IN MANY TOWNS, RAIL DRIVES DEVELOPMENT
BUT BUT TOWNS TOWNS AND AND BUSINESSES BUSINESSES still depend on rail to deliver goods
Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway soon will cease operating in Canada, halting rail traffic along a line that cuts through the Eastern Townships. While many people are breathing a sigh of relief, the closing will have an impact on towns and businesses that depend on the rail line to get supplies in and goods out. In Cowansville, where economic growth is still measured in railcars, the mayor says the locomotive continues to drive development. “We don’t want the MMA, but we need a train.” Catherine Solyom reports.
People living along the soon-to-be-defunct Montreal Maine & Atlantic railway are breathing a sigh of relief with the knowledge that the company’s days are numbered, at least on the Canadian side.
The company at the centre of the Lac-Mégantic disaster filed for bankruptcy protection last week and then promptly had its Canadian operating licence revoked because it had insufficient liability insurance.
The latest update from the Canadian Transportation Agency suggests that by October at the latest, there will be no train whistles blowing on that line east of St-JeanSur Richelieu.”
But what will the closing of the railway mean to towns and businesses that depend on it to get their supplies in and goods out?
In Cowansville, for example, where economic growth is still measured in rail cars, the mayor says the locomotive continues to drive development in the lumber and plastics industries.
“We don’t want the MM&A, but we need a train,” says Arthur Fauteux.
Three industries in Cowansville rely on it, he said, among seven in the whole Brome-Missisquoi region which the MM&A serves.
“They fill 2,482 rail cars but they have projects to use 2,500 more,” Fauteux explained. “For the rest of the population, it’s a relief. But when you look a little further, it’s a brake on development.”
Fauteux said trucking companies will likely pick up the slack left by the MM&A, but they will charge more to ship products, create more traffic and pollution, and not necessarily be less dangerous, bringing hazardous products — like oil — through the downtown cores of small towns.
Trucks have already filled in the gap for companies like Tafisa, a manufacturer of particleboard for kitchen cabinets and countertops in Lac-Mégantic. In a letter to customers sent out last week, Tafisa president and general manager Louis Brassard said trucks now take their product to several reload centres to be placed onto Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway trains.
“Train shipments have been part of our distribution system for many years and that won’t change,” Brassard wrote. “But for the moment, we have to adapt to a new — and in some cases better! — way of working.”
Eric Barbeau, a spokesman for Tafisa, could not say Thursday how the company would be affected if the MM&A railway ceased to exist.
“We’re not even considering that scenario,” Barbeau said. “There are so many variables in Lac-Mégantic right now that are out of our control. So, from the beginning, we’ve chosen to focus on our customers and look to other alternatives.”
Asked whether CN and CP railways would be affected by the 240-km gap in train service, from St-Jean-sur-Richelieu to the border of Maine, both companies said the impact was negligible — this despite the fact that 20 per cent of their freight load originates from shortline railways like the MM&A.
(On Wednesday, CP was added to the list of companies the Quebec government considers liable for cleanup costs for the Lac-Mégantic disaster, because it had hired MM&A to transport the oil from Farnham to New Brunswick.)
Meanwhile, on the other side of the border, there is a contingency plan in place, should the MM&A not be able to continue operating in the United States.
Nate Moulton, the director of the rail access program for the Maine Department of Transportation — a program designed to encourage companies to use rail service, where it makes sense, instead of highways — said that because MM&A is a monopoly, the state would petition the federal government to al- low another railway to operate MM&A rail lines until a buyer for the company was found.
(The MM&A itself took over the line in 2003 after the prior owner, Iron Road Railways, went bankrupt.) But until then, while the line is severed at the border, the MM&A is still doing the final delivery for goods brought in on other railways.
Back in Canada, Cowansville’s mayor would like to see the government step in to ensure rail traffic through his town continues.
“I think it will have to be the government (that takes it over) and railroads should become a public good with tariffs based on costs,” Arthur Fauteux said.
Kelly James, a spokeswoman for Transport Canada, said Canada’s transportation act “does not provide a mechanism for the Minister of Transport to intervene to maintain rail service. It is possible that another railway company may come forward to buy the line. Such a pro- posal would have to be considered within the context of the court-directed Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act that is currently underway.”
A spokesperson for CN said he wouldn’t comment on “potential commercial opportunities.”