![]() Barry Prentice (below), a professor of supply chain management at the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business ‘If climate change is here and it does progress, I can’t see that roadbed will ever get better’ ![]() “I think that will be an appropriate place for the discussion on policy around that issue,” she said. On the issue of whether the railroad is safe to ship oil, Raitt said the announced review of the Canadian Transportation Act will address issues regarding the shipment of various commodities. The rail line has to be safe first and foremost.” The appropriate thing has happened - the rail is not passable, therefore, it is closed. “Transport Canada officials will be inspecting it. “My officials are currently working with the executives at Hudson Bay Railway making sure repairs are being made,” she said. In Winnipeg Wednesday, federal Transport Minister Linda Raitt said she understands the damage to the rail line has been caused by permafrost issues, something that has to be dealt with every year. Are we going to put up with a lack of reliability and trying to patch it up frequently or finally do the right thing?” “For a lot of the year it works fine - as long as it’s frozen,” said Prentice. The rail line is expected to see increased shipment of grain and other goods due to growth at the port and a longer ice-free season. Especially if there’s a possibility oil will be shipped to Churchill, he added. “If the country is serious about maintaining a link to the North then it’s time to have that discussion - a real, serious examination of relocating the rail line,” he said. In 1927, they ended up moving the port to Churchill and building the rail line over “the worst possible” terrain that’s “plagued by permafrost along the shore of Hudson Bay,” he said.Ī better location would be over a rocky ridge that runs from Thompson toward Churchill, said Prentice. “At that point, it was just a salvage situation,” said Prentice. By then, the Hudson Bay Railway had already been built as far as Gillam, he said. That location wasn’t viable for a port, mainly because it kept silting up from the outflow of the Nelson River. “In today’s dollars, they spent hundreds of millions trying to develop the port there,” said Prentice. “They had right-of-way cleared all way to York Factory,” said Prentice. In the early 1900s, the federal government planned to build a major harbour on Hudson Bay for shipping grain at the mouth of the Nelson River, at Port Nelson and York Factory. ![]() Rail service has been suspended since a derailment on the Hudson Bay line June 2 just south of the Hudson Bay port, but officials initially said the service would resume within a week.Ĭhurchill was not the original destination for Canada’s northern port, and it shows in the “strange dogleg” the rail line takes east of Gillam, Prentice said. At what point do we stop throwing good money after bad?” Barry Prentice “If climate change is here and it does progress, I can’t see that roadbed will ever get better,” said Barry Prentice, a professor of supply-chain management at the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business. If Canada wants to keep its northern Port of Churchill, it should move the rail line to a route that’s not “plagued” by permafrost, a transportation expert says. This article was published (3272 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Free Press 101: How we practise journalism.
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