What a motley crew. They must think we are awful stupid or they are.

(1) Anyone remember the BC Rail Intermodal. It was shut down a few years ago as a prelude to selling BC Rail to CN Rail. 85 people lost their jobs as a result.

(2) Kinsley says that the region is the bread basket for natural resources, now that cheaper transportation and access to foreign markets is coming in. Where does he think the natural resources from (a) Bell Copper Topley and (b) Gransile Copper Topley went to for the 15 years that they were in operation. (c) Endako mines have been in operation for over 20 years. (molydenum) how do you think that was shpped. (d) Kemess has been in operation for over 10 years (e) Dont forget the two huge coal mines in Tumbler Ridge that operated for 15 years. Bullmoose and Quintette this traffic moved through Prince George to Prince Rupert for export. I could mention more but you get the point.

Its good to see that this operation will employ approx 60 people, that will just about replace the number of people who lost their jobs as a result of CN buying BC Rail.

One 12000ft (2 Mile) train in each direction. These trains are run by (1) Engineer and (1) Trainmen for each train, and I beleive that they will run from Prince George to Jasper and Return and Prince George to Smithers and Return.

Kinsley says that this could lead to Prince George becoming the Transportation and Distribution Hub for North America. Duhhhh?

Lets put this in context, using the Belt Railway Co., of Chicago Ill. as an example.
The Belt Railway is the largest intermediate switching terminal railroad in the United States, employing approximately 520 people. The Belt has 28 Miles of mainline route with more that 300 miles of switching tracks, allowing it to interchange with every railroad serving the Chicago rail hub. The Belts Clearing yards span a 5.5 mile distance among 786 acres, supporting more than 250 miles of track. The Belt Railway currently dispatches on a service-driven basis more than 8400 rail cars per day. At the clearing yards employees are able to classify between 40 and 50 miles of train consist every 24 hours.

For those who might be interested 8400 cars per day is approx 34 times as many as the CN Rails present project of 1 train per day in each direction.

To suggest that Prince George will be a transportation and distribution hub for North America is ludicrous.

You can sum the whole article up by the statement from the CN dude who doesnt seem to realize that Prince George has been the Transportation Corridor from Prince Rupert to Edmonton and Pr George North and South for years. Adding one train a day in each direction which will not even replace the coal trains that we had a few years ago will hardly make us a Transportation Hub.

They see the potential for business, they dont know what that potential will be, but it will be huge. Duhhh?

Palopu, you miss the point completely.

It is not about the number of trains or the number of cars that will go through PG. If that was what it was all about then we should be up in arms against this project for the bothersome additional traffic we will have to put up with.

The fact that most people fail to realize is that 'it' (a containerization capability on the return route of a potential world class trading route linking 60% of global GDP) is a tool that gives us a capability enabling a strategically new form of trading that never even existed 30 years ago anywhere in the world.

The real potential grows exponentially as the establishment of the direct trading connections that tie into this new global trading route take place through back haul capabilities as well as efficiency of distribution for goods to a global market. This is where the jobs will come from, not from the actual infrastructure or train engineers.

The real question is how quickly we can take advantage of our new global trading connections via containerization? Will our ability to take advantage of new infrastructure capabilities outpace the obvious potential loss of 200+ existing transportation jobs? In both questions I think all indications are IPG has and will fail.

The good news is the day we get one new plant supporting 200+ new jobs, then our down-payment is made, and we are into new jobs past the break even point. I wait for IPG to make that announcement, and then tie it in directly to our new containerization infrastructure and trading routes as an indication of IPG progress.

Time Will Tell

Chandermando.

If what you say is so, then how can you explain the fact that all the empty containers that presently come from the East and go to the Port of Vancouver through Kamloops have never been taken off the train in Kamloops and loaded. Nor does Kamloops have any huge industrie locating there that loads out containers. These containers have been going through Kamloops for 20 years.

Most of these Containers are loaded in Vancouver and for your information at least 12000 of them are loaded with pulp and paper from Prince George. Probably another 12000 or more are loaded with lumber.

Eveything you buy in Walmart is produced in China by employees getting paid approx $2.00 per hour, so I dont think you are going to produce much here at $15/20 per hour plus shpping and handling. Most of your tools, machinery, etc; is produced in China, or South East Asia.

I would be interested to hear what type of industry you think might locate here, what they would produce, and where they would ship it to. We already know that the intent is for Meat and Grain Products to be loaded in Containers from Alberta and shipped overseas, and in addition to that we will ship pulp and paper and lumber from the Greater Prince George area. 60 or 70 Containers per day would be approx 20,000 Containers a year, which is fairly close to what we now ship through Vancouver.

These empty Containers will travel through every Major City from Chicago Ill to Prince Rupert BC. Toronto, Winnipeg, Sasakatoon, Regina, Edmonton, Prince George, etc;. Why would we think that the Industry would locate in Prince George rather that some of these other Citys. Do we have some kind of an inside track. There have been reload facilities and major distribution warehouses in Calgary, Edmonton, and Winnpeg for years.

Prince George used to have some warehouse and distribution business but it was all closed down and moved out years ago.

Good question. I think Vancouver is a split off point, and thus they get all the rewards of the container port. Kamloops is not a split off point, and thus loses most opportunity to Vancouver even though they are an intermediary on the container shipment route..

PG on the other hand is closer to being considered a split off point as Prince Rupert is a one route town with potential split off for North-South traffic taking place in PG.

Where the early opportunities would be IMO would be in assembly of products manufactured in other locations, which in turn would drive the need for more local manufacturing. Example: shipments of low cost parts from various Asian locations being assembled in PG, and then split off in all directions for distribution, or the other way around with components from east and south being assembled in PG for distribution to the Pacific Rim.

IMO inbound assembly is where the biggest growth potential will happen, and outbound exports would be mainly bulk export taking advantage of lower shipping cost utilizing empty shipping containers, thus making the efficiency of doing business in Northern BC more economical.

IMO we have location advantage over most places in North America for doing business with the Pacific Rim once the infrastructure is in place. Via Vancouver we have advantage of land, verse their advantage of greater connect ability, verse our advantage of less congestion. Ditto for the other spilt off points on the North American West Coast like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angles rounding out the five cities that we will be directly competing with.

It is highly unlikely that anyone would set up an assembly plant in Prince George and then reship the assembled product to markets throughout Canada or the USA.

Ideally you would set up the assembly plants as near as possible to your biggest customers. Ie; Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, and the US North East. The closer you are to your market the less it would cost you in transportation charges. Anything shipped from Prince George East to anywhere via Rail or Truck is highly expensive, and you will always be better off sending the components closer to your market.

As an example. Pulp from Prince George is sent to Paper Machines in the Continental US and in Europe, China, Japan. These paper machines manufacture paper products that are then sold firstly in the immediate area and then outward to customers.

You could build a paper machine in Prince George and send the finished product to your largest customers in the USA and Eastern Canada, Japan, China, etc; however the transportation costs for shipping the finished product as opposed to shipping the **pulp** to make the finished product would kill the enterprise.

The same sort of logic applies to other business endeavours. We ship lumber to the USA to build houses. We dont assemble houses and then ship them out, except for a very small segment of the overall market.

Our cattle are shpped to Edmonton Alta or to other slaughterhouses and then the meat that we require is shipped back to this area. If we had a huge slaughterhouse in this area we would have to ship the majority of the finished product to the large population areas, and again our transportation costs would go through the roof. The closer you are to your market the better off you are. Its the economies of scale. We have no population in this area to consume enough product to make a plant of any kind viable. The huge markets are in the US North East and Eastern Canada. Thats why all the Containers are going there.

This closer to the market concept does not necessarily apply to China and South East Asia because (1) They already have huge populations to consume their products next to their manufacturing plants, and (2) They can manufacture so cheap that they can afford to pay the higher transportation costs to get to other markets. We dont have that option because of our labour costs, etc;

We are already a day late and a dollar short when it comes to manufacturing. Northern Telecom in Quecbec one of the biggest telephone manufactures in the world was moved to China a number of years ago. Look at your phone to see where it was made. The clothing and shoe industry in Quebec and Ontario has been gutted, along with numerous other manufacturers. We have lost this battle, and we will never be able to compete with the Asian Countries in the forseeable future.

There would be no Containers coming through the West Coast of BC or Washington, Oregon, California, if it was not for the huge manufacturing capability of South East Asia, China.

We can supply raw material, food products, oil and gas products, etc; the same as we have been doing over the years, but beyond that I dont see much.

As I said before, in the last 100 years the population of California has grown to 20 Million. Washington and Oregon have had huge population increases. The Greater Vancouver area has approx 3 Million people.

Prince George's population in the the last 100 years has grown from practically nothing to 77000 people. This averages an increase of about 770 people per year. Thats the way it is and thats the way it will remain for a long time. No increase in the population for the past 10 years and none predicted in the immediate future.