Annual Canadian Railway Operating Statistics for Mainline Companies

Canadian railway industry operating statistics published by Statistics Canada. The data includes annual metrics such as total train-kilometres, locomotive unit-kilometres, and gross tonne-kilometres for mainline companies Canadian National, Canadian Pacific, and Via Rail. It is available in XML, CSV, and HTML formats under the OGL-CA-2.0 license and was last updated on 2026-04-28.

Use Cases

• Forecast railway capacity and demand based on annual train-kilometres and car-kilometres
• Analyze operational efficiency trends based on gross tonne-kilometres and locomotive unit-kilometres
• Compare performance metrics between major carriers like Canadian National, Canadian Pacific, and Via Rail
• Model industry growth and resource allocation based on annual totals for freight and passenger car-kilometres

Strengths

• Data is provided by the authoritative national statistics agency, Statistics Canada
• Covers three major national railway operators: Canadian National, Canadian Pacific, and Via Rail
• Includes multiple key operational metrics such as train-kilometres, car-kilometres, and gross tonne-kilometres
• Available in multiple machine-readable formats including CSV and XML

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download

Provenance

Source

Statistics Canada

Collection Method

Likely collected through mandatory reporting by regulated mainline railway companies

Time Range

Annual data; specific years are not stated in the provided metadata

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-28 12:58:37.627317; freshness should be verified

Geography

Canada