AS WE SEE IT, the only real issue facing Dufferin County Council when it considers the proposed sale of the county-owned railbed is which course would make restoration of rail service most plausible.

Despite all the dire predictions we’re getting about the real intentions of The Highland Group and the prospect of hikers being killed by aggregate-laden freights hurtling through Orangeville, the reality is that any restoration of rail service through Dufferin would undoubtedly be a Canadian precedent.

Without a doubt, restoration of tracks along a railway that was abandoned more than a decade ago would be hugely expensive. The closest thing we have to an indication of the costliness is the $20 million GO Transit spent simply to upgrade the roughly 20 miles of trackage between Bradford and the south end of Barrie. Our suspicion is that the cost of re-tracking here would be well over $2 million a mile.

In the circumstances, we think County Council should look seriously at the alternative of a long-term (99- year?) lease of the right-of-way that would include provisions allowing multiple use of the 66-foot-wide corridor and an ability of the county as “landlord” to regulate the rail operation in terms of speed and charges to potential third parties such as Via Rail and GO Transit.

Although we don’t doubt that a major factor in the Highland Group’s bid to buy the corridor is the 2,400-acre quarry envisioned by the parent Highland Companies, that ought not to be a concern of county councillors, for at least three reasons.

First and foremost, there should be no doubt whatsoever that Highland will encounter stiff opposition if it actually applies for permission to mine anything approaching 2,400 acres based on a promise to restore the lands now used for potato cultivation to some form of agricultural use.

Secondly, even if Highland’s application for the right to develop a smaller quarry is approved, the firm would still need approvals for a spur running from the former CPR line to a pit site near Horning’s Mills.

And thirdly, even if Highland won the right to build such a spur line, there is surely no doubt that transporting the aggregates by rail would be vastly preferable to seeing the same haulage to Toronto or Owen Sound taking place over our county roads and provincial highways.

When it comes to comparing rail and road transportation of aggregates, the advantages of rail are many and varied. Among them are the lesser environmental impact through greater energy efficiency and lower greenhouse gas emissions; significantly less risk of personal injury accidents, and recovery of maintenance costs for the roadbed from customers rather than from local residents through their property taxes. (As an example, the cost of maintaining the former Highway 24, now Dufferin 124, is borne entirely by county ratepayers.)

The sad truth of the matter is that railways are today the most neglected form of Canadian infrastructure, and nowhere is this more obvious than in Ontario, where the two national railways have abandoned thousands of miles of branch lines and rail passenger service is but a distant memory almost everywhere but on the Windsor- Montreal corridor and the few lines boasting GO Transit service.

This situation stands in sharp contrast to the healthy modern rail systems now found in Europe and Asia.

Granted, most of the responsibility for this sad state of affairs lies with the CPR and CNR, which actively discouraged use of their branch lines by building huge intermodal operations designed to divert freight pickup and delivery from cars running on the branch lines to containers mounted on truck trailers.

Clearly, the once-busy CPR branch line to Owen Sound would not have been abandoned if the railway had built small intermodal yards in Orangeville and Owen Sound, thus sharply reducing the distance goods would have to be moved along highways and byways.

Our suspicion is that the best hope for tracks ever being restored between Orangeville and Owen Sound would lie in the corridor continuing to be owned by Dufferin and Grey counties, so that the costly restoration might qualify for federal and provincial infrastructure funding. It might also create the potential for small-scale intermodal operations that would take some trucks off our trunk highways.

And continued ownership of the corridor by the two counties might also ultimately open the door for resumption of rail passenger service, last seen about 40 years ago, and even the possibility of GO Transit train service between Orangeville and Toronto.

One thing that would be working in favour of such developments would be the inevitable worsening of the gridlock that already afflicts so much of the Greater Toronto Area.

A rail alternative to the congestion on Highways 410, 427 and 401 would become increasingly attractive, particularly if passengers could be moved in the three hours it once took a CPR Dayliner to go from Owen Sound to Toronto (and less than half that between Orangeville and Union Station).