It takes two hours to travel from Paris to Lyon by train. “Paris is a comparable size to Toronto and Lyon is the same size as Ottawa,” says Concordia University professor Judith Patterson. They also happen to be the same distance apart.

Patterson is a member of the passenger rail lobby group Transport 2000. Air travel, she says, is down between the two French cities because of the convenience and comfort of train travel.

If only it were so in this country. This summer, I went back and forth on Via Rail between Ottawa and Toronto. The trip was supposed to take four hours each way. In fact, it took more — the train was at least an hour late each way.

Perhaps it’s time for Canadians to rethink our love affair with air travel. Yes, it’s a big country, but, on a regional basis at least, riding the rails just makes sense. Or, rather, could make sense if we’d invest in making them faster.

Harry Gow, a past president of Transport 2000, estimates that at least a third of the air travellers going through Toronto’s Pearson International Airport are headed for short/medium-length destinations within the Montreal/Ottawa/Toronto corridors. High-speed rail, if it was available, wouldn’t want for passengers.

But successive federal governments have made major cuts in services and subsidies to Via Rail, our national diesel-based passenger rail operation.

What if we’d taken another route, like France did? Starting in the 1970s, France headed in the opposite direction to Canadian cutters with major investments (in the billions) in high-speed, non-polluting electric trains. (OK, so the trains do run on nuclear power, but cleaner fuel cell energy sources could be used instead.)

Although federal transport minister David Collenette is contemplating a faster passenger train rail system for Central Canada in the dying days of the Chrétien regime, it is hard to imagine the ruling Liberals investing the necessary billions to bring French-style TGVs (Trains à Grande Vitesse) to the busiest corridors.

At the same time, a number of U.S. environmental studies have linked emissions from jet aircraft to the presence of cancer-based pollutants well above safe levels around airports.

Samuel Epstein, author of The Politics of Cancer, worries about the current mania for airport expansion in North America. Epstein is professor emeritus of environmental medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health and chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition. “There is no question at all that the totality of our environment is being contaminated with a wide range of avoidable carcinogens and other toxic agents. And airports are a major source of such contamination.”

Epstein laments what he calls “the total failure of the aircraft and airport industry to recognize the very significant environmental and public health hazards and attempt to develop some abatements.”

Another great reason to invest in rail, right?

Wrong. Equivalent Canadian studies on aviation have yet to be completed and, as seems to be the case with most environmental science that would lead to, you know, change, there is some debate about the validity of the U.S. findings.

Nevertheless, Toronto’s health department, in a memorandum issued to the local city council last March, relied on the American research. It includes a study of Chicago’s Midway Airport that estimates that aircraft engine emissions contribute to approximately eleven per cent of the total estimated local cancer cases.

Also raising alarm bells is the increased frequency of brain cancer (glioblastoma) experienced by residents within three miles of the Seattle SeaTac Airport. And the Los Angeles Unified School District concluded that the Santa Monica Municipal Airport provides a cancer risk to local residents in excess of acceptable limits under the U.S. Clear Air Act.

Judith Patterson is cautious about these reports, suggesting it’s hard to separate the amounts of pollutants in the vicinity of airports that come from just the aircraft, not from automobile traffic or local industry. At the same time, she notes that the combustion of fossil fuels by cars at airports is a serious threat to local health and the environment, as well.

Dr. Monica Campbell, who heads the health promotion and environment office at the Toronto Department of Health, is confident that sophisticated computer models developed by environmental consultants can pinpoint the impact of the landing and take off of airplanes on surrounding communities. She is anticipating Toronto-specific answers from the consulting firm Rowan, Williams, Davies & Irwin’s (RWDI) current study of air quality at Pearson.

Airport authorities across North America have been hiring consultants like Guelph-based RWDI to set the environmental record straight in the face of studies linking cancer to airports. David Chadder of RWDI is also skeptical about the alleged dangers of aviation activity on local communities, calling some results “extreme.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, a member of Community Air — a group in Toronto that’s fighting a proposed move to expand the downtown Island Airport because of the possible health impact — in turn questions the reliability of the RWDI study.

âeoeI don’t know [RWDI’s] internal level of competence. All I know is that if the study is being funded by the people who want to do a particular action, then it is probably irrelevant,” says Marc Brien, a research co-coordinator for the group. “Pearson is only interested in results which are not going to disrupt their operations. So having the airport itself fund any of these studies is not meaningful.âe

Brien has a bone to pick with RWDI because it provided a favourable report on the environmental impact of a proposed bridge linking an expanded Toronto Island Airport to the foot of Bathurst Street on the Toronto lakefront. He contrasts this “bought study” with an independent report conducted for Environment Canada by Judith Patterson, which tracks increased air pollutants and greenhouse gases if an Island Airport expansion goes ahead. “No one had a monetary interest in the outcome of the [Patterson] study.”

Not only is the Island Airport set to expand, but Pearson is as well, with a new terminal and new runways.

It is worth noting that the current expansion at Pearson began in earnest in 1997 under the Greater Toronto Airport Authority (GTAA), one of a number of private operators running the country’s airports after the Chrétien government had effectively privatized them. The new private airport authorities were then out of the reach of the federal environment assessment requirements for new public projects — a loophole that the current environment minister may fill through an amendment to the Canadian Environment Assessment Act. But this legislative change is not likely to be retroactive, rabble has been told.

In 1992, when discussions regarding the expansion of Pearson first began (prior to privatization), Transport 2000 argued for the alternative of an expanded high-speed rail system in the populous Windsor to Quebec City corridor.

The Southern Ontario Air Traffic Management Environmental Assessment Panel, however, did not take the recommendation into account. They advocated instead an overall aviation plan that included a greater reliance on smaller nearby airports to take up some of Pearson’s air traffic load.

In the end, neither alternative path was taken and Transport Canada minister Jean Corbeil approved the planned expansion.

Today, Peter Gregg, the general manager of communications for the GTAA says that Pearson is the first airport in North America to be given an ISO 14,001 environmental certification for its handling of pollutants by the International Standards Organization. He is anticipating that the new runway slated to open this fall and the increase in high-speed taxiways at Pearson will eliminate the amount of idling and taxing of planes on the airfield.

But, the GTAA is not a neutral party either, adds Gregg himself, “it is our interest to see an increase in air traffic or air travel. Well, obviously we need to pay revenues and you could say that an airport without airplanes is not going to be a successful operation.”

* * *

As I took a cab past the immense construction chaos surrounding Pearson recently (it was like out of a series of the Mad Max movies about a post nuclear nightmare), I realized once again how aggravating air travel can be, especially from or to big cities like Toronto. The crowds, the cost and, now, the security. After observing the strained faces at the airport, I’m willing to guess many people feel the same way. In other words, surely a constituency exists for a quick, safe and non-polluting rail alternative for those short hauls.

Harry Gow, for one, worries that David Collenette’s new federal support for Via Rail will evaporate once his boss goes and Paul Martin takes over the federal government. Perhaps, we should let him know that the status quo is not sustainable.

Meanwhile, Toronto city council is expected to vote at the end of this month on an expanded Toronto Island airport.

Paul Weinberg

Paul Weinberg

Paul Weinberg is a freelance writer as well as author and editor, based in Hamilton, ON.