City to city chauffeur service from London, Ontario: door to door across Southwestern Ontario and beyond, at a fixed rate

London sits in the middle of everything, two hours from most of it

The Forest City is the hub of Southwestern Ontario in a way that the map makes obvious and the transport options do not. Toronto is 195 km east, Windsor 190 km west, Sarnia 100 km along the 402, Kitchener-Waterloo an hour, Stratford fifty minutes, Niagara a little over two hours, Detroit across the river from Windsor. VIA Rail runs the Toronto and Windsor corridors well for a solo traveller with no bags who is going from station to station; the bus does the same more slowly; everything else - the meeting in an office park in Mississauga, the plant in Cambridge, the hospital in Hamilton, the matinee in Stratford, the wedding in Niagara-on-the-Lake, the Lions game at Ford Field - starts and ends at a door, not a platform, and that is what a city-to-city chauffeur is for. One booking, one vehicle, one fixed price from your door to theirs, and the same back.

Planning figures before HST, one way, from downtown London; the reservation engine prices the exact addresses and date. A return the same day with the chauffeur waiting is usually cheaper by the hour.

How a city-to-city run is priced

The engine prices the two addresses and the vehicle; the number includes the chauffeur, fuel, the return of the empty car, the 407 where the chauffeur uses it and gratuity. Two things change it: a second stop, priced as a stop, and a same-day return. For a return, the honest comparison is between two one-way fares and an hourly booking with the chauffeur waiting - for Stratford, Kitchener, Sarnia, Woodstock and the Niagara wineries the hourly is usually cheaper; for Toronto, where the wait may be all day, two one-ways or one-way plus a Toronto hourly is often better. The desk will tell you which in thirty seconds. Cross-border runs to Detroit and Buffalo carry the border wait in the rate, as explained on the cross-border page.

Toronto and the GTA

The commonest run after Pearson: downtown Toronto for the head office, the bank tower, the hospital on University Avenue, the Rogers Centre, Scotiabank Arena or Union Station; Mississauga for the office parks near the airport; Hamilton for McMaster, the hospitals and the harbour. Two and a quarter hours off-peak to the Financial District, more into the Gardiner at 8 a.m., and a chauffeur who knows which of the 427, the 403 and the QEW is moving. The return the same evening is booked for a time you can move by text; a Toronto day with stops is an hourly booking with a Toronto-based rate.

Waterloo Region, Guelph and Brantford

Kitchener-Waterloo is seventy minutes for the tech park, the universities, the Aud and Centre In The Square; Cambridge for the Toyota plant and Langdon Hall; Guelph for the university and the Sleeman Centre; Brantford for Laurier, the casino and the 403 east. These are the runs where the hourly return makes most sense: a Kitchener meeting at 10 and back for lunch is four hours by the hour, cheaper than two one-ways, with the chauffeur outside.

West: Sarnia, Chatham-Kent, Windsor and the border

Sarnia is an hour straight down the 402 for Bluewater Health, the Chemical Valley plants, Canatara beach and the Point Edward casino; Chatham-Kent seventy-five minutes on the 401; Windsor two hours to the end of the highway for Caesars, the university, the hospital and the bridges. From Windsor, Detroit is across the river: Ford Field, Comerica Park, Little Caesars Arena, the DIA, Huntington Place and DTW, with the border handled on the cross-border service.

Near: Woodstock, Stratford, St. Thomas, Grand Bend

The short runs are the ones a London black car does most: Woodstock and Ingersoll for the Toyota and CAMI plants; Stratford for the Festival, dinner and the hotel; St. Thomas for the hospital and the new industrial lands, Port Stanley for the beach and the theatre; Grand Bend, Bayfield and Goderich for the Lake Huron summer. A sedan to Stratford for the matinee is a planning figure of $130-160 one way, or an afternoon by the hour with the chauffeur waiting through the show.

Niagara and the wine country

Niagara Falls is two hours twenty for Fallsview, the Parks attractions, the Shaw Festival and a wedding at a Niagara-on-the-Lake winery, and a day in the wine country is the classic hourly booking from London; the wine tour page covers the Niagara bench, Pelee Island and Essex County, and London's own breweries. Buffalo's airport is forty minutes beyond the Rainbow Bridge on the cross-border service.

Across Canada on the same account

Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Halifax: for a chauffeur at the other end of a flight, the same engine, the same classes and the same standard apply through directory-vetted operators contracted through the LimousineWorldwide.Directory, and the airports hub lists each with its terminal page. Ottawa and Montreal by road - six and seven hours from London - are quoted in writing as multi-hour programmes with a driver change where the law requires it.

What a chauffeur does on a long run that a driver does not

Plans the route against Ontario 511 before leaving and re-plans it if the 401 closes at Ingersoll; keeps the cabin at the temperature you set; stops when you ask and does not when you do not; carries water and a charging cable; knows the loading bay at your destination and where to wait for the return; drives at the speed limit in the right lane with a full tank and winter tires; and says nothing about who was in the car yesterday. The chauffeur standard is published; the fleet is late-model and detailed before every run.

Three city-to-city bookings, as they actually run

A consultant, Monday. A business sedan from Masonville at 6:30 a.m. to a client tower on Bay Street for 9, and a return booked for 5 p.m. that moves to 6:15 by text. Two fixed rates; the 401 in both directions belonged to the chauffeur.

A family, Saturday. An executive SUV from Old North to a wedding at a Niagara-on-the-Lake winery, waiting through the reception on an hourly booking, home at 1 a.m. Twelve hours, one rate, nobody counted drinks.

A patient, Wednesday. A luxury sedan from Sarnia to the cancer centre at Victoria Hospital in London for a 10 a.m. appointment, waiting, and home to Sarnia by 3 - booked by a daughter in Toronto on a household account.

The roads: 401, 402, 403, 7/8 and what closes when

Highway 401 from London to Toronto is six lanes to Woodstock and wider from Kitchener; its weak point is the stretch between London and Ingersoll where lake-effect snow off Lake Huron closes it a few times each winter, and the chauffeur's alternative is Highway 7/8 through Stratford. Highway 402 to Sarnia runs across open farmland and closes in the same squalls. Highway 403 from Woodstock to Hamilton is the route to Brantford, McMaster and the QEW for Niagara. Highway 7/8 to Kitchener and Highway 4 to Grand Bend are two-lane country roads that a chauffeur drives at the limit and not above. Ontario 511 publishes closures and cameras; the Ministry of Transportation publishes the construction season, which on the 401 near Cambridge and Milton is most of it.

Trains, buses and when they are the better choice

VIA Rail's London station on York Street serves the Toronto corridor several times a day and Windsor and Sarnia less often; for one person going from downtown London to Union Station with a laptop bag it is comfortable, fast and cheaper than a chauffeur, and we say so. The GO network reaches Kitchener and Hamilton from Toronto but not London. The intercity bus is slow and infrequent. Where the train wins is station to station; where the chauffeur wins is door to door, with bags, with a group, at 5 a.m., on a Sunday, to an address that is not a station, or when the return is the same day and the wait is part of the plan.

Business, medical and family reasons for the run

Companies send people between London and Toronto every working day; the corporate account makes the run a line item with a fixed rate. Patients travel from Sarnia, Chatham, Goderich and Stratford to London's hospitals and from London to Toronto's, with a chauffeur who waits and a household account that a family member in another city can manage. Families move students between London and home in Kitchener, Windsor or Mississauga at the start and end of every term with more luggage than a train allows. Each of these is a fixed rate before it is confirmed, and the destination pages describe the drive for each.

Michigan and New York

Beyond Windsor and Niagara the road continues: Detroit, Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Auburn Hills across the Ambassador Bridge or the Gordie Howe bridge; Buffalo, Niagara Falls NY and the Bills' stadium in Orchard Park across the Peace, Rainbow or Queenston-Lewiston bridges. The cross-border page describes the documents, the bridge queues and how the border wait sits in the fixed rate; CBSA publishes the return-side wait times the chauffeur watches.

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