VIA Rail trains will no longer stop at Guildwood and Malton stations starting next month, with the Crown corporation saying the elimination will improve travel times.

But passengers in Scarborough say it will do the exact opposite for them. They’ll now have to travel to either Union Station or Oshawa, to connect with VIA service.

“I’m very surprised and very inconvenienced,” one passenger at Guildwood station told CityNews on Thursday.

“It’s extremely frustrating,” another added. “This is my route of travel. Well it obviously won’t be anymore.”

Many riders CityNews spoke to seemed to be caught off guard by the announcement which was buried at the end of a schedule adjustments memo posted on VIA’s website this week.

The memo said the changes at both stations would come into effect on October 25.

Scarborough-Guildwood councillor Paul Ainslie, who is running for re-election, said the new detour is more than just a minor inconvenience for people in his ward.

“I’m not happy at all,” he said. “I put a social media blast out yesterday and I’m already getting emails from residents.”

“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.”

CityNews reached out to VIA Rail for a statement, but they directed us to their website which reads:

“VIA Rail will no longer serve Guildwood and Malton to improve overall travel times, given their proximity to Toronto Union Station and easy access to GO Transit and other local transit services.”

VIA Rail also announced a series of other changes between Toronto and Ottawa, which will ultimately result in one fewer daily train on average.