Via Rail Canada Earth Day special

[lagatta]

I'm signed up for a Via Rail newsletter, and have just received this:

VIA Rail truly cares about the environment and firmly believes that together, we can make a difference. To help you discover the greener way to travel, VIA is offering you an e-coupon valid for a 50% discount* on the adult regular fare.

Use your environmentally-friendly e-coupon when you purchase a Comfort class (economy) ticket for one-way or round trip travel anywhere on the VIA Rail network.

How do I get my 50% e-coupon?

Enter your e-mail address below to subscribe to one of VIA Rail’s informative e-letters, packed with promotions, contests and other special offers. You’ll then receive a 50% discount e-coupon in your mailbox.

Existing members: simply enter your e-mail address below and update your profile to obtain your e-coupon.

www.viarail.ca/earth-day/en_index.html

I imagine that it is possible to unsubscribe later on, if you just want the promotion. I don't mind their newsletter, personally; they don't send it often so it doesn't cloge up my inbox.

We don't have as many rail lines as many European countries do, but the trains are pleasant - the only drawback being that they are pricier than the bus at full fare.

I don't know if there are any catches to this. By the way, anyone over 60, if I recall, can take a "companion" along free of charge, but I doubt this applies with this deal.

[Deleted]

My Chinese colleague took the train from Vancouver to Calgary or some such. I have seen all of her photos, many of which were spectacular, and I even have all of them on my office computer (since she has no idea how to download photographs and almost everything she does goes through my computer at one time or another). Since I have to return to work tomorrow after two and a half weeks off, I'll put a few of the photographs here.

(At Gare du Nord in Paris, I have been pleased to see that the Eurostar and Thalys trains to London, Brussels and Amsterdam are vaunted as being 'carbon neutral' compared to the other ways of travelling. In fact, the SNCF website gives you the carbon emission information for every trip that you book -- and they book air travel and car rentals as well. I rent cars from Europcar regularly, and their invoices also calculate my carbon emissions on each invoice for the number of kilometers I drove and the kind of car I was driving.)

[lagatta]

Yes, the ride through the Rockies is spectacular. Another ride that is very popular among visitors from East Asian countries is the autumn colours in the East - the corridor between Toronto and Québec City - actually that corridor starts at Windsor, the Canadian sister city of Detroit (though less decrepit), but many visitors just do on from Toronto, or Niagara Falls.

I'm really hoping that there will be an impetus to reopen closed lines and increase railway service, and that the US rapid-train-corridor service will become a reality - especially between Montreal and Boston - there is also lovely scenery in-between, in Northern New England and the region of Québec just north of there (L'Estrie, or Eastern Townships).

I'm pleasantly surprised that the rapid trains are carbon neutral, though obviously they are better for the environment than car or plane travel. As you know, there are many LOCAL environmental problems with TGV and co., such as the fragile Alpine envrionment between Lyon and Turin, threatened by the TGV line planned between those two cities. There are always trade-offs, even with good envrionmental intentions - I remember taking the TGV from Paris to Lyon, and then the TPV (très petite vitesse) between Lyon and Turin, though the slow train through the Alps was pretty.

[hwinpp]

I'd go for it if I had the opportunity.
I like traveling by train and use them wherever possible.

[Deleted]

[Deleted]

[bixaorellana]

*horrible sulking*

I live in a country that I first saw via rail travel & come from another country whose very growth and development is practically synonymous with the railway. Alas, no longer. Even though any travel forum is rife with hopeful queries about traveling Mexico via rail, passenger trains are now almost non-existent here. And Amtrak seems bent on proving "you can't get there from here", along with its general late-Soviet attitude towards customer service.

The glorious pictures above bring back a train trip I took when I was around five years old, from Fairbanks, Alaska to Mount McKinley. The fact that I still remember that says something about the pleasure of train travel.

[Jazz]

Once I took the train from Vancouver to Toronto.