Maple Leaf discussion

Bob Dylan said:

Toronto is Canada's New York.( with High Prices)

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Although for Americans, the favorable exchange rate helps to make prices a bit more affordable.

We were on the ML last week—#63(3)—in business class. The Amtrak Cafe attendant was welcoming and helpful. Unlimited soft beverages. When the general announcement was made that the cafe car would be shutting down for the border crossing he poked his head into BC and said we could still get items. BC was full for most of the trip.

The VIA attendant and the VIA train crew were rather less friendly.

PRO TIP: If you’re leaving from NYP and crossing into Canada (as we were) do not wait in the general boarding queue. There is a separate both set up adjacent to the boarding gate where they check passports and tag luggage. As others have discussed, it is unclear why they bother since they didnt make similar checks for TWO passengers boarding north of NYP.

Canadian border check is inconvenient if not weird. Everyone detrains with luggage (no one that we saw had their luggage inspected). The passengers enter the “customs hall” in the west side of the station through its east door, wait in line to speak to an agent at the counter (ours was in a foul mood) then exit through west door. If continuing on (almost everyone was) you are told to walk around the south side of the building and enter the waiting room in the east half of the building. There it is a SRO wait (the room has far fewer seats then there were passengers) until you are permitted to reboard. On our trip everyone cleared and was in the waiting room at least 20 minutes before being permitted to reboard. If anyone was actually checking anything to clear the train it wasn’t apparent from where we were standing. BC is release to board through the east (right door) followed by passengers for destinations short of TWO. Coach passengers for TWO are released through the west door thereafter. It took about an hour, roughly half of which was spent standing around waiting to be released to reboard.

Adirondack Trailways bus procedures in and out of Montreal is far better than Amtrak's Gate Dragons impersonating CBSA, and so is US Customs. Luggage tags and bar codes pasted on your e-ticket is so stupid. If there is anything that would make grouchy CBSA people laugh, it is that.

Bus driver glances at your passport wherever you get on along the way at the same moment as scanning your e-ticket, throw you heavy bags in the luggage loaders, and that is that.

Canadian Customs - everyone off with the luggage and carry ons. Nothing was inspected. It's all power trip.

US Customs - gets on bus to tell us specifically do not bring anything with you inside except your passport. When someone got up with their carry on, he snapped back "I just said do not bring anything with you".

In each direction, it took 25 minutes for 40 passengers. No one was hauled off for "interview" inquisitioning.

My "Pro Tip" - go to GCT if convenient, take Metro North to Yonkers or Harmon and get on there. I'd rather spend an hour there between trains than deal with Gate Dragons and kindergarten lines at Moynihan.

I have no desire to go to Toronto, but would take a bus if I did.

Wow, I went through East Germany before the wall fell to Berlin and didn't have to go through all of this.

Help me understand NYP -> TWO fares on the Maple Leaf:

My tween-age daughter and I typically take Amtrak to the start and/or back home from the end of a summer tandem bike tour. This summer that'd mean getting from New York to Toronto and, two weeks later, home from Montreal.

I've read a little about the customs inspection stop, and hauling our heavy tandem bike (folded into a carry bag) and panniers off and back onto the train doesn't sound fun... but doable.

But the fare is surprising, for two reasons:

(a) It's higher than expected, at $296 for the two of us (coach flexible). It's more than 2.5 times our $113 cost of Montreal -> New York, which also crosses the border. I'm curious why it's this expensive, but that's secondary.

(b) Even more surprising, splitting the same Maple Leaf trip up as NYP -> NFL (Niagara Falls, NY) plus NFL -> TWO comes out $90 cheaper ($96 + 110 = 206). Why this discrepancy? Is there a reason I shouldn't book it this way?

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Also looks like we could take the train to Niagara Falls, ON for the same $96 as the NY side, and then catch a bus into Toronto for a bit cheaper. The additional hassle of getting our bike + luggage from the train station to the bus station isn't worth it if it saves us only ~$35 vs. the two-ticket Amtrak trip (NYP -> NFL, NFL -> TWO), but saving $125 vs. NYP -> TWO would be a different story.

Taking a bus all the way from NYC to Toronto is the cheapest option of all, but that's a lot more hours on a bus than I'm up for.

Charlie Pendejo said:

Help me understand NYP -> TWO fares on the Maple Leaf:

My tween-age daughter and I typically take Amtrak to the start and/or back home from the end of a summer tandem bike tour. This summer that'd mean getting from New York to Toronto and, two weeks later, home from Montreal.

I've read a little about the customs inspection stop, and hauling our heavy tandem bike (folded into a carry bag) and panniers off and back onto the train doesn't sound fun... but doable.

But the fare is surprising, for two reasons:

(a) It's higher than expected, at $296 for the two of us (coach flexible). It's more than 2.5 times our $113 cost of Montreal -> New York, which also crosses the border. I'm curious why it's this expensive, but that's secondary.

(b) Even more surprising, splitting the same Maple Leaf trip up as NYP -> NFL (Niagara Falls, NY) plus NFL -> TWO comes out $90 cheaper ($96 + 110 = 206). Why this discrepancy? Is there a reason I shouldn't book it this way?

- -

Also looks like we could take the train to Niagara Falls, ON for the same $96 as the NY side, and then catch a bus into Toronto for a bit cheaper. The additional hassle of getting our bike + luggage from the train station to the bus station isn't worth it if it saves us only ~$35 vs. the two-ticket Amtrak trip (NYP -> NFL, NFL -> TWO), but saving $125 vs. NYP -> TWO would be a different story.

Taking a bus all the way from NYC to Toronto is the cheapest option of all, but that's a lot more hours on a bus than I'm up for.

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The Bus Station in Niagara Falls,ON is across the street from the VIA Station, maybe 100 yards away.

Your best bet is to take Option 1 and Split your ticket from NYP- NFL/NFL-TWO Falls,NY.

Supply and demand rules on Amtrak so you might take a look @ other days to see how much the Fsres vary on the different options.

Charlie Pendejo said:

Help me understand NYP -> TWO fares on the Maple Leaf:

My tween-age daughter and I typically take Amtrak to the start and/or back home from the end of a summer tandem bike tour. This summer that'd mean getting from New York to Toronto and, two weeks later, home from Montreal.

I've read a little about the customs inspection stop, and hauling our heavy tandem bike (folded into a carry bag) and panniers off and back onto the train doesn't sound fun... but doable.

But the fare is surprising, for two reasons:

(a) It's higher than expected, at $296 for the two of us (coach flexible). It's more than 2.5 times our $113 cost of Montreal -> New York, which also crosses the border. I'm curious why it's this expensive, but that's secondary.

(b) Even more surprising, splitting the same Maple Leaf trip up as NYP -> NFL (Niagara Falls, NY) plus NFL -> TWO comes out $90 cheaper ($96 + 110 = 206). Why this discrepancy? Is there a reason I shouldn't book it this way?

- -

Also looks like we could take the train to Niagara Falls, ON for the same $96 as the NY side, and then catch a bus into Toronto for a bit cheaper. The additional hassle of getting our bike + luggage from the train station to the bus station isn't worth it if it saves us only ~$35 vs. the two-ticket Amtrak trip (NYP -> NFL, NFL -> TWO), but saving $125 vs. NYP -> TWO would be a different story.

Taking a bus all the way from NYC to Toronto is the cheapest option of all, but that's a lot more hours on a bus than I'm up for.

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1. They are two different routes and the Maple Leaf is significantly longer.
2. The Adirondack has been unreliable, it was cancelled all last summer and the summer before due to track issues north of the border. Ridership may be weak as a result of that because the train didn't run for years during COVID and after and when it was finally reinstated it got cancelled a couple months later for those track issues. The Maple Leaf is part of Empire Service and is the first train of the day that goes west of Albany and so has and always had pretty solid ridership to New York points.
3. Amtrak fares are yield managed and are dynamic. That general ridership difference may mean the Leaf is generally kicked into higher buckets. That fare is roughly consistent with my TWO-NYP fare in November, without the senior discount.
4. There probably isn't any reason not to split into two segments NYP-NFL and NFL-TWO if it's cheaper, though you probably want to see the conductor after Albany so as to eliminate any possibility you might have to detrain and reboard at NFL (you are going to have to do it at NFS for Canadian Customs and Immigration no matter what). You might want to run NYP-TWO again to do another fare check. It is always divided into two segments NYP-CBN on Amtrak 63 and CBN-TWO on Amtrak Thruway 7098 (VIA 98) since it is a VIA operation NFS-TWO. See what the fares are NYP-CBN and CBN-TWO on one ticket versus NYP-NFL and NFL-TWO on two. CBN is a phantom station that represents the border.
5. With dynamic yield management pricing, it can be difficult to suss out the reason the algorithms come up with any given fare for a carrier practicing it, Amtrak, VIA or airline.

The fare is pretty much the fare. With yield management, I guess there is always the chance of a bucket drop between now and summer, though I am a lot more familiar with the patterns of sleeper yield management. I really couldn't guess at the chance of a bucket drop on a coach fare.

I would ticket from NYP to Niagara Falls-ONTARIO (NFS), and from there to Toronto on VIA's website and not bother with "CBN", which is not a station.

It is an Amtrak-run train over the border to the Ontario station.

As of March 3, train 64 will sit in Rensselaer for 90 minutes and run combined once again with train 68 from Montreal.

Amtrak25 said:

I would ticket from NYP to Niagara Falls-ONTARIO (NFS), and from there to Toronto on VIA's website and not bother with "CBN", which is not a station.

It is an Amtrak-run train over the border to the Ontario station.

As of March 3, train 64 will sit in Rensselaer for 90 minutes and run combined once again with train 68 from Montreal.

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I was not suggesting ticketing to CBN, which would not be accepted as a destination and impossible to do, CBN being just a placeholder system artifact. I was suggesting re-doing a dummy NYP-TWO reservation and specifically checking the fare split between the NYP-CBN (Amtrak) and CBN-TWO ("Thruway"/VIA) segments in order to determine where the large difference between the through fare and the NYP-NFL, NFL-TWO split ticket was. It would provide the data for a true "apples to apples" comparison between the two options.

I do agree that if NYP-NFS and NFS-TWO yielded a similar price difference as splitting in NFL, it would be a better option. It wouldn't require any conversation with the ALB-NFS conductor about staying onboard at NFL and they could just re-enter the NFS station through the south door to await reboarding along with the through-ticketed passengers.

I did find in past years (pre-pandemic) traveling from Albany to Toronto that it was much cheaper to buy an Amtrak ticket to Niagara Falls, ON, and then a VIA ticket from there to Toronto than to buy a through Amtrak ticket to Toronto. Can't figure why this should be so, but the savings was considerable.

Amtrak25 said:

I would ticket from NYP to Niagara Falls-ONTARIO (NFS), and from there to Toronto on VIA's website

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Yeah, I later stumbled onto this as the best option. It also puts the total price at around $135 for the two of us (vs. $206 for split tix on Amtrak, or $296 for a single ticket NYP -> TWO), which happens to fall in line pretty well with the $113 we'll pay to get home from Montreal on the Adirondack.

Whether or not this is the actual mechanism, "there's a hefty surcharge to ticket on either Amtrak or Via for a segment the other operates" satisfies my mind.

As of March 3, train 64 will sit in Rensselaer for 90 minutes and run combined once again with train 68 from Montreal.

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Interesting! I had noticed the 64 was scheduled to arrive surprisingly late in NYP given its early start, and clearly this is why. Happily we'll be on that 68 from Montreal instead, departing nearly three hours later (11:10 vs 8:20). I had already decided Toronto -> Montreal was the better direction for our ride, and it was nice this detail works out in our favor.