The Corridor between Quebec City and Windsor, Ontario, handles the bulk of the patronage of VIA Rail Canada. A Corridor train is shown leaving Toronto Union Station for Windsor.
Second of two articles.
If you think that Amtrak has a skeletal network, you should examine the route structure for VIA Rail Canada.
Canada is a vast nation with large expanses of isolated territories. The central and western regions have a number of urban areas that have experienced explosive growth due to the development of the oil fields.
But rail service in much of Canada is skimpy at best with not a single daily train operating west of Windsor, Ontario.
VIA doesn’t serve some of the larger cities, Calgary for example, and those that it does serve are not necessarily linked by intercity passenger rail.
Much of VIA’s services are focused on a handful of corridors in a region of Ontario and Quebec stretching from Quebec City to Windsor, which is opposite of Detroit.
Although a series of routes, VIA refers to the Quebec City-Windsor region as the Corridor. These routes serve Toronto (5.5 million) and Montreal (3.8 million), Canada’s largest and second largest cities.
How much the Corridor mean to VIA? In 2013, VIA carried 3.6 million passengers in the Corridor. That represented a 1 percent increase in patronage over the previous year and accounted for the lion’s share of VIA’s 4 million total annual passengers.
Like any CEO, VIA head Yves Desjardins-Siciliano pays a lot of attention to numbers. When he looks at VIA ridership numbers he concludes that only the Corridor has enough traffic potential to justify passenger-only trackage.
As much as Desjardins-Siciliano would like to operate his trains on rails that are not owned or run by the freight railroads, that isn’t going to happen in most of Canada and it won’t happen in the Corridor anytime soon. But he is working on it.
He is also working on attracting more money to develop VIA services and making the travelling public more aware of the services that VIA offers now.
Desjardins-Siciliano faces the challenge of convincing government and private investors that Canadians will patronize fast, safe and punctual passenger trains.
“It’s up to Canadians; the best way to express their interest is to get on a train,” he said in an interview with Railway Age magazine. “If the passenger commitment is there, then we have a case for investors.”
The VIA CEO acknowledges that his company hasn’t done enough to raise awareness of its services.
“People are not really aware of the frequency of our trains in the Corridor, the comfort of the ride, nor the continuous Wi-Fi,” he said. “We have to do a better job of promotion. I am cautiously optimistic that we are succeeding because the numbers are indeed improving.”
Another number that the VIA chief wants to see improve is on-time performance. VIA corridor trains now operate at an 80 percent on-time rate, but Desjardins-Siciliano said that needs to improve.
“The issue is not that our run times are longer than they should be; the problem is that it makes our run times unreliable,” he said. “People can live with any reasonable trip time because they can plan around it. If you can’t make the schedule 95 percent of the time, then you have a big problem getting their trust.”
Yet another number also must give the VIA CEO reason to believe that there is tremendous growth to be had in the Corridor.
Approximately 83 percent of all trips in the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto triangle are made by private automobile.
Don’t look for Desjardins-Siciliano to push for high speed service, though. “One hundred miles per hour is quite fast enough, thank you,” he said. “VIA is a train service and it should economically serve intermediate points as well as the large urban centers. If you take out the small towns and price yourself like an airline, you might as well be an airline.”
If VIA is to grow its Quebec City-Windsor Corridor, it will need to address equipment needs. The passenger carrier still operates with a lot of streamliner era equipment, even in the Corridor.
The 33-year-old aluminium LRC equipment is undergoing its last feasible refurbishment and it is no longer economically wise to rebuild the streamliner era cars.
VIA also operates a fleet of Renaissance cars that were originally built for Chunnel service between London and Paris. Primarily assigned to the Montreal-Halifax Ocean, these cars will be maintained for the foreseeable future.
“The priority right now is replacement of the Corridor fleet,” Desjardins-Siciliano said. “That’s why we need to know what kind of network we will have: Will it be electrified? What speeds will it run? Those are key considerations before we invite tenders. And maybe, depending on the type of business we are building, those cars could be sourced with private investment because the money is there.
“Every major sovereign wealth fund and pension pool is looking for major infrastructure projects to invest in. There are two key conditions for infrastructure investors: One is the size of the project: bigger is better; the other is that it has to be in an economically strong and geopolitically stable environment. We are lucky enough to be in Canada, which in my opinion has the best-managed economy. There should be a way to tie these things together.”
When Desjardins-Siciliano looks ahead he sees another trend that bodes well for VIA.
“In 20 years, a quarter of the Canadian population will be over 65,” he said. “Many of them will start to be mobility challenged and will need to use shared transportation.”
Also favoring VIA is that many young adults equate freedom with connectivity. They would rather not drive.
Canada also takes in 250,000 immigrants per year and the vast majority of them come from cultures that are friendly to passenger rail.
Desjardins-Siciliano sees those three groups as creating a “huge pool of demand for passenger rail services—provided our trains leave and arrive when we say they will.”
VIA is working at creating links between its major stations and the airports in those cities.
VIA’s Corridor trains serve Montreal’s international airport with a free shuttle between the rail station and the air terminal.
Plans are in the works to link the new Union-Pearson Express trains between Toronto’s airport and the city’s downtown where VIA serves the 100-year old Union Station.
Toronto’s Beaux Arts depot is being given makeover that VIA officials say will enhance the overall travel experience of passengers.
Although much of VIA’s future growth can be expected to occur in the Corridor, Desjardins-Siciliano isn’t overlooking the rest of Canada.
The Ocean, Canadian, Skeena and the unnamed Winnipeg-Churchill service to Hudson Bay will continue to run and continue to ply routes used by freight trains.
VIA will eye restoration of trains to the Prairie and Atlantic provinces. Alberta’s major urban centers of Calgary and Edmonton are unconnected by passenger train while the provincial capitals of Regina, Sask., and Winnipeg, Manitoba, also lack connecting passenger train service.
That must seem to be a glaring omission because much of the population growth in Canada in recent years has been in the West.
Four of Canada’s five fastest growing urban areas are in the West with the Alberta cities of Calgary (1.2 million) and Edmonton (1.1 million) leading the growth.
Calgary is Canada’s fourth largest urban area while Vancouver (2.3 million) ranks third.
Regional service in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia has been downgraded in recent years and Desjardins-Siciliano suggests that the Maritime Provinces deserve better. But better service might hinge on more financial supports from the provinces.
VIA has sought to seize upon the public’s support environmentally friendly societies.
The rail carrier has splashed the slogan “A Green Choice” on the flanks of its teal, gray and gold locomotives.
“In a world of carbon concerns, rail is the most efficient mode of transportation, particularly if it is electrified,” Desjardins-Siciliano said. “We are sitting here in Quebec, which has surplus hydroelectric power. So for both economic and environmental reasons, rail is the right way to go. The real test is whether there is an appetite out there in the private sector, with the support of the federal government, to appreciate the market opportunity.”
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