Friday, May 19, 2006

Stats Canada survey on transportation

I read a Canadian Press article today in the Globe and Mail about a Statistics Canada study on the economic importance of transportation. The Canadian Press article does a fair job of covering the study, except it fails to mention railways at all - unless you count railways in the "other equipment" section of "aircraft, trucks, ships or other equipment"

One of the major findings of the study is more money is spent on "own-account" trucking (trucking owned by a company) rather than "for-hire" trucking. The other modes of travel are predominantly "for-hire".

Rail contributed just over $4 billion (0.4% GDP) to the Canadian GDP, just behind air at $4.67B (0.5% GDP). Trucks-for-hire are well ahead at $16.85B.

It's frustrating to see the press totally ignore rail in this study when it was comparable to other modes of transportation like air.

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