Re- Coast-to-coast in Canad
Tom Box
In article <3o951l$l...@nntp.crl.com> Silas Warner <si...@velo.com> writes:
>> My wife & I are thinking of flying from upstate NY to Vancouver BC
>>and taking a train back through Canada. I had heard that the ride
>>is beautiful, but I also heard it can't be done anymore (discontinued).
>>Does any one have info on this? Can anyone point me to a source
>>of further info? Thanks.
>
>Your first source of info should be:
>
>http://www.via.ca/e21.html
>
>That's the VIA Rail Canada homepage, in English.
Well, the English homepage is really
e21.html is the schedule page.
I must disagree with Silas's suggestion that this should be your first
source of information. I've avoided commenting on VIA's WWW site for
three reasons:
1) I like VIA and wish them well, and it pains me to be publicly
critical of them.
2) The VIA Web site was described to me as experimental, so I was
willing to forgive some of its shortcomings. Since VIA now publishes
the URL on the cover of its timetable, this reason no longer holds.
3) Since I'm involved with another Web site that provides information
on VIA, my criticism of VIA's own site might be seen as self-serving.
But I don't profit from the use of our site; I've only worked on it
because I want to be helpful to VIA and its potential riders.
In my opinion, the VIA Web pages have been utterly botched.
Here is part of a message I sent to VIA about their pages:
-----message to VIA begins------
It seems to me it still needs a *lot* of work. I tried it out by asking it
for schedules from Halifax to other cities on the Ocean route.
It says "Sorry, we do not recognize your choice of cities," for
Truro, Springhill Jct, Sackville, Rogersville, Newcastle, Petit
Rocher, Jacquet River, Causapscal, Amqui, Sayabec, Trois-
Pistoles, La Pocatiere, Montmagny, St-Hyacinthe, and St-Lambert.
It says (incorrectly) "...may require a connecting station," for
Amherst, Charlo, Mont-Joli, Rimouski, Riviere-du-Loup and
Charny.
It says (incorrectly) "There is no train going from Halifax to
Matapedia a this period." (Note also the untranslated French
preposition "a" in this sentence.)
The only destinations it does work correctly for are Moncton,
Bathurst, Campbellton, Levis, Drummondville, and Montreal.
Now, I realize that your system may have limited capacity and
be unable to provide information for all stations. But if this
is the case, then the schedule page should warn users of this fact.
Otherwise they may be misled into thinking that you don't stop
in Truro, Springhill Jct., Sackville, etc.
It also seems to me that the choice of stations to include has
not been well thought out. In the above example, it at least
manages to recognize Charlo, though it thinks you can't get
there from Halifax. But Charlo is a tiny village that's just a
flag stop. It completely fails to recognize Newcastle -- now
renamed Miramichi, though it fails to recognize that name either --
even though it's the 4th largest city in New Brunswick. It
fails to recognize Sackville, though there's a lot of traffic here
from Mount Allison students, all of whom have Internet access
and are potential users of your Web site. It fails to recognize
Truro, though it too is a lot bigger than Charlo, and has a lot
of student traffic, to the local agricultural college and teachers'
college, and with St. FX students connecting with the bus to
Antigonish.
The system does provide schedules to Pikwitonei, Manitoba.
I suspect the number of people in Pikwitonei with Web access
is rather small, and that inclusion of Pikwitonei should be a
low priority, if your resources are limited. It recognizes a
lot of other nowheresville places on the remote routes, while
leaving out places that are much more likely to be of interest
to users.
The system gives schedules for the one train a week from Amos
to La Sarre. But it fails to recognize Senneterre, though that's
the connecting point if you want to continue to Montreal.
The system gives schedules for Toronto to Guildwood, without
warning you that VIA doesn't carry local traffic between
these stations. On the Toronto-Montreal route, it fails to
recognize Port Hope, Napanee, and Prescott -- understandable,
if your resources are limited, but I still think these towns
deserve a higher priority than Pikwitonei. It returns a blank
screen for Trenton Junction, Gananoque, and Coteau.
It works reasonably well for the larger cities on this route, but
it sorts the schedules for, say, Toronto-Kingston by train number.
I think this is a serious shortcoming. It would be much more
convenient for users if they were sorted by departure time.
There also seem to be some trains missing, with no explanation.
For example, for Toronto-Dorval, it shows only 4 trains on
Friday, April 28, none at all that Saturday and Sunday, and only
3 on Monday, May 1. Is it failing to show trains that are already
sold out? If so, you should say so, not just give users the
impression you run fewer trains than is in fact the case.
I realize that programming the system to figure out connections
is an added complication. But these connections are important.
For example, if you ask for schedules from Cobourg to Montreal,
it only mentions the one direct train, #60. But #40 + #56 or
#46 + #68, with a change of trains in Kingston, are very
practical alternatives. I've taken 46/68 from Port Hope to
Montreal many times, and there are always others making the
same connection at Kingston. An infrequent train passenger
would be unlikely to think of checking out this possibility, and
would conclude that #60 was the only way to get from
Cobourg to Montreal.
It tells you that a train leaves Toronto at 1245 and arrives in
Vancouver at 0830. But it doesn't say what day it arrives.
You know from rec.travel.usa-canada that "How long does it
take?" is a very frequently-asked question about this route.
The quality of English is poor. The pages appear to have been
written in French, then translated into English without due
consideration being given to the fact that the two languages
have different rules for capitalization and punctuation.
Thus, in the list of telephone numbers, we find "Prince-Edward island",
"Nova-Scotia", "New-Brunswick", and "Northwest territories". These
should be "Prince Edward Island", "Nova Scotia", "New Brunswick", and
"Northwest Territories". All words capitalized, no hyphens.
Also in the phone list, a New Brunswick city is given as "Saint-Jean".
This should be "Saint John". Curiosly, when the system fails to
recognize a city, it proposes both Saint John and Sherbrooke as
alternatives, though you no longer go there.
In the list of General Sales Agents, "Brasil", "Malaisia" and "New-Zealand"
are all incorrect. In English, they should be "Brazil", "Malaysia", and
"New
Zealand".
When the system is unable to identify the name of a city entered
by a user, the list of alternative it proposes is plagued by similar
spelling errors. For example: Smiths falls, Niagara falls, Parry
sound, Thicket portage, Lynn lake, Burns lake, Red lake road, all
need capitals on all words.
One of the alternatives it proposes is "Fort Coquitlam." This of
course should be Port Coquitlam. Even worse is "Brandtford".
If you type in Brantford, the system says it doesn't recognize
the name, and proposes Brandtford as an alternative.
Perhaps these spelling errors seem trivial. But they bespeak
an inattention to detail. Potential customers are unlikely to
gain a good impression of VIA if they see that you are unable
to spell the name of their home town or province correctly.
I hope these observations will help those working on your Web pages
to improve their product.
------message to VIA ends----------
I sent the above message on April 17. The only one of these
problems that has been corrected is the spelling of Brazil,
Malaysia, and New Zealand. Mark Brader has since then pointed
out to me some other problems with the VIA pages. For example,
they don't check to see if one has entered an invalid date.
In my opinion, a much better site for information on VIA is
http://www.mcs.net/~dsdawdy/Canpass/via/via.html
The timetables here are not all up to date, but they should be
made so within a few days (Chris Roberts and I, the maintainers of
these pages, have both been away recently and unable to work on
the pages.) The Toronto-Vancouver schedule is unchanged from the
winter timetable, except that the times in Saskatchewan will look
different, because that province doesn't use daylight time.
>
>To answer your question, it can be done 3 days a week. And the train
>is a real beauty. The ride goes through Edmonton to Toronto.
>(The original route through Calgary is the line that was discontinued,
>and the Montreal section of the train is a joke.
No, the Montreal section of the train is non-existent. It was
eliminated in January 1990.
>Better to ride to
>Toronto and then to Montreal on the corridors.)
Not just better, but the only way to get there.
Tom Box
tb...@mta.ca