If anybody still needs examples of why the Liberal Party of Canada has failed Canadians this last decade, one need only look at Trudeau’s last gasp announcement of a $3.9 billion plan to “announce a plan in five years” to build high speed rail between Toronto and Montreal. Could the $3.9 billion be better spent elsewhere, say repositioning Canadian business and industry to pivot from Trumps petty tariffs and develop new markets. Of course it could. But does the $3.9 billion even need to be spent or is it simply one more example of Liberals using public funds in an attempt to but an election?
Trudeau had no business announcing anything after resigning. They've already spent billions on this. Based on what they've spent so far should mean construction starts this spring. That is another Canadian failure. That said, it's a great idea and will free up a lot of pilots to fly other routes. Public transit doesn't make money. Profit is not why you build it.
I, for one, took myself out of the client base for all Canadian airlines just prior to the pandemic due to their almost unbelievable ineptitude and contempt for air travellers.
I live within 2.5 hours drive (one-way) of Calgary International Airport. My nearest American airports are in Montana; namely Great Falls International and Glacier Park International in Kalispell (both are approximately 3.5 hrs drive for me one-way). Even considering the considerable exchange rate challenge between CAD-USD, flights from these two very small airports in Montana are generally cheaper, quicker, better serviced/appointed, and often offer more flight choices than Calgary. Add the relatively short and straightforward process of entering the USA via a ground border crossing rather than Calgary's International US Customs (which can take hours), and the choice of which way to go for air travel is blatantly obvious.
Until something drastic changes the economic and convenience equation in favour of Canadian air travel, I've effectively boycotted Canadian airlines and airports.
I share your view and solution. I gave up on Air Canada 10 years ago. I and my wife who is blind commute between Ottawa and Phoenix 4 to 6 times yearly. Fortunately United has flights between Ottawa and Phoenix - with a changeover - at 20 percent or less of Air Canada rates if you book a month or so ahead. And the attendants don’t act like they’re in training for a remake of the Canadian cinematic masterpiece “Ilsa: She-wolf of the SS” . And if there is no convenient connection from Ottawa I can drive to a border town 30 minutes away, leave my car parked for free, and take a commuter flight to a major US hub airport.
After 10 years of this I made the mistake of picking the cheapest United fight from Phoenix to Ottawa which happened to go via Los Angeles. Then found out the LAX carrier was Air Canada. Fortunately on the advice of the United agent I got a paper copy of the boarding pass instead of just relying on the phone version. The AC agent told me they did not accept phone passes we were lucky to have a paper copy otherwise we would have been denied boarding. But the United paper pass was also unacceptable I had to go to another lineup to swap my United pass for an AC one along with presentation of a bunch of ID. Then of course customs clearance was in Toronto rather than Ottawa. Try doing this while escorting a blind person.
Those little airports work great, but they will suffer the same effects if the airport the little plane is taking you to has a snow event. Your flight will be one of the first ones cancelled.
There's an easy explanation for that. Toronto, this year, is having a traditional winter; something it hasn't had in a decade. And when Toronto's arrival rate drops to the 20's as it does in a snow event, the flights to the small airports like Sudbury and Timmins don't happen at all, 2 flights to Montreal Ottawa and Winnipeg might get combined into one, and it takes 48 hours to clean up. They use sand for traction, but when the runways are clear of snow, all that sand has to be blown away because it's bad for the engines. The logistics for a big airport in winter are amazing.
I was a pilot for a decade so have no comment on how people deal with things beyond their control. But when dealing with unforeseen events communications is essential so why are Canadian airlines mandated to use a language other than English which is the worldwide language of communications?
Yep. A group of Quebec mostly private aviators managed to form a group and got the Quebec government to feel humiliated which in turn scared the shit out of the Ottawa liberals. Be grateful they managed to contain the French to small airports in Quebec.
A snow event at Pearson causes a minimum weeklong recovery for the airlines. Planes are in the wrong places, with crews timed out. The schedule is just a memory. Arrival rates for 50+ per hour drop to 20...or less. Snow removal at Pearson is brilliant, but you can't use salt. So 10 minutes after the runway is clear, it's snow-covered; especially if the wind is blowing. They do a brilliant job clearing what is basically 700km of paved road in an hour. But crews can't work 24/7. Equipment needs to come off the field for fuel, and pee breaks.
The US has far more "bail-out" airports than Canada does. The snow caused as much trouble in Toronto as the crash...especially when it closed the airports' 2 longest runways. Not only did the airports fill up, but because they are in the wrong place, crews also run out of service time. Airlines fly where there is money to be made. That's Toronto. The airport can handle its current and future demand...if they have staff.
The big problem is lack of staff. Toronto was short-staffed of air traffic controllers before the pandemic hit. Some senior management genius at Nav Canada decided to buy out senior staff when traffic cratered instead of training like mad to catch up. We now find ourselves in a place where the US was after Reagan fired all the controllers. There aren't enough, and it will take decades to catch. I say decades because the US still hasn't caught up from Reagan's idiotic decision. Unimaginable? Reality. To become a controller is roughly a three-year process. maybe 20% of those who start actually make it. More than half get to a place where they're safe 80% of the time....but then a situation comes along that they've never seen before and are unable to make something up on the fly. That challenge is why it's the greatest job ever. It's also why it's so hard to make it. Not everyone can do this.
The crash in Toronto will be because 4 or 5 things went wrong, and the "holes in the Swiss cheese" lined up....same as every other incident. It's never just one thing. As to why they don't say much, it's because they don't know. You know the plane crashed. You know everyone survived. You know investigators need time to figure out what happened. So why spread gossip? Straight-up honesty in communication would help, but the people at the gate don't know what's going on. Pearson had nothing to do with the airplane flipping over. Their response was brilliant.
Aviation is operating on the assumption that everything will go right. Life doesn't work that way often.
'Some senior management genius at Nav Canada decided to buy out senior staff when traffic cratered instead of training like mad to catch up.'
This is so common, and why we have similar issues in many other industries. Managers advising to 'save' some money by firing all the 'overpaid' oldies, and then collecting their own personal bonus cheques with the 'savings', leaving a greatly understaffed, underpaid, undertrained next generation of staff to make do the best they can, with predictable results.
The Air Travelers Bill of Rights has given us unrealistic expectations. If we want airlines to have staff and equipment available for every circumstance, we should be paying $3000 one-way YYC to YYZ. We have been duped into believing that we can book for $163 and expect $3000 service.
I've been travelling by air for decades. Not that long ago (about a decade) air travel was an generally pleasant and relatively affordable experience (though the food has sucked for a long time). WestJet in particular was customer focused and friendly with on-time service and can-do correction of generally minor delays and issues.
No longer. WE SHOULD ALL EXPECT BETTER, not worse.
The lack of pilots is yet another symptom of Canada's lopsided generational bulge with the boomers. 20 years ago you had licensed new pilots who couldn't get a job to save their lives. They were literally working in the Air Canada call centre or moving to Asia. Now 20 years later, those folks who should be mid career right now don't exist to replace the retiring boomer pilots.
As for why Canada can't seem to "get things done" as someone deeply in their field, it is cultural IMHO. The constant appeasement of various externalities changes the scope of the projects which all raise costs and increase time. Canadians pathologically hate when someone isn't taken care of, it's the equality culture. But that means when everyone had a say that no one is accountable. There is no ultimate accountability for any project unless they put their own money up for it.
I know of six studies of high speed rail in Canada, and there may be more. I participated in two of them. The first one was issued by the old Canadian Transport Commission, part of the government, back in the days when public servants still knew what they were doing and didn't have to rely on consultants. That 1971 study, and all the subsequent ones, concluded that there was no business case for high speed rail in Canada.
One of the problems is that, currently, there are some 1,000 grade crossings between Montreal and Toronto, i.e. places where the railway tracks cross roads at the same level. Grade crossings are inconsistent with high speed rail, which requires roads to use either overpasses or underpasses. But these cost a lot of money, so a high speed train would reduce crossings by at least 90%. Tell that to the people currently using them.
As the interviewee said, high speed trains need to connect very large centers. They also need to minimize intermediate stops. I would expect stops at Trois Rivieres (population 135,000) and Peterborough (population 85,000) to add significantly to costs and to add negligible revenues. As for the stop in Laval, I wonder how they are going to bring the trains from there into Montreal. The current right of way is used by commuter trains and has little or no spare capacity. So a new right of way to cross downtown Montreal -- or a very long tunnel under Mount Royal and the neighbouring areas.
Don't worry, it'll be spent, and the rail line will, perhaps thankfully, never materialize.
That's the Canadian Way.
It would actually be better for everyone if they just used the 3.9 billion to simply begin construction of the rail line today, and figure out the issues as they went.
That would create its own issues, and eventual cost overruns, but at least we would have some track laid down - something tangible to show for the 3.9 billion dollars.
But we won't, because that's not the Canadian Way.
Jen, I feel your pain when you asked “Why don’t we build stuff good?”. Having lived part of last twelve years in Vancouver, the Canada Line is the best thing I have seen that we have built good in the last 20 years.
And yet, it would have been much better had they designed stations to accommodate more than two cars. Also, have you ever waited for a train at Templeton station? It’s an open platform facing west, so you get wind and rain in your face. Totally not designed for Vancouver weather.
Really enjoyed the interview. ‘Trauma dumping’ - hilarious (sorry, Jen’s travel experience not so funny).
Pilots used to build flying hours on the smaller regional aircraft to gain the experience to fly the larger jets with the main line carriers. How are the main line carriers going to find experienced pilots to hire if there are fewer regionals to draw pilots from?
Of note, the redevelopment of LaGuardia was done by a Canadian company Vantage Airport with US partners.
Something that went unmentioned in this discussion was the relentless drive to minimize ticket cost in response to a monomaniacal consumer fixation on paying the lowest possible price. Passengers have proven over and over again that they'll choose the cheapest fare irrespective of how terrible the service and how threadbare the amenities of the flight. Then they complain, piss, and moan about how bad air travel has gotten.
One way of getting higher flight frequency and lower load factor to make the air travel network more robust to disruptions would be to pay more for tickets. However, how many people are *really* going to be willing to pay $750 for that round-trip ticket between Toronto and Vancouver instead of $500? How many are going to instead pick the ultra low cost $250 fare from the flaky low cost carrier, then skip paying for travel insurance and rage later on social media about how their trip was a disaster because of a flight delay, cancellation, or inevitable bankruptcy of said airline?
Sorry, people - we've done this to ourselves. The fact is that air travel is more affordable and accessible than it's ever been. The worst cattle class charter flight across the Atlantic will get you to your destination in hours for a price affordable to most people, something utterly unimaginable to the people who had to save for years for a steerage class ticket in cramped conditions on a weeks-long trip on a ship just 100-150 years ago. Still, it's not cheap enough - despite all the online ridicule and vitriol, there were a heck of a lot of people in "Zone 9" boarding on my last Westjet flight - people who purchased that ultrabasic ticket that doesn't even include a carry-on bag.
I don't fault the airlines for bad weather, for emergencies, for breakdowns, all of which cause major travel disruptions for their customers. What i fault them for is their woeful incapacity to deal with crisis! They should have a crisis management dept with an " all hands on deck" mentality, meaning real people, answering real phones,with real solutions for their customers. Websites and apps are not crisis management tools! Increased staffing answering real phones in times of crisis would at least give travelers the feeling that someone is working on their behalf instead of making them feel that a website is just a convenient way to take the heat of of the front line.
Good interview, and I agree totally with the comments about the recent high speed rail announcement. However, in defence of Canada, it should be pointed out that we do have a direct rail link between the airport and downtown in both Toronto and Vancouver. The UP Express is not super fast but it is convenient and affordable.
I remember hearing whispers quite a while ago that Peterborough airport was being looked at as a relief valve for Pearson. This looks slightly more likely given the Pickering airport lands are now parkland. And as unrealistic as the high-speed rail announcement seems, the Peterborough stop makes sense if that airport supports Pearson. I do think a rail connection to Toronto from Peterborough set up as a GO Transit express train (Peterborough, Oshawa and Union stops for example) would be a cheaper way to get up and running.
It's not. Pearson has tons of unused capacity, but no control staff to operate it. And who wants to take an international flight to Toronto and then have 90 minutes of travel to get to Peterborough for your commuter flight?
Hi Guys: I wanted to really enjoy the interview with Duncan Dee about there state of travel in Canada. I was disappointed not to hear him nearly as much as I heard Jen ask very long partially self-answering questions, with long intros. Her interviewee even said she had answered her own question.
Most unfortunately, Jen you went on for what seemed like an eternity, about your view of rail, construction, procurement and deliverology in Canada, while Mr Dee sat there "nodding". I was listening to hear his expertise, not such a long rant on your views. I must sadly say it's more than once a problem I have found, though I try to support you!!
A great and informative interview. Well done JG. My personal view, after several similar trips, is that the industry hates its customers. The last flights I took were First Class. They were a shit show. My next holiday is a drive.
If anybody still needs examples of why the Liberal Party of Canada has failed Canadians this last decade, one need only look at Trudeau’s last gasp announcement of a $3.9 billion plan to “announce a plan in five years” to build high speed rail between Toronto and Montreal. Could the $3.9 billion be better spent elsewhere, say repositioning Canadian business and industry to pivot from Trumps petty tariffs and develop new markets. Of course it could. But does the $3.9 billion even need to be spent or is it simply one more example of Liberals using public funds in an attempt to but an election?
Trudeau had no business announcing anything after resigning. They've already spent billions on this. Based on what they've spent so far should mean construction starts this spring. That is another Canadian failure. That said, it's a great idea and will free up a lot of pilots to fly other routes. Public transit doesn't make money. Profit is not why you build it.
Trudeau just can’t resist performing. It’s that simple.
Excellent topic for On The Line.
I, for one, took myself out of the client base for all Canadian airlines just prior to the pandemic due to their almost unbelievable ineptitude and contempt for air travellers.
I live within 2.5 hours drive (one-way) of Calgary International Airport. My nearest American airports are in Montana; namely Great Falls International and Glacier Park International in Kalispell (both are approximately 3.5 hrs drive for me one-way). Even considering the considerable exchange rate challenge between CAD-USD, flights from these two very small airports in Montana are generally cheaper, quicker, better serviced/appointed, and often offer more flight choices than Calgary. Add the relatively short and straightforward process of entering the USA via a ground border crossing rather than Calgary's International US Customs (which can take hours), and the choice of which way to go for air travel is blatantly obvious.
Until something drastic changes the economic and convenience equation in favour of Canadian air travel, I've effectively boycotted Canadian airlines and airports.
The fix is obviously competition.
I share your view and solution. I gave up on Air Canada 10 years ago. I and my wife who is blind commute between Ottawa and Phoenix 4 to 6 times yearly. Fortunately United has flights between Ottawa and Phoenix - with a changeover - at 20 percent or less of Air Canada rates if you book a month or so ahead. And the attendants don’t act like they’re in training for a remake of the Canadian cinematic masterpiece “Ilsa: She-wolf of the SS” . And if there is no convenient connection from Ottawa I can drive to a border town 30 minutes away, leave my car parked for free, and take a commuter flight to a major US hub airport.
After 10 years of this I made the mistake of picking the cheapest United fight from Phoenix to Ottawa which happened to go via Los Angeles. Then found out the LAX carrier was Air Canada. Fortunately on the advice of the United agent I got a paper copy of the boarding pass instead of just relying on the phone version. The AC agent told me they did not accept phone passes we were lucky to have a paper copy otherwise we would have been denied boarding. But the United paper pass was also unacceptable I had to go to another lineup to swap my United pass for an AC one along with presentation of a bunch of ID. Then of course customs clearance was in Toronto rather than Ottawa. Try doing this while escorting a blind person.
Those little airports work great, but they will suffer the same effects if the airport the little plane is taking you to has a snow event. Your flight will be one of the first ones cancelled.
Likely correct, if we don't reverse course on 'efficiencies'. Again, not that long ago, things were much better and more consistent.
There's an easy explanation for that. Toronto, this year, is having a traditional winter; something it hasn't had in a decade. And when Toronto's arrival rate drops to the 20's as it does in a snow event, the flights to the small airports like Sudbury and Timmins don't happen at all, 2 flights to Montreal Ottawa and Winnipeg might get combined into one, and it takes 48 hours to clean up. They use sand for traction, but when the runways are clear of snow, all that sand has to be blown away because it's bad for the engines. The logistics for a big airport in winter are amazing.
I was a pilot for a decade so have no comment on how people deal with things beyond their control. But when dealing with unforeseen events communications is essential so why are Canadian airlines mandated to use a language other than English which is the worldwide language of communications?
When my late uncle was flying long ago, he commented that there was more French heard on the airwaves of Canada, than on the airwaves of France.
He said it was to appease Quebec.
Yep. A group of Quebec mostly private aviators managed to form a group and got the Quebec government to feel humiliated which in turn scared the shit out of the Ottawa liberals. Be grateful they managed to contain the French to small airports in Quebec.
A snow event at Pearson causes a minimum weeklong recovery for the airlines. Planes are in the wrong places, with crews timed out. The schedule is just a memory. Arrival rates for 50+ per hour drop to 20...or less. Snow removal at Pearson is brilliant, but you can't use salt. So 10 minutes after the runway is clear, it's snow-covered; especially if the wind is blowing. They do a brilliant job clearing what is basically 700km of paved road in an hour. But crews can't work 24/7. Equipment needs to come off the field for fuel, and pee breaks.
The US has far more "bail-out" airports than Canada does. The snow caused as much trouble in Toronto as the crash...especially when it closed the airports' 2 longest runways. Not only did the airports fill up, but because they are in the wrong place, crews also run out of service time. Airlines fly where there is money to be made. That's Toronto. The airport can handle its current and future demand...if they have staff.
The big problem is lack of staff. Toronto was short-staffed of air traffic controllers before the pandemic hit. Some senior management genius at Nav Canada decided to buy out senior staff when traffic cratered instead of training like mad to catch up. We now find ourselves in a place where the US was after Reagan fired all the controllers. There aren't enough, and it will take decades to catch. I say decades because the US still hasn't caught up from Reagan's idiotic decision. Unimaginable? Reality. To become a controller is roughly a three-year process. maybe 20% of those who start actually make it. More than half get to a place where they're safe 80% of the time....but then a situation comes along that they've never seen before and are unable to make something up on the fly. That challenge is why it's the greatest job ever. It's also why it's so hard to make it. Not everyone can do this.
The crash in Toronto will be because 4 or 5 things went wrong, and the "holes in the Swiss cheese" lined up....same as every other incident. It's never just one thing. As to why they don't say much, it's because they don't know. You know the plane crashed. You know everyone survived. You know investigators need time to figure out what happened. So why spread gossip? Straight-up honesty in communication would help, but the people at the gate don't know what's going on. Pearson had nothing to do with the airplane flipping over. Their response was brilliant.
Aviation is operating on the assumption that everything will go right. Life doesn't work that way often.
'Some senior management genius at Nav Canada decided to buy out senior staff when traffic cratered instead of training like mad to catch up.'
This is so common, and why we have similar issues in many other industries. Managers advising to 'save' some money by firing all the 'overpaid' oldies, and then collecting their own personal bonus cheques with the 'savings', leaving a greatly understaffed, underpaid, undertrained next generation of staff to make do the best they can, with predictable results.
The Air Travelers Bill of Rights has given us unrealistic expectations. If we want airlines to have staff and equipment available for every circumstance, we should be paying $3000 one-way YYC to YYZ. We have been duped into believing that we can book for $163 and expect $3000 service.
Unrealistic expectations?
I've been travelling by air for decades. Not that long ago (about a decade) air travel was an generally pleasant and relatively affordable experience (though the food has sucked for a long time). WestJet in particular was customer focused and friendly with on-time service and can-do correction of generally minor delays and issues.
No longer. WE SHOULD ALL EXPECT BETTER, not worse.
All that did was add cost to your ticket. It will change nothing else.
The lack of pilots is yet another symptom of Canada's lopsided generational bulge with the boomers. 20 years ago you had licensed new pilots who couldn't get a job to save their lives. They were literally working in the Air Canada call centre or moving to Asia. Now 20 years later, those folks who should be mid career right now don't exist to replace the retiring boomer pilots.
As for why Canada can't seem to "get things done" as someone deeply in their field, it is cultural IMHO. The constant appeasement of various externalities changes the scope of the projects which all raise costs and increase time. Canadians pathologically hate when someone isn't taken care of, it's the equality culture. But that means when everyone had a say that no one is accountable. There is no ultimate accountability for any project unless they put their own money up for it.
Agree completely with that analysis.
The French & English Liberal Leaders 'Debates" are just the latest examples.
I know of six studies of high speed rail in Canada, and there may be more. I participated in two of them. The first one was issued by the old Canadian Transport Commission, part of the government, back in the days when public servants still knew what they were doing and didn't have to rely on consultants. That 1971 study, and all the subsequent ones, concluded that there was no business case for high speed rail in Canada.
One of the problems is that, currently, there are some 1,000 grade crossings between Montreal and Toronto, i.e. places where the railway tracks cross roads at the same level. Grade crossings are inconsistent with high speed rail, which requires roads to use either overpasses or underpasses. But these cost a lot of money, so a high speed train would reduce crossings by at least 90%. Tell that to the people currently using them.
As the interviewee said, high speed trains need to connect very large centers. They also need to minimize intermediate stops. I would expect stops at Trois Rivieres (population 135,000) and Peterborough (population 85,000) to add significantly to costs and to add negligible revenues. As for the stop in Laval, I wonder how they are going to bring the trains from there into Montreal. The current right of way is used by commuter trains and has little or no spare capacity. So a new right of way to cross downtown Montreal -- or a very long tunnel under Mount Royal and the neighbouring areas.
I can think of better ways to spend $3.9 billion.
Don't worry, it'll be spent, and the rail line will, perhaps thankfully, never materialize.
That's the Canadian Way.
It would actually be better for everyone if they just used the 3.9 billion to simply begin construction of the rail line today, and figure out the issues as they went.
That would create its own issues, and eventual cost overruns, but at least we would have some track laid down - something tangible to show for the 3.9 billion dollars.
But we won't, because that's not the Canadian Way.
Jen, I feel your pain when you asked “Why don’t we build stuff good?”. Having lived part of last twelve years in Vancouver, the Canada Line is the best thing I have seen that we have built good in the last 20 years.
And yet, it would have been much better had they designed stations to accommodate more than two cars. Also, have you ever waited for a train at Templeton station? It’s an open platform facing west, so you get wind and rain in your face. Totally not designed for Vancouver weather.
Poor Jen (and Matt).... too young to know about Mirabel Airport, a Pierre Trudeau monumental failure.
The man was a socialist idiot. He did more damage to Canada than anyone since, until mini-Turd turned up.
Really enjoyed the interview. ‘Trauma dumping’ - hilarious (sorry, Jen’s travel experience not so funny).
Pilots used to build flying hours on the smaller regional aircraft to gain the experience to fly the larger jets with the main line carriers. How are the main line carriers going to find experienced pilots to hire if there are fewer regionals to draw pilots from?
Of note, the redevelopment of LaGuardia was done by a Canadian company Vantage Airport with US partners.
Something that went unmentioned in this discussion was the relentless drive to minimize ticket cost in response to a monomaniacal consumer fixation on paying the lowest possible price. Passengers have proven over and over again that they'll choose the cheapest fare irrespective of how terrible the service and how threadbare the amenities of the flight. Then they complain, piss, and moan about how bad air travel has gotten.
One way of getting higher flight frequency and lower load factor to make the air travel network more robust to disruptions would be to pay more for tickets. However, how many people are *really* going to be willing to pay $750 for that round-trip ticket between Toronto and Vancouver instead of $500? How many are going to instead pick the ultra low cost $250 fare from the flaky low cost carrier, then skip paying for travel insurance and rage later on social media about how their trip was a disaster because of a flight delay, cancellation, or inevitable bankruptcy of said airline?
Sorry, people - we've done this to ourselves. The fact is that air travel is more affordable and accessible than it's ever been. The worst cattle class charter flight across the Atlantic will get you to your destination in hours for a price affordable to most people, something utterly unimaginable to the people who had to save for years for a steerage class ticket in cramped conditions on a weeks-long trip on a ship just 100-150 years ago. Still, it's not cheap enough - despite all the online ridicule and vitriol, there were a heck of a lot of people in "Zone 9" boarding on my last Westjet flight - people who purchased that ultrabasic ticket that doesn't even include a carry-on bag.
I don't fault the airlines for bad weather, for emergencies, for breakdowns, all of which cause major travel disruptions for their customers. What i fault them for is their woeful incapacity to deal with crisis! They should have a crisis management dept with an " all hands on deck" mentality, meaning real people, answering real phones,with real solutions for their customers. Websites and apps are not crisis management tools! Increased staffing answering real phones in times of crisis would at least give travelers the feeling that someone is working on their behalf instead of making them feel that a website is just a convenient way to take the heat of of the front line.
Good interview, and I agree totally with the comments about the recent high speed rail announcement. However, in defence of Canada, it should be pointed out that we do have a direct rail link between the airport and downtown in both Toronto and Vancouver. The UP Express is not super fast but it is convenient and affordable.
I remember hearing whispers quite a while ago that Peterborough airport was being looked at as a relief valve for Pearson. This looks slightly more likely given the Pickering airport lands are now parkland. And as unrealistic as the high-speed rail announcement seems, the Peterborough stop makes sense if that airport supports Pearson. I do think a rail connection to Toronto from Peterborough set up as a GO Transit express train (Peterborough, Oshawa and Union stops for example) would be a cheaper way to get up and running.
It's not. Pearson has tons of unused capacity, but no control staff to operate it. And who wants to take an international flight to Toronto and then have 90 minutes of travel to get to Peterborough for your commuter flight?
Hi Guys: I wanted to really enjoy the interview with Duncan Dee about there state of travel in Canada. I was disappointed not to hear him nearly as much as I heard Jen ask very long partially self-answering questions, with long intros. Her interviewee even said she had answered her own question.
Most unfortunately, Jen you went on for what seemed like an eternity, about your view of rail, construction, procurement and deliverology in Canada, while Mr Dee sat there "nodding". I was listening to hear his expertise, not such a long rant on your views. I must sadly say it's more than once a problem I have found, though I try to support you!!
A great and informative interview. Well done JG. My personal view, after several similar trips, is that the industry hates its customers. The last flights I took were First Class. They were a shit show. My next holiday is a drive.