The advocacy group, Transport Action Atlantic (TAA), has made a submission to the House of Commons Transport Committee over VIA Rail travel disruptions during the holiday season.
Travellers faced extreme delays and cancellations on The Ocean running between Montreal and Halifax shortly before Christmas.
Some travellers were stranded on trains for as long as 30 hours.
TAA has stated the Mont-Joli subdivision (the line between Riviere-du-Loup and Campbellton) was impassable following a winter storm which eventually forced both the eastbound and westbound trains to return to their points of origin.
TAA past president Ted Bartlett said delays and cancellations on The Ocean can be blamed squarely on CN which owns the tracks and was responsible for clearing them.
“It’s a private corporation beholden to its stockholders, and not the people of Canada,” noted Bartlett about the former Crown corporation which was privatized in the mid-1990s.
Since that time, CN has prioritized its biggest moneymaker – freight – over passenger rail.
Bartlett thinks all parties should come together and that includes the federal government, Transport Canada, CN and VIA Rail.
“(We need to) investigate what went wrong and take the proper corrective measures so that we can – again – move towards having a functional passenger rail system in this country instead of the disaster that we presently have.”
The Commons Transport Committee has agreed to hear TAA’s submission on Monday, January 9.
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