To meet the growing customer demand in the corridor between those three cities, VIA Rail will add four new trains per weekday and four more on weekends for a total of 28 new departures per week.
In addition to the changes, VIA Rail has created a new direct service between Quebec City and Ottawa. Previously, customers had to transfer trains to travel between the two cities.
There are now 14 daily routes for Ottawa travellers to get to and from Toronto, with increased frequencies on two previous routes.
The changes, which will take effect on Dec. 10, could attract more than 200,000 new passengers annually, VIA Rail said in a press release.
Monday marks the end of the program to rebuild the company’s F40 diesel locomotives, extending their life by 15 to 20 years at less than half the cost of purchasing new equipment. These upgraded locomotives, designed by CAD Railway Industries, now represent 70 per cent of VIA Rail’s fleet. The trains will eliminate up to 12 per cent of its greenhouse gas emissions, result in fuel savings of up to five million litres annually and reduce annual maintenance costs by 15 per cent.
The $100 million contract to rebuild the F40 locomotives was awarded in December 2007 and created 125 jobs at CAD.
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If VIA Rail service was anything close to Spain's incredibly fast (max speed of 330 km/h), efficient and inexpensive AVE/RENFE rail services, more people would even be taking the VIA to enjoy travel within Canada. For example, among one of their many routes across the country, AVE trains travel 621 km between Madrid and Barcelona in about 2 hours 30 minutes, with a top speed of 330 km/h. The quality of VIA train service needs improvement if we want to enjoy world class travel standards. The irony of it all is that our very own Bombardier developed the power cars for the high speed rail project for Spain, and was recently awarded the contract to participate in the development of a high speed rail project for the "pilgrim trains" linking Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. Excerpt from Bombardier's Press Release: "The technology is similar to that of the 46 AVE 102 and AVE 112 trains developed and manufactured for RENFE between 2001 and 2010. Bombardier has participated in the development of many of the world's leading high speed rail systems, including four different generations of TGV in France, the ICE trains used in Germany and the Netherlands, Italy's ETR 500 and V300ZEFIRO, Spain's AVE 102 and AVE 112, China's Xinshisu, the BOMBARDIER ZEFIRO family of high speed trains and the Acela in the USA." Let's hope that Via Rail is going in the right direction.