Transport committee  George.

Transport committee  In the United States we have Rule 213.345, and that's a rule whereby if we wanted to do this, we would have to run tests. We would have to run the test for the track and for the speed. The public would have to be involved with it and local legislation would have to be involved wi

Transport committee  I would imagine the policy is probably very similar. You're talking about mixed traffic, and therefore what takes place is the safety of the people. That's the number one concern.

Transport committee  Not all, no. I'm speaking about smaller cities, for example; I'm not talking about transcontinental Canada. I'm not talking about major lines where you would run VIA-type trains and all that. I'm speaking mainly about the transit type of activity.

Transport committee  I don't want you to do anything for me. What I'd like you to do for yourselves is be aggressive in the selection of European-style equipment, because their technology is so far advanced from what we have right now.

Transport committee  Right now you'd have to convince Transport Canada, I believe.

Transport committee  Under the UIC type of rules, you'd have to buy that style. You wouldn't have to have the crashworthiness. There are a lot of different things that come into play.

Transport committee  It's something I believe the government would have to allow to happen. I don't know what you did here in Ottawa, but in the New Jersey area, the transit purchased the old rail line. When they did that, they negotiated with the existing railroad as part of a temporal type of opera

Transport committee  The only thing stopping it now, I believe, would be a community wanting to have that type of service. That's the only thing probably that's stopping it. I don't know. Paul, do you have any ideas?

Transport committee  I'll give you an example. In 1994 I did a contract with a Canadian railway and a U.S. manufacturer. Right now, Transport Canada has a rule stating that I do not have to do inspections of equipment every 92 days; I do it every 180 days. In the United States, you have to do it ever

Transport committee  I would re-evaluate what the FRA calls Rule 238. I would not impose that upon Canada at this time.

Transport committee  Finally, the last thing is maintenance procedures. Because of regulations, if you do implement the European-style DMU, please do not incorporate massive maintenance instructions, rules and regulations, that therefore then will force you to build them to North American types of st

Transport committee  Your final question is what the Government of Canada can do to enable advances. We believe that the biggest thing you can do is to institute regulations and allow for what we call temporal separation. Temporal separation was first tried in the United States under what we called t

Transport committee  Very good. In your opening document, you spoke of lightweight, aerodynamic, intelligent types of vehicles, and the efficiency of existing transportation networks. We feel—it's our belief—that the present-day technology really lies with off-the-shelf European-design equipment.