News Wire: VIA Rail Canada ridership grows for fourth straight year

[Brian Schmidt]

MONTREAL — VIA Rail Canada saw an 8% increase in ridership and a 7.4% increase in revenues in calendar 2018, marking its fourth straight year of ridership increases. VIA carried 4.74 million passengers in 2018, with 4.5 million of those in the ...

http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2019/05/09-via-rail-canada-ridership-grows-for-fourth-straight-year

[JPS1]

That the Quebec City-Windsor corridor accounted for approximately 96 percent of VIA’s passengers is a compelling statistic.  It supports the argument that the viable market for passenger trains in North America is in relatively short, high density corridors.

 

Equally notable is that VIA was able to realize an 11.9 percent increase in revenues on a 9.3 percent increase in riders.  And passenger miles along the corridor increased 23 percent since 2014.