Rebuilding rail too costly
Re: "Trains the best solution"
To start with, the column doesn't ignore the train issue at all, it is written about on average once a month, sometimes more.
Secondly, most of the pro-rail letters are written by those who want to see the rail back to use it, like you, once a year to go to the Chemainus Market, not to commute every day. (We parked two blocks from the Market this summer.) The cost to use it from Shawnigan Lake to Chemainus was $19 per person each way and at that rate they could not keep it running. If there was a business case for it someone would have jumped at it by now.
There is no way of comparing the trains in Ontario to the Dayliner that once was or ever would be. In the Toronto area there is a full train getting to where people need to go several times an hour and the full buses to connect to them. They have the population to use it and pay for it. Buses operating every few minutes? It takes an hour to get from Shawnigan to Duncan, you can go a few times a day and there are at the most half a dozen people on it at the time.
Rebuilt? at what cost? There is only one track, so you can only go one way at the time. The current track has been rotting for years and the bridges would need major maintenance or replacement. Don't believe me? Walk a mile along the track, I am sure you can find more than one spike you can pull out by hand. Never mind rolling stock.
As a still working taxpayer who does cross the Malahat I do not want to foot the bill for a project that will cost our children and grandchildren and maybe even our great grandchildren. How about spending money on affordable housing closer to where people work so they do not have to travel the Malahat or any other part the Dayliner used to cover once a day. I have been crossing the Malahat for work for 16 years, my husband for 26, we have been stuck on the other side twice and have had to go out for dinner about a dozen times, less than once a year on average. (Not including a few snow days.)
There are days it is slow, but not as slow as the McKenzie to View Royal area most of the time and not nearly as slow as taking the bus to our office from wherever the train would get us to. Like the Kinsol Trestle Project, let those who want it restored raise the funds to restore it and not from the government (who pass it on to us working people, because that is where tax money comes from).
Marja Blase
Shawnigan Lake
