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National Observer
24-06-2025
- Business
- National Observer
Polar bears and crude oil don't mix By Christopher Pollon Analysis Business June 24th 2025 #73 of 74 articles from the Special Report: Business Solutions Share this article A polar bear walks past a group of tourists in Churchill, Man. The town on the shores of Hudson Bay sits on an annual migration route as bears gather along the coast, waiting for the sea ice to form. Once it does, they venture out onto the pack ice to hunt for seals, Oct. 24, 2022 (Photo by Daisy Gilardini)
Listen to article It's a Saturday night in Churchill, and the Seaport Hotel — the only bar open in late April, owned by Mayor Mike Spence — is completely dead. Other than a few characters hunched over video lottery terminals, it's just me and former port worker Joe Stover. He tells me that back in 2016, just before he was laid off by the port's former American owners OmniTRAX, this place would have been 'hopping.' Our server, Danielle Joseph, has lived in town for 16 years, including five years working at the port. She's proud that after more than 20 years of American control, the ownership is now local. But Joseph is also wary of the 'endless cycle of hype' she has witnessed over the years concerning the port's expansion. 'And I do not support oil exports from Churchill either,' she said flatly. It's a popular sentiment in this northern Manitoba port and tourist town of 850 people. But it flies in the face of a frenzy of development schemes swirling around Churchill since the election of Prime Minister Mark Carney and a focus on nation-building projects in response to a US-imposed trade war. Western premiers dream of a new economic corridor to Hudson Bay, linking mineral and energy exports to global shipping routes. Some eco-tourism operators in Churchill are worried. "Any oil spill could totally decimate our tourism industry," says tourism logistics coordinator Joe Stover. Western premiers have pitched Hudson Bay as the terminus for bitumen exports through the Arctic — a new all-season road, a hub to extend hydro-grid power to the territory of Nunavut, and not least, an export point for a mineral-rich province that Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew has called the 'Costco of Critical Minerals.' Earlier this month, Kinew floated the idea of oil shipments via Hudson Bay. Churchill, however, may find itself facing incompatible futures — a potential gateway to funnel western resources to non-US markets, expand resupply to remote communities, and bolster sovereignty in an ice-free Arctic. All of these would require a huge influx in shipping traffic and a surge in infrastructure building. At the same time, it's a remote town that earns most of its income from an ecotourism industry dependent on a pristine, unpolluted habitat for polar bears, beluga whales and 200-plus migratory bird species. 'Any oil spill could totally decimate our tourism industry,' Stover said. He is far from an environmentalist, but Stover said the inevitability of spills from increased ship traffic and hydrocarbon exports is a huge red flag. 'A question Churchill really needs to understand is, what is the backup plan?' asked Spence, who, in addition to owning this bar/motel, runs a tourism company and co-chairs the Arctic Gateway consortium of more than 40 Indigenous and bay-line communities that took over the port and railway in 2018. "For some people, all their families ever did was work on the rail line and the port, he said. 'We are going to have to find a balance, because tourism isn't going to pay all the bills.' Bears and Whales Churchill is a global tourism destination known as the Polar Bear Capital of the World. In 2023, Churchill-bound tourism contributed nearly $100 million to the provincial economy, with more than $21 million in tax revenue from some 25,000 visitors, many of them from the US, UK and Australia. Just under 1,400 full-time equivalent jobs were generated that year alone. Glen Newstater works one of these jobs as a guide and logistics expert for one of the town's biggest tourism operators. He took me on a drive along the 25-kilometre stretch of road that is Churchill, to better understand how tourism currently shapes the town. Driving along the frozen Hudson Bay coastline in late April, we pass the intact wreck of a ship called the MV Ithaca, and on a rocky beach near the airport, the remains of 'Miss Piggy' — a cargo plane that crash-landed in 1979. Both are famous local tourist sites, amazing to southerners because this far north the wrecks were not worth salvaging and have become permanent quirks of the landscape. A big tourist draw is Churchill's location beneath the aurora oval, which makes the northern lights potentially observable for 300 nights a year. But polar bears and beluga whales are by far the biggest attractions in the summer-fall tourist season, said Newstater, whose great-great-grandmother moved to Manitoba from Iceland with 11 children in tow. His great-grandfather moved to Churchill in 1930, lured by work at the newly built port. Tourists can be classified by niche. Photographers are a "unique breed" and come from all over the world, said Christine Lee, Glen's partner and general manager of the Blueberry Inn. 'Some will sit for eight hours in one place to get the perfect shot.' Not to be outdone, birders show up armed with rare species bucket lists, memorizing bird call audio recordings in advance to better identify birds. More than a dozen major tourism companies operate from the town, with some offering beluga whale tours at the nearby confluence of the Churchill River. Spence's Wat'chee Expeditions is one of multiple Indigenous-owned businesses providing local cultural and historical context. A handful of companies deliver high-end polar bear 'safaris' — with their own remote lodges and attack-proof tundra buggies. Spinoff industries include Indigenous and Inuit art, float plane services, restaurants, hotels, lodges and bars. Americans accounted for more than 40 per cent of visitors to Churchill in 2024, compared to 29 per cent from Canada. Has the US-led tariff war and strained diplomatic relations stemmed the flow of Americans to Canada's polar bear capital? 'No,' said Newstater, noting that 65 per cent of his high-end, polar bear safari visitors are from south of the border. 'Americans see what they want to see,' he said. Polar bears on thin ice? My April reporting trip coincided with a research visit by Andrew Derocher, University of Alberta biological sciences professor and one of the world's preeminent polar bear researchers. On the day we met to talk, he had about an hour of down-time before he boarded a helicopter with two graduate students to tranquilize and tag polar bears on the frozen Hudson Bay ice not far from town. Derocher's research headquarters on the outskirts of Churchill is a tourist attraction in itself — the non-profit Churchill Northern Studies Centre was built over the remains of Canada's only rocket test site. During the Cold War, the US and Canadian military fired rockets into the skies above the site in an effort to better understand the northern lights, a natural light display also known as the aurora borealis and caused by charged particles from the sun reaching the Earth's atmosphere. The same loss of sea ice that is opening the north to shipping is putting the future of local polar bears into question, Derocher said. That's because polar bears in this area spend all winter on the Hudson Bay ice hunting seals, their main source of sustenance. When the ice of Hudson Bay melts, they are forced onto land, where there is virtually nothing to eat. 'The [bear] population has declined by about 50 per cent in this area over the last few decades,' he said. 'So there's not as many as there used to be, but there's still at least 600 to 700 bears in the area.' The future of polar bears in this area is difficult to predict. 'Churchill could have polar bears for another 100 years, or it could be just five years. It just depends on what happens to the sea ice," he said. Is Derocher worried about the impact of an expanded shipping schedule on the polar bears? 'Let's say Churchill decides to ship bitumen from Alberta, and there was a big spill," he said. "Based on where we know that polar bears are moving, how they move, with currents, with the sea ice drift relative to wind patterns, we can say, 'OK, we think the oil is here,'" he said. 'How many bears would be likely to move through that area? How many bears might we be looking at trying to clean up and rehabilitate?' Research conducted in the 1980s, when there was interest in offshore oil and gas development in the Beaufort Sea, included experiments in Churchill that immersed live polar bears in oil and attempted to clean them. 'They died of kidney failure,' Derocher said. 'We know crude oil and polar bears don't mix.' Courtney knows the tourism score When I met Courtney Hooper, manager of the Arctic Trading Co. on Churchill's main street right beside the port, the 'aurora season' for watching the northern lights — a growing tourism draw that brings a lot of shoulder-season business to the store — had just ended. The company supports dozens of regional Indigenous and Inuit artists — carvers, painters and other artisans — working in stone, antler and seal skin, walrus ivory and musk oxen hair. The latter produces the softest wool, said Hooper, holding up a knitted scarf. 'It feels like wearing smoke,' she said. There's a back room full of sewing machines where skilled local artisans make moccasins or 'flippers' — a tourist favorite. Another room is stacked with animal skins and fur from coyote, wolf, beaver, silver fox, skunk, and harp and ring seal. 'We don't want to be an oil town,' Hooper said when asked about the future of the port. 'Grain and minerals would be great, though.' Cruise ships are also promising for the future, she said, because visitors flood into town for a short period of time, spend their money, and then sail away. As of June, there are two cruise ships booked to visit Churchill in the 2025 season. 'Oil brings a new perspective,' said the Winnipeg native who manages an eco-tour company with her husband when she is not running the store. 'We have so much wildlife here in the water. If we kill off the belugas, the polar bears, how would we survive if we rely so much on tourism?' Cooper's concerns go beyond the environment. 'Churchill as a town cannot support largely unexpected inflows of people,' she said. 'Where will all these [new workers] be living? We already have a housing situation. What will it look like if we get bigger?' Uncertainty about the future of the port is also putting many locals in a tough situation, she said. 'People feel like they've been promised again and again. So many people are waiting to see if they get hired at the port, and are not doing other things.' Back at the Seaport Hotel Churchill was proposed as an oil export hub as recently as 2013, when OmniTRAX held community meetings which were not warmly received. It didn't help their case, recalled Stover, that 47 people at Lac-Megantic, Que. had just been killed by the derailment of rail cars carrying oil to market. A life-long Churchillian, Stover straddles a line Churchill will have to cross if the port is to grow. He would consider a return to working at the port — 'I'd never say never' — but is also settled in a job as a logistics coordinator for one of the town's biggest ecotourism companies. It's nearing its last call at the Seaport Hotel when Michael Borden, a native of Caledon, Ont., comes into the bar to buy off-sale beer. Now 29, he moved here a few years back to work at the airport, joined the Churchill volunteer fire department, and never left. There is no place on earth even remotely like Churchill, he said. He described a transformative experience that made him want to stay: donning swim goggles, he stuck his head underwater near the confluence of the Churchill River and Hudson Bay, and made eye contact with a duo of belugas. The whales did a double take and acknowledged his presence with genuine curiosity. Dozens of belugas at this moment were communicating through a cacophony of whistles and song as he looked on. 'You can't put a price on that experience,' he said, walking out of the bar. June 24th 2025 Christopher Pollon Keep reading Warming waters revive port plans in Churchill By Christopher Pollon Analysis Business June 6th 2025 Calorie counting for polar bears: New study shows link between sea ice loss and polar bear decline By Julia Stratton News Climate Solutions Reporting February 3rd 2025 Churchill at a Crossroads: A traditional way of life clashes with 'last chance tourism' By Matteo Cimellaro Analysis Climate Solutions Reporting Urban Indigenous Communities in Ottawa December 2nd 2024 Share this article Share on Bluesky Share on LinkedIn Comments
National Observer
06-06-2025
- Business
- National Observer
Warming waters revive port plans in Churchill By Christopher Pollon Analysis Business June 6th 2025 #68 of 68 articles from the Special Report: Business Solutions Share this article Shane Hutchins, general manager of Churchill port, is working to upgrade Canada's aging deepwater Arctic facility. 'It's going to need a lot of love,' he says. (Photo by Drew Hamilton for Canada's National Observer)
Listen to article Approaching Churchill's port by train, the twin grain towers appear from kilometers away across the tundra. It's 25 below in April, and Hudson Bay is trapped under a layer of ice as deep as three meters. This tourist town of 850 people and its increasingly strategic port is asleep — waiting for a spring ice breakup that is still months away. For nearly a century, the port at Churchill has languished as a great western hope, repeatedly dashed — the terminus of North America's rail system at sub-Arctic tidewater — where politics and geography have conspired to make this place more a dead end than the apex of a great trade corridor. But Churchill's fortunes are changing. The under-used seaport and its flood-prone rail line have been transformed from a white elephant into a nation-building project — spurred by a new urgency to seek alternative markets in the wake of a US-imposed global trade war. This year alone, the federal government has pledged $175 million to upgrade the port and the 1,300-km Hudson Bay Railway to communities like Gillam, Thompson and The Pas on or connected to the rail line. Canada's only deep-water Arctic port in Churchill has been sidelined for years. That's changing as a US trade war looms. In April, US and European diplomats visited Manitoba — a province now on their radar due to its strategic position at the centre of the continent and its rail links across a vast hinterland rich in grains, critical minerals and other resources exported to the world via Arctic waters that could be nearly ice-free in the summer by the 2050s. As the sea ice retreats from Hudson Bay and the wider Arctic due to climate change, the historic Northwest Passage could increasingly be open for business. If Churchill is to become the centerpiece of a third marine trade corridor for Canada, what are the opportunities, and what stands in the way? Old port, new mission Shane Hutchins, the port's general manager, drives his pickup truck through the aging facility, pausing occasionally to point to the sights out his window — the hulking concrete grain towers, a dilapidated 1920s-era power house. 'This place is close to 100 years old,' he said. 'It's going to need a lot of love.' Now 58, Hutchins worked there from 1998 to 2012 during the so-called 'great experiment' when the Jean Chrétien government sold the port and rail line to US rail operator OmniTRAX. Critics later accused the Denver-based firm of mismanaging the port and railway despite public funding and subsidies — allegations OmniTRAX has denied. (See sidebar below: Bitter Memories) Arctic Gateway co-chairman and Churchill mayor Mike Spence, an Indigenous businessman and power broker, recalled the lobbying effort to bring the port and railway under local control. 'I went to the government, and I said, 'Bullshit. If anybody is going to have ownership, it's going to be the region," he said. "It's going to be the communities that rely on that rail line, because we have a vested interest.'' Hutchins — who also owns Churchill's only taxi company — left the port to serve a single term as town councillor and spent much of that time criticizing OmniTRAX's Canadian representative in Winnipeg. Hutchins was hired back in 2023 after the port and its rail line were acquired by Winnipeg-based Arctic Gateway Group (AGG) a few years earlier. This spring the port's 28 workers will replace the decaying wharf face with fresh wood, and buy a second tugboat. He plans to hire another 25-30 skilled tradespeople, including mechanical fixers, carpenters, and stevedores who move cargo between rail cars and ships. Local people will be hired whenever possible, he said, including from Indigenous communities living along the rail line. Some of those new hires will work in a new building to store zinc concentrates from a mine in northern Manitoba, Hutchins said, adding there are plans to double shipments this year after a successful season moving the metals from Churchill to Antwerp, Belgium. A letter of intent has also been signed this year between AGG and Saskatchewan's Genesis Fertilizers to launch phosphate and fertilizer imports and exports through Churchill's port. In Alberta — where resentment over a lack of tidewater access for oil and gas has intensified in recent months — a group of Calgary-based energy and pipeline executives have proposed a ' multi-use energy corridor ' from Alberta to Churchill, including an LNG Plant and export terminal on Hudson Bay. The twin grain annexes that dominate the port are connected to conveyor belts that lead to the water — a reminder that the port's original role exporting grains and pulses could be revived. 'We have moved 700,000 tonnes of grain a season in the past,' Hutchins said. 'It's still achievable.' Climate change enabler What makes expanding the port such a hot topic is that an ice-free Northwest Passage is no longer the 300-year-old dream of explorers — it's happening now. Ice-free conditions that can support shipping have expanded one day a year since the 1980s, said Feiyue Wang, an expert on the dynamics of Hudson Bay ice. The current four-month shipping season, from July through October, can now be stretched for as long as six months, due to climate change, said Wang, Professor & Canada Research Chair at the University of Manitoba's Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of Environment, Earth, and Resources Centre for Earth Observation Science (CEOS) in Winnipeg. 'Hudson Bay is on a trajectory to be ice-free year-round,' he said. '[Sea ice] has been the limitation to this third seaway, and why Churchill has never reached its potential.' Exports from Churchill involve bulk carriers sailing up the centre of Hudson Bay and eastward through Hudson Strait. From there 'it's a straight boulevard to Europe' — faster than from the port of Montreal, he said. Other experts point to the uncertainty created by US President Donald Trump's public desire to restore US control of the Panama Canal as an additional boon to Churchill. To be sure, insurance — not ice or geopolitics – is the biggest barrier to extending the Churchill shipping season, Wang said, accusing insurers of being 'stuck in the 1980s.' Beyond October, rates rise dramatically for vessels because insurers rely on ice condition data that is decades old. A key part of Wang's work at the University of Manitoba is to document and communicate the changing ice conditions to the insurance industry — particularly for routes where waters are increasingly navigable, but ice is present throughout much of the year. Challenges around insuring Arctic shipping remain a wicked problem, said a 2024 study by the Environmental Law Review. Lead author Pia Rebelo wrote that insurers need to calculate the premiums for both hull and machinery, and protection and indemnity, in an extreme environment that is completely unpredictable due to climate change. Given those challenges and the lack of existing data, she wrote, "the practical viability of Arctic shipping remains doubtful." To date, "insurers have paid out more in ship damage that has occurred in the Arctic than they have collected in premiums." Praying for another boom Climate change is a double-edged sword for Churchill. It is opening the gateway to ice-free shipping, but also melting the permafrost under parts of the Hudson Bay railway – the critical infrastructure that connects the port to the world. In 2017, huge spring snowfalls followed by extended, unseasonably warm weather caused flooding that washed out large sections of the track. OmniTRAX declared force majeure and the rail line was inoperable for more than two years, cutting off the rail lifeline to many northern communities with no road access. If there is an Achilles' heel to the gateway, it's the final stretch from Gillam where the railway line makes an abrupt northward turn to Churchill. It runs through a bog ecosystem that needs massive amounts of ballast — rock and gravel — to shore up and raise the track above the water line. This last stretch is also built over permafrost — which is becoming more unstable due to unpredictable warm temperatures. For Rhoda deMeulles, owner of the Churchill Home Building Centre, a key supplier of building materials from the south to contractors in town and the far north, the debacle that followed the 2017 washout was a near-death experience. She supplies contractors with building supplies that must first be trucked from Winnipeg to Thompson, then carried by rail to Churchill and all points north — up the Hudson Bay coast to places like Arviat and Whale Cove, into Nunavut and Rankin Inlet. When the railway line shut down, she almost went bankrupt. 'We suddenly were sending all our building materials to Montreal, putting it in [containers] and sailing it all the way around,' said deMeulles, who worked at the store for 24 years and then owned it for the last 30. Other staples had to be flown in from Thompson to Churchill – where a 2800m paved runway built by Americans in the late 1940s continues to serve as a critical asset for the Canadian sub-Arctic. 'I was paying $2.77 a pound. It killed us," she said. "We didn't think we were going to make it. That rail line is our life." Then came COVID, she sighed. 'I'm hoping and praying [the port] will boom again; that's what we need.' Technology to the rescue? 'Ports are the easy bit,' said Michael Byers, Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia, and author of multiple books on the Arctic. 'Roads and rail-lines to and from Arctic ports are hard, especially now because of melting permafrost and shorter seasons for ice roads,' he said. An April report by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a think tank, questioned the rationale of developing northern corridors. It argued roads and seasonal ports in the Canadian North are "incredibly expensive to build and maintain, and their use case is limited." Chris Avery, CEO of Arctic Gateway Group – a unit of the OneNorth partnership of 41 Manitoba First Nation and bayline communities which assumed ownership and operation of the port and railway in 2018 – insisted the current route has a future. 'Churchill will never replace the Ports of Vancouver or Montreal,' said Avery. 'The big selling proposition of the Port is that it provides western resources with direct, efficient access to markets in Europe, Africa and South America,' Avery told Canada's National Observer. 'To have a port in the north that helps us assert our sovereignty, connected by rail to the rest of Canada, makes a lot of sense.' Past problems with flooding and permafrost were made worse by a lack of maintenance, but that's no longer the case. 'We've used half a million tons of ballast rock along the railway. We've replaced about 300,000 railway ties,' he said. 'We manage the bridges, and we manage the culverts.' Arctic Gateway uses ground-penetrating radar mounted on locomotives to collect GPS-tracked data on the permafrost. It then employs artificial intelligence to analyze the data and identify potential trouble spots on the rail line. 'We have drones flying overhead — not just in the northern parts of the line — looking at the geometry, taking video of the tracks, ensuring levelness of the track, and also looking at all the lands surrounding the track,' Avery said. May 'erosion' event suspends traffic Weeks after Canada's National Observer visited, Arctic Gateway announced that 'embankment erosion' on the Hudson Bay Railway just outside of Gillam had caused a suspension of service. And although it was just early May, 'extreme wildfire conditions' had already suspended train service on a spur line north of The Pas. The erosion is a reminder of the vulnerabilities of the Hudson Bay railway's upper sections – the weakest links in the entire gateway chain – the stability of which could impact the future of the entire trade corridor. That's why there's a plan to establish a second port on the Nelson River not far to the south of Churchill – which does not navigate permafrost to the same degree, but is hindered by massive flows of river-borne sediment. Feiyue Wang and Barry Prentice, a professor and transportation and supply chain expert at the University of Manitoba's Transport Institute, have both recently suggested that the stretch of rail between Gillam and Churchill needs to be rebuilt on rockier ground to avoid permafrost. 'They built the [upper] rail line essentially through a frozen peat bog, and it's been a problem for 100 years,' said Prentice, who remains a champion of Churchill as a resource gateway, with a major caveat: 'What that whole system needs is billions of dollars in investment, not millions, because you've got to do much more than just fix the railway.' June 6th 2025 Christopher Pollon Keep reading Canada's future lies in the Arctic — and with Europe By Jaden Braves Opinion March 27th 2025 Americans keep an eye on Arctic port revival in Churchill By Christopher Pollon Analysis Business April 26th 2025 Canada spends $1.5 billion to boost Arctic sovereignty and empower Inuit communities By Sonal Gupta News Urban Indigenous Communities in Ottawa March 12th 2025 Share this article Share on Bluesky Share on LinkedIn Comments
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Norfolk Southern expands short line interchange improvement program
Norfolk Southern has expanded its interchange improvement program to all of its shortline connections in a bid to boost carload volume growth. NS (NYSE: NSC) sought to improve interchange consistency and reliability when it launched its Short Line Performance Project with 40 short lines last year. 'It led to just absolutely above-normal growth for us,' said Stefan Loeb, the railroad's vice president of business development and first- and final-mile markets, in a company video. 'So as an example, those 40 interchanges through 2024 grew at 4.85% volume. It outperformed our general business in those same markets.' Last year NS' overall merchandise business was up 1%. The Short Line Interchange Project, as it's now called, has been rolled out to all of the railroad's 260-plus shortline partners, NS announced Wednesday. The program creates real-time data and communication channels so that NS and short lines can quickly iron out — or prevent — service problems.'It's about collaboration to be able to sit around the table and exchange ideas and use data to determine what ideas move forward and then make a commitment to act on them,' said Ryan Higgins, chief commercial officer at shortline holding company OmniTRAX, also in the video. Tim Schumm, general manager of OmniTRAX's Alabama & Tennessee River Railway, in the video said the program provides accurate data on interchanges with NS. 'It also lets us resolve any problems quickly. Instead of waiting a day or a week to have the problem resolved, we could literally do it in hours.' About 40% of Norfolk Southern's carload volume originates or terminates on a connecting shortline railroad. Caption: Norfolk Southern local train H76, led by SD40-2 No. 3423, clears the Lehigh Line main in Three Bridges, New Jersey, with a delivery to the Black River & Western interchange on Aug 6, 2021. (Photo: Jerry Dziedzic)Subscribe to FreightWaves' Rail e-newsletter and get the latest insights on rail freight right in your agenda steams up as short lines blitz Congress Coal extends surprising lead in weekly US rail traffic J.B. Hunt and Eastern and Canadian railways see steady intermodal volume For first time since 1998, LA-Long Beach ports bid harbor rail servicesThe post Norfolk Southern expands short line interchange improvement program appeared first on FreightWaves. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
New railroad heralds Indiana multimodal development
The opening of a shortline railroad heralds a new freight initiative for southwest Indiana. The Mount Vernon Railroad, a partnership between OmniTRAX, the largest privately held, family-owned U.S. rail transportation company, and Ports of Indiana-Mount Vernon, Indiana's largest port, creates what officials are calling a 'mega-modal' opportunity. At the heart of this development is an economic opportunity centered around development of the port's 500-acre multimodal megasite. The Mount Vernon Railroad, owned by Ports of Indiana and operated by OmniTRAX, serves as the switching carrier for the port, which handles 25,000 railcars annually. Ports of Indiana is making a $25 million investment to bolster growth in various sectors including steel, automotive, plastics, energy and heavy industry. This investment aims to attract large multimodal industries that depend on both inland barge and rail transportation. The port offers access to four Class I railroads and is part of the largest inland port district in the U.S. by tonnage. Officials also foresee additional development resources from OmniTRAX parent The Broe Group, a multibillion-dollar private infrastructure firm with diverse holdings across 41 North American states and provinces. OmniTRAX's extensive operations include 29 industrial railroads throughout the U.S. and Canada, complemented by 52 transload facilities and five industrial parks. The partners said the network positions the Mount Vernon Railroad as a key player in the region's transportation infrastructure. 'Our ports and railroads are critical to Indiana businesses and Gov. [Mike] Braun's plans for helping grow our economy,' said Indiana Secretary of Commerce David Adams, at the ceremony. 'Our state's ports provide essential rail and maritime connections for Hoosiers companies and contribute $8.7 billion per year to our state's economy while supporting 50,000 jobs. This new partnership with OmniTRAX creates a tremendous opportunity for growth in southwest Indiana by supporting existing business and attracting new investment.' OmniTRAX Chief Commercial Officer Ryan Higgins called the port 'a hidden gem' thanks to its access to the U.S. agricultural and industrial heartland. Mount Vernon is one of three Indiana inland ports, along with Jeffersonville and Burns Harbor. Subscribe to FreightWaves' Rail e-newsletter and get the latest insights on rail freight right in your inbox. Find more articles by Stuart Chirls here. BNSF and UP say possible container glut doesn't scare them BNSF, UP battle over California mountain pass trackage rights Illinois railcar owner doesn't have to pay damages in Ohio train derailment Union Pacific posts flat quarterly results despite volume growth The post New railroad heralds Indiana multimodal development appeared first on FreightWaves.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
US weekly rail traffic shows strong gains
Big gains in both carload and intermodal traffic lifted U.S. weekly rail traffic to its biggest increase over 2024 levels in 10 weeks, and the second-biggest improvement of the year. Statistics from the Association of American Railroads for the week that ended on Saturday show total volume of 513,553 carloads and intermodal units, an 8.6% gain over the same week a year ago. That includes 235,865 carloads, up 7.8% over the corresponding week in 2024, and 277,688 containers and trailers, up 9.4%. The weekly gain is second only to a 25.9% increase in the third week of the year. No other week has shown a gain of more than 6.2%. Coal led all categories at 22.1% higher, followed by grain, 10.4%, and motor vehicles and parts, 9.1%. Forest products were 3.9% lower – the second straight week of declines. Through 13 weeks of 2025, total U.S. traffic is 6,316,264 carloads and intermodal units, up 4.5% over the same period a year ago. Carload traffic is up 0.1% while intermodal volume is 8.3% better. North American totals for the week that ended Saturday, from nine reporting U.S, Canadian and Mexican railroads, is 717,082 carloads and intermodal units, a gain of 7.1% over the same week a year ago. That includes 349,262 carloads, up 5.3%, and 367,820 intermodal units, up 8.8%. The year-to-date total of 8,679,986 carloads and intermodal units is up 3% compared to the first 13 weeks of 2024. That includes a 0.3% increase in Canada and an 8.8% decline in Mexico. Subscribe to FreightWaves' Rail e-newsletter and get the latest insights on rail freight right in your tabbed as new CEO of OmniTRAX Trucks make January run for the border at railroads' expense Mexico boosted CPKC, FXE in 2024 as other railroads saw weaker revenue Bring It Home: Norfolk Southern boosts industrial collaborations by enhancing infrastructure The post US weekly rail traffic shows strong gains appeared first on FreightWaves.
