Transport 2000 Canada Hot Line

15 June 2001

This is issue #606, recorded 15th June 2001, our 25th anniversary year, Bert Titcomb reporting on behalf of Harry Gow.

In this issue, rail, air, transit and road items.

In this issue...

1 - Toronto-region train expansion

Commuters in the Toronto region will get a break this fall with the addition of six more trains and more than 1000 extra seats on rail lines running from Union Station to Oshawa, Kitchener and Hamilton. Federal Transport Minister Toronto Smog Summit. The six new commuter trains are part of a plan to integrate VIA Rail and GO Transit service in the Greater Toronto and surrounding area. The government also hopes to restore commuter rail service to Peterborough and Barrie. As a bonus for skiers, the new Barrie train, if approved, would include winter service to Collingwood. When the new services launch in October, rail commuters throughout the region will for the first time be able to use a single ticket to ride either GO or VIA trains.

2 - Tired trucking terror

Truckers claim tired drivers are a public hazard. Peter Turner, a resident of Stittsville, Ontario, said he got out of trucking because of the constant fatigue. The 80 hour weeks were turning him into an angry man and jeopardizing his safety. "I fell asleep so many times on the road it was ridiculous," Mr. Turner said. "I must have a guardian angel looking over my shoulder, because I should be dead." Fatigue is a huge safety hazard plaguing the transportation industry, whether it is pilots asleep in the cockpit or truckers nodding off at the wheel. Under pressure to travel long distances under monotonous conditions, workers say they are flirting with disaster. "We are endangering the public. If you're driving over 12 to 13 hours a day, you're not at the best ability to do your job," said trucker Bill Wellman, who represents more than 1800 owner-operators as president of the National Truckers Association.

Highway accidents don't make headlines the way plane crashes and rail derailments do. But they account for the vast majority of transportation deaths in Canada. In 1999, the most recent year for which statistics are available, just 67 people died in aviation accidents, compared with 2969 on Canada's roads and highways.

3 - Brakes off on Rail Mergers

A 15-month freeze on major North American rail mergers ended this week, paving the way for a succession of deals that could redraw the continent's railway map. While no one expects the release of the new merger rules by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to spur a headlong rush by carriers to the altar, further consolidation is coming, and observers say Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Pacific Railway Co. will be swept up in it. Some observers claim that CN and CPR will be forced to wait as the four major U.S. lines - Union Pacific Corp. and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. in the west and Norfolk Southern Corp. and CSX Corp. in the east - reconfigure as two transcontinentals.

4 - Air Transat fuel surcharge

Air Transat adds $15 fuel surcharge to fares. The company has implemented a $15 fuel surcharge on all one-way domestic flights, following the lead of other Canadian carriers. The airline announced it will begin collecting the charge for each leg of a trip starting on tickets purchased as of 13 June. Transat is the third major Canadian carrier to institute the charge - Air Canada and Canada 3000 Airlines both imposed a similar charge this month. In each case, the carriers blamed persistently high fuel prices.

5 - Bombardier becomes the biggest

Bombardier has become the world's biggest railway equipment supplier. The new Bombardier Transportation, with global headquarters in Montreal and European headquarters in Berlin, has 37 000 employees, with 56 manufacturing sites in 22 countries, 17 of them in Europe. The company has about 25% of the global market.

6 - Transport Canada to overhaul airport rules and rents

The federal government announced it will overhaul the legislation that spells out the responsibilities of Canada's nonprofit airport authorities and will also review the rents that airports pay. Transport Minister David Collenette said the government plans to develop a Canada Airports Act that would establish the roles of about two dozen airport authorities that have been in charge of Canada's major airports since the early 1990s. The government will review the rent policy for leased airports in the National Airports System, which pulls in to government coffers about $250 million in rent from Canada's major airports. Airlines and other airport user groups say the rent could hit $500 million by the end of the decade and has unfairly driven up ticket prices.

7 - Air Canada chief opposes cabotage

Robert Milton speaks against permitting cabotage. To allow foreign airlines to operate in Canada - known as cabotage - without reciprocal rights would be a disaster, said the president and CEO of Air Canada. The larger U.S. carriers would fly only the lucrative transcontinental and key short-haul business routes where there is already competition and ignore smaller communities, he warned in a speech this week in Toronto. "Canada would never consider signing a one-way trade deal. Cabotage is no different. It's about trade in air services." There have been calls from some groups for Ottawa to change the law to allow cabotage to reduce Air Canada's 80% domestic market share.

8 - Ottawa Smart Growth Summit

The City of Ottawa has organized a 20/20 Smart Growth Summit this week. The city's definition of smart growth states, "We will examine the concept of smart growth - building a community that fosters economic growth and protects quality of life; a community that offers residents services they need and choices on where and how to live. We will examine the challenges that lie ahead, on everything from transportation and economic growth to affordable housing, arts and culture, our evolving social needs and much more."

Guest speakers include, Mike Burton, CEO of Metro Portland, David Crockett, president of Chattanooga Institute of Sustainability, and Andres Duany, architect and planner and "father of new urbanism".

Stay tuned for more information. Transport 2000 Canada hopes that some of these speakers will be able to influence transportation officials in Ottawa and convince them that there are other modes of transport than buses.

9 - Demand for smaller aircraft set to take off

The global demand for new commercial aircraft is expected to hit 23 459 planes worth US$1.7 trillion over the next 20 years, according to a new market forecast by Boeing Co. Among these aircraft purchases will be an expected 650 orders from Canada valued at US$37 billion, the report said. "It makes Canada a very attractive market," said a marketing executive with Boeing. The numbers were contained in a sneak peek at the airplane giant's latest annual forecast at an airline financing conference in Toronto this week.

10 - VIA Rail to build a station in Barrhaven

At the Smog Conference in Toronto, Federal Transport Minister David Collenette announced that VIA is working with the City of Ottawa and OC Transpo to add a new VIA station in west Ottawa and that by 2002, VIA will offer an additional morning service between Ottawa and Montreal to serve both intercity and commuter passengers. "All of these initiatives increase the attractiveness of rail service to commuters, get more people into public transport, and take more cars off the highways," added Mr. Collenette.

The organizers of the Smog Conference deserve kudos for the timing of this conference as much of Ontario has been under a major smog alert this week. Hopefully the conference will make some of our provincial and federal politicians realize that we have a serious problem and action is required immediately to solve it. Global TV showed David Anderson, Minister of the Environment, riding an electric powered bicycle. Did anyone talk about investing more money in public transit or forcing the petroleum industry to start producing low sulphur fuel?

11 - Newspaper series takes aim at road vehicles

On 19 May, the Ottawa Citizen began a series of articles titled "The Truth About Cars and Trucks". Part one, called "Reinventing Our Wheels" describes the serious air pollution problem in major Canadian cities and describes a number of innovate solutions. T2000 members are encouraged to obtain copies which are available on the Ottawa Citizen web site at: www.ottawacitizen.com

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