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Clear the tracks

Whistler Rail Tours sees a specific passenger rail market for Whistler Be it Amtrak in the U.S., British Rail in the U.K., Via Rail in Canada or BC Rail in the province, all have a common thread.

Whistler Rail Tours sees a specific passenger rail market for Whistler

Be it Amtrak in the U.S., British Rail in the U.K., Via Rail in Canada or BC Rail in the province, all have a common thread. They are passenger train services that are not lucrative.

That economic reality forced BC Rail out of the passenger service business at the end of October last year, marking the end of an era.

"When you run regularly scheduled passenger trains you don’t make money," said Alan Dever, vice president of communications of BC Rail.

"That’s not to say there isn’t money to be made."

A group of entrepreneurs, among them some heavy hitters in the transportation and tourism world, say they’ve found the way to make it work, in the Sea to Sky corridor at least. They presented their scheme to Whistler council on Monday night.

Whistler Rail Tours believes they can succeed where BC Rail failed.

"It’s our intention to build a company that will direct the cruise ship industry to one of B.C.’s best gems," said Whistler Rail Tours President Michael Drever.

Over 1 million cruise ship visitors embark or disembark in Vancouver every year. Currently less than one per cent visit Whistler.

Drever says Whistler Rail Tours can bring more than 15 per cent of them here on a luxury tourist train and when they get here they’ll be spending money – injecting almost half a billion dollars into the local economy within the first five years of operation.

The rail project is tied to the newest Creekside development proposal because the Nita Lake Lodge developers want to build a multi-million dollar train station to welcome the guests in Whistler.

That doesn’t change the fact that BC Rail lost millions of dollars every year in the passenger service business.

The total operating loss of the Cariboo Prospector, the passenger rail train running from North Vancouver to Prince George, was $4.8 million in 2001.

The train carried 81,000 passengers in one-way trips that year. Roughly 37,5000 made the trip to Whistler, the most popular route on the line.

"I believe studies would suggest there isn’t a market for commuter rail traffic," said Dever.

But Whistler Rail Tours will be a different service altogether, not catering to the commuter market.

Running more environmentally friendly and faster cars, Tom Rader, president of Colorado Railcar, highlighted the importance of the target market.

"We think the first class element is a very important element in running to Whistler," he said.

Holding a picture of the luxurious DMU domed car aloft he added: "It doesn’t look much like a vehicle that has run in the past on BC Rail."

Whistler Rail Tours will buy the $3 million apiece DMU cars from Colorado Railcars.

Rader has done the same type of train project elsewhere with success.

In 1983 he started a tour company in Alaska. By rehabilitating old dome cars to get the service up and running, Rader said they provided a first class project at a competitive price point.

That first year of operation 11 per cent of the cruise ship market in Alaska were taking land tours. Twenty years later approximately 50 per cent are taking land tours.

"We think that is a model that can be recreated here," he said.

BC Rail had other challenges that a private operator won’t have to deal with.

The low ridership and the costs associated with running the Cariboo Prospector were also exacerbated by the lack of capital resources in the BC Rail coffers to rebuild the aging Budd cars, a proposition totalling $30 million.

In the end BC Rail decided to get out of the passenger market altogether and focus just on their freight operations.

That means there are unused railway tracks lying empty for good portions of the day.

"There is excess capacity on BC Rail," said Dever.

"There are certainly time when other trains can run."

He added there have been third parties interested in reviving a passenger service along these rail lines.

A rail revival is also in plans for the province.

"We want to see private enterprise, which does this successfully, or other rail operators who know how to run passenger services and tourism service successfully, come in and invest in this line and provide those services," said Transportation Minister Judith Reid in an earlier interview with Pique Newsmagazine .

"We have been looking for those other operators and looking for ways for bringing this about and that is the process right now.

"That is how we believe we are going to get the very best service in tourism and in passenger services and that is what we are working toward."

Many in the tourism industry in Whistler, which is set to reap the benefits of a luxury rail service to the resort, support the concept of Whistler Rail Tours.

"Access to the resort has long been viewed as a barrier to visitation to the Whistler Resort by our guests," wrote Suzanne Denbak, president and CEO of Tourism Whistler, in a letter of support for Whistler Rail Tours.

"Any service that assists in relieving pressures on the existing transportation infrastructure is viewed favourably by the board of Tourism Whistler."

Because the Whistler Rail Tours project is linked so closely with the Nita Lake Lodge project, Councillor Nick Davies asked the group presenting their proposal on Monday night if there was a plan to book the rail guests into the Nita Lake Lodge.

Dever said: "The volume of people that we’re looking to bring in, there’s no one property that could handle it."