VIA Rail, Canada’s national passenger rail service, doesn’t post their ridership data publicly on their website.
As a citizen, though, we are entitled to know how many people board at each station. I filed a Freedom of Information request, and in a matter of months, received the data. Forgive the odd timespan, it was an off the cuff request and I’m really not putting a lot of time and effort into this. You should file an FOI request if you really want more than this. and VIA should make a habit of posting this all publicly.
Why did I do this? In an attempt to convince one of my favourite Youtubers, Miles in Transit, to come to Canada. He regularly goes to the least used Amtrak stations in different states, but there was no way for him to know which stations in Canada were least-used. Now he knows. I e-mailed him.
Here’s a link to the data in CSV format.
And I know you’re all dying to know what the least used stations in each province actually are. It’s a little complicated by the fact that you can just ask to be let off pretty much anywhere on many of VIA’s routes, so some of these “stations” have absolutely no station infrastructure, not even a sign.
Good luck, Miles.
Anyway, here’s what the data says:
Least Used Stations by Province between Jan and Oct 2023
- AB: 15 boardings
- Evansburg
- BC: Three-way tie at zero
- Aleza Lake
- Longworth
- Pacific
- MB: zero
- Winnitoba
- NB: 55 boardings
- Jacquet River
- NS: 33 boardings
- Springhill Junction
- ON: Three-way tie at zero
- Laforest
- McKee’s Camp
- Roberts
- QC: 8-way tie at zero
- Consolidated Bathurst
- Gagnon
- Lac-Des-Roches
- Lac-Malouin
- Megiscane
- Press
- St-Hilaire de Portneuf
- Timbrell
- SK: zero
- Veregin
And fine, here are all the stations with over 100 boardings per day, in order:
| Station | Average boardings per day |
| TORONTO | 3,207 |
| MONTREAL | 2,117 |
| OTTAWA | 1,510 |
| QUEBEC | 500 |
| LONDON | 469 |
| KINGSTON | 449 |
| DORVAL | 335 |
| WINDSOR | 331 |
| FALLOWFIELD | 237 |
| OSHAWA | 197 |
| STE-FOY | 194 |
| BELLEVILLE | 162 |