Sask. mayors ask Saskatoon to join campaign for Via Rail passenger train reroute
Four Saskatchewan mayors have asked the City of Saskatoon to join their calls for Via Rail to divert its passenger trains to another existing train line — helping their cities get stations and stops.
Shifting the service north from the CN main line to the Prairie North Line would help improve timeliness and accessibility for residents and tourists, according to a Tuesday media release by the four mayors of Lloydminster, Warman, Yorkton, and North Battleford.
Lloydminster Mayor Gerald Aalbers said the proposal has been in the works for some six years now.
"I think it's the train system and the passenger service that's kind of that hidden gem," he said.
The release says the proposal, if enacted, would connect Yorkton, Canora, Humboldt, Warman, the Saskatoon region, the Battlefords and Lloydminster to other parts of Canada by passenger rail.
Once in Alberta, it says, Vermilion and Vegreville would be railway destinations before the line returned to Edmonton, a current Via Rail stop on the CN main line.
Lloydminster Mayor Gerald Aalbers says the proposal to reroute the Via Rail passenger train could potentially help increase accessibility to more than 120,000 potential customers and new tourists. (François Joly/CBC)
Via Rail's on-time performance, measured as arriving within 60 minutes of scheduled arrival, has dropped from 71 per cent in 2018 to 57 per cent in 2017, according to the rail provider's 2022 annual report.
The mayors' proposal to Saskatoon's governance and priorities committee meeting on Tuesday says rerouting passenger trains would help increase those on-time performance numbers.
"The Via Rail passenger train is often parked on a siding while CN trains headed to tidewater or moving across the country take precedence, resulting in passenger train arrivals being as late as four days in Vancouver or Toronto," the news release said.
Via Rail's passenger numbers more than doubled in 2022 over the previous year.
Aalbers said a majority of these riders are visitors to Canada, and the switch could help visitors get off in locales near First Nations that are trying to build tourism opportunities.
"Could you imagine being a tourist from Europe or Asia waking up in a teepee, and you come out of the teepee surrounded by grazing buffalo, to the smell of fresh bannock cooking over an open fire in the morning, to be one of just many experiences that people would have had in Western Canada when they first arrived?"
He said the new route could improve Via Rail accessibility to more than 120,000 potential customers and new tourists.
Listen to Aalbers speaking about the proposal on CBC's Morning Edition:
Passenger revenues for Via Rail have increased by 168.2 per cent from 2021 to 2022. The annual report says that increase could be attributed to higher demand and higher average fares.
Warman Mayor Gary Philipchuk said trains running on the Prairie North could increase demand, but that fares would still have to be looked at.
"The prices do not meet the threshold of being able to be something like flights. It will not be a utilized service, so there's things that definitely have to be dealt with differently," he said.
The mayors’ proposal to Saskatoon’s governance and priorities committee said Tuesday that rerouting passenger trains would help increase Via Rail's on-time performance numbers. (Dayne Patterson/CBC)
Rerouting the line to the Prairie North would mean the passenger train losing some stops on the CN main line. Philipchuk said it should be a collaborative decision.
As of now, Aalbers said, there is more work to be done on this proposal.
"We're hoping that this information today might trigger people to reach out to Via Rail, out to their MPs, to the federal government, and to ask some questions, because really that's what we want to do, is have a conversation," he said.
Aalbers said the response from Saskatoon city council was positive, in that administration was tasked with doing more research on the proposed switch.
