Alaska Canada Rail Link
A rail connection through Canada would improve the economic security of Alaska and the lower 48 United States by providing both essential supply route redundancy, as well as West Coast container congestion relief with a new Alaska sea/rail port gateway on U.S. soil.
That page also has a link to a map in pdf format, which I found interesting.
It may or may not be significant that BC is not part of the study. Fortune Minerals could be the key player here
Fortune’s Mount Klappan anthracite coal project covers more than 15,000 hectares of contiguous coal licenses straddling the BC Rail right-of-way and roadbed, 150 kilometres northeast of the Port of Stewart and 330 kilometres northeast of the Port of Prince Rupert. The railway right-of-way currently provides road access to the site from Highway 37. Fortune is currently proposing to construct a short-cut truck haulage route in order to transport coal to the Port of Stewart. Currently, the Company is proceeding with the permitting of a 1.5 million tonnes of clean coal per year export metallurgical coal mine producing pulverized coal injection (PCI) coal for the overseas steel industry that was assessed in a positive full feasibility study in 2005
by Marston Canada Ltd.
Here are some pictures of the BC Rail right of way and the wikipedia article has some of the background. I am currently reading “The British Columbia Railway - A Railway Derailed” by Karl M Ruppenthal and Thomas Keast published by UBC in 1979 ISBN 0-919804-14-1
And no doubt the ongoing story of the sale of BC Rail will itself be the subject of a book - and probably quite a racy one judging by Bill Tieleman’s articles so far
The new rail line to Alaska should be built as soon as possible. If will have to built some time in the future, and it will more cost effective to built now than later. Future transportation demands will require it, and it will be much more friendlier to the environment than truck alternative.
Wouldn’t it be cheaper and more environmentally sound to ship materials down to Prince Rupert and transfer to rail there?
If you are talking about the anthracite, the objective is to export it. That means getting it to a seaport as cheaply as possible. Obviously the port of Stewart is a lot closer. The mine proposal was to convert the railbed into a road, but in the longer term building the railway makes a lot more sense. However it could be that commercial concerns of the mine are to get a positive cash flow quickly and exploit the resource as fast as possible. If the mine has a forecast short life than rail investment may not be justified. That is one reason why governments tend to get involved in railway construction: they look at longer term issues than commercial exploitation of one resource.
The quotation I chose from the government sponsored report does not talk about minerals in BC but more strategic issues. It will be interesting to see if these two concerns can be addressed together. In the days of a government owned BC Rail I think they might have been. With the present set up it seems less likely.
“Cheaper” and “more environmentally sound” tend to be incompatible in many projects - you can have it good, fast or cheap - pick two.
I was referring to the Alaska-Canada rail link.
Thanks for the reference to my blog, and 24 hours and http://www.thetyee.ca articles on the BC Rail privatization issue as connected to the upcoming breach of trust and fraud trial of former provincial ministerial aides David Basi and Bob Virk.
No book offers yet but I will be continue to cover the trial in depth.
alaska aggregator
Melting glaciers unearth new challenges. At first sight,