Before the
federal government announced plans last week to rescue VIA Rail from
slow financial strangulation, Ottawa appeared to have lost its
ability to guide the nation’s transportation priorities. The new VIA
funding -- mainly to refurbish aging trains and stations plus widen
a few key rail bottlenecks -- sparks additional hope that Prime
Minister Stephen Harper’s regime will not only untangle its delayed
“National Transit Strategy” but finally take an active role in
transportation planning.
Whether or not
a federal election is triggered this week, it’s past time for the
Conservatives to show if Canada will have efficient and
environmentally smart travel options within and between cities.
For decades the
feds have been handing away responsibility for highways, airports
and railroads, occasionally sending big cheques for favoured
projects. This trend effectively left the provinces, self-governing
authorities and the private sector with the job of planning how
people and goods move. There were benefits to this approach, but the
overall result is a loosely connected, inadequate network.
Reduced federal
involvement may possibly have saved billions of dollars through
efficiencies and simplified decision-making, but the transport grid
is not prepared to serve our top-tier economy or growing global
trade. Canada now lacks the flexibility to deal with looming threats
like climate change or peaking oil production -- where potentially
rocketing gas prices in coming years could drive hordes of motorists
to transit or trains. Except we don’t even have capacity for current
demands.
Since Ottawa
turned the railroads over to private companies, they have naturally
focused on profitable freight traffic. But passenger trains such as
those belonging to VIA Rail or GO Transit now must fight for
priority -- and although taxpayers foot some of the cost of
improvements to tracks and signals, these remain property of the
railroads. Lousy on-time performance for both commuter and long-haul
trains is a serious obstacle to convincing people to leave their
cars at home.
The transit
systems in our urban areas have been especially starved for
expansion, and much-needed funds promised through Harper’s transit
strategy seem delayed for either bureaucratic or political reasons.
Ottawa doesn’t
have to stick its hand into every transportation decision to make a
real difference in the mobility of Canadians -- and the
Conservatives would seem ideologically loath to meddle anyway. While
the feds need to cough up money sooner -- in the tens of billions --
they also must work with the provinces and cities to ensure there is
an overall strategy and it achieves results.