Canadian railways differ on port projects

[morseman]

From the Toronto Star today What think ye ?
CN's Prince Rupert plan said not a priority
Rob Ritchie (Pres. of CP) says changing Vancouver into a "megaport"
should be a priority rather than enlarging Prince Rupert.

Vancouver's port is the Pacific gateway for the present & the future.

Ritchie said CP rail believes a new container port in Pr.Rupert
should go ahead , just not at Vancouvers expense.

Prince Rupert is a deep-sea port in north-west B>C>
below the Alaskan Panhandle. Plans for a $170 million overhaul
of the port were unveiled last week.

CN Pledged $30 million for the project, $60 million would come
from the Federal and B.C. Govt's

CN has exclusive rail links to Pr.Rupert , While both CN and CP
have access to the Vancouver port.

Last month CP announced $160 million in track improvements
between the Prairies and Vancouver to relieve bottlenecks.
This would increase CP's capacity through Western Canada
by 12 percent or 400 freight cars daily.

CP and the Vancouver port signed an agreement to work together
on capacity developments

CP plans to soon increase its rolling stock of railcars
and locomotives to match the increased capactiy and
Vancouver port expansions.

[passengerfan]

Seems like CP is a bit concerned that if CN expands the container port at Prince Rupert more and more ships will bypass the bottleneck at Vancouver where ships sit for days on end at anchor in the outer harbor waiting their turn to enter the harbor and load or unload. Like I wrote months ago if CN gets the container port expansion at Prince Rupert then they will have effectively put together the most effective land bridge between the Orient and Europe under one railroad in North America. Prince Rupert is at least one days sailing closer to the Orient than the Port of Vancouver probably two. The CN expanded Container terminal will be able to unload containers directly onto waiting trains that can haul them through to Halifax where they can be loded directly on other Container ships destined for Europe. The same holds true for goods bound for Europe to the Orient. Not only that but ships bound from the Orient with containers bound for the midwest at Chicago will have the fastest through route possible using CN all the way. Not to mention direct Orient container service to St. Louis, Memphis and even New Orleans. The present all ship route or ship-rail route to New Orleans will no longer be able to compete with an all CN route. The fact is CN can in one fell swoop become North America's leading container carrier with the expansion of the Prince Rupert container terminal.

[morseman]

To Passengerfan

Thanks for your info which makes a very good
point in favor of CN and Prince Rupert

Would the making of Vcr as a "megaport" not clear up the backlog
of ships in the outer harbour and also give two railroads, CN & CP
more trackage to the US and the east coast. Also short distance to Seattle

[morseman]

just one other item I forgot to mention
aren't the ports along west coast of U>S> clogged up
the same as Vancouver and with Vcr becoming a "megaport"
wouldn't this reroute some of the ships to Vancouver

Rob Ritchie also mentioned at the railways annual meeting
yesterday that Vancouver provides the shortest and fastest
routes between Canada and the expanding Asian markets

Also said "Vcr is a huge engine for the Canadian economy
and is needs to be recognized as such"

"And that's whats going to be the best for Canadian industry
and for jobs in B>C>"

Will be interesting to read Saturday's papers to see the comments

Will keep you all informed.

[passengerfan]

And why would CN who has an all CN route with the Prince Rupert expansion want to share it with CP. Doesn't make good business sense to me. The CN route between Prince Rupert and Halifax would save probably eight days at the very least for shipments between the Orient and Europe alone. A megaport at Vancover has been discussed many times. And every time a megaport at Vancouver has been discussed it has been ruled out due to the expense involved. It is just CP worried about there very existence if CN bulds the container terminal at Prince Rupert. Dont forget ships goint to Vancouver must transit Active Pass and that treacherous body of water already has more than enough ship traffic. With BC Ferries between Tawassen - Sidney and all ships to and from the Orient using this pass the waterborne traffic will not be able to sustain much of an increase. Both the Canadian Coast Guard and U.S. Coast Guard had made their concerns known to the Canadian and U.S. Governments for many years. If two mega ships should collide in Active pass and one or the other sink they could effectively halt the majority of all seaborne traffic to and from Vancouver. So far all accidents have been resonably minor in Active Pass but that can't last forever and a major increase in traffic is the last thing they need.

[tatans]

As soon as North America realizes that in the very near future, the existing trade between Canada/U.S. will soon shift directly from north to south to a massive western direction (China) Vancouver/Prince Rupert will share a huge market with plenty of trade for both, watch the gigantic west coast improvemnts in the U.S. as they slowly realize the potential of the markets in China and India. We soon will probably not be each others best trading partners. Vancouver should have been improving their port facilities 10 years ago.

[passengerfan]

Vancouver has made many port improvements in the last ten years but Vancover itself has virtually no room for expansion and when the tides are running under the Lions Gate Bridge the water is fast and their is very little room for maneuvering in the confined waters next to Stanley Park. For many years their has been talk of port expansion beyond the Second Narrows Bridge but dredging alone for Mega ships is far to expensive. Roberts Bank where the Bulk Terminal is at would need very expensive dredging before any expansion could be undertaken at that facility. The much needed Container port expansion will have to take place at Prince Rupert due to the confines of the Port of Vancouver. Maybe the old Canadian Northern knew what they were doing after all when they chose Prince Rupert as their west coast terminal all those years ago.

[Dayliner]

Passengerfan,

QUOTE: Seems like CP is a bit concerned that if CN expands the container port at Prince Rupert more and more ships will bypass the bottleneck at Vancouver where ships sit for days on end at anchor in the outer harbor waiting their turn to enter the harbor and load or unload.

Most of the ships you see riding at anchor in English Bay are not container ships, but bulk carriers waiting to load grain or other bulk commodities at one of the terminals on Burrard Inlet. I understand that some bulk commodities are sensitive to weather, or that weather conditions can affect their loading, so this may account for some of the delay. True, you will occasionally see a container ship waiting for a berth, but not often; they usually come straight in and out, turning around in a day or less.

Keep in mind, also, that only two of Vancouver's container terminals are on Burrard Inlet; Fraser Surrey and Roberts Bank (Deltaport) also have large container terminals. The Port of Vancouver extends from Squami***o Roberts Bank; it already is a "megaport" in many respects.

If traffic grows as predicted, CP won't have to worry about losing business to Prince Rupert--there'll be more than enough to go around.

[Dayliner]

Passengerfan,

QUOTE: Dont forget ships goint to Vancouver must transit Active Pass and that treacherous body of water already has more than enough ship traffic.

While deep sea vessels occasionally use Active Pass, it is very rare indeed. In over 40 years of living on the coast and travelling between Vancouver Island and the mainland, I have only seen a deep sea vessel in Active Pass once; it was sufficiently unusual for the ferry captain to make an announcement over the public address system! The only other case of which I am aware is the notorious occasion in 1970 when a deep sea vessel and a ferry collided in Active Pass, killing two ferry passengers. Pilots have been much more cautious since then about advising deep sea vessels to move through Active Pass.

The primary route for vessels to reach the port of Vancouver from the Strait of Juan de Fuca is through Haro Strait (the boundary between Canada and the USA)--although I'm not exactly sure of the shipping lanes and they may use Haro Strait in one direction and Rosario Strait in the other.

[passengerfan]

But that day or two advantage that the Port of Prince Rupert will enjoy is going to be tough to overcome. The CP route from Vancouver east does not lend itself well to the doublestack containers. The CN route from Prince Rupert does. The grades are less and it will cost far less to bring this line up to super railroad standards then the CP mainline. The CN can completely bypass Montreal enroute to Halifax while CP cannot and CP uses the port of St. John New Brunswick located on the bay of Fundy and does not lend itself well to Container traffic with the tides etc. The CN port of Halifax is already a major container terminal and trains can be loaded directly from the ship.

[passengerfan]

You are quite right about Rosario and Haro Straits being used by the majority of Ocean traffic but they have major fog problems that at certain times of the year early summer and fall does not burn off sometimes into the late afternoon and both countries coast guards have voiced concerns about the manueveribility of ships passing through these straits as well as their are numerous shallows in both and the channels are not the entire width of either strait by any means.

[nanaimo73]

Passengerfan ;
CP makes a lot of use of Montreal as their East Coast port . They pulled out of Saint John a few years ago . CN is following suit and Haliax is becoming only a secondary container port .

[nanaimo73]

The Port of Vancouver has a very interesting website at www.portvancouver.com which has several maps and webcams. Well worth a visit.

[Dayliner]

Passengerfan,

You're right, Prince Rupert has the inherent advantage of being 24 hours closer than Vancouver to Asia. On the other hand, Vancouver has the advantages of economies of scale, and so far, that's what has prevented Prince Rupert from reaching its potential. A grain terminal and a coal terminal in Rupert have so far failed to divert a significant amount of traffic to the northern port.

If traffic from Asia (read China) grows as predicted, and if the promised investment is actually made (and those are two big ifs--remember, with the investment, we're talking a substantial amount of government money, and that is never reliable even at the best of times), then, yes, Rupert will at at last become the major port and traffic generator that was envisioned by the builders of the Grand Trunk Pacific. But that won't put Vancouver out of the picture--as I said in a previous post, the projected traffic volumes will mean plenty of business for everyone. But if traffic volumes don't materialize, it will be Rupert, and not Vancouver, that will suffer.

CN may have easier grades, but CP is already putting a fair amount of doublestack over the Rogers Pass and Kicking Horse Pass. CP is making strategic alliances with CN with respect to running rights, and is investing heavily in improving its own plant. I think we can look forward to some vigorous competition between these two Canadian roads for this traffic for the foreseeable future.

I'm interested in your views on what effect, if any, this will have on US ports.

[martin.knoepfel]

IMHO, the decisive point is whether taxpayer-money is invested in Prince Rupert or not. If this happens, I understand CP's concern. In this case, trackage-rights or open-access to P.R. should be instituted on the ROW

[passengerfan]

Well the Port of Long Beach-Los Angeles-San Pedro has reached its maximum capacity already where ships are concerned and this is the busiest port on the west coast like Vancouvermany ships can be seen at anchor inside the outer breakwater. To move containers from the port the Trench as it is called by locals that has speeded up access to and from the port by the double stacks. The problem is the Port has about reached its saturation point. The Port of Oakland is the second largest container Port on the west coast located on San Francisco Bay and it recently received new cranes that were moved under the Bay Bridge at low tide and the clearance was measured by only a couple of feet. No major container terminal exists on the Columbia River but their are several smaller container terminals located between the mouth of the Columbia and Portland. The Bar across the Columbia River has prevented any major Columbia River expansion of container terminals.
There was talk several years ago of the UP developing a major container terminal facility on Grays Harbor but this was finally dropped when the costs of dredging were found prohibitive and for large container ships would be almost a constant requirement.
Seattle is almost at its maximum on Puget Sound as is Tacoma 30 miles to the south on Puget Sound. Their was talk by the BNSF of developing a container port just to the south of Everett but space limitations and the amount of landfill necessary would have been prohibitive as well.
The Port of Anacortes where the Alaska Oil tankers offload to refineries is an excellent deep water and is served by BNSF. When still BN only large acquisitions of land were made by the railroad but it has long been rumored that now the present BNSF will one day develop one of the largest container terminals in the world at this port, but shipowners the other half of the equation were reluctant to serve any port with a single rail outlet. All that is changing now in this era of long term contracts between Shipping Companies and Railroads. With the numbers of containers from China and other Oriental ports increasing daily the long rumored Port of Anacortes Container MegaPort seems the most likely to be built in the immediate future. Rumor even has it that CN and CP will be granted trackage rights to the Port of Anacortes if the terminal is built and BNSF will be granted trackage rights via the old BC Rail now CN owned to the Port of Prince Rupert if it becomes a container MegaPort.

[nanaimo73]

Passengerfan;
Prince Rupert is being projected to start with 500,000 teu and expand to 1,000,000 per year which is a lot but certainly not a Megaport . CN could easily handle that and the rumour you heard about BNSF operating to the port over the ex-BCR sounds completely unworkable and ridiculous to me.Even going through the tunnel and over the lift bridge from Vancouver to North Vancouver is difficult.

[passengerfan]

The only thing I have read is that the BNSF was interested in Prince Rupert only as a bulk loading port possibly for coal. I realize the ristrictions their would be on the BCR to Double Stacks. But the BNSF properties at Anacortes are certainly of the most interest The BNSF ownership of most port property at Anacortes is the reason the refineries are unable to expand any further and the number of Alaska Oil ships is limited.

[nanaimo73]

The BCR line from Vancouver to PG is awesome for photography but hell for trains. Those crews really earn their pay.

Squamish MP 40 - 8'
Alta Lake MP 75- 2,199'
Mount Currie MP 99 - 686'
Birken MP 112 - 1,575'
Lillooet MP 157 - 793'
Kelly Lake MP 192 - 3,509'

You can not get a bulk trian of 17,000 tons of anything over that. It is 2.2%. If you heard BNSF was going to get rights to PR it must have been on the CN through Kamloops which is mostly flat.The distance from S.Vancouver to Prince Rupert is 1,110 miles via Kamloops and 950 using the old BCR. BNSF already serves North America's second biggest coal port right at the border, that's the Westshore terminal on the Vancouver Port map.

[andrewjonathon]

For BNSF to use the Port Prince Rupert someone would really have to want ship coal out of there pretty badly. The cost of shipping coal an extra 1150 miles by rail to Prince Rupert seems like it would put it at a significant disadvantage over other options.

[passengerfan]

Bulk also means grain and that might be what the BNSF had in mind faster transit time to the orient makes sense for that commodity as the Orient continues to grow at its present rate.
Something drastic needs to be done to keep India and China supplied with faster grain movement from the U. S. , Canada, Australia , Brazil, and Argentina. Busy people in those Countries burn more calories and require more daily food and both China and India are unable to grow enough to feed their own populations. And neither country has great storage facilities for grain. More and more grain will be delivered in a just in time mde like industrial parts and automotive supplies in this country. Storage of grain in countries like India is not easy do to the climatic conditions found there.

[nanaimo73]

A car of grain, coal, potash or sulphur is going to be loaded to 286,000 pounds, so a grain unit train would be just as heavy, just as long and with just as many engines as a coal train with the same number of cars. From the Border to North Vancouver a train would have to pass through three major bottlenecks, the lift bridge over the busy Fraser river, the 11,235' tunnel under Burnaby and then the lift bridge over Burrard inlet.
CP was (or is) handing grain trains to the UP at Yahk / Kingsgate for travel through Portland to the export terminal at Kalama WA on the Columbia river. I believe BNSF sends all of it's grain trains south from Spokane along the Columbia river. Those trains would have to go through Kalama and Seattle before getting to Canada.
Perhaps you heard about the planned grain terminal at Deltaport / Roberts Bank which was mentioned in the Deltaport article in the August 1988 Trains. That plan does not look like it will happen, and that land will go for container expansion.
BNSF is not going to serve Prince Rupert over the exBCR.

[passengerfan]

How about grain from the Northern Plains operating via Edmonton to Prince Rupert. The Ships you mention loading grain at Kalama very few are able to leave full due to the Columbia Bar. Only the smaller ships depart full those of the super variety load only to the winter mark or slightly less in summer in order to clear the bar not a very economical way to operate these large ships. And wintewrs they load accordingly. The Columbia Bar is one of the most treacherous crossings in the world. Seattle still lodas large numbers of grain ships as well at the huge terminal next to Smith Cove. The old Duwamish river termiinal I'm not sure is even used anymore. An interesting fact about the old Duwamish grain terminal was during the late 1950's and early 1960's when the Japanese were buying up the old mothball fleet of Liberty andVictory ships etc. they would first tow them to Seattle and load them with grain then a single tug would tow three at a time to India where the grain was offloaded and the ships were scrapped at Bangladesh with the steel then forwarded to Japan for there steel mills.
Checking my sources you are absolutely right about the BNSF not going to use the BCR but it is CP and CN both that are asking for trackage rights to a Superport if it is opened at Anacortes, just as BNSF has trackage rights to Deltaport. The only way that will happen is if the Prince Rupert terminal becomes a Container port for mostly returning empties, This is much like waht is happening with routing of the containers along the U.S. west coast today. Inbound ships unload loaded containers at Los Angeles and Oakland and empties are returned through the port of Seattle and UP runs empty double stack trains from their to Oakland and Los Angeles for reloading once again. This has been a common site in recent months down the San Joaquin Valley. This is being done by UP only as far as I know in order to ease the bottleneck at Los Angeles and not so much at Oakland. With the Sunset route mostly single track the UP has been working this line overtime. Traffic on the old Los Angeles and Salt Lake is beginning to ease somewhat from where it was during the early spring floods in Southern California but at this time it is my understanding that the BNSF is unable to handle any additional diverted traffic from the UP at either Los Angeles or Oakland.

[nanaimo73]

The Vancouver papers have not mentioned anything about CN and CP asking for rights to Anacortes, as far as I can recall.
From Blaine to Anacortes is 62 miles. Perhaps you mean Cherry Point, 16 miles from the Border at Blaine. There is a large Arco refinery there and I think that is where the tankers come in.
If anyone would like to keep up to date with accurate information on Canada's railways, the Bytown Railway Society in Ottawa publishes the magazine Branchline 11 times a year. Contact them at [e-mail]

[passengerfan]

Two articles in this weeks Railway Age should be of Interest the first is dated May 10, 2005 INTERNATIONAL FREIGHT FORWARDING SERVICES FROM CN

CN WorldWide, a new wholly owned subsidiary of CN, is offering international freight forwarding services between Europe and North America. Anita Ernesaks, a former CN vice-president of eBusiness, has been appointed managing director of the new enterprise, which will be based in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

CN WorldWide will focus initially on shipments between Europe and Eastern Canada, including Ontario and Quebec, via the Port of Halifax. Service between Europe and the U.S. will be added later. It will schedule and manage the door-to-door movement of International shipments, including rail, trucking, maritime transportation, and port handling. It will also provide warehousing, customs, and billing services.

CN Executive Vice President - Sales and Marketing James M. Foote describes CN WorldWide as being able "to offer shippers an integrated , door-to-door freight service, and position us to drive new containerized traffic through CN-served ports in North America. The new enterprise is a natural progression for CN, which has the network capacity, operating discipline, railand trucking expertise, and international partnerships to make this value-added freight-forwarding product a success." (Quote)

NEW CANADIAN CONTAINER TERMINAL TO OPEN IN 2007 April 29, 2005

A Port of Prince Rupert container terminal is set to launch in first-quarter 2007. CN Maher Terminals of Canada Corp., and the Prince Rupert Port Authority have joined forces to "create a new North American gateway" for goods moving between Asia and markets in Canada and the United States. Initial throughput capacity is expected to reach 500,000 TEUS (20-foot-equivalent containers) a year.

The group has secured $60 million in project funding from the Canadian and British Columbian goverments. CN is contributing an additional $30 million, which includes $15 million for the port's intermodal yard, $10 million for terminal trackage, and $5 million for infrastructure improvements to accommodate doublestacks along CN's B.C. North line.

Next month, Maher Terminals will put forward an RFP for the acquisition and installation of three large container cranes at the terminal and supporting container - handling equipment and technology, at a cost of approximately $60 million.

The Port of Prince Rupert is now completing bank financingfor its $25 million contribution.

Because congestion at major ports along North America's west coast remains a "significant issue" all parties are confident that a new terminal in British Columbia will be advantageous.

"CN has the capacity, service, and transit times to make Prince Rupert a true success," commented President and CEO E. Hunter Harrison, during today's announcement. "CN's network will offer fast access from Prince Rupert to the key markets of Toronto, Montreal, Chicago, and Memphis."

In the future, it's hoped that the facility will handle some 2million TEUs a year. (Quote)

[passengerfan]

Maybe the Vancouver papers (Province and Sun) don't have a good transportation editor. Are they hiring. Used to be an old joke about the Sun newspaper it went something like what happens if the Sun isn't their in the Morning? Subscribe to the Province.