INSIDE: Terry Fox Run raises big bucks during 30th celebration Pg. 3 September 21, 2010
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LOCAL NEWS, SPORTS, WEATHER & ENTERTAINMENT chilliwacktimes.com
Report supports light rail
Strahl still going strong
‘An honest accounting’ of the potential transit system
Five years since first being diagnosed with lung cancer, our MP is busier than ever
BY CHRISTINA TOTH CToth@abbotsfordtimes.com
L
ight rail proponents are optimistic about having passenger service return to the Fraser Valley after the release of a feasibility study on Monday. “We’re tremendously excited. This is the most comprehensive light rail study ever undertaken in this province, performed by an outfit with expertise in light rail solutions,” said John Buker, a founder of Rail For the Valley founder and a study co-ordinator. “This is an independent analysis by a respected company based in Great Britain that has a very solid track record in rail planning, including work on, among other things the Channel Tunnel. This report will, at long last, provide us with an honest accounting of the potential for passenger rail service on the Interurban corridor. This is something that has been sorely lacking in all provincial government-commissioned studies to date.” The report looked at the issues on re-establishing a passenger services on the former Interurban track, which runs from Chilliwack to Surrey, and which is currently used by Southern Railway for freight. The capital costs for a diesel/ hybrid train on a run from Chilliwack to the Scott Road Skytrain station would be $500 million ($5 million per kilometre) or $606 million for an electric option ($6.2 per km). The report proposes three trains See RAIL, Page 6
BY DARAH HANSEN Vancouver Sun
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Arlen Redekop/PNG
Chilliwack MP Chuck Strahl, who is also minister of transport, infrastructure and communities, was at the Pacific Central Station in Vancouver recently to unveil seven new West Coast Express passenger cars.
huck Strahl is a busy man. Since his appointment to the Transport, Infrastructure and Communities portfolio a month ago, the Tory member of Parliament from Chilliwack with the squeaky-clean reputation has spent much of his days — and evenings — in endless rounds of meetand-greets with various government stakeholders, all of them looking to bend the new minister’s ear before the House of Commons convenes Monday. “Trucker associations and port associations and airlines and airports, security firms, you name it,” Strahl said, reeling off just a few of the notable folks with their fingers in the country’s transport pie. Strahl had about 20 minutes to give The Sun in a telephone interview Wednesday—a brief Q&A wedged between a morning ride-along with Canada Post in rural Quebec and another afternoon of hand-shaking across the bridge in Ottawa. “I’ll talk fast,” he dead-panned, an early sign that the folksy charm and famed sense of humour that helped propel him into office 17 years ago are still very much alive. Also clearly thriving in the relentlessly tough federal arena is Strahl himself. It’s been five years now, almost to the day, since the then-49-year-old sent shock waves through his constituency, and nation, when he revealed he has mesothelioma, a rare and untreatable lung cancer caused by his exposure to asbestos in his previous career in the logging industry. Many assumed that, at the very least, Strahl’s career in Ottawa was finished, that he would be forced to step See STRAHL, Page 10
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