E&N (T)rail Time
11 Sep 2018The last week of August, I took three days and rode my bike from Victoria to Courtenay. It was a marvelous trip, and I got to see and stay in some wonderful towns along the way: Cowichan Bay, Duncan, Chemainus, Ladysmith, Nanaimo, Parksville, Qualicum Beach, Fanny Bay, Union Bay and Courtenay.
I also got to see a good portion of the old E&N railway line, as that line also passes through all the little towns I visited (with the exception of Cowichan Bay). It doesn’t take a trained surveyor to see that most of the railbed is in really poor condition. In many places the ties are rotting out, and you can pull spikes out of them with your bare hands. Running a train on the thing is going to take huge investments to basically rebuild the rail bed (and many of the trestles) from scratch, and the economics don’t work: revenues from freight and passenger service couldn’t even cover the operating costs of the line before it was shut down, let alone support a huge capital re-investment.
What to do with this invaluable right-of-way, an unobstructed ribbon of land running from Victoria to Courtenay (and beyond to Port Alberni)?
May I (and others) suggest a rail trail?
Right now this chunk of land is returning nothing to the province economically. It’s actually a net drain, as municipalities spend money maintaining unused level crossings and the Island Corridor Foundation (ICF) spends federal and provincial grants to cut brush and replace the occasional tie on the never-again-to-be-used line.
Unlike the current ghost railway, a recreational trail would pay for itself almost immediately.
- My first point of anecdata is my own 3-day bike excursion. Between accomodations, snacks along the way, and very tasty dinners (Maya Norte in Ladysmith and CView in Qualicum) I injected about $400 into the local economies over just two nights.
- My second point of anecdata is an economic analysis of the Rum Runner’s Trail in Nova Scotia. The study shows annual expenditures by visitors alone of $3M per year. That doesn’t even count the economic benefit of local commuting and connection between communities.
- My third point of anecdata is to just multiply $200 per night by three nights (decent speed) to cover the whole trail and 2000 marginal new tourists on the trail to get $1.2M direct new dollars. I find my made-up numbers are very compelling.
- My fourth point of anecdata is the Mackenzie Interchange, currently under construction for over $70M. There is no direct economic benefit to this infrastructure, it will induce no tourist dollars and generate no long term employment.
If a Vancouver Island Rail Trail can generate even $3M in net new economic benefit for the province, it warrants a at least $50M investment to generate an ongoing 6% return. We spend more money for less return routinely (see the Mackenzie Interchange above).
And that’s just the tourism benefit.
Electric bikes are coming, and coming fast. A paved, continuous trail will provide another transportation alternative that is currently unavailable. Take it from me, I rode from Nanaimo to Parksville on the roaring busy highway 19 through Nanoose: it’s a terrible experience, nobody wants to do that. Cruising a paved rail trail on a quietly whirring electic bike though, that would be something else again.
Right now the E&N line is not a transportation alternative. Nor is it a tourist destination. Nor is it a railway. It’s time to put that land back to work.