A SEARCH ON GOOGLE, using the phrase "electric railways and Ontario" will bring up a number of stories, few if any of which look to the future.

Rather, they look at the history, and the items that deal with current attractions in the province deal mainly with the Halton County Radial Railway, the tourist attraction near Rockwood that has a huge collection of retired streetcars, trolley buses and coaches that survived the end of the radial era.

Today, Toronto is the only city in the province that still has electrified public transit, and even there the city has long since abandoned its trolley bus system.

Interestingly, Ontario's abandonment of electricity as a means of moving people and goods has no parallel in Europe and most of the rest of the world.

A similar Google check, this time using the phrase "electric railways and Europe," produces an interesting statistic on the subject.

In 2006, 25 per cent (240,000 km) of the world's rail network was electrified and 50 per cent of all rail transport was carried by electric traction (both by locomotives and multiple units).

Particularly in Ontario, where most of the electricity comes from nuclear and hydraulic generating stations, the environmental benefits of rail electrification are surely obvious.

However, electrification of railways has other advantages, among them greater efficiency, with less weight and space being needed to produce the same power, and less power lost on grades and in warm weather.

As well, a rule of thumb is that the power range of diesel locomotives begins at the power of the strongest steam engines, while the power range of electric locomotives starts at the high end of diesel locomotives. The strongest locomotives in the world are all electric, and Europe's fastest trains are pulled by electric locomotives.

In the circumstances, it's truly amazing that even today there's no talk of electrifying Canada's busiest rail corridor, between Montreal and Windsor, and the only long-term project even being considered would see some of the busiest GO Transit lines electrified.

But perhaps there will be some needed stimulus in a report last week from Toronto's medical officer of health that warns against using diesel locomotives for the planned upgrading of the CNR line between Toronto and Georgetown to handle not only fullday GO train service but express runs into Pearson International Airport.

Dr. David McKeown says the planned use of diesel locomotives on a line that may handle up to 400 passenger and freight trains a day will put the health of nearby residents at risk.

In a strong submission to Environment Minister John Gerretson, Dr. McKeown voiced his objections to the Metrolinx plan to use diesels to power both the expanded GO service and the new rail link to Pearson.

He wants to see the expansion, planned for 2015, proceed only as an electrified service. Metrolinx launched a study this summer on eventually converting the line to electric power, but has suggested any such change would be at least 15 years away.

Dr. McKeown finds increasing evidence that diesel exhaust is associated with various cancers, particularly lung cancer, and says using diesels will result in "increased air pollution and health risk in adjacent communities."

Such a finding should surely surprise no one, and the immediate reaction by Metrolinx was disheartening.

Jim O'Mara, Metrolinx's executive lead for environmental policy and planning, said Dr. McKeown's comments raised technically complex issues, and the agency's consultants were taking a thorough look at them.

And he went on to assert that Metrolinx has examined the environmental issues very carefully and found that the impact on air quality "in reality is manageable."

Really? For one thing, there surely is nothing "technically complex" about electrifying a rail line. It's something that has been done fairly routinely for at least 100 years.

Is there any doubt that the poles and wiring could be erected while the required new trackage (to double-track at least as far as Brampton) is being installed?

As for the locomotives and rolling stock, Montreal-based Bombardier is routinely filling orders for such equipment from European railways and transit systems.

And what, pray tell, is meant by the assurance that pollution from the diesels would be "manageable"?

Something that should be remembered is that while ordinary rail lines cannot be used by electric vehicles, electrified lines can still be used by any form of locomotion.

In the case of the Toronto- Georgetown line, only the section between Georgetown and a point east of the GO Bramalea station carries high volumes of freight. Freight trains are seldom seen these days around Union Station or on the CN and CP lines that radiate out of it, the reason being that nearly all the freight goes to the suburban intermodal yards.

In the circumstances, electrification of the line is really a "no brainer."