It was a summer of poor performance for VIA Rail in Stratford. Last week, Member of Parliament for Perth-Wellington John Nater released a letter to VIA Rail outlining how the rail service had a zero per cent on-time performance rate in St. Marys and Stratford. “I had one constituent say VIA Rail is never on time. I took that as kind of a bit of a joke, but when I looked at the actual data, it turned out that no, in fact, VIA Rail hasn’t been on time a single time this entire summer,” said Nater. According to VIA Rail, a trip that takes less than 4-hours is considered to be delayed if the train arrives more than 10 minutes past the scheduled time. Nater said between Canada Day and Labour Day trains were, on average, over an hour late arriving at Union Station in Toronto. VIA Rail runs a round trip from Stratford to Union Station daily. “The real concern that a lot of folks have is the transparency side of things. When people expect to be at a final destination at a certain time and when that doesn’t happen, it really mucks up people’s plans and sets a real challenge for people getting to their final destinations,” said Nater. Via Rail said they recognize the difficulties and said they are limited in what they can do. “These challenges are largely driven by factors outside VIA Rail’s control, as we do not own the tracks on this route. Contributing factors include freight traffic, track conditions and associated speed limitations, as well as maintenance and improvement work on the rail infrastructure,” a statement from VIA Rail Canada said. Nater said he recognizes the challenges VIA faces in the Sarnia to Toronto corridor, but said there is a lot of room for improvement. “The people I talked to here locally really want to see greater rail transport. It’s a more convenient way to travel, it’s a more pleasant way, so there’s a lot of interest from folks who want to use rail travel. But the challenge is when the reliability isn’t there,” said Nater. In the spring GO Transit added a Stratford route that offers a round trip to Union Station seven days a week.
