There’s very little meat in these gym mats.

And I’m sure they already have a team filtering through that crap. Poor them.

That reminds me that the mayor of Paris decided to just quit that shit hole last year.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/27/paris-mayor-anne-hidalgo-quits-x-calling-social-media-site-a-gigantic-global-sewer

It also reminds me that lots of media sites won’t allow comments on their YouTube videos or on some of their articles because they can predict exactly the kind of BS they are going to get, and nobody from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association is saying that it’s unreasonable and limiting people’s freedom of expression.

They can still reach the mayor’s office through official channels. They can write open letters in the media. They have multiple other ways to make their shitty opinions heard. X formally known as Twitter is not fundamental to freedom of expression.

When I saw the title through my news feed, I knew exactly what it was about.

And it’s totally ridiculous and unrealistic to expect her to allow every right wing asshole on X formally known as Twitter to send her heinous messages and ad hominem. She should just quit that cesspool.

I went there for a while and every fucking post that I tried to make, or follow, within my “community” and followers, ended up being flooded by hateful messages, the worst ones being from paying accounts and highlighted by Twitter itself. I really liked the small community of people that were progressives and pro-cycling on Twitter, for Montreal. But every time they comment or if you dare reply something nice, you or them will get flooded by loads of insulting, hateful, shitty replies. I gave up. It’s untenable.

If you spend just a few minutes through her posts and their replies, you can see exactly why some of them are being blocked. The people criticizing her are unrealistic. They are not receiving personal threats and insults as “messages from their constituents”.

Again, I think she should just quit the cesspool that is X formally known as Twitter. There is nothing to gain there.

Yeah, I can understand as I have been car free for over 20 years. At least this route does have a baggage car allowing you to do this. It would be impossible in the Corridor as they don’t take baggage anymore.

With VIA you can bring a bike and lots of checked baggage with you between Toronto and Vancouver, because they have a baggage car and serve smaller communities that need it. But this is not possible between Windsor and Quebec City.

I can’t even bring a bike with me from Montreal to Drummondville, even if their new trains have bike racks. And they can’t say when it’s gonna be possible.

I also sometimes have no choice but to use VIA Rail, and that’s why I’m so critical of them.

Good luck. Bring snacks and water with you, just in case.

They are pretty rare. However, he doesn’t seem that much aware.

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.

AFAIK flying across the country is cheaper than taking a train, priority over freight or not. A flight from Vancouver to Toronto take less than 5 hours, there are daily departures, and is around $150 depending on the transporter. A train from Vancouver to Toronto is $685, takes days, and only has two departures a week. And if you plan a month in advance, it’s “only” $514.

From my point of view, nobody really wants to cross the country on a train, except those doing it for the trip itself. To me, what is lacking is, as he stated, intercity services. Going from one city to another, without a car, is a horrible experience in Canada right now. I’m not even talking about rural places, like he dares. Just cities. Even if we give priority to VIA’s trains, they are still going to require planning your trip weeks in advance to get anything other than exorbitant prices. They will still only have a few departures a day, or a week.

It’s a very good first step to prioritize passenger trains, but it’s going to take much more than that!

The country, especially the central and western parts, was populated by the railways. When looking at old railway maps, it’s just fascinating to see how every little town and village was connected by a rail line.

It’s understandable that through the years the network will shrink and consolidate, but passenger trains have not been consolidated, they’ve been butchered. Freight is king. Even old abandoned railways can’t be converted to bike paths because freight companies, while not using the line, will also not relinquish it. The government gives freight companies like CN and CP(KC) everything they want, and even lowers safety standards and regulations so those companies can make even more profit. Yet, VIA Rail and their passengers have been reduced and cut to pathetic levels.

I doubt that any minister have to take a train on a regular basis or they would be painfully aware of how bad it is. Just the airline model is making me fume a little bit every time that I board a VIA train. VIA (and Amtrak) prefers to make passengers form a long line in the station and insists on scanning every ticket before even being allowed on the platform, then checks tickets AGAIN once the train is moving. I wish they would do like in Europe; allow passengers to board like a metro, and just validate tickets once in the train.

It’s all sad and disappointing that we can’t have ‘normal’ intercity services. Even coaches are bad. The message from our leaders, whether it’s provincial (in my case), or federal, is “get a car, loser”. But get an EV! You know, for the environment,

Uh, VIA Rail is already kind of nationalized?! If you’re talking about the rail network, one can only dream! But those are billion dollar companies so I doubt any minister would dare to do that.

Aside from nationalizing the network though, we could also force freight companies to let passenger trains go before cargo and merchandise.

And thus, nothing will change.

As someone that has been living without a car for more than 20 years, I’m tempted to buy one. I’m so tired of shitty intercity services in this country. The minister is outraged now but was he also outraged when this happened last year? Or the year before?

I was in Europe for the two previous weeks and was ‘stressed’ when I didn’t have a ticket booked for the next day, but it didn’t matter at all. There are plenty of trains and if you miss one, just take the next one. Yet, while being there, I had to plan a trip from Montreal to Drummondville the weekend I got back, for my nephew’s birthday. I checked for tickets with VIA Rail FIVE days before and they were already $60 for the economy class. Guess I had to plan this three weeks in advance, because the five trains a day between Montreal and Quebec City are already “full”.

As for the passengers being stranded, the article mentions it already happened, VIA was supposed to have a plan in case of breakdown, and we can see how it went.

So I took a coach from Montreal to Drummondville. They have a whopping three departures a day.

The investigation will not change the fact that we have to plan an intercity trip WEEKS in advance otherwise it’s going to cost an arm and a leg. It will not make VIA more on time. It will not make them take bikes on the corridor. It will not move them away from their damn airline model.

I don’t like to drive, I don’t like cars in general, but I’m thinking about it. Great job from our leaders. I’m sure others that could also live without a car ended up getting one because we suck so badly at this.

Without mentioning any political party, I can point out one thing that is clearly a problem and will prevent our country from going forward; the constitution.

Want to make electoral reforms? Let’s open the constitution and see if every provinces agrees.

Want to change how anything works in the country, let’s open the constitution and see if all the provinces agree.

Every time we tried to fix that, the country nearly imploded. It’s a ticking bomb that we just ignore. We sweep that constitutional impasse under the rug every election, and ‘everything is fine’.

Knowing the CAQ and how they are literally cutting funding for public transit inside cities, hell will freeze over if they do anything about trains here.

“Get a car, looser” is pretty much their message.

Again? It also happened two years ago with passengers stuck on a train for 12 hours.

I hate VIA Rail so much, yet sometimes I have no choice but to use them, as I made the stupid choice of not having a car.

I always prepare for the worse with them. Bring snacks and water because they can’t even do that when trains are running “normally”. For example if you have not eaten before taking a VIA Rail train and count on their services, they will probably be late with the food cart and pass 3 minutes before your stop.

And don’t forget to buy your ticket 3 weeks in advance (or more) because god forbid you think of going in another city “only” a few days before. Being last minute for them is apparently about one week before taking the train.

I wanted to make Montreal to Drummondville saturday but I thought about it tuesday and it was already “too late”. So instead of the normal exorbitant price of $35 that it normally costs if you reserve 3 weeks in advance, it’s $60.

They also don’t take bikes on the corridor and they can’t say if they will eventually.

Employees will also threaten to kick you out of the train in the middle of nowhere if they want to have authority on you. Or they won’t let you out when they have an issue. You’re basically at their mercy.

And unfortunately buses are not exactly better. Intercity travel in this country sucks soooo much if you don’t have a car.

It’s so bad that in summer I prefer to cycle the whole 130 km to go visit my family instead of taking a VIA Rail train, or an Orléans Express bus.

I’m in Europe right now and I’m so envious of their trains. I don’t even have to plan ahead a few weeks before! This morning I booked a ticket from Aachen to Liège about 30 minutes before the departure and it went so well. And there was another train an hour after this one. Or a high speed one too. Aaah, we suck so bad at this.

I don’t want to say it gets worse, so I tell them to enjoy being young and have experiences while they can, because it gets more difficult.

Like, if you do stupid things and break a bone, better do it while it will heal much faster. If you want to get good at gymnastics or anything that requires being physically fit, better do it while being young.

I’m starting my 40ies and can only see how my knees are starting to hurt and my body aches in ways I didn’t know it could.

My grandmother is 95 and wants to die. She was active for her whole life but now that she is losing sight, hearing, and is mostly bound to her apartment, she’s had enough. And I can understand.

You certainly can stay young and joyful in your head, but at some point your body is not going to help.

Easy. He just has to open the constitution to make those reforms. Nothing bad ever happens when we try to change the constitution. All the provinces always agree and there is definitely no lingering constitutional issues that we haven’t been able to resolve in more than four decades.

He shouldn’t have made that promise. He should have been aware that electoral reforms would need to change the constitution and that every time we try do that, the country nearly implodes. So we just keep status quo until the constitutional crisis will be big enough that we can’t ignore it anymore. I don’t know what he was thinking. Maybe he thought we would all forget about it.

Try explaining that to a Conservative. In fact, even very progressive politicians need to understand this.

I voted for Projet Montreal and Valérie Plante but unfortunately it seems like her answer to “crime is raising” is to dump even more money on the police.