I remember when Prince Rupert port was considered a dying venture. Glad for the turn around in fortuned there and overall in the north.

Mayor Dan Rogers should spend a little more time concentrating on the 'transportation corridors' within his home community. If the pathetic condition of the streets in PG is any indication of his expertise on the subject we are in for some big trouble if they take his advice.

All these guys have to do is go back to the 60's/70's. We had airline service to Ft St John, and Calgary in addition to Vancouver. If memory serves me right you could fly Pr George, to Ft St John to Edmonton. In addition we had huge shipments of coal, lumber, woodpulp, and logs,copper concentrate, being exported from Prince Rupert BC. In addition to millions of tons of grain products.

There is nothing new to exporting huge amounts of tonnage through Prince Rupert.

Copper Concentrate and Coal will increase over the next 10/15 years. Container traffic will decrease by about 50% once the Panama Canal expansion product is finished in 2014. I expect that a lot of the copper and other ore concentrates will actually be exported through Stewart BC rather than Prince Rupert, so I would not expect much growth in Prince Rupert in the coming years.

Its not the rules and regulations that are holding back the Airport from reaching its potential. The fact of the matter is there is no potential. The whole Airport Runway Expansion project was a bust from the get go. All the rules and regulations were in place when they started this project. Are we now to beleive that they built the project knowing that they were restricted because of rules and regulations. Not bloody likely. The fact is I doubt if they were aware of the rules and regulations, and sincerely doubt if they had the acumen to actually know what they were getting into. They are now looking for reasons to explain why nothing is happening at the Airport, and the fact that they have for all intents and purposes gone broke.

If these guys would stick to the jobs that we elect them to do Ie; Look after the City, and infrastructure, and leave the Railroading, Airline, and Exporting business, and the business of making money , to those who have the expertise to do so we would be far better off.

They say that they want to improve transportation through out the North. How does our Transportation stack up against Transportation for other parts of the Province, and Export Terminals on the West coast.\\

We have a huge road system in place. Ie; Highway 97 to Alaska. Highway 16 to Prince Rupert and Edmonton Ab. Highway 97 to Vancouver. CN Rail from Prince Rupert to Vancouver, Edmonton and the whole of Canada and the USA. This transportation system is what has kept us alive for 100 years and will keep us going for the next 100.

We can improve the system, but for all intents and purposes it is in place. What we need is some industry to use it.

Having meetings and talking as if you have some input into whats happening with CN Rail, Maher Terminals, Air Canada, or West Jet is stupid. These companies operate to make money. No money, goodbye.

Thats what happened to our direct flight to Calgary. Air Canada dropped it after a private meeting with Mayor Kinsley. I suspect the fact that we were subsidising Horizen Air at the time had something to do with it. Seems to me Air Canada said that they would keep the service if we gave them a subsidy. This is what happens when local Government gets involved over their heads. They had better stick to local roads, garbage, water, sewer, etc; Thats what we elected them for.

If they have time for all this other crap, then I suggest that we should be downsizing City Hall.

I remember when Prince Rupert port was considered a dying venture. Glad for the turn around in fortuned there and overall in the north.

What I would consider the transportation priorities in the PG area are two new bridges built by the provincial government with some of the resource dollars they receive from the north.

#1) Build a bridge at Isle Pierre cutting 20km off the trip time to the PG pulp mills from out west, and shaving a half hour off the time by avoiding going like a highway traffic funnel through the city core. This would eliminate the up and down grade of Mud River hills and College Heights hill paying for itself in carbon savings alone if carbon taxes were applied to real carbon saving initiatives. This would also lessen the heavy traffic congestion west of town (Peden Hill to Beaverly), provide efficiencies for traffic going north/west, and provide reliable infrastructure to the most desirable expansion area for development in the PG region. The new Isle Pierre overpass could then be utilized to its potential as an off ramp to this new bipass road.

#2) Is a Blackwater to Willow Cale bridge and road connector for the South/west traffic taking heavy traffic off the Ferry to Peden Hill congestion bottle neck, creating half hour efficiencies for Quesnel to Vanderhoof traffic and anchoring one leg of a future PG highway ring road for heavy industrial traffic removing countless diesel engines from the bowl area improving the city air quality.

IMO those are PG priorities for transportation infrastructure maturity in the decade ahead. Both are federal/provincial responsibilities. Both are required far more than a freeway connecting our region to other parts of the province or country.

Great ideas Eagleone. Never see it happen though because it makes too much sense.

Palopu and Eagleone ...bang on,both of you!

If its such a great idea, it would pay for itself in fuel alone. Great ideas pay for themself, not with subsidies. Especially subsidies based on bad science.

Gambler that is what governments are for... they collect the fuel taxes and the carbon taxes... they have the ability to enable those taxes to do what they were intended to be for when they are collected at the pumps.

The fuel and carbon taxes collected to pay for a new hockey stadium in Quebec are not what those taxes were intended for, and are an abuse of taxation authority that is all to common and why we don't see the effective use of the money that is collected to pay for these types of projects. If you want to talk about subsidies look at where these direct taxes are being misappropriated and the reality is it is the transportation sector subsidizing pet projects of politicians at the expense of their own infrastructure needs.

The fuel and carbon taxes collected in one year alone from the PG region forest industry would be enough to pay for this infrastructure... so who is subsidizing who?