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Canada National Railway is building a huge railway terminal outside Toronto in order to handle the growing need for containers-by-rail. The move is part of a goal to shift more freight away from U.S. ports, truckers and railroads and toward their Canadian counterparts.
Transporting cargo containers via rail has been expanding as railroads target trade and amid a long-running rise in U.S. industrial production, which typically feeds growth in container transport.
Canadian railroads are taking advantage of the trend, drawing more goods that are coming from overseas and heading to stores and factories across the border.
Now, Asian shippers appear to be moving a larger share of their U.S.-bound cargo through Canada.
To help serve those shippers with U.S.-bound cargo, CN Railway announced plans in March to build a $210 million container terminal just outside Toronto to serve as a main hub for cross-border shipping. That facility will increase CN’s Toronto-based annual capacity by some 350,000
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containers, allowing for two additional trains moving south each day.
"We would like to focus a lot more on cross-border business," said CN Chief Marketing Officer J.J. Ruest. "We think we have an appealing solution to convert road traffic onto rail."
Over the last ten years, Canada has invested billions of dollars in coast-to-coast infrastructure projects. Last month, the Port of Prince Rupert, announced an expansion to its container terminal that will increase annual capacity by 60 percent to 1.3 million containers. In January, the Port of Montreal announced an expansion to increase its container handling capacity by 25 percent to 2.1 million containers a year.
For more of the Wall Street Journal story: www.wsj.com
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