Reading is for suckers. Click the video below to have the article read to you in my dulcet tones:
This
weekend my wife and I drove up island to Campbell River to visit my
mother. We used to visit once every few
months but since my stepfather’s passing in March we've made the trip - some 260km - more frequently.
We had
planned to leave Friday afternoon at 2, which we thought would allow us to beat
the inevitable after-work traffic jam that clogs up the westbound road out of
Victoria and in no way indicates a need for commuter rail. As it turned out, we were
almost right – we had made it as far as the beginning of the Malahat highway,
where traffic bottlenecks on a good day, to discover a construction crew busily
increasing to three the number of lanes which have to frantically merge into
one thirty feet later. Traffic slowed to
a standstill and we had plenty of time to reflect on how peaceful our up-island
trips used to be when Via Rail was still running.
In my more optimistic moments I imagine a day
when some kind of light rail service gives commuters in the GVRD a way to work
that doesn’t involve sweltering on asphalt while a chopped Harley Davidson four
feet away plays you the song of its people but such a utopia is unlikely.
Victoria
would like to be thought of as a forward-thinking city and with all the
tattooed yogis wandering around you’d almost fall for it – until, that is,
someone makes a suggestion towards improving infrastructure in any meaningful
way.
