VANCOUVER, B.C. — BC Rail is determined to close its money-losing passenger rail service from North Vancouver to Prince George despite a plea from municipal politicians along the route for it to be maintained, the Vancouver Sun reports.
“We intend to close the service Oct. 31,” BC Rail official Alan Dever said Wednesday.
On Tuesday 18 mayors and councillors from the Interior met in 100 Mile House in a last-ditch effort to save the service and emerged with a plea to the provincial government for a moratorium on the line’s closure.
They said the moratorium was needed in order to buy time for the government and BC Rail to devise new ways of raising revenue from the service, which lost $22 million over the last five years.
Dever said BC Rail was willing to listen “to anyone who comes up with a commercially sound solution to keep the service operating.”
“But we haven’t seen one yet,” he said.
Prince George Mayor Colin Kinsley said the moratorium would allow time for a thorough review of BC Rail’s part in the province’s economic future.
“We need to stick to our guns and make sure BC Rail steps back for a while so we can take another look at this,” he said.
The mayors will present their request during a meeting of the Provincial Congress on Transportation and Infrastructure to be held in Vancouver next Tuesday at Simon Fraser University’s downtown campus.
North Vancouver District Mayor Don Bell — who was unable to attend Tuesday’s meeting — said he supported a moratorium.
“Passenger rail service is an important transportation alternative,” said Bell, who also said he sympathized with BC Rail’s plight.
“But historically railways have received good grants and concessions from the senior governments in order to establish themselves. Part of their over-all commitment should be to maintain these connections between communities,” said Bell.
The service carried 81,000 one-way passengers in 2001, but still lost $4.8 million, said Dever.
“We’re losing millions of dollars a year on a service that primarily serves the tourist industry, not the B.C. public, and we don’t get any subsidies for that service,” said Dever.
He said the 50-year-old diesel-powered Budd cars that carried passengers were “old, unreliable and need to be retired.”
It would cost an estimated $30 million to refurbish them. Dever said the only communities along the route that depended on rail service were those between Anderson and Seton Lakes north of Pemberton.
“These folks don’t have alternative means of transportation and we are going to be providing a rail shuttle service on that part of the route to be managed by the Seton Lake Indian Band,” he said.