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The old CP Rail tunnel, which
connects Windsor
with Detroit, could be replaced with a new
$400-million tunnel within the next few years. |
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$400M rail tunnel on track
Source: Chris Doelen,
The Windsor Star
Published: September 26th 2009
Printer friendly version
CP Rail has been quietly advancing its plans for a new
$400-million rail tunnel under the Detroit River and will probably
start digging two years from now -- around the same time work starts
on a new bridge.
Richard Blouse, president and CEO of the Detroit Regional Chamber of
commerce, says he expects CP officials will give the green light
before the end of the year to dig a large-diameter tunnel big enough
to allow double-stacked railway cars to pass under the Detroit
River.
A construction permit for the new tunnel has already been issued on
the U.S. side, sources said Friday, but the environmental assessment
process has only just begun on the Canadian side and will take up to
18 months to complete.
CP and its partners have been quietly lining up Canadian political
support for the rail-only project, although excavation probably
won't start for at least two years, sources indicate. The number of
construction jobs alone to be created by the project will run into
"thousands," according to one.
"Some time before Christmas you'll hear more about this rail tunnel
we've been hearing about for years," Blouse told a breakfast meeting
of the Windsor chamber this week. "It's going to get built.
"I'm told it's imminent," Blouse said later when pressed for more
details. "It would be good to hear an announcement to get it going
-- it's a very major part of the infrastructure we need."
Mike Rohrer, director of community and business relations for the
pension funds which own the existing tunnel, confirmed Friday that
construction plans are moving forward. But he cautioned that the
final decision is still some distance off.
The century-old existing tunnel being used by CP "needs to be
replaced," Rohrer said. "It's coming, but we're not there yet.
Expect good news in the near future."
While the construction jobs will be a godsend for the depressed
region, Blouse told the Windsor chamber the best news about the
rail-only tunnel are the opportunities it will open up for the
region.
When completed, the new rail tunnel will plug the largest remaining
gap in the local infrastructure needed to help turn the region into
an "inland port" and cargo hub.
Coupled with a new international bridge downriver from the
Ambassador Bridge -- plus a few port improvements, such as the
addition of a some tower dock cranes capable of plucking containers
off ocean-going vessels -- Blouse says "the Detroit region" will be
poised to capture some of the "hundreds of thousands of jobs" up for
grabs in the world's shipping business.
While Windsor mayor Eddie Francis and others have been steadily
hammering away at the cargo hub concept for the past year, it turns
out Detroit's business community has been doing exactly the same
thing.
They're even targeting major Canadian transportation players to help
them achieve their goal, including CN and CP Rail, and the ports of
Montreal and Halifax.
In the next few weeks, members of Blouse's board will visit Halifax
to figure out how Detroit can divert thousands of cargo containers
from the current shipping route between Rotterdam and ports on the
southern U.S. coast such as Savannah., Ga.
Detroit wants to see more containers offloaded onto CN trains that
originate in Halifax, bound for its giant Toronto yards and points
West. Halifax is currently handling less than half the 1.2 million
containers it is capable of receiving.
"Time is money in the shipping business and using Halifax cuts two
days off the trip" from Europe to most of the U.S. market, Blouse
points out. "But we're not wedded to CN and Halifax."
CP Rail's connection to international shipping lanes via the Port of
Montreal could also be used to achieve the same goal, but not until
the new Windsor-Detroit tunnel opens.
CP's plans to acquire a larger tunnel to the U.S. has been around
for more than a decade -- at least since CN stole a march on its
smaller competitor by building its own double stack rail tunnel in
Sarnia. The two companies shared the Windsor-Detroit route until
Sarnia opened.
The Windsor project was on hold for years while CP and its partners
tried to raise money for the new tunnel by convincing governments to
turn the old tunnel into a truck route. That bid, known as the DRTP,
died when bureaucrats decided a new downriver bridge was the
preferred solution to the region's international traffic problems.
Blouse and his members agree completely with the border solution
chosen by the bureaucrats. "We support a second bridge, and after
9-11 we support redundancy. Modern terrorists, the way they work
today, they would easily blow up two bridges at once if they were
side-by-side" -- as the Ambassador Bridge has long insisted it
should be allowed to do exclusively. "We need two bridges."
Blouse says getting into the logistics industry in a bigger way is
the perfect fit for people in the Windsor-Detroit region, who have
more than a century of experience shipping millions of parts for the
automotive industry.
"We have people who are the best in the world at moving stuff
through a supply chain on a just-in-time basis."
The region doesn't have a choice but to chase the shipping jobs, he
said. "We've lost one million jobs since the year 2000, and they
aren't coming back, folks." |
