Railroad train engines idle 24/7, or so I understand. A no idle zone there? At the Civic Centre but not across the street in the Timmie's drive thru line up. Such disparity! Oh my!!

From the little I know about diesel
motors they smoke most when cold,
bad idea re no idle zone.

to Harbinger: Timmy's should be next in line (excuse the pun)

CN comes under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government. They own the land they are located on and of course the right of way on both sides of their rail line. I doubt that the City has any say in how they run their business. Even if they did what can you do. The CN intermodal yard and building is just a facelift to the CN Locomotive Shop that used to be there, so I would suggest at the end of the day you will have less, not more pollution. Plus they would have grandfathering rights.

In addition for the first two years the Container trains will be one per day in each direction, hardly a big deal. They had many more trains, and much more pollution in the 60's 70's and 80's. Even if you went to 2 trains per day in each direction it would be insignificant as these trains will spend not more that 2 hours in Prince George, and will be on there way East. They will spend no more time here than they would spend in Jasper, Mcbride, Vanderhoof, Burns Lake, Smithers, etc;

There will probably be a big disparity between the number of trucks that people think will be buzzing around this terminal and the number that actually materializes.
In any event when the dust settles it will probably be no more trucks than when BC Rail Intermodal was loading and unloading 150 trucks per day to and from Vancouver.

For PACHA to think that there will be an increase of truck traffic over what we have had in the past 10 years is bogus. At the very best we will maintain the status quo.

It seems that we have a large number of experts in this town in regards to Trucking, Railroading, Warehousing, and Distribution. However in my 40 years in the business I have never run across these experts. Where do they get all this knowlege.??

Case in point. The Landtrans warehouses on first avenue ( 3 Warehouses at approx 40,000sq ft each) used to truck pulp from Intercontinental Pulp and Prince George Pulp to their warehouses on first Avenue and load it into rail cars. They would truck approx 10,000 loaded trucks per year. This business died off when CN bought BC Rail, so right there we had a significant decrease in truck traffic. In addition the BC Rail Intermodal trucked aprox 55000 Trucks per year from the various mills to their facility in the BC Rail Industrial Park. This no longer happens. So we have at least a reduction of 65000 trucks per year in the last five years.

The **New** CN intermodal facility plans to load out approx 25000 Containers per year so you can see that we have a net decrease in traffic of approx 30,000 trucks per year, not counting the loss of thousands of more trucks that will no longer be going to Vancouver.

Its time that people actually started to deal with the facts surrounding the Container Terminals and the Airport Expansion . Lets get those people involved to give us the **facts** and get rid of the **hype**

PS.

If you care to look at the 3 warehouses on first Avenue you will see big **for sale signs** This will be your first indication that CN will be taking business from local warehouses and that times will be getting tougher in the warehousing industry.

Big headlines on building the CN Terminal, however nothing about the pending closure of the Landtrans Warehouses. Whats new?

"..PACHA says the planning is seriously flawed.." The only plan PACitUP has is to put PG out of it's misery. Tell industry to pack it up and leave the town to those with a government paycheck.

"..this intermodal project has not gone through an environmental review.." Well it's a little bloody late for that kind of statement! The cranes are all ready up in P Rupert and the ships will be unloading their cargo, so do PACitUP really think anyone can take them serious?

Stop the world, PG wants off! That's plain silly talk. PG is getting a reputation for a good spot to plan to avoid.

"or reduced operations during an air quality advisory."

Nice play .... The pellet plant gets a permit with a reduced operations clause in it in the case of an air advisory. The MoE has set a precedent with that permit and PACHA is heading for that foot in the door.

If anyone wants to lay blame, try the MoE .... or even the Pellet plant since their moving a brand new plant closer to the city precipitated the permit conditions. PACHA is just grabbing the opportunity handed them and those others in the City concerned about air quality.

You know full well you have it wrong YDPC ..... Tell Industry to build any new plants or operations outside the air shed, tell the CIty to get some money from the province and the feds to develop new heavy industrial lands outside the air shed.

Leave the old ones here till they make major changes, then provide them with incentives to build new plants somewhere else rather than investing mega millions in upgrading plants poorly located since the city has grown around them.

Of course, we can always start building the city in College Heights and surrounding the University ....

Hey, wait a minute .... that is what we are doing ......

;-)

"...but not across the street in the Timmie's drive thru line up."

To reduce long idling lineups at drive-thrus the city can simply ORDER the business to have two pickup windows: Customers are alternating by being assigned *pickup at window #1 or #2* when ordering!

As soon as a line-up forms, the second window MUST be opened as per city bylaw!

That will speed things up, for sure!

City Hall and the Mayor/Council don't pay attention to the rudimentary stuff, the basics.

Medium Latte, please.

I like the nice picture of a day when it was foggy. This has nothing do do with the air quality. When have you ever not been able to see the cutbanks from Connaught Hill? I just spent some time in Vancouver and you can't see the mountains to the north. Now that's smog!!!

Darn it Yama, you have disappointed me. Your usual intelligent posts always have a way to blame the NDP for everything. I guess they are not to blame for PG's poor air.