Northern Light
Superstar
The one image there demands to be pulled forward:
I doubt prices will spike, but shelves will be empty.Bets on prices of necessities in Vancouver and cost of goods all over Canada over the next few weeks?
There is going to be an absolute mountain of containers stuck at the port, too. Canada is a lot more vulnerable than the US in this regard. Maybe they can divert containers to flow through the US by rail, but that may be hard to scale.
They're saying that it could take weeks for it to be reopened. After all, rebuilding culverts and bridges takes time (even if you really need speed). Meanwhile, Vancouver is totally cut off.
Bets on prices of necessities in Vancouver and cost of goods all over Canada over the next few weeks?
We have been (sorry), and already have had some online orders cancelled. The missus was in town shopping today - Christmas and otherwise - and found that what is advertised on websites is not matching what's actually in the stores. It seems there is disconnect between IT and warehousing/shipping. Maybe what we are looking for is bobbing around the Pacific or bumping up against the Vancouver Island coast.One thing about having a grocery oligopoly, you don't get a lot of places to hide if you overtly gouge.
I expect the price of necessities, where available will hold fairly steady in that category.
In part, this is also because relatively little food comes in from Asia, the key here for most non-perishable product is whether the chains in question have a major warehouse in the Vancouver area, that is not cut off from most stores.
If they do, they have at least some buffer zone.
Though perishables will probably thin-out fairly quick. Most perishables arrive by truck, not rail, so the key there, particularly at this time of year, will be the roads to the U.S. and points south.
The challenges will therefore be in absolute availability over price, I think, in that category.
As to other goods, all the majors began to get Christmas inventory in weeks ago; they may yet have some trailing supply due to well known bottlenecks occuring at the west coast ports.
But that will probably ok, or at least no worse than it was, in respect of the Vancouver area.
However, where that trailing supply is either still on ships, or in containers at port, waiting to be shipped east............there may be some real headaches.
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Put another way, maybe go Christmas shop in person, this week.
But wait a day or two......... to give me a head start!
Maybe this is a message for Canada to pull the bandaid off and spend the money to build the kind of infrastructure seen in Europe and Japan over the Rockies. It's not like the extreme weather situation will get better, and if the alternative is rebuilding the Coquihalla every year it's probably cheaper in the long run.
But the costs involved, mean it would be decades before we saw a material benefit.
Just sayin.
That would be one seriously expensive bandaid ripping.
If you avoided (nearly) all risk of flooding or landslides with extensive tunnels .......
The Gothard Tunnel in Switzerland opened 5 years ago, after 17 years of construction, and having expended roughly $12.5B US
That's for roughly 57km of track.
The rough distance through Canada's Mountains is ~600km from just east of Canmore to just west of Vancouver.
Now, clearly, not every section would meet the criterion for tunnelling.......
Still, if you went with that for even 1/2 the distance, where it would mitigate the most risk, or generate the most travel savings...........
You're looking at well north of $100B USD in today's $ on a go-forward basis.
That makes HSR in the corridor look like pocket change!
Which is not to say we shouldn't look at tunnelling some sections of key road and rail infrastructure in the west......
But the costs involved, mean it would be decades before we saw a material benefit.
Just sayin.