Like everyone else, I will begin this short letter with "over the past year"... The phrase is becoming repetitive, but it is appropriate. "Over the past year," I have been genuinely impressed by the capacity for collaboration we have shown. We waged an all-out war in a spirit of unprecedented cooperation.
As the optimist I am, that’s the conclusion that always comes to mind when I reflect on what we have experienced over the past 20 months, and when I think about the future.
However, we cannot ignore the crisis’s collateral effects, including its impact on public transit networks. The drop in ridership on public systems, notably rail networks, has been dramatic.
The near future will require us to regain the level of collaboration we discovered in order to tackle one of the few issues that has not changed over the past year: the fight against climate change, and the need to shift our economy toward a more sustainable, lower-carbon model.
To meet this challenge, we will necessarily need to reconnect with public transit, but above all rebalance the country’s transportation supply — currently overwhelmingly dominated by cars and planes — and focus on a far more ecological mode of transport: rail.
Back to the Future, aboard the train
If there are still skeptics about the importance of transitioning our economy toward a more sustainable structure, a quick review of the data should suffice: in Canada, the transportation sector accounts for 23% of all the country’s GHG emissions. In Quebec, it is responsible for nearly 45% of emissions.
Rail transport emits on average 3 to 4 times less GHG than trucks or diesel buses to move the same volume of freight or the same number of people.
In other words, every time a good moves from road to rail, and every time a citizen trades their car for the train, it’s a win for our collective fight against climate change.
The paradigm of quality in transportation
To date, the quality of a transport service is generally assessed according to four criteria: its reliability in terms of punctuality and frequency, its speed, its comfort, and its safety. That’s what makes a new car more attractive for getting around than a bus service that doesn’t arrive on time, that runs on bumpy roads, and that gets stuck in traffic.
With the transition to a more sustainable economy, we must adjust our quality paradigm and consider the ecological cost of solutions. That is what will allow us to assess the real value of transport services, and, incidentally, to bring rail back to the forefront of the range of services available to us.
In short, once we consider the ecological footprint of transport modes, public transit — and especially the structuring systems that promote sustainable land use — are infinitely more advantageous.
Governments across Canada must therefore return to rail. And they must get moving quickly.
Accelerating the development of our networks
Municipalities must act now, notably to take advantage of the Zero-Emission Public Transit Fund set up by the federal government. Planning, building, and commissioning a structuring transit network takes many years. We will very quickly reach 2030. Achieving our environmental goals will only happen if we act today.
Like what was done in the 1970s for the construction of highways and viaducts, our generation must be the one to build passenger trains and modern networks that will carry Canadians with the greatest environmental efficiency. Rail transport is the key to ensuring this transition.
Of course, the pandemic caused a significant loss of ridership. But it is to be expected that urbanization, population growth, and the fight against climate change will triple demand for public transit over the next 30 years, rising from 44 trillion to 122 trillion passenger-kilometres.
To give the necessary impetus to launch a social project of this scale, governments must rely on public-private partnerships. Such partnerships will channel the immense potential of private capital into infrastructure projects from which entire communities can benefit.
Ready for action
On this battlefield, Siemens Mobility Canada has just given a powerful boost to the Canadian rail transport industry by completing the acquisition of the Canadian company RailTerm on July 2, 2021. A North American leader in the maintenance, control and monitoring of rail systems and networks, this company is one of the unsung heroes who make our rail networks reliable and efficient.
We are very pleased to formalize this union and to combine the power of Siemens Mobility’s technologies with RailTerm’s field experience and extensive knowledge of the Canadian rail network. This will allow us to offer Canadians rail systems that are more reliable, safer, and more available than ever.
Above all, we will be ready to build infrastructure across the country and to contribute to the transition, bringing our society back on the right track: rail transport.
This sponsored content was produced as part of Impulsion MTL 2021 — The International Forum on Fleet Management.
