Canada rail network congestion eroding appeal of train travel

Ottawa

FOR Via Rail Canada chief executive officer Yves Desjardins-Siciliano, the biggest challenge facing the country's passenger rail service can be explained with a grade-five math question.

Two trains - one passenger, one freight - are moving in the same direction on the same track; the passenger train is cruising at 177 kilometres an hour, the freight train plodding along at 64 km an hour.

"If they're 161-km apart, when will they catch up?" he said in an interview at Bloomberg's Ottawa office last week. "That's just a grade-five question."

Just under 86 minutes is the correct answer on the math quiz. For Mr Desjardins-Siciliano, the answer is too soon and too often.

Congestion on the country's rail network, spurred partly by rising crude oil shipments, is making it tougher for Via Rail to get passengers to their destinations on time. That's eroding the appeal of train travel and threatens to deepen operating losses for the carrier's only shareholder …