Rail editorial right on
The Cowichan Valley Citizen editorial, “Government needs to have a little vision on rail” was totally on target. I just want to add that this is a province-wide problem. Inter-city public transportation has been going backward for decades, and it’s inadequate by any standard. There are are no buses connecting Port Hardy and the ferries that leave from there to Campbell River and Courtenay. There are no buses connecting Hope with Osoyoos, Grand Forks, and Castlegar. And public transportation from Hope to Lytton, Cache Creek and Ashcroft is so infrequent that it’s useless.
The BC Federation of Labour and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives issued a study on this topic in February that is well worth reading: https://policyalternatives.ca/connecting-bc. The message could be summarized as “go big”. They call for a badly-needed province-wide express bus service, and developing regional rail connections along historic rail corridors. That includes the Esquimalt-Courtenay route, as well as North Vancouver-Prince George and Langley-Chilliwack.
The vision of Restore Island Rail advocates is for Esquimalt-Courtenay passenger rail service to serve as a backbone for public transportation throughout Vancouver Island, connecting the ferries and urban centres with buses to more remote areas of the island. Destroying this transportation resource and turning it into a bike path would do nothing to achieve this goal; it would just mean more expensive buses and more expensive and congested highways for them to travel on. The bike path isn’t just a bad idea; it’s a really bad idea.
Robert Broughton
Victoria