A well-known Cape Breton environmentalist is criticizing the province's current study of road tolls and says an analysis of transportation in Nova Scotia should include the idea of high-speed rail.

Neal Livingston, a documentary maker, renewable energy developer and woodlot owner in Mabou, says many people would consider using a travel service that could take them from Halifax to Sydney in just two hours.

"There's a lot of people travelling every week from eastern Nova Scotia to Halifax," he says. "They travel for work, they travel for medical reasons — and this is on an ongoing basis."

There's also lots of traffic each day between Halifax, Truro and New Glasgow, he says.

The province has hired a consultant to study the feasibility of placing tolls on eight stretches of Nova Scotia highway to pay for twinning.

Livingston says that study should also compare the costs of twinning to those of building a high-speed rail route and he believes a rail link would be cheaper.

While high-speed rail exists in other parts of the world, there is no such system in Canada, although the Ontario Liberal government has pledged to build a high-speed rail link between Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo and London.

Livingston says high-speed rail could offer significant social and economic benefits to Nova Scotians. It would improve people's lifestyles if they can cut a six-hour trip between Halifax and Sydney down to two.

"It would start to really make the province kinder of smaller," he says.

Livingston hopes the idea will find favour with Premier Stephen McNeil and the government will add high-speed rail to the study on road tolls.