You'd think, but it's just not a thing her for some reason. And a lot of our rail services are ending, not increasing. The moment that trucking became the solution to transport things, rail was doomed.
"The west wants out": Separatist sentiments growing in Alberta
- Thread starter B00Mer
- Start date
You'd think, but it's just not a thing her for some reason. And a lot of our rail services are ending, not increasing. The moment that trucking became the solution to transport things, rail was doomed.
Utterly insane. The unit cost of bulk transportation by rail is only about 1/2 of road.
We still get some containers by rail, but not as much as it used to be. Being the only rail line between NB and NS, we'd always see trains when I was a kid. Our passenger rail service ran multiple times a week to lots of places, there were always things going and coming, we were even the switch for stuff to head down to Cape Tormentine and the boats to PEI.
Now that line is the Canada National Walking trail, we get one passenger rail service a day I think, we get maybe two or three freights coming through...
IMO a high speed rail would open up jobs all over the place, and people wouldn't have to worry about moving, either. Here we're two hours away from Halifax, Saint John and Fredericton, half hour from Moncton. High speed service would let people travel all over to work.
But for some reason our Fed Government doesn't see the benefit of that kind'a service.
A 1000kph?...As long as these trains didn't have to stop & start very often...as this would be energy hungry en-devour. Where could these lines going 1000kph be safely located? Along the energy corridor that can't be across Canada? Who or what is blocking the concept of an energy corridor across our nation connecting it like what happened with our rail & highway system? Yes there is a rail system currently (that could never have been built in our current political climate) connecting the Pacific to the Atlantic but these trains aren't moving at Jet-Like speeds.....
In the chunk of Canada that I grew up in, a town could be found along the rail lines every 9 or 11 miles and you could see them coming by the grain elevators in each town. These have all but disappeared in the last 1/2 of my lifetime. Poof! No more. The remnants of these towns or ghost towns can still be found about every 9 or 11 miles if you convert these distances to metric and look at a map of the prairies.
A Farmer would haul his grain a few miles one way or the other into one of the local elevators in his 1Ton (or 2Ton) truck with stockades along the box, but now these are gone replaced by SuperElevators once every 60-80 miles or so...and every Farmer pretty much needs to own a Semi & Trailer just to get his crop to a rail line.
Rail is still a cheap (comparatively) method of transporting nonperishable or time sensitive goods that you don't need to having in under a 3 month window between ordering and receiving. For everything else it just doesn't work that well. About 30 years ago the idea of warehousing goods to have on hand (ties up funds in goods parked in warehouses by business but puts goods into customers hands in very reasonable time-frames) faded away to be replaced with ship when ordered....and rail doesn't work for this concept. This is when & why trucking became what it is today, and why rail faded due to this ship when ordered idea.
Long ago when I was a 15yr old, I was going to go from SK (Regina) to the BC interior (Salmon Arm) to go to work for the summer (Logging). I didn't have a drivers license at that point (big kid but too young to drive legally) so I priced things out and the train was slightly more than the bus but less expensive than air travel, so I bought my one way ticket to get to work. The train was to arrive in Regina at 11pm so I arranged to get myself and my bag to the train station downtown (no city bus service that late at night at that time to a train station that today is a casino).
I then sat and waited until the train arrived in Regina promptly at about 5:15am (just over 6hrs late at that point). I got onto the train that left Regina about 6:30am pointed west and we made good time for a couple of hours....before we pulled over (yes, that happens on trains) onto a siding and parked for several hours until a freight train passed on the same line going the opposite direction, and then we got moving again. This would happen repeatedly as we traveled west until I arrived in Salmon Arm BC a bit over 26 hours after I was suppose to arrive according to the train schedule. This was in the early '80's and the first & last time I took a train anywhere. After working for the summer I flew home in 2hrs arriving old enough (Birthday is Aug 21st) to get a drivers license and to start school for the fall session.
The next summer I spent in a grain elevator inside the city of Regina (corner of Albert & 7th) that's now a FastGas Service Station loading 50kg sacks by hand of Lentils into Box Cars (1100/car & two cars/day so 2200x50kgs=110,000kg or 242,000lbs across my shoulders 5 days a week for an entire summer so a bit shy of 10,000,000 lbs in two months....which added meat to my frame that year) bound for Ethiopia to be confiscated by Warlords and sold for more weapons (long story, "We are the World, We are the People....").
I still see many many freight trains transporting SeaCans West to East or East to West, and Oil Cars along the #33 from SE SK to the Co-op Refinery in Regina, and long strings of Potash Cars going south across the prairies, and even Grain Hopper Cars. There are lots & lots of them but not hauling anything time sensitive or perishable. I have a Love/Hate relationship with these as it's a good sign of economic activity when you're stuck behind one of these freight trains on a highway or a city street just trying to get to where you need to be, and I've (we've, in relation to my Family as a whole) lost our oldest Brother to one just a few months ago (& this train wasn't going 1000kph): http://www.cjme.com/2019/06/14/semi-collides-with-train-near-foam-lake-closes-highway-16/
Anyway, sorry for the sidetrack (a train pun) from the Thread Topic. I just can't picture a high speed rail system across our nation when the safe place to place it will not be allowed to exist across our nation. Currently we won't or can't invest in safe train crossings for those moving at their current speeds.
I would think that redoing the rail for high speed would allow for a whole new system to be put down in a better, 'proper' corridor.
I'm sorry for the loss of your brother.
Considering all the repairs done or needed to regular roads and highways due to heavy trucks, I still think rail would be better to transport goods than them. Save truckers for closer hauling. You'd probably have less trucker accidents due to less exhausted drivers by doing that, too, but I'm not a trucker so...
I see the loss of our rail as one of the worst do nothing about it issues the Feds have done, mostly because it's a visible loss.
Excellent points. I think you're right. Since technology doesn't advance and problems can't be solved, I'll just take my sharp stick and head back to my cave.
but the train only delivers to the train station - then you have to truck whatever you have to a warehouse or whatever. Trucking is more flexible.
I do think high speed rail would work in and out of major cities. It would allow people to commute into work from further away and hopefully get them out of the greater TO and Vancouver housing markets.
That's not where I was going. The current business philosophy of ship when needed instead of regional warehousing is what killed the railroads for the most part and has zero to do with technology so that's at best a straw-man. High speed freight trains that have to stop often aren't going to be economical as maintaining momentum is what a diesel electric does efficiently (bang for your buck fuel wise). Same with diesel or gas (and thus the reason when you buy a new vehicle they state the mileage for both city & highway).
For the most part, me too, but I don't think the high speed rail thing isn't going to work nation wide without a corridor to run it through as it's a big country spanning five time-zones to drop infrastructure across, and the political climate isn't friendly towards that scale of project at this point in time.
I agree. Out of curiosity, who are you claiming is doing this? A specific person? A specific group of people?
I think it would work as you describe it on a smaller scale regionally for urbanely dense areas to their suburbs, It wouldn't be cheap but it would eventually pay for itself.
I'm sort of working through these responses bottom to top from when they where posted.
Canada, even with the greatly increased Truck Traffic in the last couple of decades due to the increased population and the "ship when ordered" instead of the 'regional warehousing' philosophy hasn't kept up with safety in mind. Vancouver to Calgary is 13hrs, and Calgary to Winnipeg is 13hrs, and not enough places for all to stop before then (Canada's max driving time for that reason is 13hr/day as opposed to the USA's 11). ELD's (Electronic Logging Devices) take away the driver's option to stop when fatigued (live GPS & unethical companies that are the minority but it's real) creating fatigued drivers but that's a different debate.
The Fed's have very little to do with the decline of the Railroads. It could be argued that the rail system was more efficient (I'm meaning time efficient and not fuel efficient) a century ago. I remember a Thread by Colpy more than a decade ago about a box of old letters he found in an attic after an elderly family member passed away (I think that's how it happened) where letters back and forth between somewhere in New York State and small town New Brunswick where delivered in a day or two (provable by dated letters and postal marks with 1 or 2 cent stamps). Produce could be shipped by train at that point also. A letter mailed in Regina might go to Winnipeg to get processed before coming back to Regina to be further sorted before it's delivered now instead of being sorted by people on a train while in transit 100 years ago for example.
I agree, but I still think isolating it away would add a level of safety to what really hasn't improved much in the last 140 years.
Thank you. I've never mentioned this outside of work or Family before. It was a bit too close as that's only a few months ago.
For the most part I agree. I am in the transport industry also (myself and my coworker who also happens to sign my paycheque run a Trucking company). Our roads have gone to shit with the increase of super heavy loads on them with B-Trains and Turnpike Doubles. Most of Canada's highways where not built with these weights in mind and thus the reason many highway lanes in cross section look like the letter 'W' as they warp from the weight that even two decades ago where unimaginable in this country. They're going to get bigger too. and Walmart is pioneering this.
Canada, even with the greatly increased Truck Traffic in the last couple of decades due to the increased population and the "ship when ordered" instead of the 'regional warehousing' philosophy hasn't kept up with safety in mind. Vancouver to Calgary is 13hrs, and Calgary to Winnipeg is 13hrs, and not enough places for all to stop before then (Canada's max driving time for that reason is 13hr/day as opposed to the USA's 11). ELD's (Electronic Logging Devices) take away the driver's option to stop when fatigued (live GPS & unethical companies that are the minority but it's real) creating fatigued drivers but that's a different debate.
The Fed's have very little to do with the decline of the Railroads. It could be argued that the rail system was more efficient (I'm meaning time efficient and not fuel efficient) a century ago. I remember a Thread by Colpy more than a decade ago about a box of old letters he found in an attic after an elderly family member passed away (I think that's how it happened) where letters back and forth between somewhere in New York State and small town New Brunswick where delivered in a day or two (provable by dated letters and postal marks with 1 or 2 cent stamps). Produce could be shipped by train at that point also. A letter mailed in Regina might go to Winnipeg to get processed before coming back to Regina to be further sorted before it's delivered now instead of being sorted by people on a train while in transit 100 years ago for example.
If Alberta became the 51st state, the US would gain another wealthy state nearly as big as Texas, the US would replace Canada as the second largest country on Earth, and the US would gain the third largest oil reserves of any country after Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Adding Alberta’s oil production of 3.5 million barrels per day to the US oil production of 10 million barrels per day would make the US by far the largest oil producer in the world, well ahead of Saudi Arabia and Russia. It would be like having another Texas but with far fewer people and much more oil and gas. It would pretty much solve the US energy supply problems for the foreseeable future since the US could be counted on to exploit those resources and move them to market regardless of anybody trying to stop it.
From Canada’s perspective it wouldn’t be very good since Canada would lose 90% of its oil reserves It would lose much of its oil refining and petrochemical industries and become a heavy net importer of crude oil, gasoline, and diesel fuel from the US. It would also lose 35% of its farmland, and 60% of its beef cattle, and BC would be cut off from the rest of of Canada. The federal government would lose much of its tax revenue and would be unable to fund its generous revenue equalization payments to Quebec and the Atlantic Provinces any more. Universal medical care would be much harder to fund. The Canadian dollar would drop drastically as a result of the loss of oil export revenue.
Albertans would notice that their taxes went down and that the GST disappeared completely, along with carbon taxes. Their new US dollars would buy a lot more than their old Canadian dollars did. Gasoline prices would go down to US levels. They would all rush out and buy even bigger 4x4 trucks than they already drive.
I don’t think most Canadians realize just how important Alberta is to the Canadian economy. They just know that Albertans are richer than other Canadians for some inexplicable reason and feel resentful about it.
From Canada’s perspective it wouldn’t be very good since Canada would lose 90% of its oil reserves It would lose much of its oil refining and petrochemical industries and become a heavy net importer of crude oil, gasoline, and diesel fuel from the US. It would also lose 35% of its farmland, and 60% of its beef cattle, and BC would be cut off from the rest of of Canada. The federal government would lose much of its tax revenue and would be unable to fund its generous revenue equalization payments to Quebec and the Atlantic Provinces any more. Universal medical care would be much harder to fund. The Canadian dollar would drop drastically as a result of the loss of oil export revenue.
Albertans would notice that their taxes went down and that the GST disappeared completely, along with carbon taxes. Their new US dollars would buy a lot more than their old Canadian dollars did. Gasoline prices would go down to US levels. They would all rush out and buy even bigger 4x4 trucks than they already drive.
I don’t think most Canadians realize just how important Alberta is to the Canadian economy. They just know that Albertans are richer than other Canadians for some inexplicable reason and feel resentful about it.
Problem is, it's full of whiny Albertans who, if the deal went through, would have proven themselves to be disloyal and unreliable, always looking for a "better deal." Who needs that?
Pretty sure the rest of Canada does realize how important Alberta is to our Economy.
If only because Alberta never shuts up over it being that important.
We get it, we know.
Why do you think people go to Alberta to work?
But y'know what? Some of us actually wish we didn't HAVE to depend so much on Alberta.
Blackmail comes way too easily to the entitled Albertans. We need to become less dependant on them not more so.
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The really funny part about all this is that such a large portion of Albertans aren’t born and raised here. They’ve come here from other countries and other parts of Canada. What we really have is a bunch of immigrants coming here and trying to change things because they don’t like it
Sound familiar?
Sound familiar?
Not one of the separation-minded groups have uttered the idea of joining the USA.
this is your ideal and I'm guessing that it's not that of the avg Albertan
The real tell-tale sign was more along the lines that many/most political parties campaigned on how they could one-up the other parties in kicking the crap out of the resource sector.
Alberta (by name) was brought up mostly, but the ideal applies equally, if not more, to Sask and NE BC.
I'm happier than a pig in shit that the East believes in this, it really ought to make separation far easier. Mind you, it doesn't take a fortune teller to determine who will be laughing last.
When you hammer out the numbers re: population(s) that want to leave, well, we're probably at about 40% of Canada wants out of confederation.
Tater tot has really done a bang-up job whilst in office, but you know, Sunny Ways an all
Disloyal like how the US cast out the Brits?... like that?
Happy to oblige... Really happy to oblige
