SASKATOON – CN Rail isn’t about to help fix roads damaged by grain trucks.
Railways abandon branch lines in order to save money and improve their profits, says CN’s regional planning manager Bob Feeney, and it wouldn’t make any sense to turn around and give that money to local governments or farmers to pay for road maintenance and repair.
“We’re a commercial corporation, not a government agency,” he said in an interview after speaking to municipal government officials meeting here last week. “It’s not our job to defray increased expenses in other locations.”
Read Also
Agriculture ministers agree to AgriStability changes
federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
As branch lines are abandoned and more grain moves by road, local government officials are worried about skyrocketing road maintenance and repair costs.
That was evident during a panel discussion on grain transportation at the semi-annual meeting of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities. Local councillors lined up at microphones to complain that the railway is passing costs to others when it abandons grain dependent branch lines.
Pass money on
“How about passing on some of the money you save to rural municipalities, which have to pay for the roads?” one delegate asked.
But Feeney was having none of it, telling the questioners that while he recognizes there are additional costs associated with increased grain trucking, provincial and municipal governments should look elsewhere for solutions.
“Those increased expenses are due to road damage caused by truckers,” he said. “The truckers should be paying for that through their user fees.”
In an interview later, Feeney said he wasn’t surprised at the hostile tone of the questions. The cost of maintaining the rail line is hidden in the freight rate, he said, but the cost of maintaining roads is out in the open.
“When the railway leaves … it becomes a very real cost to them because they see their taxes go up to pay for those road systems.”
The CN official found his company under fire not only from rural government officials, but from another panel member, who accused the two national railways of blocking development of short-line railways as an alternative to abandonment.
Paul Beingessner, manager of Southern Rails Co-operative Ltd., said there are only two short-line railroads in the prairies “not because they’ve been unsuccessful, but because they’ve been too successful.”
He said CN and CP Rail want to control the rail network to their own advantage and have stopped abandoning unprotected lines to prevent them being taken over by short-line operators.
And now the federal government may make it even easier for the railways to abandon a line, with no requirement that they be offered for sale to short-line companies.
“The issue is not the efficiency of short lines versus the main-line carriers,” said Beingessner. “It’s who controls the destiny of branch lines in Western Canada.”
Feeney said CN is not opposed to short lines and is now involved in discussions with Central Western Railway in Alberta. However, many of the lines likely to be abandoned are in poor condition and unsuitable for a short line.
