Rail-Roaded

In September, at the Truck World show in Toronto, we were chatting with a couple of top Canadian Trucking Alliance officials about federal Transport Minister David Collenette’s surprising criticism of Canadians for Responsible and Safe Highways at a meeting of federal and provincial transport ministers over new hours-of-service rules. Collenette publicly questioned the motives of CRASH, a rail-endorsed, anti-truck lobby group, saying, “Look, no one is more pro-rail than I am … but largely those who dispute (the new HOS standard) have other interests. They really represent the point of view of other modes.”

Terrific stuff, right? Well, the real key to that speech is in fact the opening line. And just in case anyone thinks different, Collenette reinforced this allegiance when he declared after the government’s throne speech that a new federal transportation blueprint would promote a shift of freight from trucks to the railways, which he says would reduce congestion and greenhouse gas emissions.

He wasn’t clear about how this would be done. Anything remotely regulatory would spawn a Goliath of backlash that would take David far more than a slingshot to strike down. So the obvious alternative is cash — perhaps a plan similar to last year’s back-room proposal for Ottawa to subsidize expansion of Canadian Pacific Railway’s Expressway intermodal service to the tune of $2.5 billion. Ironically, that’s about the same amount the Feds take in fuel tax from Ontario motorists alone, putting just 4 per cent of that back into roads.

“It comes down to a choice for communities,” Collenette says. “Do people opt to have more frequent, high-speed freight trains or have more trucks on their roads, competing with other traffic and fouling the environment?”

Exactly what sort of “communities” is Collenette talking about? That’s what Sandra Campbell would like to know. She heads Residents Affected by Intermodal Lines (RAIL), a group (not subsidized by any special interest, I may add) fighting a Canadian National proposal to build a 450-acre terminal on agricultural land in Milton, Ont. She says intermodalism doesn’t do a thing for highway congestion and worries that CN’s proposed terminal in fact will increase traffic on the roads around her town, which doesn’t have the infrastructure to handle the 1,500 trucks a day that would use the proposed intermodal yard.

As for pollution, a report released by the federal government says taking trucks off the highway would have virtually no impact on the environment. It’s hard to imagine how shifting trucks from major highways into crowded, stop-and-go environments in cities or around intermodal yards could have any positive effect on pollution.

But perhaps Collenette’s statements should be taken with a grain of salt. After all, the free market, not King Jean Chretien’s legacy, will dictate how freight will continue to move in Canada. If the Canadian Industrial Transportation Association’s position is any indication of how shippers feel, trucking companies don’t have much to worry about for now. “Shippers use trucks because they meet the service requirements needed by Canadian companies to be competitive,” says Lisa MacGillivray, president of the CITA, an association of shippers. “We’ve seen Canada’s two railways make improvements, but they’re still almost a decade and a half behind the trucking industry.”

That’s encouraging, but the situation can change depending on much of your tax dollars the Feds decide to commit to helping railways get their act together.

Either way, it’s getting hard to tell where this government is headed on any issue these days. King Jean told business leaders at an Asia Pacific Economic summit that Canada desperately needs to attract more immigrants. Despite his own government’s repeated pronouncements about reducing gridlock, ‘Da Boss babbled, “Who will use the roads and services that we have been building?”

Somebody please get these guys a road map. They’re way off track.