The potential strike by CPKC rail traffic controllers — set to begin Thursday morning — will scramble commuting in Canada’s three largest cities. Commuter rail operations in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal all rely on CPKC dispatching to varying degrees, and those operations will cease during a strike by controllers.
Hardest hit will be Montreal, where three out of five commuter rail routes operated by Exo use CPKC lines: the Vaudreuil/Hudson, St-Jérôme, and Candiac. The Vaudreuil/Hudson and St-Jérôme are the system’s two busiest routes, accounting for 70% of the 6.1 million trips taken in 2023, the Montreal Gazette reports.
An Exo spokesman told the Gazette that the agency is preparing to deploy shuttle buses in place of trains, likely as soon as Monday, Aug. 26, but those buses will not fully replace train service. The “efforts will be focused on providing service during rush hour,” said spokesman Eric Edström. Exo is urging passengers to consider alternate routes using regular Exo bus service or other transportation services.
Vancouver will be the only city to lose all commuter rail service. Its West Coast Express service operates five daily round trips on weekdays, serving more than 3,000 passengers per day on a single eight-station, 43-mile route using CPKC between Vancouver and Mission, B.C. CityNews Vancouver reports that parent agency TransLink said in a Monday email that the operation would suffer an “indefinite” service outage in the event of a work stoppage, and that it would provide updates as the situation develops.
Toronto’s GO Transit will see just one of its seven routes halted by a work stoppage: the Milton Line, a 31.2-mile, nine-station route offering nine weekday-only, peak-period round trips. An advisory on the GO website says services at the Hamilton GO Station will also be suspended; it anticipates some service adjustments at the Aldershot station, nearest to Hamilton, and on some bus lines.
VIA Rail Canada’s only train operating fully on CPKC is its remote service using RDCs between Sudbury and White River, Ontario. That would be suspended during a controllers’ strike, the passenger operator told the Gazette. It is working with CPKC to main access to a 1-kilometer section of CPKC track used by Toronto-Ottawa trains.
All other VIA trains run on Canadian National and will not be affected, the company said.
