Introduction
The SaveRail Coalition, which is made up of businesses and community groups, exists to promote the need to retain and revitalize the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway (E&N) because we believe there is a strong current and potential need for it. We have identified untapped tourist and resident passenger markets plus freight markets. Investing in the railway and finding solutions for its management, is a lower cost and more environmentally sound alternative than spending more tax dollars on widening roads. This will enable Vancouver Island to grow and prosper while maintaining its key selling point: its quality of life.

The Business Case for Passenger Rail
There is a strong case for passenger rail on Vancouver Island. The two markets that currently will benefit the most are tourist and commuter. Tourist traffic provides the most immediate justification for keeping and revitalizing the E&N. According to Tourism Victoria, each visitor spends, on average, $120 per day. When you apply the multiplier to local economy they each generate $204 of economic activity. Therefore each day a visitor can be enticed to stay on Vancouver Island adds $204 per person per day into our economy.

Commuter traffic would enable the E&N to help alleviate road demand, especially on the steep and treacherous Mill Bay-Langford section of the Island Highway over the Malahat and through View Royal. Mimicking the experience of American roads where congestion quickly filled any new capacity the local portion of the Island Highway is at a crawl at peak periods despite over $300 million in tax dollars spent, or arguably wasted, on widening it.

E&N Tourism Potential
The E&N Dayliner still attracts between 35,000 and 45,000 riders per year. That is despite being on a single daily schedule, riding on deteriorated track, poor or no station buildings, minimal parking, no food or baggage service and high fares and little marketing. The E&N gives visitors a reason to stay longer, and spend more money in hotels, restaurants and shops.

VIA does not break down for rider type, but according to reports that more people ride the trains in summer than at other times of the year it is fair to assume that many of those 35,000/45,000 riders are visitors, both tourists and those seeing family and friends. Let's assume that 15,000 riders are visitors. Even in its present shape E&N may generate $3.06 million in tourism-related economic activity annually (15,000 x $204). Therefore, not to keep and revive the E&N would be leaving money on the table, and with it lost incomes, jobs and tax revenues. With the provincial government privatizing the BC economy and with the forestry industry in a slump, we would be shortchanging ourselves if we let this train die.

The White Pass and Yukon Route (WP&YR) from Skagway, Alaska to Whitehorse, Yukon died in 1982 when a new highway put the railway out of business. But the WP&YR came back as a summer-passenger-only service part way to Whitehorse in 1988. The WP&YR pulled in nearly 319,000 riders in the 2001 season, a 5.2% increase over 2000.

It may be possible to attract 100,000+ annual customers to the E&N. The ride and the routes are almost as spectacular as the WP&YR's, the service is year round, it taps or can tap into other markets. Vancouver Island is close to US metropolitan and Vancouver markets, plus major airports, cruise ship ports and Amtrak/VIA terminals. Here the cruise ships act as marketers. Tourism Victoria says it hopes that visitors who take the cruises will like what they see and come back. There are many such tourist destinations in Campbell River, Comox, Courtenay (especially Mount Washington), Duncan, Nanaimo and Qualicum Beach and in the islands off Vancouver Island that the train can tap, and attract customers and revenues. All it takes is proper marketing, with bus/van and ferry connections to off-line destinations.

One of the strongest untapped markets is the 38 mile branch line from Parksville to Port Alberni. According to former CPR employees such as Jim Sturgill, who has been a conductor on freight trains over that track (the last passenger train ran in 1953), it is the most spectacular rail route on Vancouver Island. The rails climb steeply to the pass through the Beaufort Range, with the aid of high curving trestles, and roll by scenic Cameron Lake and Cathedral Grove enroute. Yet with some track improvement it is possible to run a train from Nanaimo to Port Alberni to connect with the Victoria-Courtenay train in both directions for Victoria. With ferry connections at Nanaimo, visitors can make Vancouver-Port Alberni round trips and circle tours via Nanaimo and Victoria.

Developing the tourism is very important for Port Alberni. That community has suffered from forestry industry declines. Yet it has strong tourism potential. It is the jumping-off spot for the Pacific Rim National Park, with tourists driving over the twisting, challenging Highway 4 or taking the Lady Rose vessels to Bamfield and Ucluelet. Already there is a local summer only heritage steam train & a restored steam operated sawmill.

If we go back to the economic case for the E&N, lets assume that with the Port Alberni line we can attract 60,000 visitors a year to ride the railway. The annual benefit is over $12.2 million, because the addition of the Port Alberni route encourages people to add 2 or more days to their visit; you cannot ride the lines to Courtenay and to Port Alberni in the same day.

Commuter Markets
According to the province, Vancouver Island's population will grow to between 800,000 and 1 million residents by 2021; it reached close to 700,000 in 2000. The Victoria/Capital Regional area, Vancouver Island's largest population center and its key employment hub, will have over 400,000 residents in 2022 from over 336,000 in 2002.

According to the responses SaveRail received at the Feb.13, 2002 public meeting, and from news reports, there is strong interest in commuter travel to the Capital Region. People do not like driving, or riding buses over the Malahat. They perceive the road as unsafe, especially in slick and wintry weather and at night. The Victoria station is close to employers, shopping and is convenient for BC Transit buses to other destinations such as Royal Jubilee Hospital and the University of Victoria. A new station at View Royal, or even the existing Palmer Station, could connect The Great Canadian Casino and Victoria General Hospital to the E&N.

The current E&N schedule can be made to accommodate commuter rail into Victoria if the track and equipment is improved to ensure schedule reliability, better stations and parking, and onboard amenities introduced such as a coffee/snack cart. The Budd RDC cars have long been used for commuter rail. The same equipment can depart Nanaimo in the early morning, arrive in Victoria, depart to Courtenay and return to Victoria then go back to Nanaimo in the evening. The snack cart avoids the rest stops at Nanaimo.

There is a potential commuter market into Nanaimo, which has attracted new employers such as RMH Teleservices, a large call center outsourcer. Nanaimo is also a hub for Vancouver commuter traffic. With plans to restore fast ferries from Nanaimo to Vancouver, there could be demand for trains from Duncan and Ladysmith, and from Courtenay, Qualicum Beach and Parksville. They would roll down the existing harbor front rail line to provide convenient walk-on connections.

There are development benefits to commuter rail. They attract growth to outlying communities, and to local downtowns. This growth would come from commuters going to the larger center, and from businesses looking to locate in smaller lower-cost communities. The American Public Transit Association lists reports and studies of the development benefits of rail transit.

The Business Case for Freight
There is also a strong case to bring back rail freight to the E&N. The E&N carried nearly 7,000 railcars mostly between Port Alberni and Nanaimo. Its largest customer, NorskeCanada, which has a mill in Port Alberni, may be attracted back to rail if 1) investments were made, such as restoring the short branch from Westholme to Crofton to serve the Norske mill there and to connect the tracks to a barge slip to provide connections to the mainland, and if 2) total costs were lowered.

Shifting the barge slip, now at Nanaimo to Crofton, would also permit removing the yard in downtown Nanaimo, leaving a simple spur and station and basic maintenance facilities for passenger-only service. Passenger trains can carry express freight. Amtrak in the US has a very successful rail parcels program.

There is possibility of future freight traffic. There is talk of methane recovery from the old coal mines that litter Vancouver Island. Railcars would transport the compressed gas far safer than road, without the huge investment in additional pipelines and allow for small scale sites to be developed without expensive infrastructure costs. As Vancouver Island grows there may well be a need to build distribution centers and intermodal terminals to serve the local markets. Intermodal terminals will permit railcars and container/truck-trailer-carrying flatcars to be transported directly to island destinations, without off loading onto trucks in the Lower Mainland.

Bus Replacement Not An Option But Bus Coordination Is
But why not replace the E&N with buses? Greyhound/Laidlaw's buses are faster, operate more often and go to more places on Vancouver Island than VIA and, except for 7-day advance purchases, are less costly.

But bus replacement is not viable. When passenger rail service is abandoned many rail users will not switch to buses, particularly those who own or who have access cars. That means more traffic. Tourists will take scheduled train trips but with rare exceptions, like PCLs Vancouver-Victoria service, they will not go out of their way to ride a bus (the appeal of Victoria and the ferry ride are the selling points, not the bus experience). Many former rail users will also not make discretionary trips, such as a ride out for the day, if the only option is a bus.

Transport 2000 Atlantic found this pattern in a 1993 survey of residents following the end of VIA service from Sydney to Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1990. The paper reported that bus ridership also slid on the local bus company's routes following the end of train service (This was surprising in that one might have expected displaced train passengers to swell bus ridership levels, said the report).

This raises the issue of whether there is a substantial demand for regional train service, which cannot be satisfied by substituting bus service. Transport 2000 also reported that Greyhound added buses with the end of VIA service to Vancouver via Calgary also in 1990 but later removed them.

The Nova Scotia study reported that 60% to 64% of households surveyed no longer made some journeys with the loss of train service. 68% of all households who had used the train listed driving as among the alternative modes, while 64% also listed the bus as a substitute. The survey found that a high proportion of households who formerly used the train had access to a car.

This suggests that a substantial portion of the regional rail market may include car-owning households with members who cannot drive due to age or use of the car by another member, or who simply prefer not to drive, explains the report. This latter scenario might explain why some of the lack of bus ridership growth following the VIA cuts as some people may have preferred to return to driving rather than use the substitute bus service with its fewer amenities."

While much has been made of VIA's subsidy, buses are also subsidized, directly, such as BC Transit and other commuter buses, and indirectly, through road infrastructure. According to the US Federal Highway Administration each buses incurs 11.8 cents per mile in direct federal, state and local roadway expenses but pay 4.6 cents in fuel taxes, leaving 7.2 cents in net cost. In comparison each car incurs 3.5 cents but pay in 2.6 cents, with a 0.9 cent net cost.

But people will use buses connecting with trains. For example, Amtraks very successful Thruway bus program, where the rail carrier works with bus companies, provides vital and attractive links to its Cascades trains that connect Vancouver with Washington State and Oregon, and to its trains in California. Greyhound is reportedly interested in working with rail in Canada.

Bus companies also successfully operate passenger trains. One of the worlds leading bus companies, Stagecoach Group which owns Coach USA also has partnerships in several well-known UK rail franchises: South West Trains, Virgin Rail and the Island Line, on Britains Isle of Wight.

The Public Necessity: Rail Could Relieve Congestion At Less Cost Than New Roads
The island's growing population is overtaxing our regional highway system even with the new and improved Island Highway. The section from Duncan to Langford, over the Malahat remains dangerous, as indicated by frequent crashes, closures and delays.

More and widened major roads may be very costly and environmentally damaging. According to the BC Ministry of Transportation the local (Victoria-Langford) Island Highway project cost more than $300 million for about 12 lane-miles (2 additional lanes for 6 miles) or over $25 million per lane-mile. While this entailed new intersections and land acquisition even this is low cost compared to widening the road 35 lane miles over the Malahat, and through Goldstream Park. Adding 50 lane miles on the tough Highway 4 through Cathedral Grove would also be very costly and environmentally destructive. At even $25 million a lane mile the total cost would be $2.1 billion ($850 million over the Malahat, $1.25 billion through Cathedral Grove), more likely the figure would be close to $3 billion.

In comparison, it could cost roughly $30 million to rebuild for the 142-mile Victoria-Courtenay portion, which would cut the Victoria-Nanaimo schedule significantly to 2 hours, from 2 hours 25 minutes. To restore the 38 mile Port Alberni line for passenger as well as freight and the 2.5 mile Crofton line for freight would add $30-$35 million, for a total of $60-$65 million. You also avoid the costs of acquiring land for more lanes and intersections.

Because railways are guided transportation, more people and goods can be moved over a given length of route than road. If the E&N were improved, it could transport over 15,000 passengers an hour compared with up to 1,500 to 2,500 cars, or 1,680 people to 2,800 passengers, with an average of 1.12 passengers, including drivers per car according to US studies, for a highway lane.

By investing in rail you also save money by avoiding road repair and repaving costs. Specific road usage taxes like fuel taxes do not cover all road costs, like local road expenses and emergency services. Heavy trucks impose more than their fair share of road costs. According to a 1997 US Federal Highway Administration study, a heavy truck can impose wear and tear hundreds of times greater than an automobile. The abandonment of E&N freight service will increase road upkeep costs to taxpayers, when we can least afford it.

With freight removed from rail to road that increases the spectre of potentially fatal collisions with heavy trucks carrying forestry products, grain and dangerous commodities such as propane. Highway 4, from Qualicum to Port Alberni with its tight curves and steep grades, is vulnerable to such accidents, especially in the summer months with many recreational motorists and cyclists.

Conclusion
It is clear that there is a strong present and future business case for the E&N as a passenger and freight carrier. But to tap it requires a leveling of the playing field between rail and road, perhaps with a track authority and contracted freight and passenger service as proposed by the Vancouver Island Railway Society and Transport 2000, and a modest investment jump-start. Until we give the E&N a chance we will never know what it can do. But if we allow it to be abandoned we will all face the consequences of lost tourism dollars, more congestion and more taxes going to pay for more pollution-generating scenery-ripping roads that will ultimately choke our quality of life.

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