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Booming resource economy, commuter crush make old railway lines viable again

A boom in Canada's resource sector and increasing commuter gridlock are combining to give new life to old, abandoned rail lines.

The most recent development, reports the National Post, has been a $15-million project funded by the federal and B.C. governments to upgrade the E & N Railway that goes north on Vancouver Island from Victoria.

The initial improvements will allow for commuter trains to travel between the city and suburban Langford, saving an increasingly slow commute on the region's choked highways.

The 105-year-old right-of-way, which once linked mid-Island coal mines and logging operations to Victoria, had deteriorated over the decades as highways became the main arteries of commerce and travel.

The line was finally sold for a dollar to the non-profit Island Corridor Foundation in 2006. Now proponents of the upgrade see its revival for both freight and passenger traffic.

"When you're looking at the growth of the (Victoria region), it only makes sense to look at this corridor, which you already own," foundation executive director Graham Bruce told the Post.

The E & N is just one of Canada's many abandoned rail lines, either rusting, overgrown tracks or rights of way where the rails have been torn up and turned into hiking and cycling trails.

"But increasingly, as booming industries and cash-strapped governments cope with gridlocked highways and skyrocketing transport costs, many are discovering that the cure may be rusting away just over the back fence," Post reporter Tristin Hopper wrote.

Eugene Hretzay has been instrumental in launching a $50-million project to upgrade the Yukon and White Pass Railway line, which was built to link Skagway, Alaska, with the Klondike at the turn of the 20th century. Today it's largely a curiosity that takes summer cruise ship tourists on short rides in vintage rail cars.

Hretzay, who became the line's president two years ago, saw the expansion of mining in the Yukon as an opportunity. Trucks that are taking ore to Skagway's could be replaced by cheaper, more efficient freight trains.

"We estimate that the ton per kilometre is about 50 per cent lower than that by truck," Hretzay told the Post.

The explosion in northern Alberta's oil sands development has also revived the region's rail network. Canadian National Railway, which sold off its Athabascan holdings in the 1990s, has come back and snapped up several small rail lines, the Post reported.

The company is also refurbishing lines in Quebec, British Columbia and Illinois.

In Ottawa, there's a push to open a commuter rail line to Gatineau, Que., where many civil servants live. And Peterborough MP Dean Del Mastro wants to upgrade existing Canadian Pacific Railway lines to handle the long dreamed of high-speed commuter train into Toronto.

Back in B.C., commuter congestion in the Vancouver area is reviving talk of reviving the century-old Interurban, which carried people from downtown Vancouver east to Chilliwack, 100 kilometres away. The electric tram line disappeared with the opening of the Trans-Canada Highway.

While the elevated SkyTrain system links Vancouver and its immediate suburbs, most commuters from Fraser Valley communities are left with an increasingly time-consuming drive across a couple of bridges or use the pricy West Coast Express train.

John Vissers, whose group Rail for the Valley is behind efforts to bring back the old commuter rail line, said the time is right.

"We could have this entire system up and running, serving a quarter million people, for approximately the same cost as two kilometres of SkyTrain," said Vissers.

(CP image)