VIA Rail

[steveintoronto]

Thanks, no third loco. The "40 VIA" loco was leading. I thought I took a pic of the front (guess I didn't). I assume, once it gets to Toronto, the special train will detached to b-line for Montreal.

Ahh! I presumed it was westbound. The event must have been yesterday. In retrospect, I see it was:

Meanwhile, VIA Rail is celebrating its 40th anniversary on Saturday with a special event at Sarnia’s Centennial Park from 11am until 3pm.

 

[kEiThZ]

I despise Doug Ford. But here's hoping that drive to sink the carbon tax actually forces the federal Liberals to put their money where they mouths are. There's no path that offers a more clear return on emissions reduction than public transport. And that includes projects like HFR.

 

[micheal_can]

I despise Doug Ford. But here's hoping that drive to sink the carbon tax actually forces the federal Liberals to put their money where they mouths are. There's no path that offers a more clear return on emissions reduction than public transport. And that includes projects like HFR.

What do you think the carbon tax money was being used for?

 

[timio]

The 40 special train is currently sitting at Mimico yard.

 

[dowlingm]

I despise Doug Ford. But here's hoping that drive to sink the carbon tax actually forces the federal Liberals to put their money where they mouths are. There's no path that offers a more clear return on emissions reduction than public transport. And that includes projects like HFR.

I think I'd want to see some numbers on that. Energy retrofits on decrepit school HVAC (funded by carbon tax) could have brought in quite an amount, and HFR will require quite an expenditure of energy to build before a single passenger is removed from road or plane.

 

[kEiThZ]

What do you think the carbon tax money was being used for?

Inefficient nonsense like rebates for EV buyers. The only logical way to reduce consumption is to disincentivize it. You will never be able to hand out enough incentives to actually create real change. Want to adopt EVs en masse? Raise fuel taxes till gas costs $2/L. Want to reduce home heating emissions? Mandate geothermal heat pumps for all new construction. And tax NG heavily. Watch as homeowners scramble to put on more efficient windows and solar heating themselves. Of course, that's not politically palatable, so we have governments pretending to do something by subsidizing upper middle class homeowners and buyers of EVs.

It's also ridiculous to me that we were essentially subsidizing an appliance that makes suburban commutes cheaper. In essence, the government was subsidizing poor land use, inefficient living spaces and increased traffic. But, of course, none of those EV buyers wanted to talk about second order effects of the program that was putting dollars in their pockets.

If we were sincere about emissions reductions, 100% of those carbon taxes would have gone to public transport (transit and intercity) expansion (not operations). And they should have been accompanied by strict regulatory efforts to increase density and building efficiency.

I think I'd want to see some numbers on that. Energy retrofits on decrepit school HVAC (funded by carbon tax) could have brought in quite an amount, and HFR will require quite an expenditure of energy to build before a single passenger is removed from road or plane.

Have a look at a Sankey diagram for carbon or energy flows in Canada:

http://www.cesarnet.ca/blog/it-s-carbon-stupid-visualizing-canada-s-carbon-flows

Other than exports our largest sectors of emission is transport. You will never cut enough from retrofitting windows to meet Paris targets. And I've never seen anything about windows saving enough to overcome the emissions from that two car family taking hour long single passenger auto commutes. Also, if we're honest, this country has no real economy beyond resources and artificially inflated cardboard boxes masquerading as assets (housing), so we aren't going to be cutting energy exports. That leaves only one real option: transportation.

And when it comes to transportation, the real bang-for-buck is wherever aviation emissions can be turned into train emissions:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/carbon-emissions-per-transport-type

Link to the data sheet in the above article: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...RxMrDKIb8tXuOKsc/edit?hl=en_GB&hl=en_GB#gid=0

That should have made investment in HFR as a minimum, dead obvious, for corridors where demand is sufficient (Quebec-Windsor, Calgary-Edmonton). But the Trudeau government decided they didn't want to be the bad guys implementing carbon pricing directly and they also weren't actually sincere enough to invest in projects like HFR and HSR and actually divert passengers from road and air to rail. Political expediency won the day ($10B distributed nationally buys more votes than HFR). So I am not actually sad to see some of the provinces (including Doug Ford's Ontario) force their hand.

Time for Trudeau to actually spend political capital or real capital fighting climate change. And since we can all but bet that politicians are cowards and he won't actually want to battle the provinces, I am hoping this forces the government's hand on projects with a very obvious return on emissions reductions.

Not just HFR. If the feds are serious about combating climate change, they should be helping every major railway electrify to the extent feasible. GO, CP, CN and AMT should always be getting federal help to electrify.

Harsh it may be. But I prefer my politics straight up. I'd rather have a guy who is clear on his intent to do nothing than a guy who lulls the public into complacency pretending to do something. The former gives me something to aim for. The latter actually makes change substantially difficult.

 

[micheal_can]

Inefficient nonsense like rebates for EV buyers. The only logical way to reduce consumption is to disincentivize it. You will never be able to hand out enough incentives to actually create real change. Want to adopt EVs en masse? Raise fuel taxes till gas costs $2/L. Want to reduce home heating emissions? Mandate geothermal heat pumps for all new construction. And tax NG heavily. Watch as homeowners scramble to put on more efficient windows and solar heating themselves. Of course, that's not politically palatable, so we have governments pretending to do something by subsidizing upper middle class homeowners and buyers of EVs.

It's also ridiculous to me that we were essentially subsidizing an appliance that makes suburban commutes cheaper. In essence, the government was subsidizing poor land use, inefficient living spaces and increased traffic. But, of course, none of those EV buyers wanted to talk about second order effects of the program that was putting dollars in their pockets.

If we were sincere about emissions reductions, 100% of those carbon taxes would have gone to public transport (transit and intercity).



Have a look at a Sankey diagram for carbon or energy flows in Canada:

http://www.cesarnet.ca/blog/it-s-carbon-stupid-visualizing-canada-s-carbon-flows

Other than exports our largest sectors of emission is transport. You will never cut enough from retrofitting windows to meet Paris targets. And I've never seen anything about windows saving enough to overcome the emissions from that two car family taking hour long single passenger auto commutes. Also, if we're honest, this country has no real economy beyond resources and artificially inflated cardboard boxes masquerading as assets (housing), so we aren't going to be cutting energy exports. That leaves only one real option: transportation.

And when it comes to transportation, the real bang-for-buck is wherever aviation emissions can be turned into train emissions:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/carbon-emissions-per-transport-type

Link to the data sheet in the above article: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...RxMrDKIb8tXuOKsc/edit?hl=en_GB&hl=en_GB#gid=0

That should have made investment in HFR as a minimum, dead obvious, for corridors where demand is sufficient (Quebec-Windsor, Calgary-Edmonton). But the Trudeau government decided they didn't want to be the bad guys implementing carbon pricing directly and they also weren't actually sincere enough to invest in projects like HFR and HSR and actually divert passengers from road and air to rail. Political expediency won the day ($10B distributed nationally buys more votes than HFR). So I am not actually sad to see some of the provinces (including Doug Ford's Ontario) force their hand.

Time for Trudeau to actually spend political capital or real capital fighting climate change. And since we can all but bet that politicians are cowards and he won't actually want to battle the provinces, I am hoping this forces the government's hand on projects with a very obvious return on emissions reductions.

Not just HFR. If the feds are serious about combating climate change, they should be helping every major railway electrify to the extent feasible. GO, CP, CN and AMT should always be getting federal help to electrify.

Harsh it may be. But I prefer my politics straight up. I'd rather have a guy who is clear on his intent to do nothing than a guy who lulls the public into complacency pretending to do something. The former gives me something to aim for. The latter actually makes change substantially difficult.

EVs were part of it, but most of the transit around this country being built has been funded by the carbon tax.

 

[kEiThZ]

EVs were part of it, but most of the transit around this country being built has been funded by the carbon tax.

And there's nothing that says transit can't be funded by other revenue generation.

Ford's fight with Trudeau is about who gets to wear it for a tax increase. Simple as that. I'm hoping this will finally force a uniform national carbon tax. And some sincere federal investment. Like HFR.

 

[Northern Light]

Inefficient nonsense like rebates for EV buyers. The only logical way to reduce consumption is to disincentivize it. You will never be able to hand out enough incentives to actually create real change. Want to adopt EVs en masse? Raise fuel taxes till gas costs $2/L. Want to reduce home heating emissions? Mandate geothermal heat pumps for all new construction. And tax NG heavily. Watch as homeowners scramble to put on more efficient windows and solar heating themselves. Of course, that's not politically palatable, so we have governments pretending to do something by subsidizing upper middle class homeowners and buyers of EVs.

It's also ridiculous to me that we were essentially subsidizing an appliance that makes suburban commutes cheaper. In essence, the government was subsidizing poor land use, inefficient living spaces and increased traffic. But, of course, none of those EV buyers wanted to talk about second order effects of the program that was putting dollars in their pockets.

If we were sincere about emissions reductions, 100% of those carbon taxes would have gone to public transport (transit and intercity) expansion (not operations). And they should have been accompanied by strict regulatory efforts to increase density and building efficiency.



Have a look at a Sankey diagram for carbon or energy flows in Canada:

http://www.cesarnet.ca/blog/it-s-carbon-stupid-visualizing-canada-s-carbon-flows

Other than exports our largest sectors of emission is transport. You will never cut enough from retrofitting windows to meet Paris targets. And I've never seen anything about windows saving enough to overcome the emissions from that two car family taking hour long single passenger auto commutes. Also, if we're honest, this country has no real economy beyond resources and artificially inflated cardboard boxes masquerading as assets (housing), so we aren't going to be cutting energy exports. That leaves only one real option: transportation.

And when it comes to transportation, the real bang-for-buck is wherever aviation emissions can be turned into train emissions:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/carbon-emissions-per-transport-type

Link to the data sheet in the above article: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...RxMrDKIb8tXuOKsc/edit?hl=en_GB&hl=en_GB#gid=0

That should have made investment in HFR as a minimum, dead obvious, for corridors where demand is sufficient (Quebec-Windsor, Calgary-Edmonton). But the Trudeau government decided they didn't want to be the bad guys implementing carbon pricing directly and they also weren't actually sincere enough to invest in projects like HFR and HSR and actually divert passengers from road and air to rail. Political expediency won the day ($10B distributed nationally buys more votes than HFR). So I am not actually sad to see some of the provinces (including Doug Ford's Ontario) force their hand.

Time for Trudeau to actually spend political capital or real capital fighting climate change. And since we can all but bet that politicians are cowards and he won't actually want to battle the provinces, I am hoping this forces the government's hand on projects with a very obvious return on emissions reductions.

Not just HFR. If the feds are serious about combating climate change, they should be helping every major railway electrify to the extent feasible. GO, CP, CN and AMT should always be getting federal help to electrify.

Harsh it may be. But I prefer my politics straight up. I'd rather have a guy who is clear on his intent to do nothing than a guy who lulls the public into complacency pretending to do something. The former gives me something to aim for. The latter actually makes change substantially difficult.

There needs to be a 'love' button for this post! Well said!

 

[micheal_can]

And there's nothing that says transit can't be funded by other revenue generation.

Ford's fight with Trudeau is about who gets to wear it for a tax increase. Simple as that. I'm hoping this will finally force a uniform national carbon tax. And some sincere federal investment. Like HFR.

Kinda like the ever loved GST?

 

[kEiThZ]

Kinda like the ever loved GST?

Mulroney had bigger balls than Trudeau. GST and free trade with the US. Things that we all benefit from today. Real leaders do the right thing. Not the popular thing.

 

[micheal_can]

Mulroney had bigger balls than Trudeau. GST and free trade with the US. Things that we all benefit from today. Real leaders do the right thing. Not the popular thing.

That is why Trudeau has a deadline for the provinces to set one. Then, if they won't he will.

 

[kEiThZ]

That is why Trudeau has a deadline for the provinces to set one. Then, if they won't he will.

Again. All so he doesn't have to waste political capital implementing a carbon pricing scheme. So he can get credit for cutting emissions while the premiers take the backlash for a tax increase from voters. As we saw in Ontario.

It'll be really interesting to see how the court case plays out. I'm hoping Trudeau finally does what should have been done all along: a national carbon pricing scheme.

 

[SunriseChampion]

There needs to be a 'love' button for this post! Well said!

I was thinking the exact same thing.

Here is my lame facsimile: ♡

Stupid-look-on-face-nod-of-approval @kEiThZ

 

[kEiThZ]

There needs to be a 'love' button for this post! Well said!

I was thinking the exact same thing.

Here is my lame facsimile: ♡

Stupid-look-on-face-nod-of-approval @kEiThZ

We're all here for good and honest civic discourse. No thanks needed.

I like to thinkb of myself as adding a pragmatic element to a forum that defaults to group think a bit too much.