It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) celebrated its centennial on Sept. 1.
At a mid-day ceremony at the agency’s Roncesvalles Carhouse, Mayor John Tory proclaimed the day as “TTC Centenary Day” in the city.
TTC CEO Rick Leary
“For 100 years, the TTC has provided a vital link, connecting people with places and opportunities in Toronto,” Tory said. “The TTC has grown over the past century to deliver exceptional transit that provides service to all corners of the city through a network of buses, subways, streetcars and Wheel-Trans vehicles.” The mayor praised the agency for continuing to transport frontline workers and others during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and said: “As we celebrate the TTC’s past, I am confident in its future because we are committed as a city to continuing to upgrade and expand the TTC with the help of our partners in the provincial and federal governments.”
“Through a century of immense change, the TTC has evolved and adapted along with the city we serve,” TTC Chair Jaye Robinson said.
TTC has transported 32 billion people since it was founded, according to CEO Rick Leary, who also expressed his thanks to the agency’s 16,000 current employees, as well as past employees “whose hard work and dedication have made this century of service possible.”
The first of 575 Peter Witt streetcars and the city of Toronto’s first electric streetcar track switch were introduced in 1921.(TTC)
The event featured a display of historic vehicles, including a Peter Witt streetcar from 1921 and a PCC car from 1938. PCC cars ran in Toronto until 1995, and a few former Toronto cars still run in limited service on Fridays and weekends on the Lakefront Trolley, a downtown circulator line in Kenosha, Wis.
On Aug. 20, 1938, TTC welcomed the first “Red Rockets”: Presidents’ Conference Committee (PCC) streetcars, Nos. 4001 and 4002. (TTC)
The agency handed out commemorative “TTC 100” transfers on its buses, and there were special displays around the city. In addition, TTC is marking the occasion through an awareness campaign on its vehicles and social media channels and in stations. A special TTC 100th Anniversary microsite has been launched, and watch a special anniversary video below.
Both the centennial site and TTC’s main website include a list of the upcoming celebration events. There will be street banners displayed on Yonge Street and University Avenues (along Line 1) and in front of Union station this month. There is also a “100 Years of Moving Toronto” photographic exhibit on the city of Toronto’s archive website, and TTC is posting its own photo exhibits at twelve stations, which will be on display until next July.
TTC’s history microsite presents a comprehensive and pictorial history of Toronto’s transit since its founding. It describes the beginning of the agency this way: “On Sept. 1, 1921, The Toronto Transportation Commission assumed responsibility for all public transit within Toronto city limits and began operations. This was a significant moment for the growing city.” It also highlighted the providers operating at the time: “Since the 1800s, Toronto had been served by multiple transportation organizations. The consolidation of the Toronto Railway Company, the Toronto Civic Railways, and parts of the city-owned Toronto & York Radial Railway meant that nine separate fare systems were replaced by one TTC fare system.”
TTC’s red paint scheme was introduced almost immediately, on the Peter Witt cars, which made their appearance later in 1921. According to the history microsite, they received mixed reviews at first, and the TorontoStar dubbed them “Red Rattlers.” Electric trolley buses; ferries (the operation was later given back to the city); and Grey Coach Lines, an intercity bus operation came later in the decade. (Grey Coach was sold to Ontario Northland Motor Coach Services and the now-defunct Greyhound Canada in 1992.)
March 30, 1954 was the first day for the Yonge subway, which signaled the last day for the Yonge streetcars (seen here in this view looking north toward Merton Street).(TTC)
There was a big change in 1954, when TTC opened its first subway line, from Union Station to Eglinton under Yonge Street. It is now part of the Yonge-University Line, which is designated “Line 1” and shown in yellow on maps (see below). The original red cars were called “Rockets.” The name stuck through a longtime TTC slogan “Ride the Rocket,” and through the new articulated subway cars with open gangways, which were known as “Toronto Rockets.” The cars were made by Bombardier, ordered in 2006, delivered between 2010 and 2017, and got their name from a public contest held in 2006.
TTC receives high marks from transit managers and advocates alike; some believe the system is the best in North America. It has often been complimented for its efficient operation, frequent service, positive attitude toward its riders, and operational features like places for intermodal transfers inside fare controls. Subways do not run all night, but they run frequently until closing, and are replaced with a network of “owl” buses within the city, including a route that runs frequently on Yonge Street through the night. Some streetcar lines run all night, as well.
Andy Byford was TTC General Manager from 2011-17.
Its general managers have included legendary figures Andy Byford (2011-17), who later headed transit in New York City and is now back in London, and David Gunn (1995-99), who later served as President of Amtrak.
About 50 years ago, at the midpoint of TTC’s history, this writer knew the members of a railfan club based in Brooklyn, N.Y., called the Borough Park, Laurelton & Northern Rowboat Company. Every year, they would make a pilgrimage to Toronto and ride the city’s subways and streetcars for the Labor Day (spelled “Labour” in Canada) weekend. They marveled at the reliably frequent service, along with architectural features like grand unions on the streetcar system, which exist nowhere else in North America. Since that time, the subway and streetcar systems have both grown—with four subway lines and 10 streetcar routes, in addition to the agency’s extensive bus network—and TTC’s transit goes beyond the Toronto boarder and into the municipalities of Mississauga, Vaughan and Markham.
Toronto Rocket transit at TTC’s at St. Clair station. (Photo courtesy of the Globe & Mail).
Whether they are aware of transit elsewhere or not, Torontonians praise TTC and the ease with which they can get around on it. So do expatriate Torontonians, who can compare the transit they remember with the transit they now ride elsewhere. It seems reasonable to assume that this writer is not the only American who wants to go back to Toronto and “Ride the Rocket” again. When the border between the countries will reopen is essentially up to the COVID-19 virus and how politicians react to it, but riding Toronto’s transit and seeing the exhibits about its history are two activities that will someday be available to Americans again—at least we know that riding the TTC will.
Happy Anniversary, TTC!
The first low-floor Flexity streetcar entered service in 2014. The last CLRVs and ALRVs were retired from service in 2019 as the era of 100% accessible streetcars began. (William C. Vantuono photo)
The Board Pieces Clearly Favored Canadian Pacific
Written byDavid Nahass, Financial Editor , RAILWAY AGE
RAILWAY AGE, FINANCIAL EDGE, SEPTEMBER 2021 ISSUE: For investors, industry watchers and rail consumers, August was either the most interesting or frustrating month to date in the reality dating show, “I Want to Buy a Class I Railroad.”
For those of you not keeping score, here are the highlights:
• Aug. 10:Canadian Pacific (CP) raises its bid for Kansas City Southern (KCS) to approximately $300 per share, covering roughly half of the spread between its original bid and that of CN. KCS subsequently rejects CP’s bid. Surface Transportation Board (STB) Chairman Martin Oberman indicates the STB will issue its decision on the CN-KCS voting trust by Aug. 31, extending the original Aug. 16 date.
Surface Transportation Board Chairman Martin Oberman
• Aug. 13: KCS pushes back its shareholder meeting to Sept. 3, 2021.
• Aug. 30: Activist hedge fund TCI Fund Management Ltd. ups its stake in CN to 5.2%, becoming a “beneficial owner.”
• Aug. 31: STB rejects the CN-KCS voting trust, citing, among many reasons, that the voting trust does not serve the public interest and—more telling—a CN-KCS merger would generate downstream effects. TCI, reiterating what it said in May, demands the resignation of CN Board Chair Robert Pace and CEO JJ Ruest. CP reaffirms its Aug. 10 offer.
• Sept. 1: KCS adjourns its shareholder meeting and says it is considering CP’s sweetened deal.
Let’s parse one or two specifics about the situation. First and foremost is CP CEO Keith Creel and his dance with the flames of success and failure. In May’s Financial Edge, Creel was called out for having too much pride (“I’m not increasing CP’s bid”) and trying to be too clever (offering $275 a share and then—oops!—being immediately bested by CN’s $325 offer). Creel waged a political and propaganda war (as expected) to outline the superiority of the CP proposal vs. the CN proposal.
Until Aug. 31, Creel was running the risk of being too clever for this chess board. CP’s “split it down the middle” indicated that it realized something every investor knew back in April—pride be damned. The voting trust rejection alone was not going to be enough for investors to award KCS to CP for $275 a share vs. the CN proposal.
CP’s increase from $275 to $300 provides just enough carrot ($25 per share) to sway voters who had been concerned about the stick’s (STB’s) rejection of the CN voting trust. Strategically, the timing of CP’s move looked like it was hatched to line up with the STB rejection of the CN voting trust.
However, now that some dust has settled and STB has rejected the CN voting trust, the pieces on the board clearly favor CP.
— Recent decisions have shown a few things: Chairman Oberman achieved his goal of looking judicial and thoughtful and of enforcing a new style of STB management; proxy services demonstrated their protection of “shareholder value”; and CP demonstrated that it was not outwitted on the big stage. —
Pride is not nearly as important as success, and Keith Creel has shown the difference between being savvy and thoughtful vs. being loud and overconfident. In a classic rope-a-dope, a well-positioned Creel responded to the CN bid with a just-right price increase. This, combined with an executable strategy, may be stronger than the CN $325. Creel turned the possibility of being dismissed for being too clever by relying heavily on early STB support, into being just clever enough. As the kids say, “That is fire!”
The increase in price from $275 to $300 per share gave the STB the freedom to reject the CN voting trust at a shareholder cost of $2.6 billion vs. $5.2 billion. This provides plenty of cover for STB. No one, least of all politicians, likes to give the impression that they are messing with the myth of the free market.
The pieces on the board favor CP. CN’s road to completion looks like a dead end. Yet, probability analysis is a finicky thing easily disrupted by a multitude of circumstantial agendas. The decisions in the final days showed a few things: Chairman Oberman achieved his goal of looking judicial and thoughtful and of enforcing a new style of STB management; proxy services demonstrated their protection of “shareholder value”; and CP demonstrated that it was not outwitted on the big stage.
Finally, CN’s failure to acquire KCS will not portend its merger with another Class I railroad to bring the world back into “balance.” CN has no second act in this performance.
In the end, the STB is the straw that stirs the M&A drink. This places extra emphasis on whether the STB is making decisions in the best interest of rail transportation consumers, railroad shareholders or in the STB itself (STB was sued by CN in April 2021). Once the dust settles, Wilner’s call for greater transparency should be the resonance that survives.
— CN’s failure to acquire KCS will not portend its merger with another Class I railroad to bring the world back into “balance.” CN has no second act in this performance. —
As for CN’s future with an activist hedge fund as a beneficial owner, the emphatic rejection of the CN voting trust by the STB and the “power move” by TCI to turn the CN executive suite upside-down and shake it violently virtually assured (at least on the surface) that CN would not be able to pull off a KCS acquisition under any circumstances, whether via appeal or by offering concessions to appease the regulators. If TCI doesn’t have faith in the existing management team—clearly stating, “The CN board must take responsibility for the company’s recent underperformance and failure,” and going as far as to propose a new CEO, Jim Vena—how can that management team have been trusted to negotiate concessions that would satisfy the volatile mix of customers, competitors, regulators and railroads?
In moments of crisis, people are often directed to “look inward,” evaluate key decisions and adapt to a new normal. But when the unforgiving cold of deep space sucks the air out of the room, and you’re about to be blasted out with it, it’s a better strategy to look for a safe landing spot.
Written byFrank N. Wilner, Capitol Hill Contributing Editor, RAILWAY AGE
News Item: The Surface Transportation Board (STB) has found that among seven Class I railroads, five—BNSF, CSX, Kansas City Southern, Canadian Pacific (CP)-owned Soo Line, and Union Pacific—were revenue adequate for 2020. Norfolk Southern and CN-owned Grand Trunk Western were within a fraction of a percentage point of making the cut.
Revenue adequacy means a railroad earns enough to cover total operating costs, including depreciation and obsolescence, plus a competitive return on invested capital sufficient over the long term to attract capital to maintain a railroad’s large and costly infrastructure, including locomotives and rolling stock.
Back when railroads were serially revenue inadequate, even by better-trusted Wall Street calculations, many a scrap dealer stood in the bid line—a dismembered carcass appearing more valuable than the whole.
Indeed, when the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad went bust and was liquidated in 1980, its largest single stockholder, Henry Crown, was quoted in the March 5, 1980, New York Times that he “recognized many years ago that the Rock Island was worth more dead than alive.”
No more, no more. Just follow the money trail. Notwithstanding a COVID-infected 2020 that spread gloom across wide swaths of the global economy, five Class I railroads still were deemed by the STB to be revenue adequate—the other two so barely short of the achievement that non-math majors wouldn’t recognize the difference.
Little wonder that railroads have become a siren call to investment funds and each other. CSX and Norfolk Southern shelled out $13.6 billion above market value for Conrail in 1998, while non-railroad holding company Berkshire Hathaway paid $22 billion above market value to acquire BNSF in 2010.
Other investment funds—although unsuccessful in bagging their railroad prey—similarly performed a version of the peacock mating ritual, flashing plumes of colorful currency during courtship. Who knows what the final acquisition premium will be for mini-Class I Kansas City Southern once its hungry-for-profit shareholders decide between CP and CN? Already, KCS is owed a $1 billion break-up fee from CN following the STB’s rejection of CN’s proposed voting trust.
While acquisition premiums deliver impressive paydays for stockholders of the target railroad, it is shippers who stand to suffer. The transfer of cash—including if the transaction is aborted and break-up fees are paid—may initiate a period of deferred maintenance and a delay of capital investment essential to medium- and long-term service quality.
Especially at risk are captive shippers—those lacking effective transportation alternatives to rail—as they may receive less rate relief or be precluded altogether from challenging the reasonableness of rail freight rates increased as a result of an acquisition premium being paid.
More precisely, the acquisition premium increases the investment base used by the STB to determine variable costs. As the investment base rises, the ratio of revenue (the freight rate) to variable costs (R/VC) decreases, and rates below 180% of variable costs are immune from shipper challenge. An increased investment base also lowers a railroad’s return on investment, which adversely impacts revenue adequacy.
Captive shippers endure a triple whammy when acquisition premiums are paid:
• First, there is the risk that maintenance will be deferred and capital investment delayed owing to cash shortages or a need to reward investors with dividends and buybacks.
• Second, as the R/VC ratio decreases, regulatory relief becomes more limited.
• Third, an acquisition premium can cause an otherwise revenue adequate railroad to appear revenue inadequate and immune from protection as provided by a 1985 ICC decision (still in force) known as Coal Rate Guidelines. The guidelines included a Revenue Adequacy Constraint—that upon achieving revenue adequacy, a railroad is constrained from taking further rate increases unless it demonstrates its need for higher revenue, the harm it would suffer if it could not collect higher revenue, and why a shipper should pay higher rates.
So, what might an aggressive STB do to protect captive shippers?
For one, where an acquisition premium is paid, the STB can order the inflated investment base reduced by the amount of the acquisition premium. In fact, the STB did just that following Berkshire Hathaway’s 100% acquisition of BNSF—but only for three years owing to a regulatory anomaly.
Unlike the unfolding CP or CN and KCS transaction, the Berkshire Hathaway transaction was immune from regulatory approval so long as Berkshire Hathaway owned no other railroads. When it was discovered it already owned two short lines, the STB ordered the investment base adjusted downward by the amount of the acquisition premium for a three-year period, pending sale of those short lines—at which time the transaction again became immune and the investment base increased, over a four-year phase-in period, to reflect the acquisition premium.
The practice of including acquisition premiums in a railroad’s investment base followed 1987 recommendations of a congressionally created Railroad Accounting Principles Board (RAPB). But the STB has in the past detoured from GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), as in ignoring the positive impact on revenue adequacy of a $1.5 trillion tax cut enacted by Congress in December 2017. Prior to the RAPB’s recommendations, historical costs (when assets were first dedicated to public service) were used to compute a merged railroad’s investment base rather than acquisition costs. Notably, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) does not allow an acquisition premium to result in higher rates, absent a demonstration of offsetting customer benefits.
Alternatively, the STB can eliminate the impact of acquisition premiums in determining market dominance—the threshold for advancing a captive shipper’s rate reasonableness complaint.
Or, the STB could create a corresponding customer benefit to offset the negative shipper impact of acquisition premiums. It can condition merger approval on systemwide competitive access to assure two-railroad competition at sole-served terminals. In fact, when CP sought to acquire Norfolk Southern in 2015, CP CEO E. Hunter Harrison said he was open to allowing competing railroads to utilize the merged railroads’ track to reach sole-served customers and would quote line-segment rates in bottleneck situations.
Meanwhile, there lurks another bogeyman—legislation bringing railroads more fully under the antitrust laws and shifting to the Department of Justice authority to rule on rail merger applications.
In 2001, after the STB imposed a 15-month rail-merger moratorium to allow it to write New Merger Rules—an action that aborted a proposed merger between BNSF and CN—BNSF CEO Robert D. Krebs told an annual meeting of the Transportation Research Forum, “Several years ago … I favored shifting jurisdiction over railroads to the Justice Department. Today, I wish I’d worked harder to make that happen.”
Then in March 2009, attorneys general from 20 states signed a letter urging Congress to revoke the railroads’ antitrust exemption where STB oversight exists, and grant federal agencies and state attorneys general authority “to challenge anticompetitive business practices and mergers and acquisitions in the railroad industry.”
Revenue adequate railroads must now further contend with activist STB Chairman Martin J. Oberman, who told a North American Rail Shippers conference in Chicago Sept. 8 that the statute guiding STB actions “mandates that the STB consider the best interests” of the shippers and the public “as well as railroad owners.”
The urgency of hearing directly from other STB members is more pronounced, given Oberman’s other comments Sept. 8, which were nothing less than a change-agent’s dagger aimed at Class I railroads. Citing STB data, Oberman said that since 2010, Class I railroads paid out $53 billion more in stock buybacks and dividends ($191 billion) than was spent on infrastructure ($138 billion).
“Where would rail customers, rail workers and the public be if a meaningful portion of that $191 billion had been re-invested in expanding service and making service more predictable and reliable?” asked Oberman rhetorically—and, to railroad ears, surely sounding much like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) suggesting redistribution of wealth.
Since partial economic deregulation of railroads in 1980—and probably even before, during the age of more heavy-handed regulatory oversight—no ICC or STB chairman has taken to a bully pulpit to disgorge such anti-railroad rhetoric. With lame-duck Republican Begeman awaiting a Democratic successor, Karen Hedlund, giving Democratic Chairman Oberman’s STB a 3-2 Democratic majority, railroads are on notice from Oberman’s strong signal to revisit, reconsider and revise their business plan.
Postscript: Another relevant voice—although no longer an STB member—is Democrat Debra L. Miller (2014-2018), currently director of the University of Kansas Public Management Center. In conversations Sept. 9 with this writer, Miller said:
“During my time at the Board, I grew concerned that the rate regulation process is so flawed that there is no path to fixing it. In order to even begin the process, a shipper has to vacate its contract shipping rate and accept a tariff rate. Not only will the tariff rate be substantially higher than the contract rate, making it a very costly change, but railroads can easily raise the tariff rate without the need of any approval, so the shipper has to put itself in a very financially vulnerable position before even beginning the rate review process.
“And we should be clear that the process requires shippers to build a hypothetical stand-alone railroad at today’s costs, or what has been termed replacement cost. How can anyone build a railroad today and compete with a railroad that was built over the past 150 years? They can’t.”
Apprehend the echo of Bob Dylan—“The times they are a-changin.’”
Frank N. Wilner is Railway Age’s Capitol Hill Contributing Editor. His seventh book, “Railroads & Economic Regulation,” will be published in early fall by Simmons-Boardman Books. For two decades, Wilner was the principal drafter of rail industry policy positions and congressional testimony at the Association of American Railroads. He later held a White House appointment as a chief of staff at the STB and was director of public relations for the United Transportation Union and its successor, the Transportation Division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers. A former president of the Association for Transportation Law, Logistics and Policy, Wilner also edited its law journal. He has written for the Heritage Foundation and was a columnist for the Cato Institute’s Regulation magazine. He earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in economics and labor relations at Virginia Tech. Among Wilner’s other books are “Understanding the Railway Labor Act,” “Railroad Mergers: History, Analysis, Insight,” and “Amtrak: Past, Present, Future.”
First-half farm cash receipts are up 12.4 percent, but full year likely to drop due to drought. | Robin Booker photo
Canada’s agricultural producers enjoyed record revenues in the first six months of 2021, thanks to high commodity prices, brisk sales and strong global demand for agricultural products.
According to Statistics Canada, total farm cash receipts across the country exceeded $38.2 billion in the first six months of 2021, a year-over-year increase of 12.4 percent.
During the same six-month period in 2020, national farm cash receipts were valued at just a shade over $34 billion.
Cash receipts from crops were up by $2.8 billion from last year and revenues from livestock sales were $1.6 billion higher, StatCan said.
Direct government payments were $125.5 million lower.
On a province-by-province basis, Alberta farm incomes showed the greatest increase, rising year-over-year by $1.6 billion or 20.6 percent, followed by Manitoba, up $895.5 million, or 28.3 percent.
Saskatchewan farm receipts rose by nearly $650 million, or 7.9 percent.
Statistics Canada cautioned, however, that changing conditions across the country during the past few months — specifically drought conditions across much of the Prairies and higher feed costs affecting livestock operations — will have a negative impact on full-year 2021 numbers.
“Much has changed since these data were collected,” Canada’s national statistics agency said in an Aug. 31 release.
“Farmers are contending with higher-than-average temperatures and drought conditions throughout the growing season across much of the Prairies, higher feed costs and forest fires.”
The full impact of these challenges will become clearer in the future, it said.
Nationally, first-half farm revenues from the sale of agricultural crops were up by more than 14 percent this year versus last year.
Total crop sales of $22.5 billion in the six-month period ending June 30 were the result of higher revenues from sales of canola (up $1.5 billion), wheat excluding durum (up $718 million) and durum (up $284 million).
In fact, farm revenues were up for every major crop type grown in Western Canada, with the exception of lentils.
First-half sales revenue from lentils decreased by more than $250 million, or 30.2 percent, StatCan said.
All told, crop receipts rose in seven of Canada’s 10 provinces, it added.
The only provinces that saw a year-over-year decline in crop-related revenue were Quebec (down $59.1 million), New Brunswick (down $22 million) and Nova Scotia ( down $1.5 million).
“Strong international demand pushed prices higher for grains and oilseeds,” StatCan said.
“To meet this demand, the transportation of grains and oilseeds by rail destined for international markets continued at near-record levels for the two major railways” during the first half of 2021.
Canola was a shining star.
Canola revenues (up 33.7 percent nationally) and canola prices (up 39.1 percent on average) both rose in the first half of 2021, with China, Japan and Mexico accounting for two-thirds of Canada’s first-half canola exports.
The domestic canola crush also increased by 2.1 percent.
Cash receipts from wheat excluding durum were also up on the strength of higher sales volumes (up 5.2 percent) and higher prices (up 19.9 percent).
China, which is expanding its national hog herd after recent outbreaks of African swine fever, continued to be a large buyer of Canadian grains and oilseeds, especially for feed crops.
China was the largest single buyer of Canadian wheat during the first half of 2021, taking 16.8 percent of all Canadian wheat exported.
Canadian livestock receipts also rose sharply during the first half of the year.
Total livestock receipts were up 12.4 percent to $14.3 billion, thanks largely to gains in the hog sector.
Hog revenues were up $846 million or 37.6 percent from the same period a year earlier. Average hog prices for the six-month period were nearly 31 percent higher this year, than last, the StatCan report said.
Cattle receipts, including slaughter receipts, rose 8.8 percent to $4.3 billion on the strength of higher prices (up 4.4 percent) and larger sales volumes (up 4.2 percent).
Revenues in supply-managed farm sectors were pegged at $6.1 billion, a year-over-year increase of 5.3 percent.
Farm Credit Canada, the country’s largest agricultural lender, was unavailable to comment, citing concerns over the perception of voter influence during the federal election.
But in an earlier news release, FCC president and chief executive officer Michael Hoffort acknowledged that summer weather conditions will have a negative impact on 2021 yields and production.
Even with record prices for many agricultural commodities, lower production will impact farm incomes.
FCC said it will consider additional short-term credit options, deferral of principal payments and other loan payment schedule amendments to reduce financial pressures on those affected by unfavourable weather.
BC
Letter: Nurse who organized protest outside hospital hurt people working in health care
A nurse should understand that we choose nursing because we care
By: Cee
Protestors in Vancouver, September 1, 2021Brendan Kergin
Dear Bob, the Editor-in-Chief,
Thank you for your recent coverage on the protest outside B.C. hospitals last week.
I went from being disheartened, exasperated, exhausted, to confounded when I learned that the organizer of the protest was a nurse.
I was going to use my nurse’s hat to calmly write to the protesters. I would set aside my assumptions and judgment that there is a knowledge deficit. I would begin with open ended questions: “I would love to better understand your feelings regarding the COVID vaccine”. I would engage in reflective listening: “Sounds like you have some reservations about the efficacy of vaccines.” I would then assess the protesters’ desire and ability to change.
The purpose of the conversation is not to forcefully convince protesters to abandon their existing beliefs or to prove my perspectives. The objectives are to present the sensitive matter through the many lenses of a prism rather than merely two sides of a coin. By introducing the idea that things do not necessarily have to be black or white. It is perfectly acceptable to have multiple shades of gray. Our world is complex hence there can be more than 2 solutions.
Once I have instilled a dose of complexity to the thorny matter, I would facilitate and encourage the protesters to express their doubts and empower them to be curious to explore some of the other shades of gray.
I would then conclude the conversation by showing my faith that the protesters would make the best choice for their bodies and our society. I don’t expect the protesters to change their viewpoints overnight. All I want to achieve is to plant a seed for them to stay open minded to various possibilities. I believe there is more common ground than we think. I am willing to bet that we would like to return to our ‘normal’ lives.
I feel competent and confident to enter a heated conversation with humility and curiosity with protesters. But, I must confess that the organizer’s line of reasoning and initiative defeated me.
A nurse should understand that the immunocompromised cancer patients cannot afford to get infected and be exposed to a sea of maskless protesters. A nurse should understand every second matters for the patients who are having a stroke or heart attack when the protesters block the ambulances. A nurse should understand the sweats and bruised nose from wearing N95 for 12 hours. A nurse should understand that we have our fear and tears yet we return shift after shift. A nurse should understand how the health care teams have been indefatigably tending to patients and families. Lastly, a nurse should understand that we choose nursing because we care!
Kristen Nagle, your imprudent actions are hurting us.
Bob, thank you for your coverage.
Warmly, Cee
SOL INVICTUS
Growing risk of once-in-a-century solar superstorm that could knock out internet, study says
CTVNews.ca writer Published Thursday, September 9, 2021 1
The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft took this image on 30 May 2020. (Solar Orbiter/EUI Team/ ESA & NASA; CSL, IAS, MPS, PMOD/WRC, ROB, UCL/MSSL)
TORONTO -- Imagine if one day the internet was down not just in your neighbourhood, but across the globe, knocked out by a threat from space: an enormous solar superstorm.
It sounds like science fiction, but a new study says it could become our reality earlier than we think if we don’t prepare properly for the next time the sun spits a wave of magnetized plasma at us.
“Astrophysicists estimate the likelihood of a solar storm of sufficient strength to cause catastrophic disruption occurring within the next decade to be 1.6 — 12 per cent,” the study states.
“Paying attention to this threat and planning defenses against it, […] is critical for the long-term resilience of the internet.”
It paints a scary picture of what could happen if an enormous solar storm hits us: submarine cables between countries shut down, power grids offline, data centres from web giants at risk of going dark. But how do we even start protecting against it?
Solar activity isn’t easy to predict. While we know that the sun has an 11-year cycle that lets us track when solar activity will be higher, whether these high points will have harmless solar flares or large-scale solar weather events isn’t easy to pinpoint.
The sun also has a longer cycle that takes approximately 80-100 years called the Gleissberg cycle, in which large-scale solar events during solar maxima (the high point of the 11-year-cycle) become four times more likely to occur.
The two most recent solar cycles, from 1996-2008 and 2008-2020, were part of a minimum activity period during the Gleissberg cycle.
“In other words, modern technological advancement coincided with a period of weak solar activity and the sun is expected to become more active in the near future,” the study stated.
This means that the modern internet infrastructure we’ve developed over the last few decades has never been tested by strong solar activity.
WHAT IS A SOLAR SUPERSTORM?
Also known as a geomagnetic storm, a solar superstorm is what happens when something called a coronal mass ejection (CME) escapes the sun and strikes the Earth.
Large portions of the sun’s outer layer, the corona, can be blown off into space due to changes in the sun’s magnetic fields. These clouds of magnetized particles and superheated gas can reach the Earth in anywhere from a day to four or five days.
If Earth is in the path of a CME, the solar plasma will slam into the Earth’s magnetic field and cause a geomagnetic storm. While this doesn’t directly harm any humans on the planet below, it can impact our magnetic field and cause “strong electric currents on the Earth’s surface that can disrupt and even destroy various human technologies.”
We know this because it’s happened before — just never in the age of the internet.
The first recorded CME to greatly impact Earth was in 1859. Known as the Carrington event, it caused large-scale telegraph outages in North America and Europe, with equipment fires and electric shocks to telegram operators reported across the globe.
The CME that caused it was travelling so fast it reached the Earth in only 17.6 hours, and scientists have theorized in the past that if such an event struck us today, it could knock out power for 20-40 million people in the U.S. alone for up to two years.
The strongest CME of the past century was in 1921. But smaller CMEs have impacted us since, including one that knocked out the power grid in Quebec in 1989, plunging the entire province into darkness.
Just when the next big CME could be isn’t certain. The study stated that this next solar cycle is on track to have between 210 and 260 sunspots at the height of the sun’s cycle, which is twice the amount that occurred at the peak in the last cycle. CMEs originate near sunspots, so this can be a predictor for the strength and likelihood of a CME.
The new study pointed out that in the last Gleissberg cycle, its minimum was in 1910, and a huge CME occurred just over a decade later. Since we’re coming out of a period of minimum solar activity, we should be on the alert.
“Given that a strong solar cycle that can produce a Carrington-scale event can occur in the next couple of decades, we need to prepare our infrastructure now for a potential catastrophic event,” the study stated.
WHAT IS AT RISK?
The study looked at the physical infrastructure that could be at risk, from cable networks to data centers, to the location of more than 46,000,000 internet routers.
A big threat during solar superstorms is geomagnetically induced currents (GIC) that flow through ground-based power grids and systems, putting these at risk as well as oil and gas pipelines and networking cables.
The real worry is how these would affect long-distance cables.
While long-distance cables that carry signals in optical fibres are not at a risk from GICs because there is no actual electric current in them, conductors that accompany them to power repeaters, called power feeding lines, are at risk.
Submarine cables, which are laid in the sea to carry telecommunication signals, have never been stress-tested by a strong solar event. These undersea cables keep our global internet going, carrying almost all of our communications.
“During catastrophic events with a large probability of repeater failure, at an inter-repeater distance of 150 km, nearly 80 per cent of undersea cables will be affected, leaving an equal fraction of endpoints unreachable, whereas 52 per cent of cables and 17 per cent of nodes in the U.S. land network are affected,” the study predicted.
Satellites are also at risk during solar superstorms, not because of electric currents caused by the magnetic fields interfacing, but because of coming into contact with the supercharged particles themselves.
“Both surface-based and satellite-based communication systems are under high risk of collapse if a Carrington-scale event occurs again,” the study pointed out.
The study looked at the weak points of physical infrastructure across the globe in order to estimate what could happen in best and worst case scenarios in different countries.
Assuming there’s only low failure of long-distance cables, in the U.S., most cables connected to Oregon would fail, and connectivity to Canada and Europe would fail completely.
In China, while more than half of their connections would be unaffected, Shanghai would lose all of its long-distance connectivity.
Assuming high levels of failure, all long-distance connectivity would be lost on the West coast of the U.S., except for one cable connecting Southern California to Hawaii. The U.K. would lose most of its long-distance cables, and its connection to North America. New Zealand would lose all of its connections except to Australia.
“The U.S. is one of the most vulnerable locations with a high risk of disconnection from Europe during extreme solar events,” the study said. “Intracontinental connections in Europe are at a lower risk due to the presence of a large number of shorter land and submarine cables interconnecting the continent.”
The study also looked at which regions would be vulnerable in a geomagnetic storm, and then how many internet providers were located in those region, and found that 57 per cent of internet providers would be at risk.
When it came to data centres run by web giants such as Google and Facebook, the study found that Google data centres are more spread out and largely located in countries that have cables less likely to fail, whereas Facebook’s data centres are located mostly in the northern part of the northern hemisphere.
“Owing to the limited geographic spread of data centers, Facebook will have less resilience in the event of solar superstorms,” the study said.
HOW TO PLAN
But although this all sounds scary, we have time to start the process of bolstering our infrastructure.
The study recommended we strengthen our infrastructure by doing things like laying more cables to minimize the risk of being completely cut off.
“Since links from the U.S. and Canada to Europe and Asia are highly vulnerable, adding more links to Central and South America can help in maintaining global connectivity,” the study suggested.
Planning for future data centres to be more spread out across the globe instead of clustered in northern parts of Europe and North America will also help keep the world connected in the event of a solar superstorm.
Spacecraft currently will only be able to give us 13 hours of warning if a huge CME were heading our way, the study stated. Hopefully we would’ve predicted it before then, but that’s the window in which we could be certain one was on the way.
The study suggested that in anticipation of this, we could devise a shutdown strategy to be enacted globally, that would allow us to minimize connectivity loss after the geomagnetic storm. Power grids would need to reduce or shut down completely during the storm.
In terms of internet infrastructure, we need to figure out how to protect equipment during the solar storm, and figure out how to keep service going if there is damage afterwards. Part of that is designing things that have been tested for how they would function in the event of large-scale failures, something that currently isn’t part of resilience evaluation.
“We need to rethink the network environment in the event of a partial or complete disconnection,” the study stated.
Designing a backup system that could patch together available modes of communication, using cables, satellite and wireless, could help keep things going.
It might require a lot of rethinking how we keep the world connected. But if we want the Internet Age to continue running smoothly, it might be necessary to start protecting it from the sun’s future wrath.
