MONTREAL – In response to growing competition from airplanes, buses, automobiles and walking, Via Rail unveiled its new mediocre-speed train for the Toronto-Montreal corridor on Monday.
“The customers have spoken and we have listened,” proclaimed Marc Laliberté, Via Rail’s CEO during a press conference in Montreal’s train station while wiping the new train’s coal dust off his face. “People won’t put up with trains that are slower than the highway speed limit, so our new train will go 101km/hour, one full kilometer faster than a car.”
Laliberté boasted that this would reduce travel by a whopping five minutes.
“Unfortunately, the technology to build 600km of high speed rail just hasn’t been invented yet,” bemoaned Elizabeth Marks, the project’s lead engineer. “We looked at trains in France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and Japan but none of these places have high speed rail, so we’re stuck with coal.”
“Travelling to Montreal from Toronto on business used to take up a large part of my day,” said RBC executive Jeremy Travers. “Now it will only take five minutes less than a large part of my day – if the train’s on time.”
