True, it’s possible to travel across Canada by rail, but let’s be honest, that’s mainly for tourists who pay big bucks to spend their time in vintage 1960s dome cars watching as the Great White North flashes by. As for high-speed rail, now so fast it takes barely more than two hours to go from London to Paris, it simply doesn’t exist in Canada, not even in the densely populated Toronto-Montreal corridor
"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children." A Liberal-supporting, environmentalist blog. We blog according to our opinions, not those of the party or government. Free speech must win and that's why we have this blog. The views of two Montrealers and a Libertarian.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Ash Cloud Life
Christopher Hume, a columnist for the Star trapped in Europe because of the ash cloud preventing many flights from leaving tackles the question of what would happen if the ash cloud came to North America. His answer? Chaos. Why? Because we have no other means of fast transportation. While Europe has high speed rail, we have the often-late under-funded pollution-spewing diesel trains chugging along our routes. There have been enough studies on this proving that this is an economically viable solution and it might even pay for itself like the AVE in Spain. It's time we get moving on high speed rail.
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Trains are bad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteYou'd think this would be a wake-up call for food security too, but oh well.
ReplyDeleteBTW, there's a brilliant article in the Walrus about sustainability in Europe that talks about the AVE. Apparently the Spanish were pleasantly surprised to find that small, struggling cities along the route suddenly found new life when they gained high speed rail access.
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2010.05-environment-the-new-grand-tour/