This B.C. MP is taking a 4,500-km train ride to try and improve passenger rail in Canada

Taylor Bachrach will be home for Christmas — he hopes.

On Sunday, the NDP transportation critic and MP for the riding of Skeena-Bulkley Valley, plans to leave the House of Commons and start a series of train rides that will begin in Toronto and end more than 4,500 kilometres west in his hometown of Smithers, B.C. — about 200 kilometres inland from B.C.’s north coast.

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.

 The Rail Passenger Priority Act calls for the Canada Transportation Act to be amended so that any time a passenger and cargo train want to use the same rail line, the passenger train gets priority.

That would be a reversal of the usual situation now, where passenger trains like Via Rail are renting track time from freight companies, primarily CN Rail.

That relationship poses a problem in Bachrach’s riding, where increased train traffic to and from the Port of Prince Rupert often leads to long delays for people trying to use Via Rail service that runs from Prince Rupert to Bachrach’s hometown of Smithers and on to Prince George and Jasper.

“Right now people are avoiding the train because they can’t get to where they need to go with any sense of consistency,” Bachrach said.

Marc Brazeau, CEO of the Railway Association of Canada — which represents CN and CPKC rail — said any legislation that alters right of way on the rails would need to be balanced against the importance of efficient freight operations.

“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.

Bachrach says he is taking his December train trip in order to drum up support for his proposal and to better understand the challenges and needs of train commuters across Canada.

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

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why do you actually want to take the train from Ottawa to B.C.?

Well, partly because I need to get home for Christmas and, after about 100 flights this year, Air Canada and I could use a break from each other. But more importantly because it’s a chance to experience the state of passenger rail in Canada.

I’m pretty familiar with the passenger train the Skeena in northwest B.C., but this is going to give me a chance to talk to passengers and communities right across the country about a vision for Canada catching up to the rest of the world and having a viable passenger train service, which we don’t right now.

What are some of the biggest frustrations about rail travel that you’ve already heard?

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.

Via used to make it from Toronto to Vancouver in three-and-a-half days, but because of this challenge sharing the tracks with CN and CP, it now takes four-and-a-half days to do the same trip.

We can’t get more people riding the train if they don’t know when the train is going to show up at the station.

A tremendous amount of goods ship [on those rail lines]. Why is slowing those goods down worth faster passenger service?

As you know, since we lost Greyhound [bus service], people have very few passenger transportation options in northern B.C. and right across rural Canada.

Not everyone can afford the cost of flying across the country, and so we need to have a better balance between the need to ship goods, which is a very real need and connected to the health of our economy, and the need to transport passengers and provide people with safe, convenient, affordable and low carbon transportation options.

It might mean building new infrastructure, it might mean creating new systems to schedule trains so that the situation is really optimized.

But what’s happening right now is that the passenger train is the poor cousin to freight traffic and people are sitting on the sidelines for hours and hours.

That’s creating a situation where people don’t want to take the train as basic transportation.

We have the potential as a country to have a much better passenger rail system.

When we look around the world, other countries are doing much better than us and I think this is a vision that a lot of people see as a positive one.