Yup,
PG beginning to look just like Huntsville!!
Factories and money starting to role in.

I was under the impression that this is a 20 year plan.

What is the broken blue line? A new road to the west of the airport, including access to a bridge across the Fraser, or just a demarcation of an area?

BTW, a container reload facility is different than a full intermodal port.

This could very well simply be a lumber reload facility to bring lumber from the region to be reloaded into the empty containers going back to their port of origin. Such a smaller facility was mentioned by CN quite recently.

Opinion 250 is a little slow on the uptake on this one. This was, in fact, mentioned a couple of weeks ago by CN officials and they were quick to point out that in fact this is not an inland port but a reloading facility that is a distant poor cousin to what is normally referred to as an inland port. This was hardly breaking news and certainly not new.

Yes the potential site has been revealed....
now CN do you really think it is gonna happen?
I don't.....too many people talking out of the side of their mouths to put too much emphasis on this happening...
or so I believe.

"This of course doesn't discount the work being done on the First Avenue site".

That is one beautification project Prince George doesn't need! More cut-off from the rivers, more noise and pollution, more deterioration of downtown.

I always thought the Moffat family land they sold last year next to the Airport was going to be the site of the inland container port, but that was speculation even for the Moffets who sold the land.

Reload facilities bang a lot of cars around. At a few hundred feet from the much anticipated lol Benchlands subdivision we will either have a lot of angry residents or a bankrupt developer IMO. I believe Benchland will prove to be a crutch to PG's future for the quality of neighborhood it brings on to the market as well as the congestion on Peden Hill that will result.

Time Will Tell

I would like to see the ridge overlooking the Fraser and the city between the two bridges designated for tourism related ventures such as hotels, motels, campgrounds, service stations, restaurants ect....

I suspect that what you see is what you will get. That is a reload yard on BCR for loading some local lumber to Prince Rupert, in Containers rather than trucking it to Vancouver to load in Containers. Very little if any spin off jobs for Prince George.

Rumour is that there will be an Inland Container Terminal in the Edmonton area. This might make more sense as the Census Metropolitan Area of Edmonton and Calgary is about 2,650,000, people within a 200 mile radius, while Prince George has a CMA of approx 200,000 people in a 400 mile radius. Big difference if some of the inbound containers are for local consumption.

You can load lumber, pulp, paper, and various and sundry grain products from Calgary/Edmonton/Grande Praire to Rupert.

I think our elected leaders are all talk and no action. IMO they dropped the ball, and in the end Palopu's analysis will prove to be the correct one. We took no vision to the table as a community and matched that with no commitment towards the vision in terms of infrastructure development and direction. I still think the potential is there, but won't run out and buy realestate with the current actors in charge of the show.

Before CN can make any money off this adventure...
they got to learn how to keep the train on the track!

Rumor has it Jimmy Patterson bought a huge chunk of land out by the airport.
Got that from a very very good source!
If this is true, then look for that runway to be lengthened----soon. Plus, plus!
Money is coming into Prince George that is not made known to the public.
Guess it is true-when purchasing real estate-pay attention to location, location, location!
If you do not invest in Prince George now-soon you won't be in a position to-unless you are very rich.

Dream on trusted. The rumour I heard was that the property by the Airport was purchased by Rempel Trucking. They do not have a big presence in the Central Interior, so it is possible.

If Jimmy Pattison bought the property then it is possible that he would be looking at a huge storage facility for Foreign automobiles, which could be imported from Japan to Rupert to Pr George and then distributed through-out the Province. However I will have to see it to beleive it.

The terminal is designed to be 98% marine-to-rail intermodal, virtually eliminating the need for trucks.

I wonder how many trucking jobs that will be in PG?

1/3 of west coast container exports are pulp and lumber.

Prince Rupert will be 1/3 the capacity of Vancouver or Seattle in phase #1, but will be 2/3'rds of them both combined when phase #2 is complete.

On July 12, 2005 the Alberta government announced the donation of $2.75 million of land to the county of Grand Prairie to start the development of an intermodal container facility.

Wall Street Journal on the subject...
-------------------------

PRINCE RUPERT, British Columbia This mist-shrouded port boasts scenic beauty and an abundance of wildlife but a human population of a mere 13,000.

Now, thanks to soaring U.S.-China trade, Prince Rupert may have a very different future: as an important link in the transport chain that supplies DVD players, toys, clothes and other goods to the U.S. heartland.

Large container-ship ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., have seen surging volumes as the Asian trade has boomed. This has meant chronic congestion and pushed some cargo to smaller West Coast ports such as Vancouver, British Columbia. Now tiny Prince Rupert 500 miles to the remote north of Vancouver is making a play for a piece of that international trade. And the entry of a well-established U.S. port operator has given the project credibility.

He is M. Brian Maher, whose family-owned company operates the largest container terminal in the port of New York and New Jersey. By October of next year, Mr. Maher expects his giant cranes to be moving Asian goods onto trains at an upgraded Prince Rupert terminal for a 2,600-mile rail ride to the Midwest. He is gambling that big-box retailers and large global shipping companies, frustrated by backups at Southern California ports, will flock to his alternative route.

The project faces plenty of obstacles. A tribal group has filed a lawsuit contending the container-terminal plan violates aboriginal land rights. The city's small population means there will be almost no local demand for the arriving goods, nor local products to put on the ships for their return voyage to Asia. Workers are having to adapt their schedules to environmental concerns, such as holding off blasting when whales, sea otters or porpoises are sighted. And there is no guarantee that either the shipping companies or the big retailers will want goods sent via Prince Rupert.

Situating a container-ship operation at such an out-of-the way spot turns conventional wisdom about port-building on its head. The usual plan is to build ports next to major cities that generate great demand for cargo, and then to compete for freight bound for elsewhere as well. But more than 98 percent of goods imported through Prince Rupert will leave the area immediately on long train rides.

The Prince Rupert project is part of a wave of port development that attempts an end run around the most historically important Asian gateways farther south. Los Angeles and Long Beach handled more than 60 percent of containers that passed through West Coast ports in the U.S. and Canada last year. They are a magnet for cargo because they have a huge local market and abundant rail lines. Manufacturers and retailers have fed the growth by building vast distribution centers about 40 miles east of Los Angeles.

But traffic has been seriously snarled three times in the past decade, including a 10-day shutdown in 2002 resulting from a stalemate in labor negotiations. The Southern California ports recently expanded capacity by keeping truck gates open at night and on weekends, and by adding more tracks, terminals and dockworkers. But "shippers have already been burned, and they know they can't just rely on established West Coast ports," Mr. Maher maintains. "They have to find alternative gateways."

Prince Rupert has lots of competition in the bid to provide alternatives. Voters in Panama will decide this fall whether to back a $5.5 billion widening of the Panama Canal to handle bigger ships carrying Asian goods to the U.S. East Coast and Gulf of Mexico ports. Houston is building a container terminal to serve Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Home Depot Inc. distribution centers. The largest container-ship company in the world, A.P. Moller-Maersk Group of Copenhagen, is building a new terminal in Norfolk, Va. New facilities are under way or planned in smaller ports in Mobile, Ala., Wilmington, N.C., and Jacksonville, Fla.

Kansas City Southern is pushing a Mexican port as the answer. The railroad has spent 10 years assembling a rail line linking the Pacific port of Lazaro Cardenas with Kansas City, and recently launched direct cargo trains over part of the 2,200-mile route. Giant terminal operator Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. of Hong Kong plans to build a new container terminal in Lazaro Cardenas by the end of next year.

Describing the Prince Rupert project, Kansas City Southern Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Haverty says: "I mean no disrespect, but it's isolated, there's nothing there and you have to go a long way to get there."

As for the shippers and retailers who will decide how much use to make of Prince Rupert, they express interest but aren't ready for commitments. "We need options to the existing West Coast ports and Panama Canal," says Peter Keller, an executive vice president of NYK Line (North America) Inc., a container-ship company. He says Prince Rupert has the water and the rail capacity, but will have to show it can compete on rates and service.

With a deep natural harbor, Prince Rupert has long been a port but not one that could handle container ships. Local authorities such as Don Krusel, president of the Prince Rupert Port Authority, sought to add container capacity and finally won provincial and Canadian national aid for the project. But skepticism remained strong until the port signed up a major terminal operator, Maher Terminals Inc. A terminal operator leases port facilities and provides the cranes that transfer containers from ships for transport over land by truck and train.

The idea of exploiting this isolated natural harbor for major movement of cargo dates all the way back to 1906, when railroad builder Charles Melville Hays had a vision of making it part of a shortcut from Asia to Europe. He proposed to load trains at Prince Rupert with silk arriving from China, speed the freight to Montreal by rail and load it back on ships that would traverse the St. Lawrence River and the Atlantic. But six years later Mr. Hays died on the Titanic.

Prince Rupert developed modestly as a small hub for exporting bulky goods that weren't being put in standard metal containers. The Fairview Terminal at the mouth of the inner harbor loaded lumber into ships bound for Asia, while other docks handled grain and coal. But coal volume suffered as some mines closed. The port's cargo dwindled to under five million tons last year from about 14 million in 1994.

Nestled among the coastal mountains and islands of northern British Columbia and drenched by about 10 feet of precipitation annually, Prince Rupert stays lush and green. Its harbor at the end of a narrow inlet extends to an unusual depth of more than 100 feet. Lining the waterfront are old wooden piers, a rail yard, ferry terminals, fish-processing plants, and a few seafood restaurants.

Mr. Maher got interested in the area a few years ago at the suggestion of one of his executives. Mr. Maher, 59 years old, is the son of a onetime longshoreman who got into terminal operation in New Jersey after World War II. The area boomed as trade grew and cargo began moving in containers instead of cartons and other loose items. Maher Terminals, owned by Mr. Maher and his brother Basil, 54, now operates a 450-acre terminal in Elizabeth, N.J., next to the New Jersey Turnpike and Newark airport. Home to 26 container-ship lines, the huge facility handles 5,000 trucks a day.

Convinced the flood of Asian cargo would bring new cargo growth to the Pacific Coast, Mr. Maher looked for ways to expand but missed out on a chance to operate a container terminal in Tacoma, Wash. When one of his executives brought up the idea of developing Prince Rupert, Mr. Maher liked the idea, partly because the deep harbor could accommodate the biggest ships without dredging.

The British Columbia port also appeared to offer the shortest, fastest route from China to the U.S. Midwest, and it had an upgraded rail line with capacity to spare. To move a 40-foot container from Shanghai to Chicago via the Los Angeles or Long Beach docks takes about 22 days and costs about $3,500. Prince Rupert is 1,100 miles closer to Shanghai than Southern California, equal to about two days of travel time.

In addition, in contrast to rail freight from Southern California, once a container is loaded on a train in Prince Rupert, there are few local stops to slow it during its 2,600-mile trek over mountains and prairies to Chicago. While that route is longer than the land route from Los Angeles to Chicago, the rail-transit time might be about the same. "The only thing trains have to worry about is hitting a moose," says Mr. Krusel of the local port authority. He calculates that Asian freight passing through Prince Rupert should arrive in Chicago nearly two days sooner than if it had gone through the Southern California ports.

When Prince Rupert authorities who were pushing the container-ship project solicited proposals from terminal operators, Mr. Maher jumped in. Maher Terminals won a 30-year lease with an option to develop a larger operation later.

While the losing bidders meant to use Prince Rupert just for overflow, Mr. Maher believed the port could become a major cargo gateway for North America despite its remoteness. He agreed to spend $60 million initially on new cranes and equipment as part of transforming the old docks into a container terminal. Port officials now are drawing up plans for a massive second phase that would expand the terminal far more.

That project could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, meaning that Maher Terminals' investment could ultimately run as high as $500 million. Mr. Maher argues that continuing rapid growth in cargo from the Far East to the U.S. rising about 10 percent a year means that ship lines will flock to Prince Rupert and other new terminals elsewhere.

While most port terminals have sprawling lanes for thousands of trucks, Prince Rupert because so little cargo will be used locally will have only one truck gate. The vast majority of containers will be loaded onto rail cars waiting in a big rail yard. Prince Rupert's deep, funnel-shaped harbor has tides that rise and fall 25 feet every 12 hours, so it will need cranes especially designed to adjust to the huge tidal swings.

To help fill containers for the return trip to Asia, Canadian National Railway Co., which runs the rail lines leaving Prince Rupert, plans to build new depots along a route from Memphis, Tenn., that will collect soybeans, cotton, paper and other exports.

Workers now are demolishing the old Fairview Terminal in the shadow of towering Mount Hays to make way for the first phase of the new port. Steel pilings 120 feet long will extend the pier into deeper water. Workers are laying the foundation for the huge cranes, scheduled to arrive next spring. They, too, are coming from China.

Mr. Maher still must overcome opposition from the Coast Tsimshian First Nations tribal group, whose members have longstanding land-title issues in the region and say they weren't sufficiently consulted about the project. "They are determined that this port won't operate until their issues are resolved," says Greg McDade, lawyer for the tribe. Port officials are confident the project won't be slowed or derailed.

Although the dock will have union labor, some officials of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union express skepticism about port projects such as Prince Rupert, concerned that they may lessen the union's leverage when the current contracts expire in 2008. Current dockworkers in Prince Rupert, who belong to the Canadian chapter of the ILWU, continued to work during the 2002 labor battle.

As far as competition is concerned, the Prince Rupert project has a big jump on the Panama Canal expansion plan, which some say could take 10 years if approved. The Lazaro Cardenas project in Mexico has suffered from labor strife, such as the fatal shooting by police in April of two strikers at a nearby steel mill. Parts of the railroad connecting the Mexican port to the U.S. are circuitous and slow, using mostly a single set of tracks that forces trains to pull into sidings and wait for other trains to pass on heavily trafficked portions of the route. Meanwhile, the giant established ports in Southern California face the possibility of work stoppages when dockworkers' contracts expire.

Among the obstacles to be faced in Prince Rupert are the reluctance of some shipping lines to add new ports because of extra costs such as for piloting the ships. But after years in the New Jersey docks, wrestling with the complexities of operating a terminal amid congestion, union wrangling and local politics, Mr. Maher figures he is ready for just about anything at Prince Rupert.

LOAD-DATE: August 8, 2006

Come on, Pal!
I am not dreaming, nor am I having a nightmare!
I am simply stating a rumor-which will remain just that, until proven true or false.
I, personally, do not give a rat's ___ if it is fact or fiction.
Prince George is just a dirty, air polluted, poorly run city, seemingly going nowhere fast as far as population. Even the garbage in front of the old Kresges is a good example of the filth the residents ignore. If I had not had to go to the old Northern I would not have ventured that far. Amazing how the city will worry about a privately owned piece of property being kept clean, and the city streets can be littered with garbage, and that is overlooked.
But, at risk of repeating myself-I really do not give a rats _ _ _!
So who does??

Point taken trusted.

As for the Container Terminal in Prince Rupert, although Pr Rupert is closer to South East Asia by water than Vancouver or some other Pacific Ports, it is further away for the US Midwest by rail, so in essence some of the time you gain by using Rupert is lost because of the longer transit time by rail. This is not a big problem during the summer months, but trains have to be reduced in size during the cold winter month, because of problems getting air for the brakes etc; Historically during cold winters traffic can be seriouslty delayed.

Winnipeg Man. is the area where trains start to congest and traffic starts to back up. Once it starts it goes from bad to worse. We havent seen to much of this in the last few years because of the warmer winters, however it is always a possibility., Ive seen traffic delayed on the Prairies for weeks during some bad winters.

My point is that just because you come through Prince Rupert, does not necessarily mean that you have clear sailing to the US Midwest year round.

If this Winter continues to go the way it has started we might get a sense as to what I am talking about.

Paul I already get that sense. My cars have not been on time for the last couple of weeks. I heard it could have been switches that didn't work after the wind storm (power), and the latest excuss is the crew is sick this weekend. I find it frustrating when you have cars in the main yard in town and it takes longer than their much vaunted CN Express to Chicago to get them a few hundred yard to your spur line. Makes one wonder....

If I believe all the rumours there are about Patterson buying property in and around PG, there would not be any land left.

Go to the horse's mouth if you want to know. Then again, rumours are more fun.

I suspect many of us will be surprised at what may be announced by spring 2007.

;-)