(Reuters circulated the following article on April 26.)
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Alaska and Canada’s Yukon Territory have agreed to launch a $5 million feasibility study of a possible 900-mile (1,400 kilometer) rail link that would open the sparsely populated northern wilderness to more economic development, advocates said on Tuesday.
The railroad could carry ore from yet-to-be developed Alaska mines and, if expanded to western Alaska, could even serve Teck-Cominco’s Red Dog Mine, the world’s largest zinc producer, said Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski.
Murkowski, along with Dennis Fentie, premier of Canada’s Yukon Territory announced that they have signed an agreement to do the study. Costs will be split between the governments.
“We could move resources into the Yukon Territory and move those same resources out to the markets of the Trans-Canada railroad system and on into the United States,” Murkowski said on Monday.
“I think it’s justifiable and I think the economics will support this,” the Republican governor said.
But skeptics say the plan is far-fetched.
“Mega-projects like this mean dreaming big, and I think we should do that. But we have to pencil it out to make sure it really works,” said state Rep. David Guttenberg, a Fairbanks Democrat. While the idea of a rail link is appealing, railroads around the country have been in financial trouble, casting doubt on chances for a new Alaska-Yukon line, Guttenberg said.
Even if the long-planned Alaska natural gas pipeline is built along the proposed rail corridor, Guttenberg said, it still might be cheaper to ship supplies needed for that project over the sea by barge.
Congress has already appropriated the $2.5 million that the state of Alaska would contribute to the feasibility study, the governor’s office said.
Yukon’s Fentie said the governments should not wait for the private sector to initiate such a rail link.
“If that’s the attitude they took when they were building the trans-continental railroad, we’d still be driving an ox cart east to west,” he said.