https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/mobile/getting-victoria-langford-rail-travel-back-on-track-would-cost-600m-province-1.4916211
A report detailing the condition of the Vancouver Island Railway has been released recently and it doesn look good.
Up from previous estimates, the line could cost between $100 and $600 Millon to fully rehabilitate, perhaps putting public support for the project in jeopardy. Hopefully this all works out and trains can run again on the island, but right now, that seems uncertain.
I wrote a letter to the editor of the Comox Record, which they published, as soon as the engineering study was published about seven years ago detailing the embargoed bridges and their need for funding to put right, plus all the defects in the rail bed and ties, etc. I stated that the rails would likely never sing to passenger steel again because the costs of running the enterprise, even if various governments and municipalities coughed up the purportedly needed $12M, or whatever the figure was (laughable), it would never pay for itself. Further, I pointed out, while all the real engineering and funding and repairs took place over the next four or five years, another two or three bridges would reach their stale dates.
I would like to see this latest study released. I think it's ridiculous, agenda-driven, and meant to doom the rails. But at the opposite extreme was that study done in 2012/13.
A realistic figure? I told my wife before the news announcer had said it, that it would take $60M to get 20 good years out of that venture. Even if I'm wrong by 100%, it's still only $120M. Trouble is, it's about $100M too much.
The Port Alberni group has been clearing brush along that branchline in recent months. I don't think they plan to run trains on it yet, the current goal would seem to be speeder operations.
Has anything come of the proposed commuter/light rail use of the ROW in Victoria?
And when will that end-cab switcher be delivered to the Victoria roundhouse? That move will be the first train in Victoria since 2011, when the VIA RDC's left for the last time.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
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