13 April 2004

CPR's Ritchie calls for North American R/R network summit

The following article is excerpted from the 13 April 2004 edition of “Canadian Transportation & Logistics”.

Rob Ritchie, President and CEO of CP Rail is seeking a North American summit between the rail industry and the federal governments of the US, Canada and Mexico to discuss the challenges facing the industry and 'the solutions that will support the growth of trade well into the 21st Century',….

Ritchie says the growing economies of the U.S., Canada and Mexico will require double today's surface transportation on the continent over the next 20 years.

As such, the national surface transportation system - the network of ports, railroads and highways - must keep pace to ensure efficiency and productivity.

Ritchie says the investment needs to meet such rapid growth far outpace financial capabilities of the railroads especially given a climate of outdated regulatory and taxation policies that distort the market place and 'siphon money away from the railroads', he says. Public/private partnerships, in the absence of public policy reform, could fill the funding gap, he says.

The Canadian International Freight Forwarders Association says it fully supports Ritchie in these assertions and urges Minister of Transport Tony Valeri to 'pay urgent heed to our transport infrastructure woes; as so devastatingly demonstrated by the present intermodal backlog in Vancouver ports,' ….