Got a hankering to see the continent, but short on time/funds/without wheels? Travel by train is a lower-impact, relaxed, and budget-conscious way to go, especially in Canada.

Serious travelers have likely logged time on the rails, be it  sleek, high-speed European or Japanese trains, or the clapped-out versions found throughout parts of Latin America and Southeast Asia.  Here in the states, unfortunately, long-distance rail travel can be time inefficient and pricey. 

In general, however, train travel  is a greener way to go. Recent freak accidents in Spain and Quebec notwithstanding, trains are statistically much safer and less expensive than driving (when you factor in gas and depreciation), and far more efficient if you’re not in a hurry. After all, you can nap, read, or work.

Personally, I just like to zone out and  stare out the window, taking in the  scenery. Having traveled by train on four continents, I’ve experienced the good, the bad, and the seriously fetid. So it’s with good authority that I say VIA Rail Canada—the country’s national passenger rail system—rocks. Another eco-plus: Vancouver’s Pacific Central Station is just a 20-minute ride from the Vancouver National Airport on the efficient Canada Line rapid transit system.

VIA recently underwent a $22 million dollar renovation and eco-consciousness is notably a part of their promotional campaign  (Canadians are impressively on the ball when it comes to green practices and ethics). Perhaps being an enormous country with a low population, fragile ecosystem, and massive foodshed is a good thing?

The VIA website addresses environmental issues and cites statistics, such as this: “Last year, 4 million VIA rail passengers traveled more than 851 million miles (1.37 billion kilometers)? Despite all these trips, they produced only 0.03% of greenhouse gas (GHG)  related to transportation, while motorists alone have produced 13% of GHG emissions.”

This isn’t to say that you should believe everything you read, but the fact that travel by train is environmentally cleaner than plane, car, or cruise ship is nothing new. I’ve always loved taking the train, so for me, VIA’s makeover was an excuse to go to British Columbia for a week, and travel two of the province’s most famous routes.

The Canadian line runs from Vancouver to Toronto, but I chose to travel from Vancouver to Jasper (which is actually just over the border in Alberta), home of the largest national park in the Canadian Rockies. Because the Canadian travels trans-provinces, it offers both Economy (which includes a sleeping berth) and Sleeper Plus class, which includes full-service dining, and by far the sweetest room I’ve ever seen on a train.

VIA isn’t the Orient Express, so don’t expect bells and whistles, but the cushy chairs fold down into a full bed with a duvet, and there’s a private bathroom; showers are shared. There were even functional electrical outlets (are you listening, Amtrak?), but Wi-Fi capability depends upon route; in the heart of the Canadian Rockies, forget about phone and internet…which I gladly did. In fact, I was so cozy in my room, I had to force myself out and into the glass-ceiled and -sided Dome and Panorama cars (access may depend upon route and travel class).

During daylight hours, if you’re lucky, you’ll have an engineer who slows the train for photo ops of stunning visuals, like the towering Pyramid Falls, visible only from the tracks en route to Jasper.

The 20-hour overnight journey offers distinctly beautiful scenery. There are jagged peaks, meadows of wildflowers, farmland dotted with bales of hay, and usually, loads of wildlife (I seemed to be napping or peeing every time someone saw a moose, Grizzly bear, or bald eagle, but they’re out there, I promise- there were plenty of animals in Jasper). You’ll see crystalline glacial lakes, and cruise alongside the milky jade waters of the Fraser River.

In Jasper, I boarded the famed Jasper-Prince Rupert line, formerly known as “The Skeena” because it follows the dramatic river of the same name. This two-day, 720-miles run heads west, going from the Rockies to the rugged Pacific Coast. There are no sleeper cars on this route; instead, the train stops overnight in the sleepy city of Prince George (recommendation: the stylish Sandman Signature Hotel).

While the first day has attractive, pastoral scenery, the second day is money. From the jagged, glacier-swathed peaks of the Coast Mountains to the misty sandbars of the swift, wide Skeena, it’s Canadian wilderness at its best.

Prince Rupert itself is a delightfully quirky little port, and a great place to kick it for a couple of days. The highlights of the region (besides the views of the Alaskan Coastal Range, just 40 tantalizing miles away) are the stellar humpback whale watching and grizzly viewing.  I took a six-hour round-trip boat ride up the Northern Inside Passage with the excellent, family-owned Prince Rupert Adventure Tours.

We watched humpbacks “lunge-feeding” just yards away from the boat, spotted porpoises and harbour seals, and watched bald eagles snatching fish scraps out of mid-air. The highlight of  the week, however, was seeing grizzly bears in the Khutzeymateen Valley.

Although completely wild, the bears live in a protected region known as a “sanctuary,” how close to shore the boats can get to the animals, which spend summers foraging onshore for dandelions, grass, and clams, depends upon their mood. Many of the passengers on the boat were the same folks I’d spent the last two days riding the rails with. It had been a running joke amongst us  that we’d ask for a refund if we didn’t see any whales or bears on our trip. It turns out that traveling to the edge of the continent is worth every cent.

All images: VIA Rail Canada

Related on EcoSalon :

10 Things to Love About Rail Travel

7 Lessons from Canada’s Environmental Pragmatism

The post Why Travel by Train Rocks, Especially in Canada (Hint: It’s Relaxing and Green) appeared first on EcoSalon.

A seat with a view.

“Journeys are the midwives of thought,” said Alain de Botton in The Art of Travel. “Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train.” Indeed, some of our favorite travel memories are of the moments in transit: the anticipation of touching down in a new airport, the bone-rattling foreign tuk-tuk rides, the changes in landscape as you traverse a country by train. “At the end of hours of train-dreaming, we may feel we have been returned to ourselves – that is, brought back into contact with emotions and ideas of importance to us,” Botton said. Let this photo collection of scenes from planes, trains, and automobiles take you on a mental journey, and allow your thoughts to roam free.

(above) Reymert, Arizona, USA

Barcelona, Spain

London, England

Valle d’Aosta, Italy

Estrella, Arizona, USA

Malla, Spain

Baghdad, Iraq

Cebu, Philippines

Fuefuki-shi, Japan

Fiji

Arnessysla, Iceland

Bangalore, India

Mt. Fuji, Japan

Glasgow, Scotland

Punta Cana, Mexico

Naperville, Illinois, USA

Copenhagen, Denmark

Lima, Peru

Madrid, Spain

Bangkok, Thailand

Venice, Italy

Edinburgh, Scotland

Phoenix, Arizona, USA

San Francisco, California, USA

Holland

Costanero Norte, Chile

Transsiberian Railway, Russia

Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska, USA

Montevideo, Uruguay

Chicago, Illinois, USA

SEE ALSO:

40 Gorgeous Photos of Europe

40 Gorgeous Photos of North America

40 Gorgeous Photos of Latin America

40 Gorgeous Photos of Asia

40 Gorgeous Photos of Africa

25 Photos of Islands Threatened by Climate Change

View more photo collections here. 

The post 30 Photos of Life in Motion appeared first on EcoSalon.

And then there’s the environment: Getting around by Amtrak rail requires about a third fewer BTUs per mile than passenger cars, and half of what it takes to fly. Plug that draw into your handy times a million (people) times a billion (BTUs) calculator and, given the option, rail wins big for all of us – always.

And now Amtrak is getting even greener by ordering 70 new electric locomotives that will be more energy efficient than the “toasters” they’re replacing, boasting “regenerative braking systems” that automatically return electricity to the power grid. The new trains will cost $466 million and are earmarked to run in the rail system’s Northeast corridor between Washington and Boston and the Keystone Corridor between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Under the six-year contract, manufacturer Siemens will start delivering the Amtrak Cities Sprinter ACS-64 electric locomotive in 2013.  They’ll be built using “renewable energy and provide cleaner, more efficient movement of people on the most heavily traveled rail route in the country,” says the “thrilled” (almost half a billion? I bet) president of Siemens.

The regenerative braking system, says the NYT, is used in cars like the Prius. When a electric vehicle slows down, its motors function as a brake and coverts energy in an electric current. In a car “the current goes back into the battery, which has limited capacity and can only accept it relatively slowly. On the train, the energy goes back into the overhead power lines and the electric grid, which can accept all of the energy quickly.”

Here’s another good reason to be hot on the tracks, and while Amtrak’s announcement leads with “it’s the economy, traveler” – the purchase will create 250 good ol’ American jobs, primarily at a facility in Sacramento, California, but also at plants in Norwood, Ohio, and Alpharetta, Georgia – green is green. So here’s to the green economy. Ride on, baby.

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I heart trains! It’s hands down the greenest way to travel – train travel releases 10 times fewer greenhouse gases per average passenger journey than flying. Here are ten more reasons why train travel is the antidote to everything I hate about airports, flying and long car journeys.

1. Trains are faster than most short-haul flights, when you take into account the time spent getting to and from the airport and going through security.

2. Railway stations are generally in the center of town – ideal when you arrive in an unfamiliar city and need to find your way to the hotel.

3. Any security checks are less cumbersome than airport security. You don’t have to get there more than half an hour early at the most and you can pack your water – or that bottle of wine you picked up on your holiday.

4. There’s usually plenty of room on board to stretch out and you are free to get up and walk around.

5. You don’t need to keep your eyes on the road, deal with unruly passengers or share the road with pig-headed drivers. Instead you can read your book, do the crossword, call your friends, or just look out the window and watch the world go by. Sometimes there’s even free wifi on board.

6. It’s fast. While US rail network Amtrak could do with a bit of TLC, I’ve still found it a reasonable way to get from New York City to Washington DC, and from Seattle to Vancouver. In Europe, it’s a different story – the continent is crisscrossed with high-speed services. Even in the UK, where rail services are generally less reliable and fast than elsewhere in Europe, it beats the rat race on the overcrowded motorways. For example, it takes just over two hours to go from London to York by train, compared with five or six hours by car.

7. For longer journeys, there are usually sleeper services on offer for a reasonable price, so you can go to sleep and wake up in a new place. It costs a lot less money than a flat bed seat in a plane or a hotel for the night on a road trip.

8. The pricing structure is transparent, especially if you book online and can see all the options laid out before you. Tickets usually go on sale 90 days in advance (120 days in the case of the Eurostar from London to Paris or Brussels) and the earlier you book, the cheaper it is. It’s worth making sure you book a seat as well as a ticket in case the train is full.

9. It’s possible to go almost anywhere in the world if you have the time – The Man in Seat 61 shows you how.

10. The train can be is more than just a way to get from A to B and can be part of the holiday itself. The website Luxury Trains has a few appealing suggestions – how romantic and luxurious would it be to see Europe from the comfort of the gorgeous old-time Orient Express? Or if you’re hankering after the Australian outback, there’s a new service operating from Adelaide to Darwin called the Ghan and Platinum service sounds quite wonderful.

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