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Following the 10-hour delay to VIA Rail train 622 from Montreal to Quebec City of August 31, 2024, caused by an equipment failure on the train, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transportation, Infrastructure, and Communities (TRAN) has launched an investigation. The committee called both VIA Rail and Minister of Transport to testify.
Transport Action welcomes this investigation, because this is the fourth time in the last couple of years that a Quebec-Windsor corridor train has been stranded for a considerable time, and the second instance of a new Venture train failing and then being difficult for the crew to move. The Minister of Transport, Pablo Rodriguez, has also demanded that VIA Rail engage a third party to investigate the incident.
We hope that these investigations, rather than seeking someone to blame or political points to score, will be conducted using a systems approach to finding and addressing root causes. What component failed and why? Are there similarities with the failure near Montreal on October 6, 2023, or issues experienced with Amtrak’s Venture fleet?
What caused VIA Rail’s initial triage attempts to fail, extending the delay? Was VIA Rail able to make use of the advanced telemetry and diagnostics on the new equipment? How many of the operational and customer service lessons learned from previous occasions were successfully applied on this occasion, and what else should now be learned?
It is also vital that the federal government rather than “holding VIA to account” seeks to ensure that VIA Rail has the resources necessary to implement the findings of these investigations and increase service resilience.
VIA Rail promptly apologised and offered all the passengers on 622 a full refund in addition to a 100% credit for future travel, but the indirect costs of reputational damage, disruption to the host railway, and inconvenience to passengers, are far larger.
In the Quebec-Windsor corridor, it should be reasonably feasible to respond to most incidents within two hours, but this would require additional relief crews and equipment to be kept on standby, plus additional staff in operations to coordinate incident response. Additional resources for maintenance are also likely to be recommended by the investigations.
Proactive status updates on the main VIA Rail social media channels had largely disappeared several years ago, with responses to customer queries being directed to phone the call centre, but since the incident a new VIA Rail Alerts channel has been created on Twitter for network status updates.
TRAN Committee meeting agendas and recordings can be found at: https://www.ourcommons.ca/Committees/en/TRAN/Meetings
Note: The train that failed was composed of locomotive 2200, cars 2609, 2709, 2809, 2909 and cab car 2309. 2200 is the SCV-42 fleet leader, which was delivered in 2021 and used for extensive acceptance testing. It would then have been retrofitted with any modifications identified in that process before entering service. The 2×09 consist was delivered without a locomotive and there was a mishap during delivery in which the consist was moved while the brakes were left on, requiring a delay for repairs at Sarnia.