On May 29, 2012 at 1PM CST, VIA will be holding its Annual Public Meeting (APM). It’s an opportunity for all VIA stakeholders to learn more about our 2011 performance and our plans for 2012 and beyond. It’s also a chance for members of VIA’s Board of Directors and Senior Management team to hear about the things that matter to you.
Last year, the APM was held in our nation’s capital. This year we’re heading toWinnipeg’s Union Station – an important stop on VIA’s iconic Canadian service between Toronto and Vancouver.
Winnipeg is a fitting location for the 2012 APM for many reasons. This year marks the 100th anniversary of Union Station. The historic character of the edifice highlights passenger-rail’s role in building Canada over the last century. Also, as VIA is undergoing its most important transformation in over 20 years, it reminds us that today’s work can also have a lasting impact on Canada’s future. It holds the promise of a new beginning for passenger transportation in Canada.
Just because you can’t be in Winnipeg to connect with us in person, doesn’t mean you can’t still connect with us in other ways. You can watch and listen to VIA’s APM through live webcast at viarail.ca. You can ask questions through one of our social media platforms, on Facebook or Twitter (@VIA_Rail). You can even join the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #VIAAPM2012.
The APM is one element in our ongoing efforts to meet with communities, discuss operational issues and share future plans. We look forward to hearing from you on May 29th at 1PM CST.
At VIA, safety is our number one priority. From our train operations, to the work we do at our stations, in our maintenance centres and in our offices, VIA employees strive to promote a strong safety culture across every aspect of our business operations. This week, as we recognize Rail Safety Week, I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on what safety means to us as an organization, and share just how we’re working to ensure it encompasses everything we do.
VIA operates close to 500 trains each week across 12, 500km of track – that’s a lot of trains on the move at any given moment. For each and every one of these trains, we have processes and procedures in place to ensure that our passengers arrive at their destination safely and securely. We focus a great deal of time and energy ensuring that all of the elements over which we have direct control, are working properly. It’s something we take great pride in, and not something we take lightly.
Of course not everything is within our direct control; various external elements can also have an impact on the safe arrival of our trains. This is why VIA is actively involved in outreach programs that strive to promote the importance of maintaining – and strengthening – railway safety in our communities.
According to Operation Lifesaver – an organization that focuses on educating Canadians about the hazards surrounding rail property and trains – every year approximately 300 collisions and trespassing incidents occur at highway/railway crossings and along railway tracks in Canada. In our mind, that is 300 incidents too many. Indeed, even one incident is one too many. That is why VIA is proud to work with Operation Lifesaver, the Railway Association of Canada, Transport Canada and other industry partners, with a goal of preventing these incidents through education and outreach. We believe that getting out into communities to spread the word on rail safety can save lives.
In fact, as part of Railway Safety Week, VIA has been working in collaboration with Operation Lifesaver, Belleville Police, CN Railway and Bay of Quinte Safe Communities to educate the public on the importance of following safe practices in and around railway land in the Belleville, Ontario area. Together we have been in the community, handing out Rail Safety guides at kiosks at Belleville station and in local malls; meeting pedestrians and vehicle drivers at area rail crossings; giving safety presentations to kids at local schools and making a special donation to the Belleville Children’s Safety Village. Throughout each of these initiatives the goal remains the same; to educate the public on how to stay safe.
Although these particular examples are taking place in the Belleville area, staying safe is important no matter where you are, and similar initiatives regularly take place right across the country. For more information on how you can get involved, or to find out about events near you, I encourage you to visit www.operationlifesaver.ca. Education is the first step to staying safe.
Rail safety requires the efforts of many people; from industry partners to local citizens in communities across the country. We are fortunate to have great leaders out there, working to keep Canadians safe, but we need your help too. When it comes to train tracks, stay off, stay away, stay safe! Make safety your top priority.
Our loyalty programme, VIA Preference, has been around since 1996. It’s one of the most rewarding programmes inCanada, with its fast accumulation scheme – offering at least one point per dollar spent – and accessible redemption opportunities. Technology-wise, VIA Preference has been ahead of the pack inCanadasince 2009, featuring totally modular communications that are truly relevant for members, and a web site that reconstructs itself as soon as a member logs in. In essence, a member in Vancouver will not see the same thing as a member in Toronto, Montréal or Halifax.
With the multitude of loyalty programmes offering on-line redemption of points or miles, the launch of VIA Preference’s redemption on-line on March 30 is not a huge innovation per se. But one must realize that this launch is of considerable importance given the integration of two systems: VIA Preference’s system and VIA Rail’s booking engine. VIA went down this road of integration instead of imagining a distinct booking mechanism that would have made matters more complicated for its members.
And that’s where the true innovation lies. By coupling the point system to the reservation system, VIA Preference members can now easily choose how they want to “pay” for their train ticket. For any given itinerary in the Québec City-Windsor corridor, members can now see in the booking process the cost in dollars for a one-way or return trip as well as the number of required points. If members choose to use their points, these are automatically deducted from their account and their account balance is updated on the spot.
For us, technology must be user-focused, user-friendly, simple and seamless. The integration of point redemption on-line is another recent example of VIA’s push towards making it easier for clients and members to use our services. This integration also made its way to VIA’s mobile booking engine on April 17 – so no matter how members choose to book their train tickets, they will always have the option to use their points.
By the way, if you’re not already a member of the VIA Preference programme, maybe you should look it up. Simply visit viapreference.com.
For many of us who have travelled to Europe, hopping off of an airplane and onto a regional or intercity train all within the same airport complex, is not an uncommon experience. Those of us in the transportation business refer to this as inter-modality. In fact, the European experience has expanded to include more than just integration within the same physical building. Combining the power of the web through such tools as meta-search engines for planning trip itineraries and more sophisticated reservation systems used by transporters, consumers can easily plan, visualize, book, and pay for their flight and rail segments in one transaction and on one site.
More countries around the globe are creating this type of seamless connection between very different but very complimentary modes of passenger transport. The national railway in Germany, DB, and the French railway, SNCF, developed and implemented these seamless integrations with airlines decades ago. They are now extending this integration to include taxi, local bus transport, intercity motorcoach and bicycles.
So what about in Canada, you ask? Sadly, there are very few, if any, full-fledged modal integrations. In fact, as far as air-rail partnerships of the type described earlier, there are none. I have heard several so called ‘transportation experts’ suggest that the country is too sparsely populated for such collaboration to be successful, or that we are a country dominated by a culture of driving and flying, therefore it is not in our culture to adopt inter-modality as a way to get from one part of Canada to another. Or better still, that there are too many technical barriers to overcome such as reservation, accounting or ticketing issues.
I suggest there is a lack of trust among carriers in Canada. We don’t want to share each other’s customers for fear of permanently eroding our respective customer base. Or we prefer to keep our customers within the same alliance of like-modes of transport instead of recognizing combinations of transport modes have a role to play in providing Canadians with better mobility options.
Well, VIA has found Canadians have defied expert opinion, the over-protective carriers, and the shortcomings of reservation systems. We started to ask our customers for more information about their full trip itinerary before and after the train portion of their trip, such as what airport they were headed to and what airline they were using. We discovered thousands of customers who took our trains to get to airports within the Quebec-Windsor Corridor, even travelling from Toronto Union Station to Dorval Station, right adjacent to Montreal’s Trudeau Airport, then on to board an overseas flight.
Whatever their motivations were for self-arranging an inter-modal trip, their behaviour sends a loud and clear message to all passenger carriers and infrastructure operators in this country: we need to drop the parochial attitude of protecting our fiefdoms and work together to create a better end-to-end trip experience because whether we like it or not, Canadians are creating their own inter-modal experience.
VIA Rail has already implemented one-stop shopping experiences for motorcoach connections from our trains to the airports in Montreal and Toronto as well as from VIA Rail trains to GO regional trains in Ontario. We have already signed agreements with one foreign airline and are in the final steps of concluding an agreement with another major player in the airline industry, as well as another regional transport carrier.
So the next time you book a ticket toTorontoorMontreal, don’t be surprised when the drop-down menu asks you whether you want Toronto Union Station, Pearson Airport or Island Airport. Our vision is to improve the mobility of Canadians as well as foreign visitors. Eliminating barriers to mobility can only grow the travel market as a whole and benefit all carriers.
VIA Rail’s pet policy recently made headlines. While we have always collected customer feedback through market research, email, phone calls and in-person interactions, we have recently added social media to our toolset. Although sometimes the comments can be quite brutal, we appreciate the feedback. It challenges us to look at what we do with a fresh perspective and may ultimately lead to improvements.
So, following that coverage, we looked at our pet policy and found it to be appropriate for the following reasons:
- Hygiene: While our cars are cleaned before and after each departure, pet hair can get into tough to reach places and contribute to a dirty environment. Additionally, some pets are well potty trained and others, not so well trained. This makes it difficult for us to allow some pets but others. Finally, we do have food and food preparation stations on board that we need to keep clean, similar to restaurants.
- Sensitivity/allergies: Certain pets are hypoallergenic. However, this doesn’t mean that they will not affect allergy sufferers, only that the breed may be more compatible with allergy sufferers than other breeds – even this is not certain. Since some allergy sufferers cannot be near animals at all, VIA Rail offers a pet-free travel environment where they know they will not be affected.
- Space restrictions: You may have noticed that we have a few different types of equipment. Since the size and shape of cages can also vary, we can’t guarantee the necessary space for pets to sit with their owners on all of our trains.
It is important to note that passengers travelling with pets may still do so on certain trains when baggage car services are available. VIA Rail has recently increased the number of routes with trains offering baggage car service in order to accommodate the needs of more passengers, and pet owners can also take advantage of this service. During the trip, owners can make arrangements with our staff at any time to visit with their pet, and on longer trips, pets can be taken off the train briefly at longer stops.
Also of note is that all service animals certified by accredited trainers are accepted on board VIA trains, not just seeing-eye dogs.
Some comments have suggested creating special passenger cars where pets are allowed to travel with their owners. After reviewing this suggestion, we determined that limited equipment availability and the process of cycling this equipment to other trains, where it may no longer be a special passenger car, makes this an operational challenge and one that we can’t pursue at this time.
We’ve decided to leave things as they are, at least for the time being. Creating a pleasant and enjoyable travel experience for all of our passengers is still our priority, and there’s still the opportunity for passengers to travel with their pets. We’ll continue to collect feedback on the policy and revisit it over time.
Your feedback is always appreciated, and we’d be happy to hear from you in the comments below or using the VIAevolution email contact form.
