[reaperexpress]

I would go back a bit further to where both lines offered morning, midday, and afternoon connectivity to lines east and (for Kitchener) through connections to Windsor. Since 1990, that connectivity has been whittled down. That's not ridership declining, it's VIA being backed away from the market.

Sure.

Here's May 1988 Toronto-Kitchener-London timetable, which shows connections from Montreal and Ottawa and to Windsor and Sarnia. There were only 4 trains per day on weekdays, 5 on Saturday and 3 on Sunday. That's a far cry from the hourly-or-better service we have between Toronto and Kitchener today. Looking back to 1978, there have never been more than 5 trains per day to Kitchener. That's less than half of the 12 direct trains we have today and one fifth of the 21 total departures (including the train+bus combo).

Fair enough, GO has stepped into the gap for Toronto service on those routes, but at the expense of connectivity to the intercity network.

The 1988 timetable lists 5 connections from Montreal and 3 from Ottawa.

I happen to be travelling from Ottawa to Guelph in a few weeks, and I discovered that there are 7 to 8 convenient connections per day for that city pair. To Kitchener there's one more than that, since the connection from Train 643 works as well.

I will be taking train 53 and trying my luck with the 19-minute transfer to the 16:52 GO train. That's a much tigher transfer than Via could ever schedule, because if I miss the GO train, it's only a 30-minute wait until the next one and there's no ticket to rebook. The travel times on GO express trains are only a few minutes longer than historical Via trains, so the total travel times are about the same today as the fastest historical times.

Where connectivity has dropped is west of Kitchener, and especially westward from London. There's only one very slow Via train per day, which is no longer timed for convenient onward connections. This is why I've been saying that the Province should give Metrolinx a mandate to provide Regional Express services across southern Ontario, not just regional services within the Greater Golden Horseshoe. In this case I envision purchasing and upgrading the London-Kitchener corridor to extend hourly GO service to London and cut travel times to about 1h10 from Guelph to London. Rerouting the Sarnia service via Brantford would cut an hour off that trip, which will boost ridership and help build the case to restore some additional trips from Sania to London.

Toronto-Niagara
Here's the May 1988 timetable for Toronto-Niagara. It's still only 3 trains per day, which is one fewer than the current service. Travel times were about 15 minutes faster than today.