VIA Rail Struggling with Fleet Availability

One daily roundtrip between Ottawa and Toronto and some weekend departures have been cut from VIA Rail’s schedule at least until at least March 2025 as the company struggles with fleet availability. Caught between the need to retire its legacy corridor fleet, including life-expired LRC cars, and availability issues with the new Siemens Venture fleet, proactively changing the timetable to avoid unscheduled cancellations and is a wise precaution, albeit a regrettable one, after some last-minute cancellations toward the end of January.

The services currently suspended are:

This is combination of suspensions is particularly inconvenient for passengers from west of Toronto, with 42 having been the first connection for morning train 70 from Windsor since the retiming of services to fit Metrolinx demands broke the connection between trains 70 and 40. It also eliminates some of the few trains that call at Napanee, Trenton Junction and Napanee.

Additionally, LRC sets have reappeared on some Quebec-Montreal-Ottawa services to replace Venture assignments.  

One the 32 new Siemens Venture sets ordered, 26 have now been delivered, but in January up to 11 sets appear to have been sidelined simultaneously by a variety of technical issues. With temperatures dropping sharply this winter, Transport Action understands that these issues include windshield glass cracks appearing on some trains parked outside at night, with overnight stabling outside becoming more frequent with more of the trains entering service on more routes.

Transport Action reached out to Siemens Mobility for comment, and understands Siemens engineers are working with VIA Rail to diagnose and resolve the underlying issues. The arrival of warmer weather should also buy some time to address cold and snow related issues before next winter.

Fleet availability issues further are compounded by the ongoing problems with on-time performance over CN and Metrolinx infrastructure, including the grade crossing dispute, which mean that in order to avoid cascading delays VIA Rail is not currently able to schedule equipment to perform three trips per day. Addressing these track access and regulatory challenges continues to be a key issue for Transport Action’s advocacy.  

This also comes at a time when VIA Rail needs to secure government funding to augment the Siemens Venture fleet, which was originally sized based on the assumption that the High Frequency Rail project would open this decade, to meet growing travel demand between Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal for at least another ten years and to lengthen at least some Venture trains to match the 7-car LRC consists that are being used to meet current demand in the corridor in the limited train paths available on the Kingston Subdivision between Toronto and Montreal.