VIA Rail will stop serving Guildwood and Malton stations starting October 25

VIA Rail will stop serving Guildwood and Malton stations starting October 25, forcing Scarborough passengers to travel significantly farther to catch a train to Ottawa or beyond.

Passengers at Guildwood will have to go to either Union Station or Oshawa to connect with VIA service. The decision, announced at the end of a schedule adjustments memo on VIA's website this week, has drawn immediate criticism from local elected officials and residents.

"I'm very surprised and very inconvenienced," one passenger at Guildwood station said. "It's extremely frustrating. This is my route of travel. Well it obviously won't be anymore."

VIA Rail cited the stops' proximity to Toronto Union Station and easy access to GO Transit and other local transit services as justification, claiming the change will improve overall travel times. But Scarborough-Guildwood councillor Paul Ainslie called the rationale flawed.

"I'm not happy at all. I put a social media blast out yesterday and I'm already getting emails from residents," Ainslie said. "When your options for VIA service are either Union station or Oshawa and you're in Scarborough, you know that is not an option right? Part of their rationale was you can take a GO train either way, and I use VIA all the time to go to Ottawa for meetings. To say to me 'we want you to take a train on another service, GO Transit, to go west, so you can go east,' is ludicrous."

The closure is part of a broader series of changes between Toronto and Ottawa that will result in one fewer daily train on average. VIA Rail did not disclose ridership figures at either station, and the source material does not specify how many daily trains operated between the two cities before or after the October 25 changes.