By James Peters

Lillooet mayor pushes for relaunched passenger rail service

Jun 20, 2016 | 3:01 PM

KAMLOOPS — The Mayor of Lillooet says her community is squarely behind a push to restart passenger rail service between North Vancouver and Prince George.

The service was discontinued in 2002, with Premier Gordon Campbell saying there was not enough ridership.

But Marg Lampman says, in the last two years of the service, it was quite popular.

“Approximately 125,000 passengers rode that from North Vancouver to Prince George each year, and that was with no advertising whatsoever. It was an extremely popular way to travel around,” said Lampman. 

The service used to stop in Lillooet, and Lampman says it was a good conduit for tourism into her district, but also for local residents to commute either to the Lower Mainland or northern BC.

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Lampman says the district is looking to Transportation Minister Todd Stone to facilitate discussions with a private company like Via Rail to see if restarting the service would be viable.

A group is seeking signatures to support this idea, you can view that petition here.