Transport 2000 Canada Hot Line

26 May 2001

This is the Transport 2000 Canada Hotline, issue number 603, recorded on 26 May 2001, our 25th anniversary year, Darrell Richards reporting.

In this issue...

1 - Ottawa Citizen Feature on the Auto

Paul McKay of the Ottawa Citizen is publishing a series of feature articles on the future of the automobile, particularly environmental problems. This is an excellent well researched series with a balance of expert opinion. It portrays the environmental problems realistically with no magic bullet to solve all problems. Technical fixes alone cannot provide sustainable transportation, because clever designers can short circuit technical standards. For example, even current emission reduction targets for diesel truck engines have not been met because manufacturers installed devices on 1.3 million engines in North America that turned off pollution control equipment at highway speed. Another example provided is the classification of the PT Cruiser car as a light truck. By improving the fleet average fuel efficiency of the truck category, this allowed Chrysler to sell more gas hungry trucks, vans and sport utilities.

2 - CPR Improvements

The Canadian Pacific Railway has signed new contracts to carry international containers on double stack trains from Vancouver to the U.S. MidWest. This is an expected doubling of CPR container traffic on the Vancouver-Chicago corridor.

CPR is also testing a new technology that tracks trains and submits information about them via wireless networks. The Crosslogix system will also trigger crossing arms, bells and flashing lights at crossings, activated by sensors under the track.

3 - Truck Blitz in Alberta

A truck safety blitz in Alberta found that less than one half of 333 trucks inspected were able to pass. The national truck safety blitz called Roadcheck will happen starting June 4. The national inspections are well advertised in advance which may distort the results. With advance information about the blitz, the worst trucks could be voluntarily parked for three days to avoid inspections.

4 - New Hours Rules for Bus Drivers

Transport Canada has released its new regulation for bus and truck driver hours of work, which would allow up to 16 hours of driving in a single shift or 96 hours per week. These are the longest shift and weekly limits in the developed world and compare to 10 hour shifts and 60 hour weeks in the U.S. Transport Canada also proposes new authority to issue permits that could exempt bus and truck companies from even the new limits on driving hours. Electronic recorders (black boxes) will not be required on trucks and buses as they are on trains and commercial aircraft.

Thank you for calling the Transport 2000 Canada Hotline. For additional information, please contact our web site at:

www.transport2000.ca.