Evidence of meeting #20 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was railway.
A recording is available from Parliament.
President and Chief Executive Director, West Coast Express
It's our third attempt. It's been literally a cut-and-paste for each bill: C-26, C-44, and C-11.
President and Chief Executive Director, West Coast Express
As it relates to us, the only other one that was different goes back 20 years ago. It was Bill C-97, and many of the elements were the same—nothing structural. In fact, this is probably more comprehensive and appropriate.
Liberal
President and Chief Executive Director, West Coast Express
This has literally been a cut-and-paste for each of the last three bills.
Liberal
Andy Scott Liberal Fredericton, NB
I'm interested in the infrastructure piece. This is also the committee responsible for infrastructure. I think we may want to take up some of those issues as well.
Is it fair that the Canadian strategic infrastructure fund would make an investment, that upon the investment the asset would go to the railroad, and in fact they would generate revenues on the basis of the public investment, which presumably you contributed to as a taxpayer?
Liberal
Andy Scott Liberal Fredericton, NB
If that public investment is in the name of.... Generally I think your business is seeing attention and investment by virtue of environmental issues, fast transit, and so on. The strategic infrastructure fund speaks very specifically to an interest in this, and that you would represent the interest. It occurs to me that whatever moneys would flow from that investment would more appropriately be rolled back into more investment along the same lines.
Now, granted the revenue flow, if this is done as you're suggesting, it would be less because the prospect of arbitration would cause the negotiations to be more favourable. I think that's the basis of your optimism. I just want to make sure I haven't....
President and Chief Executive Director, West Coast Express
Yes, we're not here to increase our friction, that's for sure.
Liberal
Andy Scott Liberal Fredericton, NB
No, understood.
So as for the order of magnitude, are these kind of numbers available? I'm trying to get a sense of the costs of the 20 years. You suggested that if this were to happen right away, the costs would be less, and if it doesn't happen, you said specifically that you wouldn't be expanding until this is done. So with opportunity costs and practical costs to you as a result of the fact that this has taken far too long, there's a bit of an incentive to us.
Is there any response to that? Can you tell me?
Managing Director and Chief Executive Director, GO Transit
I can use the Milton corridor as an example. I think it was in the late 1980s that the Province of Ontario invested about $30 million into that corridor for track improvements to allow us to run some more trains. What ended up happening was that because of the high access fees in the corridor, we didn't put as many trains as we wanted. Of course, as the recession of the early 1990s hit, we actually had to reduce some train service in that corridor, which the freights then occupied.
So they essentially occupied the money that we put in. If this legislation had been in place in 1986, we would probably have all-day service on the Milton corridor right now. It's a crystal ball, but really there would be a lot more train service out there in the GO network than there is now. We have a lot of train service now, but I think there would be a lot more.
President and Chief Executive Director, West Coast Express
I'm not sure, but I think GO's example was similar to ours with the West Coast Express. What kind of modal shift can you actually get for the person with the choice of a car who's commuting around Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Winnipeg, or any centre? For the dollars you put in, the modal shift that commuter rail generates is about 50% of our ridership with the choice of a car who are willing to park and say, you know what, I'll take a train. If our cost structures are not competitive and you put a bus in place, you typically get about a 12% to 15% modal shift.
That's not to say a commuter train is the answer for everything; it's just a tool in our tool box to solve problems. But where the circumstances are right and it's the right line, the right agreement, and so on, the viability for the modal shift far advantages putting commuter rail in.
I can't comment on what opportunities have been lost, but I know there's significant demand in our case. Our parking lots are full, our ridership is approaching capacity, and I suspect there'll be more trains coming.
But ultimately, down the road is to the railways. Don't just hit us on margin; help us where we can actually make it so economical that we can bring you more capital that benefits goods movement in the future, as well as passenger movement. And don't just look at it on a pricing basis—what can you extract and we can bear? That's not a good way for a long-term balance of prosperity for all of us.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Very quickly, I know you've covered this in some respects, but I'm curious to know if you have any other goodies in your wish bag that you would like to see in this legislation governing you that you would consider equitable.
President and Chief Executive Director, West Coast Express
At this time, from our perspective, it's appropriate.
Vice-President, Trains, Agence métropolitaine de transport
Yes, the same for us. We worked hard just for this. At one point in time we said, let's get this, let's not do any more wishful thinking for anything more.
I mean, it was already hard to get this, so you can imagine, if we started to add to it, how it would simply disturb things. I think we're satisfied with what's in there.
Managing Director and Chief Executive Director, GO Transit
Same. We're perfectly content with this. It really gives us the flexibility to do what we really need to do. It's fair to the railways as well.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed
Thank you.
Because we have a little bit of time, I'm going to go around once more.
We'll start with Mr. McGuinty.
Liberal
David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON
Mr. Chairman, thank you once again.
I'd like to go back to the noise issue raised earlier by Mr. Storseth. A number of the affected parties with respect to rail noise in the country have come to see us or have spoken to us by teleconference, and have said that there are two weak features in this bill with respect to noise. To a certain extent, you're also in the noise business, and I'm sure you manage community expectations and challenges on that front.
The first issue they raise is the applicability of municipal bylaws to noise generated by rail companies. The second has to do with the sanctionability of the bill in terms of what kinds of sanctions are available to the CTA with respect to penalizing or pursuing rail companies.
Can you give us a sense of what you deal with every day in managing on both those fronts? Do you think it's a competitive disadvantage? You're in different businesses, but are you having to deal with things that another segment of the economy doesn't deal with?
You deal with this issue, I'm sure, every day. Can you comment generally on those two aspects of the noise question?
Managing Director and Chief Executive Director, GO Transit
When you look at the municipal bylaws related to noise, if the municipalities actually applied their bylaws to any transportation infrastructure, you'd shut down every single road at 11 o'clock at night. I mean, that's one of the things, that infrastructure-related stuff is not like the fixed noise component of generators, the banging of dump trucks, and things like that. The railways, I know, have a number of issues associated with this. The noise essentially would result in rail yard operations being shut down and things like that. So there are some major issues there.
Typically, in most cases these rail yards were there long before the residential development came into play. The municipalities actually allowed the residential development to be built, and now all of a sudden they're blaming the railways for the noise.
As a commuter operator, our big issue with noise really is the need to blow the whistle when you go through level crossings. That's what most people complain about. At 5:30 in the morning there are four big blasts of the horn, and it wakes everyone up. That's done purely for safety reasons. If we had road-rail grade separations all over the place, those issues would go away. Again, that relates to infrastructure that needs to be put in place.
So probably our number one issue, from a commuter operation perspective, is the whistle-blowing.
Managing Director and Chief Executive Director, GO Transit
Actually, the municipal bylaws really don't apply to us. When we do new rail corridors, we actually go in and do noise tests in the area. We find that the background noise level is much higher than the noise that our introduced services would apply to.
We comply with the provincial regulations related to noise, and likewise the federal regulations that currently exist.