VIA Rail, Canada's national rail passenger service, has recorded 26,000 more passengers in the second quarter of 2016 compared to the same period last year.
Also for the second quarter, Canadians traveled 7.2 million more miles on VIA Rail trains, an increase of approximately 3.6 percent over the 2015 second quarter. In part as a result of the growth in its ridership, VIA Rail has reduced its requirement for government funding compared to the pevious year.
“Over the past two years, VIA Rail has made a big shift to become a more customer-focused organization,” stated Yves Desjardins-Siciliano, VIA Rail’s president and CEO. “This change has been a key part of VIA Rail’s modernization and is at the heart of our recent successes.”
“It is thanks to the agility and hard work of everyone at VIA Rail that we’ve started to experience significant changes in many of our performance indicators — and faster than we anticipated,” continued Desjardins-Siciliano. “In the second quarter of 2016, the upward trend continued; our revenues were up 7 percent and ridership grew by 2.9 percent compared to the same quarter last year. More Canadians are choosing a greener, smarter way to travel by making a habit of taking the train.”
During the second quarter of 2016, VIA Rail made major improvements to summer schedules, offered more service in the Quebec City – Windsor corridor and enhanced its Canadian Service’s Prestige class experience. It also published its first Sustainable Mobility Report and organized events as part of Operation Lifesaver’s Rail Safety Week.