The State of the Dreaded "Airport Transfer" in Canada's Major Cities
// Last Friday, I flew with my wife and two sons from Montreal to Halifax. We planned to spend two nights there, before returning on The Ocean, the historic Via Rail train, which takes 22 hours to make the trip between Nova Scotia and Quebec. (I'll be writing more about this rail odyssey in an upcoming HIGH SPEED newsletter.)
By rail, it's a 1,300-kilometer trip, versus just over 800 kilometers by air. If saving time is important to you, the plane clearly has the train beat, hands down, on a trip of this distance. If quality of experience and cost is paramount, though, the train often comes out on top. That's true even in central and eastern Canada, which doesn't have nearly as dense an inter-city rail network as you'll find in Europe or Asia.
There are many hidden costs, in terms of time and money, associated with air travel. One of the most maddening is the dreaded "airport transfer."
The trip to the airport is, by far, the most dangerous part of any flight you take—particularly if you get there in a car. In all of 2024, just 244 passengers died—of 9.5 billion transported—on scheduled commercial flights around the world. In (stark) contrast, fifteen times the number killed on planes all year died every day in automobile crashes around the world, for a total of 1.35 million global road deaths. If you have the choice, getting there by transit—a train, bus, or commuter service—is always a safer option.
There are only three cities in Canada where you can ride a train-to-the-plane. In Toronto, you can take the UP Express from Union Station, by way of Bloor and Weston stations, to Pearson airport. The service, which began in 2015, takes about 25 minutes, and costs $12.35 one-way.
In Ottawa, as of this year, you can ride the O-Train from downtown to the Macdonald-Cartier airport (see the map above). Maddeningly, though, completing the trip requires two changes of train. (The same is true of getting to the airport from downtown Los Angeles.) The final leg is on a stub line from South Keys, and the trip takes a full hour, though the cost is only $4.05 one-way. The Cadillac of airport transfers in Canada is Vancouver's Skytrain-Canada Line, which will whisk you from downtown, with no change of train, across the Fraser River, in 24 minutes. The two-zone ticket price is just $4.65; if, however, you leave from the airport, they slap a $5 fee on to your Compass or credit card.
