Cold temperatures slow traffic | Farmers, agriculture minister say railways could do more
Canadian farmers aren’t buying the cold weather excuse for slumping railway performance.
Neither is the federal agriculture minister.
Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway are blaming frigid temperatures for the slowdown in grain movement.
“Extreme cold weather starting in early December became an issue hampering CN operations and leading to a downturn in transportation performance for all commodities, including grain,” said CN spokesperson Mark Hallman.
“The continuing severe cold has slowed down the velocity of our operation and has affected not just grain but everything else we move.”
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CN has to use shorter trains once the weather drops below -25 C to consistently get air from the locomotives to the last rail car to release the brakes.
The length of the trains can be reduced by as much as 20 to 30 percent, which means more trains need to operate to handle the same volume of commodities.
That leads to increased congestion, a need for more crews, longer dwell times in switching yards and delays when trains meet on the tracks.
“That eats up network capacity,” said Hallman.
Michael Murphy, vice-president of government affairs for CP, had similar comments when he appeared at a House of Commons agriculture committee meeting last week.
“CP has very extensive winter preparations and actions to deal with winter operations. However, sustained cold below -25 C is a tipping point for railway operations,” he said.
“We must act on added winter mitigations such as reduced train lengths and it is extremely challenging for equipment and people.”
Robert Taylor, director of government affairs for CP, said the cold weather has a significant impact on train size.
“We run less than 7,000 feet on CP once the winter operating condition kicks in,” he told the committee.
“We’re running some trains up to 14,000 feet, so if you do that math, it’s quite significant.”
Saskatoon has had 45 days this winter that were colder than -25 C, and Winnipeg had 48, according to Environment Canada. The yearly averages are 32 days in Saskatoon and 35 in Winnipeg.
The forecast for February, March and April calls for a continuation of the trend of below average temperatures.
However, the chances of dipping below -25 C in March are far slimmer than they are from December to February, said Environment Canada meteorologist John Paul Cragg.
Farmers aren’t satisfied with the cold weather excuse for lackluster rail performance.
“We understand that it has been cold, but it’s Canada and it gets cold every year,” said Rick White, general manager of the Canadian Canola Growers Association. “To us, it’s not an excuse. It is inexcusable.”
He said farmers are disappointed with the lack of foresight and contingency planning by both national railways.
“All they do is shorten the trains and say it’s too cold.”
White would like to see more investment in locomotives and crews so that just as much grain moves when temperatures inevitably dip below -25 C.
He believes there should be an additional third train for every two on the tracks if railways are forced to shorten trains by 30 percent.
“They can go bumper-to-bumper. It’s not rocket science,” said White.
Federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz is also upset with railway performance.
“Looking backwards, you can see there’s absolutely no surge capacity,” he said. “I wouldn’t even begin to understand the myriad of issues that the railways say they face, but simply to say it’s cold weather, I think, is problematic.”
Ritz agreed with White about how the railways could have better dealt with the frosty temperatures.
“They say they’re building up to 130-car capacity trains and they’ve got to drop back to 70. Then put twice as many trains on the track. That would be the short answer for a neophyte such as myself,” he said.
CN has said it will do its “level best” once the cold weather eases to help western Canadian farmers export record volumes of grain this crop year.
“We expect to be able to restore our normal plan for train operations,” said Hallman.
“And as our network velocity recovers, we anticipate that our grain service will ramp back up to equal or exceed our normal seasonal operating performance.”
Murphy delivered a similar message to the Commons agriculture committee.
“We are confident that with weather permitting that we will soon return to stronger year-over-year gains on a current basis,” he said.
CN’s car spots through the end of January were 6.5 percent ahead of the five-year average, even with all the cold weather issues, and unloads at west coast terminals were six percent ahead.
CP has said its grain and grain product volumes from September to January are still 17 percent higher than the five-year average and eight percent higher than last year.
Larry Weber, a grain analyst with Weber Commodities Inc., pointed out in a recent newsletter that the five-year average the railways are using includes two years when eight to 12 million acres of western Canadian farmland were lost to excessive moisture or flooding.
However, Hallman said the port unload data is based on the first 26 weeks of all five years, when plenty of grain is available regardless of seeded acreage.
There is always a strong marketing push during the post-harvest period. Lost acreage would show up in the last half of the year when railways run out of grain to move.
He also said lost acres due to excessive moisture and flooding were primarily in CP’s territory. CN’s grain traffic was affected but to a lesser degree.
