The Prime Minister, Mark Carney, announced that, for the first time in four decades, VIA Rail passenger cars will be built in Canada. The federal government is investing more than $4.7 billion for VIA Rail to acquire and maintain 313 new passenger rail cars from Alstom Canada.
This is the overall issue with Via rail (and interestingly enough, Amtrak). Canada theoretically mandates that passenger rail traffic has priority for rail segments under contention, and freight must sit on the siding. This is by statute. However, rail companies often/always say “lol fuck off” and go anyways, arguing either the train length exceeds the siding length or essentially “we’re already here”.
The result is Via rail (and Amtrak) service is literally always late, almost always because of freight traffic. Until they actually start enforcing passenger rail priority (or building dedicated passenger rail lines like adult countries) I don’t see how rail transit can possibly become viable in North America.