This has been my frustration in Ontario trying to use VIA for family trips. Once you have two adults and a couple kids, the train is significantly more expensive than just driving, and only faster than the absolute worst case traffic conditions.
It's even worse for long-haul. I have family along the Canadian route (Toronto -> Vancouver), and taking the overnight sleeper train out there is about 4x the cost of flying.
Yeah long haul on Amtrak also has this annoying feature where connecting trains are often 1 day apart because the connecting train left an hour before the arriving train gets there. And forget about the cost. I’m about to fly to the west coast on frontier for $75/RT... go price that on Amtrak.. I’m guessing $400-$600 ... and easily 4-5 days of travel. We’ve also looked into NY to Orlando because you can bring your car... you might as well buy a car down there! I get the romance of rail travel - I’ve done Chicago to Minneapolis and LA to Santa Barbara.. it’s beautiful. But wildly impractical.
Well and in some ways the branding for it even leans into that, with promotions more akin to what you'd expect from a cruise line than from a transportation company.
I mean, maybe that's just the obvious path given what they're working with in terms of cost structure, but it's still annoying.
It's even worse for long-haul. I have family along the Canadian route (Toronto -> Vancouver), and taking the overnight sleeper train out there is about 4x the cost of flying.