Canada

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.

TIME FOR VIAQUEBEC

We couldn't go out

Why the hell not? Lots of via rail lines across the country have random little stops out in the bush so people can get on and off. There was no reason to not open the doors and let people walk around.

I wouldn't want to be stuck in Quebec either.

I hate how Via Rail is trying to call it "an inconvenience."

A train being 15 minutes late is an inconvenience. A train running out of the sandwich you like is an inconvenience. This was a complete lack of emergency planning and care for the passengers. The fact that a diabetic person has to be rescued off the train is appalling.

There needs to be regulations brought in to stop any transportation business from being able to literally trap people like this all because they don't want to pay to make it right.

The business will always only do what's best for them. They're becoming less and less afraid of bad PR. So we need to make them care again with regulations, fines, and even criminal charges when it reaches that threshold.

10 hours is a fucking long ass time.
There's no reason not to have called shuttles to get these people to their destination way before that.
They could have walked the rest of the way in less than that.
Utter lack of emergency response, let alone preparedness.

I'm sure they'll receive a lousy apology email from the CEO about how they care and are deeply sorry (but still won't fix their shit), and how this is an exceptional situation (but for which they have an email template).

I love trains, trains are great, but ViaRail needs to get their fucking shit together.

Why would there be no toilets?!?

It always has to be right on holidays when these breakdowns happen, doesn't it?