Dear editor,
With rhetoric seeming to be heating up on the railway front, a movement has begun to try to help things get on track (pun intended).
Your readers can go to www.vifreightbyrail.ca and send, or sign up to be included in, a weekly letter to VIA Rail and Southern Railway of Vancouver Island (SVI) encouraging the two parties to conclude their negotiations.
Whether those negotiations produce an agreement or not, who knows?
However, VIA Rail and SVI have both responded to the first two weeks of letters with VIA insisting the money is not enough and SVI providing a BC Safety Authority letter saying it is.
Clearly there is an impasse in these negotiations and the public, and railway, is effectively being held hostage. This is not fair to the provincial, federal and local governments that agreed to the funding, nor is it fair to the people of Vancouver Island.
Two years is far too long for any negotiation, especially when there are provisions for mediation.
So if your readers would like things to just get over and done with, I encourage them to go to www.vifreightbyrail.ca and participate in the weekly letter campaign pressuring these two companies to talk. The letters will be sent until a resolution is achieved.
Chris Alemany,
Port Alberni