Rail against the machine

I was in Vancouver this weekend, visiting Red Canuck, MD and family. But getting there wasn't without some weather-related tribulation, including an unplanned stop at the Ramada 'Mall of America' for an overnight stay and some full frontal stereotyping of North American native culture -- like the 'Smok'em Peace Pipe' gift shop in the lobby, or the gentle savagery summarized in a display case of collectible American Indian porcelain. I hope you enjoy the picture (left) of the laughing water ("minnehaha") sculpture as much as I did when I saw it in person. The icing on the cake was the classic car show of 1950s Chevrolets being held in the large parking lot behind the hotel -- Heartbeat of America, indeed!

The travel by air experience has been incredibly convenient for the better part of four decades with the ushering in of the modern jet. By the mid-1980s, flying was a routine part of how we all travelled, to the detriment of other forms of travel, particularly trains. We know the story of trains in North America, which is not unlike the plight of our native population -- discarded, disintegrating, essentially decimated.

But where it was once a pleasure to hop on a plane and get to a far off destination quickly and conveniently, air travel has become a complete pain; fighting traffic to get to the airport on time, weather delays, burdensome security procedures, baggage fees, a measly pack of peanuts and maybe the whole tin of soda, if you ask nicely. Could my travel from New York to Vancouver have been done by high-speed rail?

I was forwarded an excellent article from Walrus Magazine on how Canada was once in a position of leadership in the train business and, once again, I lamented the Canadian inability to fend off the seduction of following an American model. That's undoubtedly a simplistic statement, but at the very least, couldn't we be smarter and hedge our bets? We have a history of being easily seduced out of business (remember the Avro Arrow?) to the detriment of home-grown industries, associated research advances and ultimately, national interest.

The article's author, Monte Paulsen, rhymes off a list of countries working on, or planning, high-speed rail including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Morocco, and succinctly sums up the basic intelligence behind building high-speed rail in two paras:

Why are these countries planning and building high-speed rail lines? Because they’re a kind of insurance policy for the twenty-first century. High-speed rail ensures that cities remain connected the next time the price of oil rises, and in the event that $150-a-barrel oil returns for good. Because it is so much more fuel efficient, high-speed rail is far, far greener than flying, and in a century of dwindling oil it’s also far more economically sustainable — a fact Saudi Arabia seems to grasp, but Canada does not.

Canada possesses both the expertise to build high-speed rail systems — Bombardier is a global leader — and the population to support them, along routes such as the Quebec City–Windsor and Calgary–Edmonton corridors. What it lacks is the political will to act. As a result, Canada is failing to leverage the recent wave of infrastructure spending, let alone nourish its legacy as a nation built on the spine of its railroad.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Instead, I leave you with original video footage by Bill Morrison, of the Sikorsky-designed, Montreal Locomotive Works-built, 167 kilometer-per-hour capable Canadian National Turbo Train outside Montreal's Central Station in October 1982 in preparation for one of its last runs. This is, drolly, spliced together with video footage of the Rapido Train scale model, probably in someone's basement. And, if that's what building Canadian infrastructure has come to, we should all be a little sad.