) and MMC is already taken care of by the Corridor fleet renewal (which includes a new maintenance facility at MMC). The only overlap between HxR and VIA’s current Corridor network is MTRL-OTTW-SMTF and the final approaches into TRTO and QBEC…
Edit:
No need to guess what the $491.2 million were intended for:
Technical Assistance to VIA Rail on Dorval Intermodal Station Project
SYSTRA Canada, consulting and engineering firm, world leader in public transport infrastructure engineering.www.systra.com
Urban Sky
Senior Member
VIA’s objective is to maximize revenues, not ridership and as a taxpayer, I highly approve of this. And as someone who travels for business and doesn’t want to expense change fees, it saves my employer a lot of money that fully-refundable Economy Plus and Business Plus tickets are finally also dynamically priced and therefore most of the time much cheaper than before. When the new system was introduced, I was able to cancel my old Economy Plus tickets I had already booked for the next two round-trips and rebook in Business Plus (!) for slightly less than what I had originally paid for Economy Plus. I’ve also seen multiple accounts (like below) where people cancelled and rebooked upcoming trips they had booked with points, as the new system requires much less points:
It would allow better connections, but the funding envelope doesn’t seem to include the extension of the REM to the Airport…
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nfitz
Superstar
Marginally less walking to a bus maybe. It's not about REM - and that they aren't building one more short section from Trudeau to Dorval Circle is absurd.
There's already an intermodal station there, serving Exo trains and SMT buses. Last time I looked, there were connections to the VIA station, involving outdoor concrete staircases and highway underpasses. I'm not sure if that's been improved - it's been a long time since I used that station.
Presumably this would be a proper and convenient accessible connection from the existing terminal and Exo station buildings.
Now there used to be a STM bus from the bus terminal to Trudeau ... ran about once every half-hour - presumably still around. The STM 747 route non-stop from Lionel-Groulx to Trudeau would be a better choice. Runs as frequently as every 7.5 minutes.
kEiThZ
Superstar
Resorting to conspiracy theories is ridiculous. What in my history here would suggest I am making something up that I claim happened to my own parents?
They got off an Emirates flight early in the morning. That should tell you that they were automatically limited to the number and weight of checked and carry-on luggage. EK243 lands around 0700. Train 65 departs Dorval at 1126.
It took them about 2 hrs to deplane, get their luggage, clear customs, get some coffee and then take the shuttle to Dorval. According to them, they were the only passengers in the station at the time, so the staff set up to weigh their bags. My mom's exact words were, "We were lucky nobody else was there. Would have been embarrassing to repack in front of other people. And thank god [my brother] was there to take the rest of the stuff.". They weren't limited by total weight here. They were limited by the 50lb absolute limit on each piece. After all, flying internationally they were only allowed one checked bag and one carry on.
They flew from Montreal to a take advantage of some inaugural air fare deals by Emirates in November. Luggage weight rules weren't in place or being enforced when they left. But they were still limited by airline rules. The real irony here is that an airline let the few pounds go on an intercontinental flight while VIA forced them to leave some of their clothes with my brother and repack. VIA is somehow more strict than Emirates.
Allandale25
Senior Member
Urban Sky
Senior Member
It’s always refreshing to see people discussing HFR without pointlessly obsessing about the 3h59 it once took (once-per-day) to travel between Toronto and Montréal…
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kEiThZ
Superstar
Can we keep Corridor discussion here in the future:
Quebec-Windsor Corridor
I’m currently on train 35 (one of the Venture trainsets) and we came to a complete stop to “protect the crossing” at Dunning Rd (between Castleman and Ottawa). My first thought was that the gates weren’t working but when we did cross it, they were down with the lights flashing. I did notice a...