A sombre anniversary
Twenty years ago today, Conservative transport minister Benoit Bouchard announced that Via Rail would be cut from 405 trains per week to 191, with the layoff of nearly 3000 Via employees and the outright elimination of 18 of the 38 passenger train routes that existed in the country at that time. The cuts took place on January 15th, 1990.
The predictions at the time were that passengers carried would drop from 6.8 million to 4.1 million per year, unnecessarily forcing 2.7 million trips onto the road per year.
Surely we have learned from this and will do better under the current Conservative government?
Posted at 23:46 on October 04, 2009