The Maple Leaf train from Toronto to NYC is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, because I'll be damned if I ever ride it again.
If you love your family, you will never let them ride this train.
When Canada defeated Venezuela in penalties during their July 5th match, advancing onwards to the Copa America semi-finals, I knew I had to make plans quickly. With Canada’s semi-final appearance versus Argentina set to occur on July 9th in New York, I rushed to book travel, a hotel room, and game tickets on effectively three days notice.
As a proud dues-paying member of The Voyageurs Canada Soccer supporter group, tickets were obtainable at a fair price for this incredibly high demand match; over 80,000 attendees travelled to MetLife Stadium in order to witness the battle between Team Canada and Lionel Messi’s Argentina.
For the hotel stay, New York City has such a large capacity for accommodating visitors that hotel prices were notably lower than similar rooms I’ve booked in less popular cities. However, while both the hotel and the match ticket were priced reasonably, Air Canada surge-priced their economy fares into the blatantly obscene.
While prices for flights are naturally higher when booking on such short notice, Air Canada was asking $1200 CAD round-trip for the worst economy fare from YYZ to JFK, without carry-on baggage included. In contrast, the joint-operated VIA/Amtrak Maple Leaf train from Toronto’s Union Station to New York City’s Penn Station would only cost $340 round-trip, on the same July 8th to July 10th date range.
Obviously, my fondness for trains and railways is not a secret, and has been the subject of multiple previous columns. Nonetheless, despite the train being an order of magnitude slower, the cost advantage here was so substantial that I did not hesitate to choose the Maple Leaf over flying into JFK or LaGuardia. If I flew instead, the cost of my entire vacation would have effectively doubled, solely from the cost of airfare.
Thus, excited as I was to experience the novelty of Canadian-American international rail travel, I optimistically set off for Union Station with my camera and my backpack, and I placed my full trust and faith in the hands of both VIA Rail and Amtrak.
What an awful mistake I made, putting faith in other people.
An Infrastructural Calamity
The Maple Leaf passenger service operates between Union Station in Downtown Toronto, and Moynihan Train Hall at New York Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan. The total length of the journey is only 875km, yet the route is officially scheduled to last thirteen hours from Toronto to NYC, travelling slower than competing bus routes. This service, which operates a single time per day, is the ungodly fusion of the GO Train from Toronto to Niagara Falls, and Amtrak’s Empire Service from Niagara Falls to New York City through the state capital of Albany.
From Union Station to Aldershot GO in Burlington, the Maple Leaf operates over Metrolinx passenger tracks, used for GO Lakeshore West trains as well as VIA Rail Corridor operations. Once reaching Aldershot however, the Maple Leaf switches to tracks owned by Canadian National Railway, which heavily prioritize freight rail over passengers, until reaching the Niagara Falls border.
Unlike the Amtrak Cascades service from Vancouver to Seattle, where US Customs does preclearance in Vancouver before departure, on the Maple Leaf every single passenger must disembark and proceed through customs before the train can continue onwards. VIA Rail staff onboard will frequently claim that the hour they have scheduled is more than enough to process a full train; this is a blatant lie and the train will frequently sit empty for longer than two hours while waiting for passengers to be processed through customs.
One factor contributing to the excessive delay entering the United States is that the US Customs and Border Patrol are feckless and incompetent at their only job. The Maple Leaf is literally the sole international train in a given day that will cross the Niagara Falls border, only a single time per day. US CBP agents have quite literally every indication when the single train of the day is about to arrive, and they are literally paid to stand around and be ready solely for this single train.
Which perfectly explains why on July 8th they had us all disembark the train, line up inside the facility…and then have us stand there for thirty minutes without processing anybody. I would be fairly understanding if there was some sort of technical glitch in their system. But I have absolutely zero fucking patience for the CBP agent who told his coworker, in earshot of our entire lineup that had been waiting the entire time with no action from CBP, that he actually just “hadn’t logged in to the computer yet”.
CBP agents at the Niagara Falls, NY train station only have a single part of their day where they need to give a shit about doing their job. They refuse to even pretend to give a shit, because they know that they can cause literally any delay to Amtrak with zero consequences, and they know nobody can complain to their face without risking arbitrary consequences.
So despite only having a single luggage scanner, in reality it was not a significant bottleneck; they could have a dozen luggage scanners, and it wouldn’t matter in the slightest, because CBP will simply dick around doing fuck all while hundreds of passengers are effectively held hostage waiting to board a train that still has ten more hours to go.
There’s no excuse for us to tolerate this Mickey Mouse operation at the Niagara Falls border. Instead, it’s time to use the available space at Union Station in Toronto, and allow the operation of a US Customs Preclearance facility, so that passengers are able to experience the same benefits that they already can on transborder flights, and aboard Amtrak’s aforementioned Cascades.
Most of the stops between Toronto and the Niagara Falls border are unnecessary, considering the plethora of GO and VIA Rail service providing far more convenient schedules for literally every Canadian station on the Maple Leaf route. In addition to the direct time-saving benefits of border preclearance, fewer stops before the border means the train does not need to brake and then reaccelerate as many times. This is actually the principle which GO uses to schedule it’s express trains, making fewer stops but enabling higher speeds to the major stations.
The only two stops that ultimately need to remain on the Canadian side are in Toronto, and the Niagara Falls, ON station right on the border; the latter could have pre-clearance facilities staffed by agents from the nearby Whirlpool Bridge at set hours before the train is scheduled to arrive.
As long as passengers are only allowed to board at Toronto and Niagara Falls after preclearance, and not disembark before reaching the United States, this would be a far more efficient system, and as the Amtrak Cascades in Vancouver claims you only need to arrive an hour before departure to make it through preclearance, that shorter timeframe will already become an advantage over transborder flights.
After crossing from Niagara Falls, ON to Niagara Falls, NY, the Maple Leaf operates on CSX Transportation freight rail, inflicting the same persistent delays and stoppages on passenger rail that CN Railway does in Canada. While Metrolinx has realized the necessity of passenger-dedicated tracks to ensure frequent and reliable service without interruption by freight, a significant portion of the Maple Leaf route limps at a snail’s pace over freight-priority tracks.
The lengthy customs delays at the border are painful enough, without the additional torture of watching the Maple Leaf grind to a complete halt halfway between stations to allow CN or CSX to speed their freight past our entire train. This happened several times along the CN and CSX tracks, both on the journey to New York and on the return trip home to Toronto.
The remainder of the track south of Poughkeepsie towards New York Penn Station is variously owned by the MTA’s Metro-North Railroad or by Amtrak themselves, providing similar passenger-first benefits as the Metrolinx tracks which VIA Rail parasitically leeches from for their Corridor service.
As a result, once returning from the CSX freight tracks to Amtrak-leased passenger track at Schenectady, the train not only achieves a higher peak speed, it also achieves higher reliability and partially attempts to make up for lost time on the freight rails. Because of this passenger-prioritized rail corridor, the Maple Leaf and the Empire Service have far better reliability on the NYC-Albany leg than they do on the rest of the service.
On the entirety of the route, Amtrak’s own rolling stock is used, with passengers riding in Amfleet I coaches that began revenue service nearly half a century ago in 1975. At the rear of the train, passengers have access to a café car to purchase food and both hard and soft beverages. This café car is another Amfleet I, configured as a club-dinette with a split between business class seating and open table seating for paying café customers.
Despite using Amtrak rolling stock for the entirety of the route, in Canada the train is operated by VIA Rail crew, and the Amtrak crew only operates the train in the United States. This is again, decidedly unlike the Amtrak Cascades, where Amtrak operates the entire route, and VIA is so uninvolved they won’t even bother to mention the route exists on their webpage for Vancouver, let alone come to an agreement with Amtrak to sell connecting tickets.
As the VIA Rail crew disembark on the Canadian side, and passengers headed to New York must proceed through customs on the American side, the time for the Canadian and American crews to swap is in addition to the time waiting for customs. If the crews were able to swap during the customs checks, the delay wouldn’t even be noticed, but instead the crew swaps happen opposite to each customs check to add maximum delay.
If all of this infrastructural stupidity wasn’t dumb enough, don’t worry, there is even more stupidity yet to come. Due to the lack of ventilation in New York Penn Station or the rail tunnels leading into it, diesel locomotives are barred by regulation from entering the tunnels or the station. As such, between New York Penn Station and Croton-Harmon Station one stop south of Poughkeepsie, both Amtrak and the Metro-North Railroad must operate electric trains.
Thus, between Albany–Rensselaer Station and New York Penn Station, all Amtrak trains, including the Maple Leaf, use the GE Genesis P32AC-DM dual-mode locomotive, which is able to operate on electric power when available, and on diesel power when operating on non-electrified track. Dual-mode locomotives present the best of both worlds, in a reality where neither the Canadian and American governments have bothered electrifying the majority of their passenger rail networks.
Unfortunately, Amtrak has only eighteen dual-mode Genesis locomotives, and since they are required for not only the Maple Leaf but every other Amtrak route entering New York City through the small electrified corridor, Amtrak does not have the luxury of using the dual-mode locomotive for the entirety of the Maple Leaf route, defeating the very purpose that dual-mode locomotives are intended for.
Instead, at Albany–Rensselaer Station, the P32AC-DM dual-mode Genesis locomotive is swapped for a fully-diesel Genesis locomotive, and the dual-mode is reattached to another Amtrak train headed back southwards to New York City. While only part of the route from Albany to NYC is electrified, Albany is the station best equipped to perform the locomotive swaps, and thus a dual-mode locomotive is used instead of a fully electric locomotive like the Siemens ACS-64 used on Amtrak’s Northeast Regional service.
These locomotive swaps at Albany contribute one final systemic delay to not only the Maple Leaf service, but every single Amtrak service operating through New York Penn Station. While the swaps have gotten more efficient with experience, shortening the delay to a smoke break, even Amtrak understands this is not viable if they want to attract ridership to any of their routes on the Eastern Seaboard.
As part of an expansive fleet modernization program, Amtrak has ordered a variant of the Siemens Charger locomotive paired with Siemens Venture passenger cars, similar to the Charger/Venture trainsets that VIA Rail is now using for Corridor service. However, while the SCV-42 variant of the Charger used by VIA Rail is purely diesel, the ALC-42E variant Amtrak has on order will be a dual-mode locomotive, capable of the coveted electric-mode operation into New York Penn Station.
While Amtrak has already had the ALC-42 long-range diesel variant and the SC-44 inter-city diesel variant in service for several years, they still await delivery of their ALC-42E dual-mode locomotives; as of February 2024, two of the 75 ALC-42Es were still under construction.
Notably, while the Venture cars will be much newer than the Amfleet I cars in service, the new seating will actually have significantly less recline than the older train cars, although they will have middle arm rests. In addition, rather than allowing passengers to order food and drink from the cart attendant while seated, like VIA Rail does on all of it’s Venture coaches, Amtrak’s Venture coaches on the Maple Leaf will still force passengers to walk through several gangways to the very back of the train in order to access the café car.
Ultimately, the Siemens Charger is able to reach a peak speed of 200 kilometres per hour, although on typical Corridor service in Canada, VIA Rail limits operations to only 160 klicks. While this will be of no assistance when the train is forced to stop for freight rail to pass, the dual-mode Charger will be faster than the current Genesis locomotives on the track segments controlled by Metrolinx, Amtrak, and New York’s MTA.
At the very least, the new Charger/Venture trainsets will be modern and comfortable, and their dual-mode locomotives will stay semi-permanently attached to the train consist, once and for all freeing Amtrak from the plague of Albany’s locomotive swapping hell. Once these dual-mode trainsets start delivery in 2026, at least some degree of improvement to the passenger experience could be expected for those riding the Maple Leaf.
But Amtrak doesn’t get credit for fixing things until they’ve actually fixed things, and today passengers are still riding the old stainless steel Amfleet cars, with their trains facing every possible delay and hindrance under the sun. In virtually all aspects, the infrastructure underpinning the Maple Leaf train is sabotaged by austerity and greed, and Amtrak as a larger organization is literally the only party with any desire to even attempt fixing a single one of those broken aspects.
Despite all of the above, these half-century old trains, the arduous customs process, the lengthy ride, and the even lengthier delays, it can all be tolerated if you’ve braced yourself for the pain. Indeed, those are aspects of the journey I was already aware of in advance, and well-prepared for before I boarded the train.
However, what I had not prepared for, was for the the customer service from Amtrak and VIA Rail employees to be even worse than the crumbling infrastructure.
Customer Disservice
The first quirk arising from VIA Rail and Amtrak’s clunky dual-crew arrangement, was when I received four tickets for my round-trip journey, rather than two. Despite disembarking and then re-boarding the exact same train after passing through customs, the VIA Rail and Amtrak portions are numbered and ticketed as separate journeys, and this has bigger implications for rail travelers than they may realize.
For the VIA Rail operated segments, the No. 97 train goes southbound from Toronto to Niagara Falls, ON, while the No. 98 goes northbound in the opposite direction. On the American side of the border, the No. 64 Amtrak continues southbound from Niagara Falls, NY to New York City, while the No. 63 goes northbound out of NYC back towards Western New York.
When purchasing any ticket for the Maple Leaf service, which operator you can buy the ticket from becomes complicated. For domestic journeys solely following the 97/98 or the 63/64 trains without crossing the border, you can only buy tickets from that country’s rail operator. For both one-way and round-trip international journeys, your ticket must be purchased from your starting country’s rail operator.
However, purchasing an international ticket from VIA Rail is actually the worst way for a Canadian to make the journey, and it will cause complications. While Amtrak allows for their other routes to connect to the Maple Leaf on a single itinerary, VIA Rail does not enable passengers to ticket any connecting journeys to the Maple Leaf on either side of the border.
This is not merely an issue of convenience for riders, it is actively hostile to those who need to transfer from the Maple Leaf to other inter-city train services. When your connections are ticketed separately, they do not have the same protections as a connection on a single itinerary, and the rail operator will have no responsibility or obligation to cover your financial losses if you miss your connection due to their delay.
There is a single solution, however, and it is predictably both stupid and a hassle. Since domestic tickets are available for domestic journeys along the route, passengers can simply buy the VIA Rail and Amtrak portions of the route separately from each operator.
While VIA Rail does not enable any connections to the 97/98 even on domestic tickets, Amtrak enables connections to the 63/64 without fuss, and this is the only way for Canadians traveling south or returning home to add a protected connection in New York City between the Maple Leaf and any other Amtrak service.
Even if you have no intention of transferring to another train, booking each domestic leg separately is reliably cheaper than buying the combined international ticket upfront from either VIA Rail or Amtrak, despite being the exact same journey. VIA Rail and Amtrak both effectively charge a premium for the “convenience” of the combined ticket, and yet the combined tickets are actually more hostile to passengers than if they simply booked the two legs separately.
Finally, splitting your tickets between VIA Rail and Amtrak is the only mechanism by which Canadians are able to book a ticket in the business class section of the Maple Leaf, as VIA Rail does not sell any business class tickets even for international passengers travelling the full Toronto-NYC route. While buying each domestic leg separately will only get you business class on the American segment, that section makes up the vast majority of the track length in comparison to the relatively tiny Canadian stub around Lake Ontario.
When the Amtrak agent walked through our coach to inspect every passenger’s ticket on the 63 train returning north from NYC, the agent frequently remarked that she was unable to scan tickets issued by VIA Rail, only the tickets issued by Amtrak. She was forced to return to the end of the train, consult the passenger manifest, and manually check off the names of myself and other affected passengers.
Compared to the frictionless experience of airline codesharing, VIA Rail and Amtrak seem intent on making the cross-border experience as painful as possible for both passengers and staff alike. No rail operator should need random members of the public to inform them that their rail network actually does require a functional ticketing system! I refuse to believe VIA Rail or Amtrak executives have ever ridden this service, because if they had, the ticketing system would have been fixed by now!
Before boarding your train, you’ll want to get to the station early, and to set your alarm even earlier; the Maple Leaf departs Toronto at 8:20, while the return journey from New York City departs even earlier in the morning at 7:16. Losing the cost of your fare is far from the worst concern if you miss your train; with only a single departure per day, you’ll be sticking around the city a full twenty-four hours longer than you intended.
While it may appear tempting to sleep in and arrive shortly before departure as you would with many other inter-city rail operators, the Maple Leaf sees long queues waiting to board at both terminal stations. This is because both VIA Rail and Amtrak, in their unholy contempt for humanity, have decided that seating is first-come first-serve for both economy and business class, with no option to reserve seats in advance.
Even when arriving early, it will be difficult to obtain a good seat with a window view, as the vast majority of windows aboard the train were smeared with both grime and literal bird shit. Regardless of whether you like your initial seat, at the border crossing you are forced to disembark with all your luggage, and pick an entirely new seat upon reboarding. Thus, your ability to obtain a good seat for the remaining ten hours after entering the United States depends on your ability to aggressively muscle and elbow past your rival passengers to the front of the customs line.
It’s important, however, that you remain unalarmed by the lack of reserved seating if you are traveling with a partner, or with a trio/quartet. Rest assured, Amtrak will ensure your party is able to sit together, and they will ensure it with as much unnecessary aggression and hostility as their heart desires.
Amtrak agents aboard the train will relocate solo passengers or pairs from sections of the car where the two pairs of seats directly face each other, to ensure that they are used by those larger groups; these four-seat sections should absolutely be reserved for larger groups, and none of the passengers expressed any ire at this.
What went over much more poorly with passengers, however, was when a mother and her child boarded midway along the route, and the Amtrak agent picked a random passenger to relocate from their seat to an empty seat beside another passenger. The passenger then asked why they were being selected to relocate and not any of the other solo passengers beside an empty seat.
The solo passenger’s irritation was both fair and understandable, considering the Amfleet I coach has no arm rest between the two seats, and thus you can frequently slide and bump into your seatmate. But the Amtrak agent made it evident they had no need to explain their decision-making, and declared that he was not requesting, but requiring the passenger move, or he would face consequences.
This entire conflict could have been prevented with reserved seating, where traveling pairs could book their seats together, and the four-seat group sections could be limited by the computer system so that only groups of three or four on a single itinerary are able to book them. VIA Rail and Amtrak have both already implemented the technical systems required to make this a reality; they simply have decided against doing so.
Reserved seating would have prevented the mother and child from needing an agent’s assistance to sit together. It would have kept the solo passenger from feeling unfairly and arbitrarily targeted while other passengers were not, and it would have kept Amtrak employees from having an open outlet to express their contempt for passengers, contempt they made well known across the entire width of New York State.
I found it incredibly interest, how in that same train car on the same journey on the same day, the Amtrak agents expressed zero concern for handling the two teenage boys repeatedly sprinting up and down the length of our car while screaming and bumping into passengers. They didn’t care about the passenger blasting the streaming show on their iPad at the maximum volume for the entire train car to hear, despite explicitly being against Amtrak’s rules onboard the train.
But if you wanted to sit at one of the six tables in the café car to consume the food or drink you just purchased, then you’ll find yourself blocked by those very same Amtrak agents. While four of those six tables can sit four people, and the other two accessible tables can sit two people plus a wheelchair, Amtrak employees will each sit at a separate table while spreading out assorted paperwork across the entire surface, and then tell you that you’re not allowed to sit at that table.
As a result, while the café car frequently had a long line of customers trailing through the gangway into the following car, on both instances of my round-trip Amtrak employees blocked three of the six tables from passenger use. This problem did not occur while VIA Rail operated the café car on the Canadian segment, but solely occurred with Amtrak employees south of the border.
When I saw one of those tables was hogged by the Amtrak agent from the previous aggressive encounter with the solo passenger, I kindly suggested that he and another Amtrak employee share a table for their paperwork, and that he place his luggage in the overhead bin and not on the empty seat beside him. Since this was the exact same advice he provided to passengers, I thought he would find the suggestion helpful. Unfortunately for him, he was decidedly unamused.
Amtrak would also repeatedly close and reopen the café car with extremely short notice, with passengers unable to rely on food and beverages actually being consistently available across the scheduled thirteen-hour ride. Considering the journey lasts through breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the lack of consistent food and beverage availability from Amtrak was awful. VIA Rail, on the other hand, started their café service shortly after departure, and only closed the car shortly before their crew swap with Amtrak in Niagara Falls.
It was clear by the time I had returned to Niagara Falls on my return trip that Amtrak employees onboard the train had absolutely zero desire to help passengers, and seized upon every opportunity to make our journey even more miserable. The only instance where I saw an Amtrak agent willingly assist any passenger was when it gave them the excuse to arbitrarily express hostility towards other passengers.
When the basic infrastructure underpinning the train is so severely lacking, as in the case of the Maple Leaf, good customer service is more important than ever to make a positive impression. Instead, Amtrak did their best to demonstrate they resent the very existence of the passengers they carry.
And yet, somehow, despite all of this, when my frustration with Amtrak was at the zenith, VIA Rail would end my journey in such cataclysmic embarrassment that Amtrak looked downright respectable in comparison.
Failure, Failure Everywhere.
While there had been heavy downpour of rain on July 10th, hitting large swaths of the Maple Leaf route across both Southern Ontario and New York State, the journey remained mostly uninterrupted by the weather, absent a short thirty-minute stoppage for a tornado warning that ultimately passed without any incident.
The Genesis locomotive and the Amfleet cars had no difficulties traversing the entirety of the Amtrak route towards Niagara Falls, NY, until the Amtrak crew disembarked without a word and handed us over to VIA Rail crew to operate us into the CBSA customs facility in Niagara Falls, ON.
What neither Amtrak nor VIA Rail crew had informed us, but many of us realized independently once checking our email inboxes, was that around 16:30 in the afternoon, VIA Rail had sent a single email solely titled “Train Advisory! Train 98”. In this email, sent while the train was approaching Buffalo, VIA Rail informed passengers that they were cancelling the entire Canadian leg of the return journey due to the rain supposedly making the tracks unsafe.
I remain befuddled as to why Amtrak felt completely safe operating the Genesis locomotive and the Amfleet cars for hundreds of kilometres in the heavy downpour, and yet VIA Rail felt so unsafe operating the exact same train in the exact same rainstorm in the exact same region that they cancelled the entire train. There is no reality in which the train was perfectly safe to operate in Niagara Falls, NY, and then magically became hazardous to human life once crossing into Niagara Falls, ON.
Either Amtrak put passengers at risk for no reason, or VIA Rail cancelled their train for no reason. But both the CN Railway and CSX Transportation tracks are Class I Freight Railways, and thus should be meeting the same safety standards for maintenance and operations. The implication that CN was unsafe to operate on, but CSX was safe to operate on, quite frankly has disturbing implications for whether CN Railway tracks are safe for any VIA Rail service to utilize.
It should be plainly evident that Amtrak and VIA Rail cannot both be wrong at the same time about whether the train was safe to operate, and I think passengers deserve a valid explanation as to which of these two possibilities was the truth. Either VIA Rail made the wrong call and cancelled an entire train for no reason, or they know something about the safety of the CN tracks that we don’t, and that should terrify us.
While I and a few other passengers noticed the train cancellation by passively checking our emails, many passengers only found out their return to Toronto was cancelled the moment they exited customs and attempted to reboard the train. The Amtrak crew didn’t think it was their problem to tell us, and the VIA Rail crew also didn’t think it was their problem to tell us, until finally the VIA Rail service director realized he probably needed to address an entire train full of angry passengers confused as to why their train wasn’t departing.
The email that VIA Rail sent indicated that passengers may “cancel” their ticket for a full refund, however such a policy is clearly intended for normal VIA Rail services; the dysfunctional ticketing system already considered the 98 to be in progress, and did not provide any opportunity to cancel the ticket online, despite the train literally being cancelled before the scheduled “departure” in Niagara Falls.
As an alternative to their suggested impossibility, VIA Rail claimed that replacement coach buses would operate from Niagara Falls, and that those passengers who chose to use the replacement bus rather than cancelling their ticket would receive a 50% credit for the fare paid on Train No. 98, redeemable within twelve months. How this would be calculated for international passengers, where the 97/98 and 63/64 are sold for a single price, was not made clear at all.
Despite having more than an hour’s notice that they were cancelling the train, there was not a single replacement bus in sight by the time we arrived at the station. The VIA Rail service director claimed that the first bus would show up at 18:00, which it did not. He then claimed that another bus would show up at 18:30, which it also did not.
He then made clear that passengers headed to St. Catharines and Grimsby would be placed on the bus before any passengers headed to Toronto, meaning that not only was there no knowledge of when the first replacement bus would arrive, but that I likely would not even be permitted to board it.
It was at this point, abandoned on the side of the tracks beside the most decrepit motel in Niagara Region, I began to question whether VIA Rail would actually carry a single passenger back home. Deciding whether to make another way home and attempt to claim the full refund, I looked at the GO Transit schedule on my phone, and saw a GO Bus that could easily take me home. I looked at the time for the bus, and I saw that it would be departing within a single minute, and that the next one would not arrive for an extended period of time. So without hesitation, I made my choice.
I sprinted for the GO Bus as fast as my legs could carry me, faster than I’ve ever been able to run before, and somehow while carrying twenty pounds of luggage in my backpack. I tapped my fare card on the reader, plopped myself down in the first open seat I could find, and smiled knowing that at least one transit agency was reliable enough to save me when things went wrong.
And as the GO Bus puttered out of Niagara Falls, leaving behind the train tracks, and the bus terminal, and scores of stranded and frustrated passengers in the cold rain, I looked back through the window of the bus as long as I could, until they disappeared into the horizon. I never saw a single replacement bus from VIA Rail arrive.
Metrolinx, Thank You Very Much.
Thanks to Metrolinx, while I arrived at Union Station several hours later than the Maple Leaf was scheduled, GO Transit ensured I safely returned home at all. While VIA Rail was fully satisfied to abandon an entire train of people along the side of the tracks in the pouring rain, Metrolinx stepped up and provided a reliable and convenient transit option that I was able to instinctively trust.
VIA Rail is happy to let their infrastructure languish further and further, meanwhile Metrolinx has significantly invested in improving both their infrastructure as well as their customer service. When a train station is served by both GO Trains as well as VIA Rail trains, I am extremely likely to prefer taking GO. Metrolinx has earned the trust of transit riders through concrete action, while VIA Rail has abused the trust of riders to a greater extent with every passing year.
There are no excuses for how the Maple Leaf is operated by VIA Rail or Amtrak, and there are no excuses for how poorly CN and CSX maintain their tracks in their respective countries. There are no excuses for the political authorities in Canada or the United States, who are proud to hold press conferences extolling their support for passenger rail, while never appearing to take the train themselves.
These politicians are akin to the most unsavoury kind of chef, believing themselves too good to eat their own cooking, yet more than happy to foist their congealed slop upon the mass public. Canadian MPs currently receive a certain number of transit credits per year which cover the cost of flights, but they also receive an unlimited pass to ride VIA Rail literally as much as they desire.
I believe if we strip MPs of their taxpayer-funded flights, and force them to use their VIA Rail passes to commute from their home ridings, we will see a massive political shift to improve VIA Rail across Canada. Some politicians may argue that it would take several days to go between their home riding and Ottawa by train, and my response is that this will become a powerful incentive for those politicians to support high-speed rail!
Riding the Maple Leaf round-trip from Toronto to New York City was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience, because the gods themselves will damn me for my hubris if I ever willingly step through that horseshit again. Just over a year ago, I tripped on the sidewalk and landed face-first on the concrete, shattering two of my front teeth. This terrible anecdote about my teeth may seem like a complete non-sequitur, but please allow me to quickly explain the relevance:
Between my experience riding the Maple Leaf, and my experience literally shattering my teeth on the pavement, I can now definitively confirm that riding the Maple Leaf was indisputably more painful than slamming my teeth against the ground and feeling them shatter in my mouth. I would gladly choose to shatter more teeth, rather than ride the Maple Leaf again as it currently exists. Perhaps, when my great-grandchildren are eventually born, the Maple Leaf will hopefully be less painful than shattering my teeth. I won’t keep my hopes up.
To the minimal credit of VIA Rail, after calling their support line several days later, I was promptly assured that I would receive a refund for the return leg of my journey. I actually did not want or expect the entirety of the NYC-Toronto ticket to be refunded; I only wanted a refund on the Niagara Falls-Toronto segment as VIA Rail promised, but it appears that VIA Rail did not have any ability in their system to split apart the American and Canadian legs for a partial refund. I assume that Amtrak will not be pleased with VIA Rail refunding the American leg of the journey solely because of VIA Rail’s dysfunctional ticketing system.
What truly frustrates me, however, is that I never should have needed to call VIA Rail’s support number in the first place! VIA Rail has a full passenger manifest of every ticket holder who crossed the border into Canada on the July 10th Maple Leaf, and they claimed they would be scanning boarding passes to see which passengers used the replacement bus.
As such, they should have been able to automatically see which passengers took the replacement bus, and which did not complete their ticketed journey, and then provide refunds and credits according to their own established rules. It should not be up to each individual passenger to call the support line and individually pursue their refunds; VIA Rail has a responsibility to give everyone their money back for the cancelled train.
I am actively wondering as I type this column, how many passengers went completely uncompensated for their cancelled train, because they did not think to call the support number like I did. I question whether the notice my situation received from members of the Canadian media affected the treatment I received; did other passengers without the ability to make a public fuss receive the same refund I did?
This was a genuinely awful experience, where every involved party managed to disappoint me to progressively larger extents. If I can provide you with any single piece of advice, any lesson gleaned from this miserable voyage, it would be this:
The Maple Leaf train is an unmitigated clusterfuck, and if you truly love your friends and family, you will never allow them to step foot onboard.
Absolutely shameful customer service by Amtrak on board staff, and VIA's as well. In my experience, VIA's customer service in hundreds of trips has been great. However, I have read of numerous problems with Amtrak's on board staff, on various routes. Basically the conductor and crew seem to operate however they wish in many cases, and as described here, do not care much to do much for the passenger experience.
I'd also read on good authority at the NY State Dept of Homeland Security really dislikes having to shuttle out their officers from Buffalo Airport for this Maple Leaf train, which may well explain their horrendous behaviour for train passengers. Having travelled on Amtrak's train between Vancouver and Seattle, and experiencing no delays in crossing the boarder in either direction, I can attest that a seamless process is very much possible. Nonetheless, Amtrak's staff's behaviour reinforces my decision not to travel to the US anymore.
Quick thing re: the CN tracks -- i'm fairly sure that they may have been unsafe since to CN, these tracks are a minor branchline that they don't care about, and therefore would be not maintained as well and potentially unsafe in a rainstorm. That's definitely the case on the Adirondack's route to Montreal
I also feel like the systemic issues of North American passenger rail are not enough to say to never ride the Maple Leaf, but I have personally never ridden it (though I do intend to soon), so I can't say.