To the Editor,
Re: Rail offers preferred option, Letters, April 16.
David Weston and Ian Gartshore made some very good points that make me wonder why the provincial government is not moving to keep our railway moving.
I would like to offer one reason why.
A tractor-trailer unit leaves the warehouse in Victoria and travels 500 kilometres to deliver groceries in Port Hardy.
Let’s be generous and say said tractor gets 10 km per litre of fuel. On the round trip of 1,000 km, 100 litres of fuel would be consumed.
The combined provincial taxes on that fuel would be at least $30. Being generous, we could say that the province will gain $750 to $1,000 a year in fuel taxes from the one truck.
Lets now multiply that income by the truck kilometres that could be replaced by an efficient rail system and you will see why our government is not so eager to go with the rail option.
Weston and Gartshore asked; Where are our governments? Why, collecting taxes of course. Where else?
Alan MacKinnon
Nanaimo