[Aylmer]

I think that we're conflating two different types of travel. For day-trip distances (Halifax-Truro, Calgary-Edmonton, Saskatoon-Regina, roughly less than 500km), then you definitely want multiple daily frequencies because many of these hops are likely to be planned around whatever else you've got going on that day (leaving in the morning for a lunch meeting, leaving after work for an evening, etc.). Speed is also important here - an extra 30 minutes on a 2-3h trip can mean the difference between making and missing a meeting/concert/dinner, etc.

Long-distance travel is another matter though. These are trips which might require at least a long weekend to be worth it the time or expense under normal (read non-business) circumstances, no matter how you travel (Halifax-Montreal, Winnipeg-Calgary, Edmonton-Vancouver, about 1000+ km). For these types of trips, a daily departure or two is likely all you'd really want. Unlike shorter hops, these are likely proper planned trips where you'll be dedicating your day to travelling, not planning your travel around your day. Speed is also less of a factor here, especially if it's overnight; you'll have dedicated your whole day for a Winnipeg-Banff, so an hour or two faster or slower isn't really your biggest concern. Even less so if you've been sleeping through it.

To look at more extreme contrasts, I'm perfectly happy to only have one transatlantic flight per day, but I get frustrated if I have to wait more than 15 minutes for a bus to take me downtown, and anything over an hour's frequency may as well not exist at all. And I won't notice much if a direct flight is delayed 1h, but a 5-minute delay on the bus will have me fuming.

In the Corridor, there are plenty of short city pairs which demand frequency and speed above all else. And although there are definitely some of those elsewhere (St John-Moncton-Halifax, Calgary-Edmonton, Saskatoon-Regina), many of the trips in other regions fall into the long-distance category. And for those, a once or twice daily train - even a slow one - would likely fit most people's needs. If I'm doing Toronto-Winnipeg from Toronto to visit the in-laws and there's a morning and an evening departure, I would be thrilled and would likely take the train much more often on that stretch, time permitting.

But I think that daily is really the bare minimum. The problem right now is that if you want to take the train long-distance, you have to not only plan your day around travel (which you were likely to do in any case for any mode for those distances), you have to also plan your whole week according to it. The times that I have taken the train to Winnipeg - which is lovely and I recommend it - I didn't have the flexibility to, say, add an extra day because it's a long weekend, or come back a day earlier because I have something planned. My week has to be a blank slate, and then I plan it around the fact that I'm taking the train. Or I roll the dice and see whether the train departures just happen to match my agenda. I do it because I enjoy the experience, but it definitely isn't practical and I can't do it most of the time. And if the timetable is infrequent enough to turn away even a railfan, then it'll be a hard sell to the average Canadian.

Bring the Canadian and the Ocean up to daily, and I'm quite certain that a lot of people who never considered the train as a practical option will take notice.