Slow Go On VIA Upgrades

Dale Smith, www.blacklocks.ca
Transport Canada will spend three years scrutinizing a VIA Rail plan to upgrade to 110 mph commuter service on its busiest routes, say budget documents. Cabinet remains silent on a recommendation that passenger subsidies be cut on a promise of better service.

The finance department yesterday said it would provide $3.3 million “over three years to Transport Canada to support an in-depth assessment of VIA Rail’s high-frequency rail proposal.” The venture to be cost-shared with private investors would see faster service on dedicated tracks on the Crown railway’s busiest routes linking Québec City, Montréal, Ottawa, Toronto and Windsor, Ont.

“VIA Rail faces significant capital investment requests going forward,” the budget said. New funding for the railway includes $34 million for maintenance, and $7.7 million on technical studies of capital improvements.

The budget follows testimony from the railway’s CEO that trains now run later than ever on freight right-of-ways owned by Canadian National Railways and Canadian Pacific Rail. “Much is left to be done,” CEO Yves Desjardin-Siciliano earlier told the Commons transport committee.

“Time to destination and on-time performance is deteriorating every day,” said Desjardin-Siciliano; “The time to destination is longer than it’s ever been. The on-time performance has deteriorated from 87 percent five years ago to 64 percent last year; this is just not attractive to passengers.”

“We have been busy refocusing our business to what counts most, which is our passengers,” he told MPs; “The mission of VIA is really to take passengers out of their cars, specifically in the high density Toronto-Ottawa-Montréal corridor, and put them into trains.”

A transport department statutory review of the Canada Transportation Act has urged that regulators cut subsidies outside Québec and Ontario to focus on urban routes that currently serve 90 percent of passengers. “Changes are needed to enable passenger rail service in Canada to develop on a more predictable and sustainable basis,” said the review Pathways: Connecting Canada’s Transportation System To The World.

“A dedicated track would be good for Canada,” said Pathways, written by former industry minister David Emerson. “It would allow for additional passenger rail frequencies and more freight rail capacity in the long term, and would help to lower highway congestion in Ontario and Québec.”

Annual deficits at the railway have run to more than $300 million a year.