D7

By Tim Moerman
For The Times & Transcript

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Every now and then I get a strange sense that sanity is beginning to prevail in the world. It happened last week when I heard of Barack Obama's plan to spend $13 billion to establish high-speed passenger rail corridors throughout the United States.

I can only hope Canada will follow the American lead on this one.

Trains are far more energy-efficient than passenger jets, and produce far less greenhouse gases. A modern European-style TGV (train à grand vitesse), with an operating speed of 200-300 km/hr, could make the 1,200 kilometre run from Halifax to Montreal in about four to six hours.

That's about how long it takes to fly today, if you include the trek to and from the airport, the one-hour advance check-in, and the increasingly common flight delays.

Add the security hassles, the luggage restrictions and the crowding that reduces airline passengers to something like human Spam, and it's really no contest.

The train is the way to go.

Or would be, if there was one.

Unfortunately, we don't have anything like the European TGV system; indeed, we barely have any passenger rail service at all. In Canada, as in the United States, our rail network has been left to wither away through decades of neglect.

This is particularly tragic in Canada, a nation that after all was built on the spine of a transcontinental railroad. Today, in most of the country, we get one very, very slow train per day. (That's where the train runs at all; many major cities have no passenger rail service, period.)

Most of us barely noticed the decline in rail service because most of us barely used it.

For decades, airlines provided cheap, fast, reliable service between major cities. In the beginning, it must have been wonderful; it seemed that jet planes were the future, while trains belonged in the dusty, sepia-toned past.

But the future isn't what it used to be, and we will soon need passenger rail again in a big way.

For the moment, the recession has shoved peak oil off the front page, but let's not kid ourselves. The fact remains that we have used up the world's supply of cheap, reliable petroleum, and what's left will be much more expensive to produce and refine.

When the economy starts to recover and demand for oil picks up again, we are liable to once again see dramatically higher fuel prices.

The consequences for the airline industry will not be good.

This time last year, as oil passed $100 a barrel, fuel costs were already stretching airlines to the breaking point. The resulting cost-cutting -- eliminating backup crews, keeping fewer jets on standby -- has made the entire system fragile and vulnerable to the slightest disruption. Long delays became the rule, not the exception. Last winter, my eight-hour trip to Duluth turned into a 26-hour, five-city ordeal thanks to overbooked flights and under-staffed ticket counters. By now almost everyone has a similar story.

For business travellers, whose premium fares are the backbone of the airlines' revenue, speed and reliability are essential. At a certain point, Joe the Executive is going to decide that he can no longer count on making a morning meeting in Toronto and getting back in time for his afternoon face time in Montreal. When that happens it's all over for commercial aviation as we know it.

Now, don't get me wrong -- the airlines aren't going to disappear outright.

In a country as vast as Canada, aviation will continue to play a role for a long time. But it will work very differently, and flying will (as it should) be reserved for extremely long hauls.

It barely makes sense, even now, to make short trips by plane; the only reason we do it is because we've no real alternative. Once fuel costs pass a certain point, the advantages of railroads for short trips will become undeniable.

Today, when you book a flight, it typically involves one or more connections. But why do those segments all have to be by air?

If we had high-speed rail service linking our airports and our cities, you could book a whole trip on the same system. Suppose you were going from Moncton to Red Deer. Your booking would include a train ticket from downtown Moncton to Halifax, then a flight from Halifax to Calgary, and then another train from Calgary right into Red Deer. You would use the most effective mode for each part of the trip. And if you were just making a short trip, you'd never have to board a plane at all.

But, details, details.

First we have to make a commitment -- we, as a nation -- to invest in passenger rail, and we have to do this soon. The day is fast approaching when the sheer scarcity of fuel will make mass air travel unviable.

When that happens, unless we have the passenger rail system up and running, most of us will be going nowhere fast.

n Tim Moerman, of Moncton, is an urban planner and in demand speaker at conferences across North America on the subject of preparing for a world in which oil is no longer cheap or plentiful.