How to Market Your Startup in the USA

I thought I was being clever. Christmas travel is unpleasant even at the best of times. With a massive storm hurting airports across North America, I opted to go by train from Toronto to Kingston on December 23rd. The plan was for me to arrive a few days early to visit my folks, followed by my partner on Christmas Day. Then we would take the train to Ottawa and Montreal for a pleasant holiday. Needless to say, things didn't go as planned.All things considered, I was fortunate. My train experienced significant delays after Cobourg. We eventually became stalled sporadically for nearly two hours before arriving in Belleville and things began to move more smoothly. I arrived in Kingston about three hours late. It was a far cry from the 14-hour-plus delays that passengers faced a few trains later. Fortunately, my partner's flight was only held on the tarmac for an hour.People are understandably furious. If I had caught a later train, I'm sure I would have been too. However, I'm not sure what Via might have done differently.I take the train rather often. I made the foolish decision to drive it from Ottawa to Edmonton years ago. And I used to frequently ride the train (or bus) from Sudbury to Toronto. It gives you a better understanding of how large the country is and how tough it is to transport people by land. You can travel a long distance on the train without seeing anything other than woods and rocks.

The Windsor to Quebec City corridor is a little different

While more than a third of Canada's population lives along that corridor, it is still a large area. And, while you might be close to one place or the other most of the time, this is not always true.Furthermore, most people that travel the Windsor-Quebec corridor do not go that far. More individuals do very short journeys like mine than complete the entire route. Even so, there are stops. In most circumstances, there is no reason to anticipate lengthy delays.Given how brief most parts are, most people do not order lunches. They are normal fare for business class, yet even in the business cabin, supplies run out. Trains aren't designed to feed everyone. The kitchens are insufficiently large, and they will not simply allow hundreds of meals to deteriorate on each segment.You need to know all of this to understand how difficult it was for Via to deal with exceptionally extended delays. There were several infuriating accounts about the payment system failing, forcing individuals to buy meals in cash. Even if that wasn't the case, they very definitely didn't have enough food for everyone on what was intended to be a short two-hour trip. So, even if the crew opted to smash the glass and distribute food, they would most likely have done so arbitrarily. I could be mistaken, but restricting with cash might have been the least bad option.

For those comparing this to air travel

planes are not prepared for 14-hour delays either. They'd ran out of petrol long before then. A couple hours of delays and you'd be dead. So having enough food to go around isn't a top priority there.One can also wonder why crews did not work with management to arrange for food delivery to the trains. This might have been easier said than done. Management would have been overburdened dealing with many stranded trains on the Windsor-Quebec corridor, much alone any additional concerns. The call centers were congested for almost 48 hours. The situation was chaotic. It's possible that middle management just failed to make the correct decisions. It's also likely that they were just overwhelmed, and communication routes broke down. Of course, it's likely they weren't receiving the necessary information from CN, who controls the rails. We don't know all the specifics yet, but it's easy to see how this could have gone wrong without implying malice or terrible incompetenceRemember that these trains did not stop at a station or in the center of a city. And the weather wasn't ideal. Whiteout conditions and wind gusts of 100 to 120 kilometers exacerbate an already tough logistics situation. Ever tried to get an Uber in Toronto during a blizzard? Imagine that outside a town of a few thousand people at night during a devastating storm. Are eateries open at that time and in those conditions during a holiday weekend? It's not always easy to find a train in the middle of the wilderness.

It's also important considering the train personnel themselves

They aren't the highest-paid people in the world. While they have some decision-making authority, they are not part of management. I suppose they might have used their credit cards and located a restaurant to deliver food (provided the train was close to a road and had cell phone service). But that is a lot to anticipate.For all they knew, it could have been simply another twenty minutes. Or 40. Or 60. When do you start to panic? You don't want to be the man who makes a hurried call shortly before the train restarts. If you work on the Via train, you will not be paid for this.And for those who argue that they should have let passengers walk off the train, consider this: do you want to be the person who lets Granny freeze in the woods? People trapped on a train may overestimate the benefits of being outside. You probably do not want to explain that to your supervisor.You may also wonder if Via should have been better prepared for a calamity. Perhaps they should have filled the overhead bins with extra water and snacks. Maybe. However, when things are going well, people are less likely to go into full survivalist gear.