In terms of efficiency, we're very fortunate in Canada with our class I railways: we have really the most efficient railways in North America, and North American railways are seen as the most efficient freight railways in the world. They've transformed from what was previously very inefficient to highly efficient. One of the ways they've done that is by creating longer trains, and that's had an impact on things like crossings. One of the members mentioned crossings earlier.
That's an interesting piece of this puzzle, because the fact is that over the last 10 years, 85% of the serious injuries and 91% of the fatalities involving railways have been at crossings or trespassing. This year, all of the fatalities in rail have been at crossings or trespassing, so there's no question that railways—partly because of their business model, but mainly because of safety—are resisting additional crossings.
Instead, what we need to do as a society is think about how we can consolidate crossings and protect them by having more bridges and tunnels. There was a great example with the Vancouver Gateway, where the province of B.C., the Government of Canada, and the local communities collaborated to solve the problem of congestion at the ports. It worked all the way backward, using rail and road traffic. We built more bridges. We made some changes at the port. We invested in rail.
The result was greater fluidity for the national economy, and greater local fluidity because you weren't held up waiting for a train. Now you had a bridge or a tunnel you could take, and greater fluidity at the port. And guess what? It's a lot safer. That corridor approach is what we need in the country, and that means more infrastructure investment at crossings, more collaboration between the parties, and closing crossings rather than opening new ones.
After the accident in Lac-Mégantic, everyone realized that railway safety is important. So we are against installing more level crossings.
