Why is this municipal administration chasing a concept that will likely bear fruit about the same time Beelzebub’s sweltering subterranean redoubt freezes over?
Recently all six members of council and Mayor Patricia Heintzman attended the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) convention held in Victoria. One of their priorities was to endorse the District of Lillooet’s campaign to put forward a resolution for the return of the mothballed passenger rail service linking North Vancouver with communities all the way up to Prince George.
In a statement issued earlier this year, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Todd Stone said “Given the fact that market demand for passenger rail service along this route remains marginal, the provincial government is not considering reinstating this service.” Beyond those ridership concerns, there are other cost considerations, including acquiring right-of-way access to existing rail lines and investing in extensive track and railcar upgrades. And with a provincial election just around the corner, public transit in the heavily populated Metro Vancouver Region will be given a much higher priority.
During the UBCM gathering the mayors of Lillooet and North Vancouver met with Minister Stone to discuss the idea of reviving the service. A request for information about the outcome of that meeting resulted in the following email response from the ministry: “While the province is always willing to hear and discuss ideas with municipalities, we let the mayors know that we were not planning to invest in reinstating the service.” The main reason cited was the significant improvements made to the highway network from Prince George to North Vancouver.
Prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics the province spent in the vicinity of $750 million on Sea to Sky Highway upgrades. This year the government is investing an additional $5.4-million on that thoroughfare. As well, in the last decade the Lillooet area has received almost $60 million in highway enhancements.
This past April, Jordan Sturdy, MLA for West Vancouver-Sea to Sky, told Pique magazine that passenger rail service might be possible through the private sector but “we all recognize that with this day and age, probably the best public transit alternative — or most cost-effective public transit alternative, if not glamorous — is certainly buses.”
According to Trevor Mills, the archivist at the West Coast Railway Heritage Park, in order to stay operational most of the BC Rail passenger lines were subsidized, similar to how public transit is funded. And even with millions of passengers a year, train services like Via Rail are still subsidized.
Mills recently told The Chief what is needed is somebody rail-oriented high up in government that will push it through. “I think that’s about the only way you’re going to get it to happen,” he said.
