The sun sets on the CBNS yard in Sydney, a few months before rail service on the line came to a halt. Let’s hope the sun hasn’t set on the rail line for good. Photo: Tim Hayman
The celebrated Orangedale whistle has been silent for nearly eight months, and the rails across Cape Breton from St. Peter’s Junction to Sydney lie rusty and unused. But optimism remains high that the 100 miles of track may yet be saved for future use.
The Minister’s Rail Advisory Committee – a group representing rail users, municipalities and the business community in general – was scheduled to meet on July 30 to hear the outcome of three reports commissioned by provincial Transportation Minister Geoff MacLellan. Consultants were to examine the long-term implications of rail service in Cape Breton, and the economics of rail versus highway transportation. An engineering study on the state of the long-neglected infrastructure was also included.
David Rae – dean of the Shannon School of Business at Cape Breton University and chair of the Scotia Rail Development Society – has been one of the prime movers behind the rail retention campaign. He’s leaving CBU at the end of the summer to return to the UK, but promises that he’s still going to be very much involved. Finding a successor to maintain the momentum behind the effort was one of the agenda items for a July 28th meeting in Sydney.
Dr. Rae remains optimistic that a solution will be found, and insists that rail is very important to Cape Breton’s future. He points to the potential intermodal traffic that could and should be moving by rail – relieving pressure on the already overburdened highway network and enhancing road safety for all users. He notes that the reopening of the Donkin coal mine will create a renewed need for trains, and adds that the port of Sydney really hasn’t much of a future without a rail link. Continue reading “Struggle to save Cape Breton line continues”→
Can we afford to subsidize public and active transportation? Can we afford not to? Our car dependent culture is costing us more than we think, argues a recent report by the University of New Brunswick’s Urban and Communities Studies Institute.
“The problem is our decision makers do not cost all forms of transportation, even though they are all subsidized,” says Yves Bourgeois, a co-author of the report. They cite a 2008 Transport Canada report that calculated private vehicle drivers only pay for 75% of inter-city car travel costs, whereas rail and bus users pay 96% and 95%, respectively. Once you factor in congestion, policing, accident-related healthcare costs, GHG emissions, etc, cars are costlier to governments than they appear.
“If we could shave just 5% off what New Brunswick spends on accident-related healthcare costs, that’s an additional $20 million governments could spend on more sustainable transportation,” says Bourgeois. This boosts the case for public transit, as well as investing in community-based shared transportation networks across many of our region’s more rural towns and villages.
Dr. Yves Bourgeois presented the UNB report’s findings at TAA’s fall board meeting.
Arguments that improve environmental and economic sustainability may appear no-brainers, but Bourgeois raises three important governance challenges. First, even if sustainable transportation could save provincial governments tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars, public transit is left to municipal governments who underinvest because they only reap part of the benefits. The costs and benefits accrue to the same taxpayer, but provincial-municipal governments do not always disentangle responsibilities well.
The second governance challenge owes to regional-level planning. PEI and NB “lead” the country with the highest percentages of workers residing in one community and working in another. That puts stress not only on the road system, but also on things like parking and policing, paid for by one municipality’s taxpayers but shared by others.
The third challenge highlights the intricate link between transportation and the built environment, and suggests departments within the same government may not work well together. A provincial education or health department may decide to site a new school or hospital in a suburb to save on land acquisition costs. They may not have factored in increased busing costs, and they are even less likely to have factored in the costs of roads and increased traffic to that area, water and sewer line costs to the municipality, etc. How we design property developments can also make a big difference in the viability of transportation alternatives, but this implies coordination between a town’s planning, administrative and elected bodies.
By not addressing these governance challenges today, we reinforce our dependence on private vehicles and the underestimated costs they bring to households, governments and society. The report also shows the extent of our car dependence and discusses the impact this has on our ability to tackle other social priorities like poverty reduction, economic development and immigration retention.
90% of NBers commute by car compared to the national average of 79%. Only 55% of recent immigrants rely on cars, which can make retention difficult where transportation alternatives are rare;
NBers have the 3rd highest car ownership rate in Canada (1.55 per household); they drive an average 800km a year more and produce 9.4% more CO2 from car use;
12.7% of Canadians use mass transit, but only 2.2% in New Brunswick: 4.9% in Saint John, 3.4% in Moncton and 2.7% in Fredericton;
NBers walk (5.7% vs 6.2%) and bike (0.5% vs 1.4%) to work less;
Canadians estimate at $4500 the annual cost of operating a private vehicle, but the CAA calculates at $10,500 the real costs for a compact car. It takes approximately $6/hour off someone’s take-home pay to keep a car on the road. The cost of working may be too high for low-income earners if alternatives to cars are unavailable;
NBers spend 19% of their budget on transportation compared to 15% for Canadians. Lower-income NBers spend 17% vs. 12% for low-income Canadians.
The report can be accessed free of charge from www.unb.ca/urban.
The railways of Cape Breton have been steadily eroded for several decades, reducing rail service on the island to a mere skeleton of what it once was. Apart from Nova Scotia Power-owned coal shuttle trains running back and forth between Sydney’s coal piers and the Lingan power plant, the last remaining rail link across the island is the Cape Breton and Central Nova Scotia (CBNS) Railway’s Sydney Subdivision. Snaking its way from Sydney down along the Bras D’Or Lakes and joining the mainland of Nova Scotia via the Canso Causeway, this former CN line historically saw heavy freight trains and regular passenger services. Today, it is hardly used at all and may soon be lost for good.
Traffic on the line deteriorated through the 1990s with the closing of Cape Breton’s coal mines, along with declining rail traffic from Newfoundland and cancellation of VIA Rail passenger services. Changing hands from CN, shortline operators RailTex and RailAmerica both failed to generate greater traffic, and deferred maintenance allowed the line to fall into disrepair.
By 2014, new shortline owner Genesee and Wyoming (GWI) was running one train a week on the line. Through a combination of rate hikes, a rejection of a long-standing provincial subsidy, and an application to discontinue services, GWI aims to end any service on the line as soon as possible.
Transport Action Atlantic believes that this line provides a critical piece of transportation infrastructure for Cape Breton island, which needs to be maintained in some fashion to ensure that safe, reliable and sustainable transportation options will be a possibility in Cape Breton’s future. We will be actively involved in the fight to save this rail line, participating in the Nova Scotia UARB hearings and various town hall meetings, and ensuring that our voice is present in the conversation on this issue. Keep an eye on our website for updates on the situation, further information about what we’re doing, and opportunities for you to get involved.
