MONTREAL — The Canadian National Railway computer outage that disrupted GO Transit and VIA Rail Canada trains on Tuesday was caused by a software upgrade, CN said on Wednesday.
CN spokesman Jonathan Abecassis told CTV News that the railroad had determined the problem was because of “an internal systems upgrade, which affected CN’s ability to connect to the internet. There’s no indication of a cybersecurity incident whatsoever. At no time was the safety of the public compromised, and at no time was data impacted.”
The inability to connect to the internet meant that Ontario transit agency Metrolinx, the parent agency of GO Transit, was unable to connect to CN servers, essential for communications between GO and CN systems. The outage began at 12:30 p.m. EDT; some connectivity was restored about 3:45 p.m., with most recovery complete by 8 p.m. The problem was fully restored overnight, Abecassis said.
Initially, the connectivity issue forced GO Transit trains to stop at the nearest station. The UP Express service between Toronto Union Station and Pearson Airport was also affected, as were more than 30 VIA trains. Eleven of those trains were more than two hours late.
CN train operations were not affected, although the company’s customer service portal was offline during the outage.
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