A second inquiry into Ottawa’s problematic light rail system, this time by Canada’s Transportation Safety Board, has warned that the city’s new Confederation Line is a safety risk and should be substantially re-engineered.
Transport Canada confirmed Oct. 31 that state corporation VIA Rail Canada has been shunted aside from its own project to construct and operate an electrified “High Frequency Rail” (HFR) service along the Corridor linking Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto—the only profitable route VIA currently covers.
While the overall transportation sector struggles to find a new normal following the extreme disruption of pandemic lockdowns, customer levels have strongly rebounded to 85% of pre-pandemic levels for North American private
Cynthia Garneau on May 20 gave up VIA Rail Canada leadership with two years remaining in her nominal tenure.
Public opposition to the notion of a railway on stilts slicing through downtown Montreal has killed a key portion of the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) commuter network to be constructed, and directly operated for profit by the province’s public pension fund.
Flush with cash, as its vast tar sands oil field suddenly lurched from environmental pariah to savior of western civilization, the Alberta government is looking more favorably upon a scheme to build a new, independent passenger railway, connecting Calgary International Airport (YYC) to the Rocky Mountain’s global tourist destination, Banff National Park.
Canada’s public passenger railway VIA Rail has been pulled back from pandemic-induced oblivion by a federal government now framing the scheme for a dedicated, electrified right-of-way linking Quebec City and Toronto as a certainty for the first time since the project was first revealed in 2015.
Ukrainian National Railways appealed to the International Red Cross March 3 to demand that invading Russia guarantee the safety of evacuation trains for civilians trapped in cities under siege. Most urgent is the city of Volnovakha in the Russian-occupied Donbass region at the eastern edge of the country.
Battered by COVID-19 lockdowns, fatigued rolling stock, fierce competition for station slots and the ubiquitous adoption of alternatives to physical travel, Canada’s publicly owned intercity passenger system is mired in an existential crisis over which it has little or no control. That is the depressing message in VIA Rail’s 2021-2025 Corporate Plan, dated Nov. 5 2021 but never officially announced by way of news release. It resides in an obscure page of the company’s website.
If there are no atheists in foxholes, then there should now be no climate skeptics left among Canadian railroaders, as they move rapidly on what they do best: rebuild to keep the trains running.
