Click here to sign up for our free daily newsletter

Grain off the rails: Transportation update

Apr 14, 2025 | 4:48 PM

Grain companies have not been pleased with either railways’ ability to meet hopper car orders this winter.

Mark Hemmes with Quorum Corp monitors railway performance on behalf of grain companies and several farm organizations. He participated in a webinar sponsored by the Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission.

Hemmes addressed several questions raised by producers about his views on how to get grain moving on time. One question was about achieving a better balance between the different rail corridors. Hemmes said detailed analysis has shown this is not possible.

“Vancouver and Prince Rupert are seeing vessels that are actually going into the Mediterranean quite often. It’s just cheaper to take it out of Vancouver, go through the Panama Canal and then back across. That’s the way the economics structures it,” Hemmes said. “You can’t change the directional flow of traffic based on railway convenience, so unless they’re willing to make up the difference in the price or the cost of it by lowering their rail freight rates to make that work, it’s never going to happen.”

Hemmes said rates would have to be cut in half or more in order for the economics to pencil out.

There was also discussion on whether additional regulations would help improve the situation or are there other potential solutions. Hemmes said what has been learned from history is that when you overregulate you don’t create better performance, you create more resentment.

“As far as infrastructure is concerned, there’s still work that needs to be done. It’s highly unlikely, if not impossible, to come up with a third port on the West Coast so what we’ve got is what we’re going to have in the future, so we have to make that work better,” he said.

There are things that the Port of Vancouver is doing really well, it’s just taking some time to get it done. One of the big issues is access to the North Shore.

“We’ve got some infrastructure in Vancouver that’s over 100 years old that needs to be replaced and some of that is going to be fairly costly. I think, probably, the biggest benefit that would come to the system would be greater resiliency and greater redundancy with the railways being a lot more nimble than they are today and responding to problems that occur. Their recovery has got to be a lot better than what it has been especially this year.”

There was a question about building an additional line to move empty cars back between Kamloops and Vancouver. Hemmes said there was an inability to build a second line on either side of the Fraser Canyon. The only way to expand their capacity was by having unidirectional running.

“Basically, everything goes south on CN’s track, everything goes north on CPCK’s track, and that works. It’s really expanded the capacity. It’s when you get beyond that, it becomes a problem,” he said.

When asked about what new infrastructure is required on the west coast. He said the New Westminster Bridge in Vancouver, which is over 100 years old, needs to be replaced.

“There’s lots of studies that are going on and I don’t like to say that they’re dithering, but there’s a lot that they could do a lot faster. There are a few others that have been taking forever. Eventually they may have to build a second bridge over to the North Shore if traffic increases that much. There are a lot of things that could be considered on the infrastructure side.”

alice.mcfarlane@pattisonmedia.com

On X: @farmnewsNOW