Modernizing VIA Rail’s online ticketing platform for greater scalability

AWS Competency: Industry and Workload
 

Supporting Canada's national passenger rail service

VIA Rail is Canada's national passenger rail service, connecting communities across the country through an extensive rail network. While the organization serves millions of passengers each year, it also provides an essential transportation link for some remote communities where travel alternatives are limited. As a publicly owned organization that relies on both ticket revenue and government funding, VIA Rail must balance operational efficiency, service reliability and exceptional customer experience while meeting evolving public expectations.

VIA Rail's modernization opportunity

In 2017, VIA Rail started laying the groundwork for a large modernization initiative of their core ticketing system. The maintenance and evolution of the existing platform was becoming challenging, and scalable performance to handle peak demand was required in order to provide optimal customer experience.

As a core business function, ticketing has a direct impact on revenue generation, so ensuring a seamless and engaging first step online is a critical element in enticing travellers, many of whom could consider other modes of transportation, to choose the train. With many competing options, online reservation and ticketing processes must be efficient, pleasant and trouble-free. This is of particular importance during peak travel periods, when the solution has to be scalable and flexible enough to handle instantaneous peaks in demand, and operate with little to no downtime. VIA Rail is also required to meet strict privacy protocols and laws.

CGI employs AWS Cloud solutions

After thorough analysis and discussions with the VIA Rail team, it was clear that AWS Cloud computing technology provided the most effective solution to meet the transportation company’s needs. Aware of the value of cloud technology, they wanted a roadmap to implement a best-in-class approach to their new ticketing system.

Working with CGI's IT architects, engineers, and domain-specific consultants, the client implemented a full roster of AWS Cloud services to create a reliable and flexible online ticketing system.

CGI assembled an easily scalable microservices architecture built around 32 services using AWS's lightweight API gateways. These autonomous and specialized systems were agile, flexible and easy to deploy. VIA Rail also used Kubernetes, an open-source software that allows for the deployment and management of containerized applications at scale, to manage clusters of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) compute instances. This was implemented on a full roster of AWS Lambda, AWS’s serverless, event-driven compute service.
 

CGI uses AWS to improve the scalability and flexibility of VIA Rail ticketing platform
 

The solution

Using AWS Cloud technology, CGI helped modernize VIA Rail's online ticketing platform with a scalable, flexible and secure cloud architecture designed to support both current operations and future growth.

• Scalable cloud platform: Created a scalable, flexible and stable online ticketing platform that seamlessly scales to meet peaks in customer demand.
• Faster delivery: Reduced the time required to upgrade or modify processes from months to weeks—and in some cases, days.
• Enhanced customer experience: Delivered a faster, more seamless reservation and ticketing purchasing experience
• Built-in security: Leveraged the full suite of AWS security services to help protect sensitive personal information throughout the reservation and payment process.
• Real-time insights: Enabled access to improved real-time metrics, allowing VIA Rail to rapidly adapt to changing customer demand and incorporate data into business analysis and strategic decision-making.

Since the initial launch of VIA Rail’s modern reservation platform two years ago, CGI has continued to enhance and extend the solution to meet evolving business and customer needs. In the past two years, CGI has delivered new capabilities such as support for the Canada Strong initiative, travel credits, travel pass management for employees and customers, expanded travel agency booking and ticket issuance, and transactional chat functionality. Together, these enhancements demonstrate the long-term value of the AWS-based architecture, giving VIA Rail the flexibility to introduce new offerings quickly, respond to changing priorities, and deploy updates with minimal disruption to customer operations.

Business value delivered

While this modernization initiative supported a national passenger rail operator, the business outcomes are relevant for organizations across industries that depend on high-volume digital services and mission-critical customer experiences.

• Future-ready digital platforms provide technology flexibility to evolve services without requiring large-scale system replacement.
• Modern cloud architectures enable organizations to accelerate response to changing customer expectations, business priorities and market conditions.
• Incremental modernization helps reduce transformation risk by delivering value continuously rather than waiting for a single large deployment.
• A resilient technology foundation supports ongoing innovation, allowing organizations to introduce new capabilities faster while maintaining operational continuity.

Looking ahead, CGI continues to work with VIA Rail and AWS to support the next phase of modernization. By building on the scalability and flexibility of the current cloud-based foundation, future initiatives are expected to further enhance agility, enable new service capabilities, and help VIA Rail continue advancing its long-term vision for modern, resilient passenger services.