Expropriate the rails back. They never should have been in private hands.

It's really unfortunate that we've spent the last 30-40 years deleting a lot of the passenger-specific rail infrastructure outside of metro Vancouver and the Toronto-Montreal corridor. At this point it would be a major breakthrough to even bring a serious passenger service into existence. There's nothing I would like more, but it seems impossible.

It was always nonsense that the freight trains always had priority as they were 12 times longer.

Good luck making it through the prairies on passenger rail. Do we even have any stations left? I never see passenger trains. Only freight.

In the year 2000 I looked into a train trip from Vancouver to Quebec City for two adults and and a child. The cost was $10,000.00. We chose to stay home.

His journey will probably start by driving past the old rail station in downtown Ottawa (a couple blocks from parliament) out to the boonies.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

That journey could be complicated by the fact that passenger trains in Canada are often delayed when they have to give right of way to cargo traffic travelling on the same tracks.

And that's exactly the point: Bachrach's journey is part of a quest to build support for a bill he introduced in Parliament this week.

"Any passenger service proposal must demonstrate that freight capacity to handle current and future anticipated volumes can be preserved, which is essential to support Canada's economy," Brazeau said in an emailed statement to The Canadian Press in October after Via Rail chief executive Mario Péloquin called on the federal government to give passenger trains right of way on the tracks.

Both Bachrach and Péloquin pointed to U.S. regulations that give Amtrak passenger cars priority over freight as a model for the proposed legislation.

He spoke to CBC Daybreak North host Carolina de Ryk about the upcoming journey.

I think the biggest thing right now is that the passenger train has to make way for freight traffic and that has resulted in Via's inability to keep a consistent schedule.

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