In July I took for the first time in 7 years the train in Canada.  Flying can be very inconvenient and if you fly a lot, you probably want to find other options whenever possible.  To do this I try to travel by train rather than by plane, and here are some reasons why, using the trip between Montreal and Toronto with VIA Rail (www.viarail.ca) as an example.

In this case I found a great option, taking the train on a round-trip from Montreal to Toronto.  The trip takes around 5 hours by train.  It seems much longer compared to the 1 to 1.5 hour flight, but in reality it is not.  Factor in the time it takes to get from to the airport or from the airport in either city, having to be at the airport an hour or more ahead of the flight plus the good chance your plane will be late for departure and/or arrival, and the time works out to be pretty much equivalent.  With the train you are Downtown in either the case of Montreal or Toronto when you leave or arrive, meaning you simply have to hop in the local transportation (Toronto Transit Commission http://www.stm.info/ or the Société de transport de Montréal www.stm.info) to get where you need to go.  This saves you the cost of a taxi or in the case of Montreal the $15 bus between the city and the airport.

Not only that, but the train costs significantly less than the plane in this case.  You can travel this trip for as little as $150 on a round-trip if you book in advance and take advantage of the discounted regular fares.  In my case I booked late and had to take a discounted first class VIA 1 ticket for one half of the trip, but even then the fare was quite affordable at $230 and probably saved $150 on flying.

Booking online was easy, though I did have to redeem my ticket at a kiosk at the train station prior to departure.  This could be done at a regular ticket booth or a computerized kiosk, where I simply had to put in my credit card I had booked the tickets with to have them printed.  (There are other options than using your credit card to get these tickets.)  Since I did not have easy access to a printer for the ticket to be printed for presentation to a ticket agent, the computerized kiosk was highly convenient.

Traveling by train was a real pleasure.  First of all there was not the stress and heavy security of the airport check-in.  It was so nice to not have to take off my shoes, my belt, empty my pockets, and still somehow set off an alarm of the metal detector.  The train stations were both very easy to access and the trains were on-time.  They were not overly crowded like many airports.

When traveling first class on the Montreal to Toronto leg of the journey, I was able to wait in the lounge prior to departure.  As it was an 06:45 morning train though, the lounge opened only about 15 minutes prior to departure, which didn’t help me much as I had arrived earlier and was forced to just wander around the station.  In fact, the lounge was nothing special, just a little nicer to sit-in and a newspaper to read.  The only advantage was being able to board ahead of the long-line of passengers waiting in the regular classes to board.  Even then, with assigned seats, this was not a major advantage.

The advantage of the first class seating was the meal you could order ahead of time, and according to your dietary restriction.  In my case I ordered a vegetarian meal and the meal was okay.  There was also regular coffee and tea service.  There was also a little more seating room over the regular class, though to be honest both are generous with VIA and in fact infinitely better than what you get on an airplane.  Even in the regular class (which VIA calls the Comfort Class) you had a food cart you could order from.  In addition to the seating space it is just nicer and easier to get up and walk around on a train than a plane, with more room.

The added plus of traveling by train are electrical outlets at the seats.  This means if you bring along you laptop it can make the trip pass so much quicker, whether you have work to get done or watch a movie.

VIA also advertises Internet access for most of its trains on the route between Quebec City and Windsor (the Quebec-Windsor corridor) which includes Montreal and Toronto.  For me this sounded great because I would be able to use my laptop and access the Internet.   This was the one BIG disappointment with the trip.

For about $10 you can purchase access for 24 hours (there are also other options to buy a pass for a month or a highly expensive pay-per-minute plan).  VIA does warn that the technology for the Internet access is not perfect and like cellular technology outages may occur or transmission speed may vary.  http://www.viarail.ca/wirelessinternet/en_index.html

For the trip in first class from Montreal to Toronto the access was not good but usable.  It’s transmission speed harkened back to the old days of dial-up Internet.  What I found myself doing was to have several webpages loading at the same time, while I also had Word documents to work on, in order to make the slow transmission speeds bearable.  Then there were still long periods when the Internet would not connect at all.

I am not sure if first class has better access to the Internet (which as written above was not good at all), but for the trip from Toronto up to Montreal in regular class it was completely unusable.  I had a number of things I wanted to get done while on the train but after 1.5 hours of trying to open just a single webpage, I gave up in complete frustration.  No one else I spoke to on my car was able to access the Internet either.  So that was a waste of $10.

(When I contacted the customer service of VIA Rail the next day I got no comment and no chance to recoup the lost cost. From my experience and what I have spoken with other people, it is best not to go waste the money on this Internet service which essentially does not work.  I would love to get feedback from others who have used it however.)

Overall, other than wasting money on an unusable Internet service, VIA Rail was a pleasurable and affordable experience which was much better than flying between Montreal and Toronto.  I would recommend this option over flying to anyone, with fairly frequent daily trains.

In fact I recommend taking the train over the plane whenever possible.  I started doing this last year (2007) when I booked online in advance in the United Kingdom for a business trip between London and Dundee, Scotland.  The round-trip only cost 56 GBP. I had researched the prices online with The Trainline http://www.thetrainline.com/ but believe I had actually done further research and ultimately booked with the National Rail Enquiries website http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/, having the ticket delivered to my door by mail.

The whole trip took around 8 hours with a change and short delay in Edinburgh.  Like the VIA Rail trip trip described above it was much more convenient with less stress, convenience of location and convenience of service.  There were also electrical outlets so I was able to keep myself busy on my laptop for good parts of the journey.  Though British trains are not terribly spacious, they are more so still than the planes.  Plus the costs of traveling to the airports, with the time lost, can run up the overall costs of your flight significantly.  Only Heathrow is connected to the expensive London Underground and traveling there costs half (or less depending on if you have an Oyster card https://oyster.tfl.gov.uk/oyster/entry.do) than the 15 GBP of traveling to the other airports.  Add in the time lost getting to the airports and the stress, and in the end even the 8 hour trip by train is not that much different than flying, with a lot less stress and less inconveniences, and probably cheaper.

My advice, whenever possible, take the train over the plane.

The added advantage is that you will reduce your carbon footprint and put less pressure on our environment.