Urban Sky
Senior Member
The frustratingly large disconnect between the Operations and Communications departments at VIA is a big reason for why I left VIA, but I believe that Hanlon’s Razor deserves consideration when reading such statements by VIA spokespeople. In my personal experience, they usually act with the best intentions, but not the best information, let alone: any grasp of how a railroad actually operates, especially when unforeseen events happen.Just as I want advocates to point to the actual issues I expect Via's communications to do so as well. Claiming that the train was in a remote location is a lie that is presumably intended to deflect blame by making the external factors seem more significant than they actually were. Instead they should be accurately portraying the reasons they didn't send a bus, such as the reasons you described here.
Tom Box routinely documents on Groups.io how information provided by VIA often appears to be provided by people who seem overwhelmed with the subtleties and complexities of what they are talking about, as in his most recent (though possibly not the most relevant) example below:
Last Friday's Ocean detour receives some belated coverage in today's Acadie Nouvelle, a daily newspaper based in Caraquet, NB.
The story says (my translation), "Although the Newcastle section is not known for being particularly fast, the Napadogan-Pelletier route is even less so, which made for a longer trip."
It then quotes Karl Helou, identified as a VIA spokesperson, "We had to slow down considerably. We were going at minimum speeds. It ran at around 16 km/h, so it was slow and that's what caused delays."
That's not correct. As already discussed in this thread, the Napadogan - Pelletier route has higher speed limits and is shorter than the Newcastle - Mont-Joli route, so the detouring Oceans made up significant amounts of time.
#15 had been 5 h late at Moncton, for reasons unrelated to the detour, but was on time at Ste-Foy and Montreal. #14 was more than 2 h early into Moncton and, after waiting for the scheduled Moncton departure time, was on time at Halifax.
Re: Ocean detours on NTR route
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