Passengers at the Union Station concourse on May 22 at the station’s Great Hall in Toronto. In 2019, five million people rode a Via train, before the pandemic halted most travel in 2020, when ridership fell to 1.1 million.Abhijit Alka Anil /The Globe and Mail
The head of Via Rail is optimistic the number of people boarding its passenger trains this year will top prepandemic figures for the first time.
The ease of rail travel and shifting preferences are among the factors driving up Via Rail’s ridership this year, says Mario Péloquin, chief executive officer of Canada’s national passenger rail service.
In 2019, five million people rode a Via train, before the pandemic halted most travel in 2020, when ridership fell to 1.1 million.
“The recovery postpandemic is working very well for us,” said Mr. Péloquin, 59.
He also credits the increase to Canada’s large – and growing – population of immigrants who are accustomed to using trains to get around, as well as environmental concerns and cuts in regional bus service. “The customers we [used to] have returned [and] we’re attracting new customers,” he said in an interview.
Via employs more than 3,600 people and operates a 71-locomotive fleet with 352 cars. The railway rang up $408-million in passenger revenue in 2023, exceeding 2019′s $388-million, but ran an operating loss of $308-million. Government subsidies in 2023 increased to $773-million.
Mr. Péloquin, a fourth-generation railroader with four decades of experience in freight and passenger rail systems, is set to mark the end of his first year at the controls of the Crown corporation.
Before Via, he was the chief operating officer of New York’s transit system, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and managed traffic control for Canadian National Railway Co. CNR-T, in addition to work at rail suppliers and builders AtkinsRéalis and Aecon Group ARE-T.
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Via’s annual passenger numbers in the 1980s hovered at more than six million, until then-prime minister Brian Mulroney slashed routes by 55 per cent in a bid to reduce subsidies. The number of passengers plunged to 3.5 million in 1990 from 6.5 million in 1989.
Mr. Péloquin is pushing ahead with Via’s plan to reduce its reliance on taxpayers while boosting ridership.
Thirty-two complete trainsets are being added for the Quebec City-Windsor corridor, a stretch that accounts for 96 per cent of Via’s trips and 82 per cent of its revenue. The government recently promised new funding to replace the 1950s-made trains in Via’s trans-Canada fleet. This would allow Via to rebuild some of its network, returning to communities that lost service. And the dream of faster electric trains on an exclusive rail network in the Toronto-Ottawa-Quebec City corridor persists, with private-sector bids to build and operate the trains due this summer.
Still, Mr. Péloquin cautions that Via is not meant to be a money-maker. “Like every other passenger railroad or transit system, it’s a service,” he says. “It’s not there to generate a profit because the price elasticity is just not there.” The railway serves far-flung communities that rely on it for connections, medical care and food, he says, adding that such a system that tries to recover all its costs from passengers will price itself out of the market.
Via, he says, is more than the corridor service that comprises almost all its business.
“We have to think bigger than that,” Mr. Péloquin said. “We serve the corridor of course, but the importance of Via Rail is outside of the corridor. If you think of the route that goes from Winnipeg to Churchill, Man., that is in some sections an essential service. There’s no roads and now there’s no winter roads this year. We deliver groceries, bring people to the dentist and so on. They have no other way to go in and out of their small community along the rail line. And it’s the same thing in Northern Quebec and other regions of the country. So you can’t charge $1,000 to go see the dentist on the train, right? So it’s not a profit centre. It’s a service.”