Classical Gas
No one can say that they haven’t been warned that the price of gas was going to go up. It was only a matter of time. And with diesel even higher (odd) the tour industry must be grinding its collective teeth.
One of the big problems with North American is that the people fell in love with the automobile and let a great train system go down the tubes. If you wonder how good train transportation was just listen to songs of the swing era: Atcheson Topeka and the Santa Fe, Chattanooga Choo-Choo, etc. The songs sounded like trains.
In Canada (In Nova Scotia they ripped up rails in the late ’80’s-early ’90’s) they came up with an ill-conceived (my opinion) plan called the Trans Canada Trail, which is basically a racetrack for idiots on ATV’s. Tell me how this is good for tourism except for the odd group of hikers. And let me say this: I’ve never met a hiker who likes walking on flat land for too long.
I don’t have to expound on the virtues of traveling in Europe. This is what we used to do before 1960. Now, the tax-payer funded Bombardier, A Quebec company who makes the best rail equipment in the world, exports almost all of the good stuff and our VIA Rail passenger service is still running off 50 year-old coaches.
The demise of good transport is the Achilles heel of Canadian tourism and unless more time and effort is put into redoing our “National Dream” we will be the poor relative of the tourism industry. Like the transcontinental railroad of the 1870’s which tied our country together this has to be a high priority. Rail travel should be available to the areas that ripped out the rails, places where tourist want to go. Then the price of seeing this country isn’t so high.
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