Saskatchewan Agrivision has identified a potential stumbling block in its attempt to create an inland port in the province.
The group wants to establish a port that will provide services such as customs clearance, transloading, distribution warehouses and logistics for containerized commodities heading across Canada and into the United States and Mexico.
The services would be provided in Moose Jaw, Regina and Saskatoon, giving shippers access to Canadian National Railway’s line that runs from Vancouver to Halifax as well as Canadian Pacific Railway’s shipping routes including a line that runs from Moose Jaw to Chicago.
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Agrivision said Saskatchewan is ideally suited to provide such a service, being located at the intersection of east-west and north-south rail traffic.
“It’s really the chokepoint in the system. There’s no point in Canada where all the transportation comes as close together as they do here,” said Agrivision president Red Williams.
But if CN goes ahead with its plans to decommission a portion of the Craik line that runs between Regina and Saskatoon, the link among Saskatchewan’s three main cities will be lost, delivering a serious blow to plans for establishing an inland port in the province.
“Although it is difficult to halt a process as complex as rail line abandonment, this is one time when it may make good sense,” said Williams.
Kevin Franchuk, spokesperson for CN, said the section up for abandonment is 137 kilometres of track between Regina and Davidson, Sask., which has seen no traffic since 2001.
CN has worked with several groups to see if there were any alternatives to discontinuance.
“The potential initiatives were not economically viable,” he said.
The railway believes it is time to move to the next step in the Canadian Transportation Agency’s process, which entails advertising the track for sale in newspapers. That will take place in late October.
If there are no interested buyers, the line will be offered to all three levels of government.
If no qualified buyer emerges from either process, the line will be formally discontinued and municipalities will be compensated to the tune of $30,000 for every mile of track within their borders.
As for the Agrivision proposal, Franchuk said before CN even considers participating in an inland container port project, it would have to see a strong organization leading the charge and a commitment from other key players like the steamship lines.
“They have to make a strong economic business case to CN,” he said.
Williams said his group isn’t trying to interfere in the railway’s operations, acknowledging that it makes sense to mothball a line that has no traffic. But he would like to see the abandonment process halted for a year or so to see if the inland port concept becomes reality.
Agrivision doesn’t have the resources to make a bid for the portion of the Craik line that is up for abandonment but the agricultural think-tank would support other groups that might want to make an offer to create a short line, like a rural municipality or a consortium of RMs, Williams said.
Leslie Winchester, spokesperson for the RM of Craik, said it is interested in maintaining the portion of line from Craik to Davidson, which might be necessary for future economic development activities in the community.
