(The Canadian Press circulated the following article by Allan Swift on October 11.)
MONTREAL — An explosion in worldwide trade is putting such a strain on Canadian ports and railways that shippers claim it is creating supply problems for retail and manufacturing customers.
Angry at delays that last for up to weeks, freight forwarders point fingers at the railroads. One spokesman accused them of being in the 19th century.
George Kuhn, executive director of the Canadian International Freight Forwarders Association, said container congestion is a worldwide phenomenon, with ships waiting off Los Angeles as much as 10 days to unload.
But in Canada, he blames the two main railways – Canadian National and Canadian Pacific – for not foreseeing immense traffic buildups from the Pacific and Europe.
“The key is the railroads in this country, and the railroads are still operating in the 19th and 20th century,” said Kuhn, whose association has 160 members.
“Their available rolling stock and inland facilities are all taxed to the maximum and then some.”
A spokesman for Canadian National said the company has spent $280 million on terminals and extended rail sidings since 1999 to improve traffic flows.
“It’s more than just railways (involved),” said Mark Hallman; “You’ve got steamship companies, forwarders, ports, terminals, drayage; too often the finger gets pointed at the railways.”
The ports of Montreal and Vancouver admit they lack capacity to keep up with growth of containers, mostly filled with consumer goods from China.
There are calls for all parts of the transportation system to co-operate, for example to smooth the peaks of huge container ship arrivals.
The Port of Montreal reported container traffic jumped more than 10 per cent to the end of August compared with last year, for a total of 7.1 million tonnes.
The Montreal longshoremen’s union reported last month that delays averaged three weeks, extending up to seven weeks, and said one steamship line had to find an alternative port.
Port spokesman Michel Turgeon said this was because container volumes did not slow down as they usually do in the summer, combined with summer vacations for workers.
He said the situation was getting back to normal, and said Canadian Pacific Railroad has added 200 railcars to the port.
Anne McMullin, spokeswoman for the Vancouver Port Authority, said container traffic was up seven per cent over the record levels of 2003.
“It’s not so much delays, as it’s just taking longer,” said McMullin, reluctant to say there were traffic slowdowns.
The North American backlogs extend back to Asia where ships are limiting payloads because of bottlenecks in Canada, he said.
“So you can imagine that is very often creating havoc, especially in today’s environment where manufacturing is working with JIT (just-in-time) systems,” as well as with big department stores like The Bay, Kuhn said.
Kuhn, of the freight fowarders association, said plans by CN Rail to develop the Port of Prince Rupert, B.C., into a container port will help ease the pressure, but that is five to eight years away.
In the short term Kuhn said the system would work better if the different trasportation modes worked co-operatively, and for the railways to do more track sharing, as they do now, and share equipment.
“Each mode is still thinking in solitude; we have to become more altruistic in our thinking, to share information.”
In the longer term, there will have to be major investments for larger ports and inland terminals and double-track railway lines, through public and private financing. “We’re talking billions of dollars.”
The two railways claim their traffic is currently fluid.
The CPR’s Len Cocolicchio said the Calgary-based railway imposed allocations on shipping lines at Vancouver to limit container volumes “to bring some predictability to growth in that area.”
CP intermodal carloads grew by 12 per cent in the first half this year.
“In Canada the situation is far superior to other parts of the world, and one of the reasons for that is the railroads,” Cocolicchio said.
CNR believes the Port of Vancouver could handle 15 to 20 per cent more traffic – without more equipment – by spreading out the flow of containers.
One sore spot for shippers are the two sprawling rail terminals in the Toronto area, CPR’s Vaughan Terminal and CN’s Brampton Intermodal Terminal.
Since the trains run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the railways want local deliveries on weekends and evenings to relieve congestion.
CN has even started imposing storage fees on containers in its yard. “Forwarders can’t continue to use our terminals as storage facilities,” Hallman said.
Bob Armstrong, president of the Canadian Association of Importers and Exporters, representing 750 companies including big retail chains, sees no reason why the railways should force local deliverers to work weekends.
“Railways want everybody to march to their drum,” complained Armstrong.
“There’s just an explosion of trade right now so the railways can’t keep up with the business, and of course they’ll blame everybody else.”