Bridge to nowhere.

• Author: McCartney, Henry
• Position: LETTERS - Letter to the editor

As a subscriber since the 1980s, I've been very appreciative of so many of your articles, but this is my first letter to the editor--to laud "The Shipping News" (July/August 2010). You've convinced me that reforming our transportation industries is a low-lying fruit if we want to address both oil depletion and climate change. I was particularly impressed with the article's clear analysis that trucking is so much more vulnerable to rising oil costs than rail or water.

It seems logical that market forces coupled with government reforms will bring real change. But vested interests are likely to subvert such change. On the Canadian-American border, an enormously expensive effort is underway to double the capacity of the Peace Bridge, deemed necessary because of the international...