The time has come for passenger rail service
By Letter to the Editor on January 31, 2018.
Note to Premier Notley and her government: If you desire to have a lasting legacy to your time in office, I present this for your serious consideration. Instead of dribbling away the hundreds of millions of dollars (maybe billions) that the carbon tax will generate for provincial coffers, consider the big picture. How about passenger rail service for all Albertans. If you want to decrease carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and truly help the environment, look through the eyes of the Europeans. Even the small countries with 5 to 8 million people have excellent electric passenger rail service — some even high speed rail. They can afford it, why can’t we? Get all four Western provinces to join a southern route. And the federal government can contribute also. Anyone who has enjoyed passenger rail travel in Europe extols the pure joy of travelling carefree by train. Every Albertan that voted for your party would agree. All Albertans deserve passenger rail service. Maybe the United Conservative Party will add it as a plank in their election platform. It’s a vote getter. John MacLaren Medicine Hat 8-7
Having traveled in Europe and ridden their electric train systems I would have to agree, except that Albertans allowed Ralph Klein to deregulate our electricity giving us the highest costing power bills in Canada. We are still paying the second highest , next to Ontario, and the eighth highest in North America we are told. Edmonton was forced to eliminate all their electric buses because of what Klein did.
When you’ve lost about $350 billion in oil wealth and tax breaks to their rich friends, because of what Klein, Stelmach and Redford did to us it’s impossible pay the billions an electric rail system would cost Albertans, just ask those of us in Edmonton who have watched our city councils put us in a horrific financial mess with the LRT system. People want it stopped, yet they keep forcing more on us. Our former mayor Stephen Mandel took us from a $400 million debt to a $2,6 Billion debt and now he wants to become premier, fighting for the leadership of the Alberta Party. A former land developer who only cares about looking after his rich friends. We haven’t forgotten how he gave a $675 million arena to a muilti-billionaire at the expense of the taxpayers..
If the NDP are able to get us out of the mess we are in by getting our royalties and taxes back up to the Lougheed levels then an electric system would likely be possible, and I’m all for it. But it’s going to take time, a lot of time because of the mess we are in.
Distances are too great in Canada to justify the huge cost to build. Europe is more concentrated and less tracks needed. Metro areas is the only place I can see it anywhere close to being cost effective as there should be less cost to build with greater ridership,