![]() Similarly, there hasn't been much outcry to restore the northern Quebec routes cut in 1981. I have to suspect that most of the branch lines in Manitoba which weren't daily in 1978 would have survived under *any* circumstances. Train service thrives on volume (lots of passengers), and some of these lines just didn't have the population for it. I really wonder how some of those ultra-remote lines had survived until 1981. Not only did much of it come back, other parts were taken over by GO Transit.Īlso, when I look at the pre-1981 network. When funds are short for any government, passenger rail is an easy target. Do other Democrat politicians feel similarly? Don't be too sure. Like most people familiar with Amtrak, I'm optimistic that "Amtrak Joe" will do what he can for its future. There's a little wishful thinking in connecting leftist politics funding passenger rail and right-wing politics with its demise. As a VIA supporter and historian, I find both equally distasteful and the lesson learned is that public funding for passenger rail does not advance nor decline solely on the political leanings of the government in power. So to paraphrase, the company was already 40% smaller when attacked by the Mulroney government as you described, making the proportional cut "less of the whole", if that makes sense. In 1981, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's government endorsed Minister of Transport Jean-Luc Pépin's plan which slash Via's budget, leading to a 40 percent reduction in the company's operations. While the Mulroney cuts were bad, the ones 10 years prior under the current PM's daddy were worse in actual quantity. More recent history tends to overwrite what happened before. We were lucky to have Clinton as President when the sabotage attempt against Amtrak came it got reversed as a result. So there were concerted sabotage attempts against the passenger rail systems in Canada, the US, and Mexico all at around the same time. Zedillo was President of Mexico in 1995 his sabotage of the Mexican system also stuck. VIA couldn't, because Mulroney had sabotaged VIA. I consider the Mulroney cuts to be sabotage.Īmtrak took advantage of the rising demand despite attacks from some sectors of government and the moronic "Mercer Consulting cuts" of 1996 which were reversed within a year. It's particularly notable that these attacks were done during the time when passenger rail demand was starting a long, and sustained, upturn rail demand rose continuously, and quickly, during the 1990s. In North America, only Mexico's destruction of its entire passenger train network under President Zedillo is worse. It really looks like an attempt to kill the system entirely. And Ontario and Quebec were really only preserved by provincial takeover of a lot of the services. They specifically ripped the heart out of the system most of the previous, and most of the subsequent, cuts had been to weaker branch lines or related to damaged track or bridges (with some exceptions) - while the Mulroney axe wrecked all service to any province other than Ontario and Quebec. It seems clear that the 1990 cuts, under right-winger Brian Mulroney, were the most brutal, hostile anti-passenger cuts in Canada's history.
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