Railway still vital to proposed container
Efforts to bring a container port and logistics park to the Sydney area are not entirely dependent on a Cape Breton railway, says the head of the firm with the exclusive marketing rights to Sydney harbour.
However, Albert Barbusci,
CEO of Sydney Harbour Investment Partners (SHIP), said bringing the now disused rail line up to operating standards would greatly benefit any project.
In a telephone interview with the Cape Breton Post, the Montréal-based businessman clarified his firm’s two Sydney port strategies.
“One is trans-shipment, where we will use short sea shipment down the coast, but it won’t be as ideal for us as port developers and operators because the rail complements the other side, so the ideal option would be a combination of moving cargo by rail and short sea shipping,” said Barbusci.
“But, if we had to go transshipment as a standalone we could do it, it’s the model with which we launched ourselves originally — we can do either or, but the ideal scenario would be to get the upgrade on the rail, to run cargo down south and trans-ship as much as we can.”
His comments come a week following a Post story that revealed it would take a $102-million upgrade before the Cape Breton and Central Nova Scotia Railway could handle the kind of freight that would be on the move to and from a Sydney container terminal.
According to the $90,000,
yet-to-be-released study that was commissioned by the Port of Sydney Development Corporation, upgrading the rail line to a class 3 standard would allow for the movement of double-stacked container
cars. Required improvements would include the repair of several bridges and general upgrades to approximately 390 kilometres of track between Sydney and Truro, where it links up with the national CN line.
In the interim, a Chinese “working group” that CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke said would be in Sydney early in the New Year is now tentatively scheduled to visit Cape Breton in March, according to Barbusci.
“We remain committed — at the end of the day we are allin,” he said.
“We want to see this through, we believe you have a great location, it’s been strategic for hundreds of years for a reason, but the only way we will be successful is if we are all moving in the same direction.”
Meanwhile, Clarke, who has long focused on bringing a container port to Sydney Harbour, said the Cape Breton Regional Municipality has now moved from a leadership role to a supporting role.
“Everything now is with all the developers, they’re doing the work that’s necessary, they’ll come forth and deal with it,” he said.
“Council did its particular component, the province is committed to meeting the conditions with regard to tax concessions and abatements and providing a 99-year lease, so as soon as the developers trigger the next steps we’ll move forward.”
But what exactly those next steps might be remains somewhat of a mystery. Will Chinese interests invest in the project if there is no railway? And, if upgrades are made to the infrastructure of the railway, owned by Genesee and Wyoming, it’s still not known who will bear the cost.
Meanwhile, the province and the American rail company are nearing the end of a one-year agreement that temporarily preserves the Cape Breton (St. Peters Junction to Sydney) portion of the line. That deal has the Nova Scotia government paying Genesee and Wyoming $60,000 a month to reimburse operations expenses, while in return the rail company agreed not to apply to abandon the line.
The last train rolled through Cape Breton in late 2015.