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VIA Rail

Churchill isn't anywhere that is critical for defense or for heavy goods delivery. There are so many other towns and cities in the far north that get by without rail access, it's hard to make the case for this one town to have it, especially if the money to fix the line could be better spent.

VIA has had a good run on this route, but there will be very little impact if the line is abandoned.

- Paul
I think you'll be seeing a number of arguments and discussions on the point. If the rail line is closed, then a highway must be built. And it's not to serve the two thousand or so people in the immediate area.

Jeff Griffiths is a retired Canadian Air Force officer, and Certified Management Consultant, in Calgary Alta. This column was distributed by the Canada West Foundation.
It would appear that, despite lofty rhetoric, the Arctic hasn’t been a high priority for the federal government for years.

It should be. Fully 40 per cent of Canada is in the Arctic, we have 162,000 kilometres of Arctic coastline and 25 per cent of the global Arctic within our territory, according to government documents.

Canadian defence policy states that the Canadian Forces must be able to exercise control over and defend Canada’s sovereignty in the Arctic. And yet the only permanent operational unit of the Canadian Forces in the north is the RCAF’s 440 Squadron. It operates four aging Twin Otter aircraft from a base in Yellowknife.

That’s pathetic.[...]
http://thestarphoenix.com/opinion/columnists/1015-edit-griffiths-view

As for talk of Resolute and Nanisivik, they are for *re-fuelling*, not docking, repair, or loading, unloading.
Arctic naval facility at Nanisivik completion delayed to 2018
Project manager says 2018 a 'very realistic' schedule for navy refuelling facility
CBC News Posted: Mar 04, 2015 6:45 AM CT Last Updated: Mar 04, 2015 4:02 PM CT

[...]
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north...anisivik-completion-delayed-to-2018-1.2980312
[...]
That solution is for the federal government to build a large military base in the Churchill area.

The fight for the arctic
The battle for the arctic is heating up. While Russia and other nations expand their military presence in the north, Canada is doing nothing. Our weakness could cause us to lose out on trillions of dollars of potential wealth in the north. Our “arctic sovereignty” is meaningless unless we have military strength to back it up.

That’s why an investment in our northern military forces now will pay off big time later. We should have at least 10,000 active troops stationed in the north, and we should greatly expand our navy and air force in the region. Building the large military facilities to achieve those goals would be a massive economic boost to the entire northern region, and would be accompanied by infrastructure investments in durable railroads and highways in the region.

Reorienting Churchill around military objectives would benefit the region through substantial job creation, and would benefit our entire country by strengthening our national security and boosting our claim to northern resources. It would be a win-win, and is far superior to anything being discussed currently.

Of course, such a plan would require the government buying the Port of Churchill back from OmniTrax. That’s simply a no-brainer at this point, as it makes zero sense for such a strategic national asset to be owned by a foreign billionaire.

Our national security, resource wealth, and job creation must be first priority for the federal government. A big military build-up in Churchill will achieve all of those goals.
http://mytoba.ca/featured/opinion-massive-military-base-help-churchill/

Here's a couple more:
Analysis
What the closure of an Arctic seaport in Manitoba could mean for Canadian sovereignty
Closure of Canada's only deepwater mainland Arctic port may pose a problem
By Bartley Kives, CBC News Posted: Jul 26, 2016 6:00 PM CT Last Updated: Jul 27, 2016 9:53 AM CT

It's always a big deal when a small town loses its largest employer. But Churchill, Man., is not just any town — and its port is not just any business.

The Port of Churchill is the only deepwater link between Canada's Arctic waters and its railroad network. Or at least it was before Monday, when Denver-based OmniTrax shut it down, offering little warning and even less in the way of an explanation.

The closure stunned the town of about 750, where roughly one in 10 people is employed by the port at some point of the year. The shockwave then rippled down the 1,300-kilometre Hudson Bay Railway through railroad communities like The Pas, Man., before fanning out into the grain fields of northwestern Manitoba and northern Saskatchewan.[...]
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/churchill-port-analysis-1.3696199
How Ottawa abandoned our only Arctic port
Canada’s only Arctic deep-water port is now closed, leaving workers in Churchill puzzled and any talk of Arctic sovereignty feeling like empty rhetoric


Scott Gilmore

August 18, 2016
[...]

Despite Canada’s patriotic rhetoric about Arctic sovereignty, there is no Coast Guard here. No icebreakers. No Navy. No port police. The small RCMP detachment doesn’t have a boat. Omnitrax’s tugs are moored to their berth, idle. The harbourmaster only comes up when a freighter is expected. The Transport Canada building is padlocked and empty. There isn’t even a life ring to be found. It may be the only commercial deep-water port in the world without any security or rescue resources, and it’s been like this as long as anyone can remember.

If there’s an emergency in the bay, or in the surrounding wilderness, the people of Churchill are on their own. If a search and rescue aircraft is needed, it must fly in from Trenton, in southern Ontario, 2,000 km away.
[...]

I asked if the Prime Minister has ever visited Churchill: No, not yet. The new premier of Manitoba, Brian Pallister, hasn’t either. But a senior Chinese diplomat was up last week to recruit locals interested in Mandarin language training. China is increasingly active in the Arctic; for them, the northern maritime route to Europe is about 6,000 km shorter. Beijing has yet to recognize Ottawa’s sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, which many believe will become increasingly important due to global warming and melting ice. Perhaps this is understandable. The Canadian North is the same size as the European Union but with a population of only 118,000 people—less than the city of Guelph, Ont.

Earlier this year Beijing published a shipping guidebook to Canada’s North, with detailed information on sea ice and weather, and announced it intends to transport cargo through the archipelago soon. China has refused to say whether it will ask Canada’s permission or not.

Either way, we have no choice in the matter. Canada no longer has an ocean-going blue water Navy after years of budget cuts, neglect and shipbuilding delays. The nearest naval base is in Halifax, 4,000 km to the south. And the Coast Guard has only seven icebreakers capable of truly northern operations. None are heavy enough to remain year round. And our force of part-time Canadian Rangers? They are still using Second World War era Lee-Enfield rifles.

RELATED: The sinking of the Canadian Navy

There’s a large inukshuk on a pebble beach behind City Hall where tourists stop for selfies. In recent decades the traditional Inuit landmark, and the North in general, has become a prominent part of our cultural identity. Canadians visit here to be more Canadian—to say they’ve stood on the tundra and photographed polar bears. Our politicians do the same thing, and they know how important the Arctic is to Canadian identity. They fly up, stand by some sled dogs, assure us Canada stretches from “sea to sea to sea,” and declare us an important northern nation.

But the town of Churchill proves these are just lies we tell ourselves. Canada remains huddled next to the U.S. border. Our northern ambitions were abandoned long ago. Now, we project our sovereignty and promote development with nothing more than empty rhetoric.

When Justin Trudeau took office last year he issued his ministers mandate letters containing over 360 different “priorities.” The Arctic was mentioned only twice. One of those, however, was to the minister of defence, commanding him to “renew Canada’s focus on surveillance and control of Canadian territory and approaches, particularly our Arctic regions.”
[...]
The closure of this port, however, is not just a regional economic calamity, like a shuttered pulp and paper mill or under-capacity fish-processing plant.

At a time when climate change is opening up the Arctic Ocean to shipping, and powerful nations like Russia and China pose new threats to Canada's sovereignty, the viability of the only deepwater port connected to the nation's transportation network is no small matter. [...]
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/abondoned-churchill/

There will be military strategists getting involved in the discussion. Real ones...
 
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You are underestimating what importance the Churchill line has to VIA: there has been a close cooperation with the tourism industry in Northern Manitoba which has allowed to significantly grow the tourism markets during the seasons for watching polar bears (July to November), Whales (June to August) and the Northern lights (January to March and August/September). This has helped to significantly improve the performance of the Winnipeg-Churchill train, yielding a higher cost-recovery and lower per-passenger-mile-subsidy figure in the last two years than the Toronto-Niagara service
You say that as if that's a positive qualification. In fact, Toronto-Niagara (which currently consists of the Amtrak Maple Leaf and nothing else) is an outlier.

I'm not going to go into the rest of your lengthy post in detail, but will say this: if Manitoba and Canada decided to take the port and railroad back into public ownership and keep it in repair, that's fine. That burden should not fall on VIA Rail directly, given that the line is as much a freight link as a passenger one.
 
There are no shipments out now. Churchill is still there. Eighty per cent of tourists arrive by plane anyways. So long as Churchill has an airport, it is on equal footing with every other town in the North. So long as it has an airport and polar bears, it has an economic purpose and a job base.
- Paul
Are you sure? I'd think that there would be more people going via train as most people can't afford the thousand dollar air fare to Churchill. I also heard that some businesses there are laying off most of their staff due to the suspension of VIA service.
 
That burden should not fall on VIA Rail directly, given that the line is as much a freight link as a passenger one.

It's nationally strategic. There are many things many other nations do, at considerable expense, to continue laying claim to their territory. Norway is an excellent example, but I won't go into detail at this time. VIA's role should continue to be just one of an *operator* over that line. Churchill continues to be the most northerly deep-water port, not just a refuelling jetty, but one capable of servicing and lading heavy ships, military and non-military, and bringing in those supplies on a sustained and substantial basis.

It's also ice-free almost year round now. The Northwest Passage is becoming reality.
 
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Are you sure? I'd think that there would be more people going via train as most people can't afford the thousand dollar air fare to Churchill. I also heard that some businesses there are laying off most of their staff due to the suspension of VIA service.

One of the recent media articles (CBC I think, I'm too lazy to go look for it) quoted the mayor of Churchill giving that statistic.

I priced the trip a year or so back (now regretting my decision not to go, but it was too pricey on a per day basis) and there was no difference in cost for air versus VIA. When the loonie started falling a year or two back, the Churchill tours were quick to raise their rates, no doubt on the premise that the demand by foreign tourists was solid at that (converted) price point. So yeah, I do believe people do and will still fly.

PS: I just got off a plane from Newfoundland. Seems to me there are some parallels there. The policy decision to improve the TCH versus continue to subsidise the railway seems to have worked out just fine.

- Paul
 
@Urban Sky

Great analysis. So am I right in understanding that the line is still in the red? So who's picking up the tab?
Omnitrax claims to have lost $30 million since they bought the line in 1997 and with any private company, the tab has presumably fallen onto its owners (shareholders). The governments also paid many millions with newspaper reports quoting a wide range of figures, depending on what these figures include: $40 million or even $80 million for the port and the railway, $30-50 million annually to Omnitrax and VIA Rail or "nearly $200 million since 1997 on the rail line, the port, grain-shipping incentives and other investments in housing, recreation and roads in Churchill". It is therefore difficult to quantify the subsidy for the various recipients and even the figures published by VIA Rail may be distorted by including indirect costs in addition to the avoidable costs.

You say that as if that's a positive qualification. In fact, Toronto-Niagara (which currently consists of the Amtrak Maple Leaf and nothing else) is an outlier.
I don't think anybody would be proud about loosing $5 for every $1 earned, but I still think it's remarkable if a service linking this countries' seventh-largest cities with small population centres of only 5,513, 13,678 and 899 (for The Pas, Thompson and Churchill, respectively) 2-3 times weekly over a distance of 1,697 km outperforms a service which connects the same countries' largest city with its most visited tourist attraction and linking to the United States' most populated Metropolitan Statistical Area (20 million people) daily.

Are you sure? I'd think that there would be more people going via train as most people can't afford the thousand dollar air fare to Churchill. I also heard that some businesses there are laying off most of their staff due to the suspension of VIA service.
Indeed:
At least five workers in the Town of Churchill have been let go after the only train into the northern Manitoba community suspended its service, and business owners are warning more layoffs could be afoot.

"Quite heartbreaking," said Belinda Fitzpatrick, owner of the 31-room Tundra Inn and 10-bed hostel, who had to deliver the bad news to five workers Saturday.

Fitzpatrick had planned to open a seasonal restaurant next week, but the closure of the rail line by Denver-based OmniTrax has now crushed those plans.

"It's our lifeline to our community," she said.
[...]

"It's very nerve-racking," said Dale de Meulles, who together with his wife Rhoda has run Churchill's hardware and lumber store for the past 14 years — a shop they may soon have to close.

"We don't know how we're going to survive, to be honest," said Rhoda de Meulles.

[...]

Fitzpatrick is now contacting guests who were booked to stay at her hotel and hostel this summer to see if they can afford to fly into the community instead of travelling by train.

But she's not getting her hopes up.

There have already been cancellations, and she estimates she will lose 90 per cent of guests who had planned to stay at her hostel — many were planning to come to Churchill with Via Rail's sold-out Canada 150 youth pass.

I don't think that anyone would expect a passenger rail service serving such a small and spread out populations to recover its costs. But just like the owner of the Tundra Inn says above, it's a lifeline for people living up there - and they are Canadians just like you...
 
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PS: I just got off a plane from Newfoundland. Seems to me there are some parallels there. The policy decision to improve the TCH versus continue to subsidise the railway seems to have worked out just fine.

Kinda debatable. I'm not sure a one-time payment of $800 million quite makes up for it. The TCH is okay, but truck traffic (and winter studs) takes a major toll on it.

The railway's problem was also its incompatible narrow gauge, though of course passenger service was gone by the 70s.

Also I'm not sure exactly what parallels there are with Churchill, particularly since the railway was only ever useful for transport around the Island.
 
PS: I just got off a plane from Newfoundland. Seems to me there are some parallels there. The policy decision to improve the TCH versus continue to subsidise the railway seems to have worked out just fine.

- Paul
Interesting choice of words - the highway is "improved" while the railway is "subsidized". It would be a bit more accurate to say that the decision was to subsidize the highway instead of the railway.

Now I have no idea if the railway in Newfoundland was feasible, but generally speaking, wording choices like that are part of the reason our transportation system is so skewed towards driving.
 
The railway in Newfoundland never really turned a profit in its entire existence. By the end, it was capable of hauling container traffic, which made the gauge issue less critical, and offered some ability to integrate with trucks, but it still wasn't marketable.

The comparable feature in my mind is that, regardless of gauge, both run through rough terrain that is comparable in cost to operate and maintain. In both cases, weather is problemmatic for much of the year. The end delivery will be by truck as the line does not reach everything of substance - the 'final mile' issue, just like commuters - and it's costly to transship cargo.

Much as I would love to see both maintained, for the volumes and types of cargo we are talking about, trucks will take the business away if there is a road. If there were a mine or bulk facility that shipped trainloads regularly, it might be a different story. But there isn't.

Remember, VIA looks financially attractive so long as freight pays for track maintenance. Those costs can't be carried out of the passenger revenue alone.

- Paul
 
Fair enough, though passenger service was ended ~20 years before the railway actually closed. It did service the mine in Buchans, but that closed in the 80s.

I admit I still don't quite get how flying to St John's (?) brought to mind the comparison.
 
I admit I still don't quite get how flying to St John's (?) brought to mind the comparison.

Sorry, I should explain that one better. Mostly because every town I went through had a stuffed and mounted museum train, and the right of way is still prominent. I spent a lot of my drive mulling whether the decision to shut the railway down was the right one, and what would it take to revive a railway today, and would there be any point in that. My hotel was right next to the container wharf in St John's, close to the old railway station.... I watched a lot of freight transloaded to trucks in a place that used to have railway tracks. Even with that continuing business, it's hard to imagine how one could justify a railway...... it would take a mine or a large refinery in the inland (like Buchans) to justify that. A railway can't distribute goods, it can only serve as a backbone. Like subways, there has to be a need for that much backbone before you can justify the investment.

Perhaps Northern Ontario or Northern Quebec is a better comparison. For every isolated community that has rail service, there are five that never had it, and as many that lost it (there was this thing called the National Transcontinental.....but....).

VIA certainly does useful work where it is able to "piggyback" on a working freight railway to provide service. But consider all the media coverage of dismal conditions in small towns and particularly on First Nations in the North. Nobody is demanding that we build a railway to make them sustainable. They are too far flung and there isn't any freight to haul. New mines have been opened (with all the attendant materiel being brought in) hundreds of miles from any railhead.

If the Churchill line were a cheaply maintained piece of infrastructure that will be there anyways, we would be foolish not to exploit it. But the reality is it's capital and maintenance intensive and without a steady stream of money, will sink into the muskeg in short order. It's entirely reasonable to ask whether that stream of money should be directed towards all these northern communities, which might benefit more generally from a road network.

While we value public transit in the urban areas that justify it....and on the rail lines that do have longevity for the future, we transit and train lover have to face facts..... in much of this country, roads are the best solution.

- Paul
 
Also, my inner political nerd noticed something today about the VIA HFR map that popped up at the Peterborough Chamber of Commerce last fall. See those dotted lines? They're not municipality boundaries, they're Federal electoral ridings. Glad to see that VIA is thinking politically when marketing this project. Here is a map of ridings for comparison.

QlM5dIj.png
 

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