Port Vancouver Holds Off Action against CN

Port Metro Vancouver is putting off any possible legal action against Canadian National Railway until it receives a promised report of how many containers CN will need to resume rail instead of truck service to three container terminals.

The British Columbia port began canvassing options, including legal action, after CN replaced rail service with truck service July 13 between CN’s Vancouver Intermodal Terminal and the downtown terminals Centerm and Vanterm and Fraser Surrey Docks on the Fraser River.

Now, the main concern for the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority is what improved numbers of containers CN feels it needs for these terminals so that it can go back to rail service, according to Chris Badger, chief operating officer for the authority.

While customers have incurred some extra costs because of CN’s shift to trucks, dwell times for containers at the three terminals "have remained within acceptable limits," Badger said in an interview.

"What remains a bigger concern for us is what will be the trigger point to move from rubber tires back to steel wheels," he said. Canadian National "has promised to provide us with that number."

"Based on what that trigger point is, which we are told is a very low number — that it wouldn’t take very much to tip them back to steel wheels — we will probably just continue to monitor," Badger said.

If only a low number of additional containers is needed, and if rail publicizes itself as cheaper and more environmentally sound than other transport modes, how has CN explained the move to trucks Badger was asked. "Yes, it’s a good question, to which we have not received a satisfactory answer," he said. "But CN is saying they can provide as good or better service (by truck) given these amounts of containers, and we can’t disagree with that."

One key concern is future marketing of Port Metro Vancouver, Badger said. "We insist that our rail system is second to none in North America, so we want to make sure that this continues to be our very good marketing tool."

CN continues to serve Deltaport, the fourth and largest Vancouver container terminal, by rail.

CN has declined to give any figures for the numbers of containers delivered to and from Vancouver’s terminals, before the switch to trucks and now. They are commercially confidential information, CN spokesman Mark Hallman said. Rail service would resume to the terminals when the box business for them improved, he said.