When a passenger operator is forced to survive on a budget insufficient to provide service capable of satisfying its country’s travel needs, while on-time reliability remains hamstrung by host railroads, it is almost impossible for the person in charge to make a difference.
The abrupt departure of VIA Rail Canada CEO Cynthia Garneau after three years is seen by many Canadian observers as recognition of that reality [see “VIA Rail Canada CEO Garneau resigns,” News Wire May 21, 2022]. But the move was likely set in motion in March when Transport Minister Omar Alghabra announced at a VIA facility, without Garneau in attendance, that his department would essentially usurp her role as “High Frequency Rail’s” primary overseer.
Corridor involvement to be limited
The theoretical, if not practical, idea of a separate Quebec City-Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto route mostly under VIA control affords the promise of more frequencies unencumbered by Canadian National-dictated dispatching and capacity limitations.
Now that initiative, first championed in 2016 by Garneau’s VIA predecessor, Yves Desjardines-Siciliano, will instead be managed by a “Transport Canada/VIA HFR Joint Project Office.” The new arrangement was devised to entertain “expressions of interest” from private investors who might bear some of the risk on what has been estimated as a $12 billion investment [see “Transport Canada inches forward …,” News Wire March 10, 2022].
Toronto-based investigative reporter Greg Gormick notes that as Transport Canada effectively takes control away from VIA, the High Frequency Rail Project is now getting C$491 million ($383 million in U.S. dollars) for planning and engineering studies in 2022’s “Government of Canada Budgets and Main Estimates.” This compares to a combined total of C$78 million ($60.8 million U.S.) allocated to VIA alone for the previous six years.
“VIA capital investment over its 45-year life has been little more than a government yo-yo, with spurts in 2001-2002 for P42 locomotives and Renaissance equipment, nothing in 2005-2006, and economic stimulus funding in 2010-2012 for corridor improvements,” Gormick tells Trains News Wire. He says research for his forthcoming book, Railroaded: the Life, Near-Death and Future of Canada’s Passenger Trains, also reveals that “no VIA president has ever departed or ‘retired’ of their own free will. The senior executives and directors all serve ‘at pleasure,’ which means by the political whims of the federal government.”