Poll Archives: 2002
| 2003 | 2004
Poll Date: December
Total Votes: 6
I'd take the train if gas was free. -- J.B.
Poll Date: November
Total Votes: 4
Poll Date: October
Total Votes: 8
Poll Date: September
Total Votes: 9
Poll Date: August
Total Votes: 23
Pat Durand's remarks: "Put the web cam on the fire escape
on the platform side of the Anchorage Depot facing North west. This will
get all the action morning until about 6 pm. Then camera will need to turn
back toward the east to avoid the setting sun. You will see more trains
right there than any other location on the railroad. Coal, Gravel, and at
least 8 passenger movements per day in the summer.
If you have remote zoom you could get out to the freight main which is currently
being worked on at the bridge site."
Poll Date: July
Total Votes: 15
Note the huge change from color prints to digital as shown when comparing this poll to the June 2003 poll.
Poll Date: June
Total Votes: 8
Poll Date: May
Total Votes: 10
Expert: Alaska railroad makes no sense
An expert on rail transport says a railway to Alaska does not make much financial sense.
The Yukon government is putting up more than $3 million to study the feasibility of a line linking the north to southern markets. The Alaska government is putting up a matching amount.
Retired UBC professor Bill Waters has spent more three decades studying the rail industry, and is familiar with the history of the White Pass railway, used to ship lead and zinc from the Yukon's Faro mine to a deepwater port in Skagway Alaska until 1982.
"The dream of the Alaska railroad is something probably
100 years old, but in the last 100 years, the evolution of technologies
including truck has meant the railway is not nearly as important as it once
was," he says. "So it's now a more specialized mode, large volume
movements, even there
it's marginal economics, the rate of return on railways is not very high."
Waters says the population of Yukon and Alaska is too small to generate enough freight traffic. He says passenger trains usually don't make money. Waters is not surprised however that politicians and others believe in a railway to Alaska.
"Both the U.S. and Canada, the railways opened up this continent you know, we all have nostalgia for it," he says. "In a sense it's a shame, it's a dream lots of us would like to see it, the problem is what would you do with it once you had it."
Mining has been touted as one industry that might be a big user of a railway through Yukon to Alaska.
Waters says it makes more financial sense to move ore to the nearest port and then to market by sea.
Waters is also not surprised that the Yukon and Alaskan governments are putting up public monies for a feasibility study. He says that's because there's no chance the private sector will. - CBC
Poll Date: April
Total Votes: 29
Poll Date: April
Total Votes: 6
Poll Date: March
Total Votes: 9
Poll Date: February
Total Votes: 13
Poll Date: January
Total Votes: 13
