CN crossing delays put dent in VIA Rail ridership for first quarter of 2025

VIA Rail’s quarterly report for the first three months of 2025 shows that on time performance plummeted from 72% the year before to just 30%, largely due to speed restrictions imposed by CN on the new Venture trains in the corridor.

While many passengers understand that Canada’s national passenger railway in not the master of its own destiny when operating on freight-owned tracks, reliability is vital in any public transport system and the additional delays of 40-45 minutes imposed by CN are deeply harmful. In a recent speech to TRACCS Rail Day in Toronto, VIA Rail CEO Mario Péloquin apologized for the impact of these disruptions and thanked passengers for their patience.

Ridership, which had been growing consistently since the end of the pandemic, therefore posted a decline of 3%.

Transport Action continues to call upon Transport Canada to swiftly resolve the grade crossing warning time dispute, ensuring an objective approach to ensure the safety of the railway and of road users at crossings, including requiring CN to configure its equipment to reliably detect the 16-axle Venture trains that will be used by Ontario Northland from next year.

We understand that business travel in the corridor has been hit hardest, and winning these passengers back to rail travel once the issue is resolved could be costly. Meanwhile, the cost in travel credits and points given to people whose train is more than an hour late is also adding up rapidly.

However, there was also some good news in the period, with the operating cost per available seat mile dropping to 51.7 cents, down 8.2%, cost recovery across the network increasing by 11.5%, and per-passenger subsidy requirements were also reduced. This suggests that the Crown corporation would be able to post very strong results if it received the political support needed to restore on-time performance and ridership growth.

Deliveries of the new Venture trains will be completed this summer, and VIA Rail needs to be able to fully deploy the new fleet in order to retire older equipment.