Intermodal Report
Growing the CPR Intermodal Business
What’s new with Canadian Pacific Railway’s intermodal business?
In a period of change for this transportation service provider, domestic and international intermodal traffic continues to be the biggest growth area of CPR’s business.
The key to growth in the intermodal business is service reliability. CPR is at the tail end of a period of record capital investment aimed at revitalizing assets that are key to both improved service and cost reduction. These include record investment in a new fleet of locomotives employing alternating current technology, building new and expanding intermodal terminals, upgrading track infrastructure, and deploying a new generation of computer applications. These strategic investments, made possible by cost reduction and higher profitability, have yielded an outstanding service component for intermodal customers.
Here are just a few of the latest developments to touch CPR’s international and domestic intermodal business.
Giving international shippers options
Canadian Pacific Railway continues to make gains in transPacific container traffic over its Vancouver-Chicago corridor, as the only rail carrier that can move freight from the Port of Vancouver and Deltaport to Chicago over its own track.
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| Expressway, Canadian Pacific Railway’s roll-on, roll-off technology, allows truckers a way to provide their customers with superior dock-to-dock service while reducing fuel and driver costs. |
In the spring of this year, China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) launched a new transPacific container service, and Swiss-based Norasia launched its first transPacific service. Both shipping lines chose the Port of Vancouver as their North American gateway and CPR as the land carrier moving containers on double-stack trains directly into Chicago.
CPR has primed its Vancouver-Chicago corridor for transPacific container traffic growth by making large investments to expand track capacity and increase train speed. It has purchased a fleet of 346 high-performance alternating current locomotives employing the most advanced locomotive technology to provide reliable service. CPR also recently completed a multi-year modernization of its Chicago-area yard, which includes a large intermodal terminal to speed freight throughput in the Chicago hub. At the same time, the Port of Vancouver and its container terminal operators have expanded the capacity of their facilities.
The contracts were both significant victories for CPR, a sign that strategic investments in track infrastructure, terminals and hauling power are producing results. We have developed very competitive transit times into the Chicago hub and outstanding connections for traffic moving beyond Chicago. Together, with the Port of Vancouver and its terminals, CPR has created a competitive edge over U.S. ports and rail routings that is attracting the attention of major shipping lines.
Domestic intermodal terminals expanding
By this fall, a phase two expansion of CPR’s Lachine Intermodal Facility in Montreal will be complete, expanding its intermodal handling capability to a capacity of 205,000 units-per-year, up from 140,000 units-per-year. This marks a terminal handling capacity increase of approximately 45 percent, allowing CPR to handle better the customers’ business.
The work provides increased efficiencies that include high intensity lighting, higher light towers and an expanded electrical reefer plug-in area in the main terminal, designed to provide enhanced and more effective loaded and empty reefer handling capability. Also featured is a new entrance with expanded capacity for truck traffic — increasing the six-truck-lane handling capacity to 45 vehicles, up from from 12-15 vehicles, reducing congestion and decreasing wait time. And three additional on-demand lanes help speed throughputs during peak activity.
The new working tracks totaling approximately 5,000 feet will bring total working track capacity in the main terminal to 12,500 feet. This about 40 percent increase in working capacity greatly enhances productivity and terminal output capabilities. A new empty annex adjacent to the terminal also includes 2,000 feet of working track to better facilitate steamship line repositioning requests. This will free up about ten acres of terminal capacity, improving flow-through capability in the yard.
Lachine’s expansion, combined with the recent additions of a $37 million intermodal facility in Vancouver, B.C., and a new intermodal facility in Calgary, Alta., strengthens the already reliable network of 23 CPR intermodal terminals that provides shippers easy access to our transcontinental network and the domestic and international markets we can help them reach.
Expressway service
CPR has invested $48 million to expand Expressway, an innovative short-haul intermodal freight system that allows CPR to partner with truckers to deliver shipments quickly and cost effectively.
Expressway has successfully been tested for more than two years, using Iron Highway equipment in the Montreal-Toronto corridor. With new railway equipment and the construction of three new terminals (in Milton, near Toronto; Montreal; Detroit), the unique service is poised for full service between Montreal and Toronto, as well as an extension to Detroit by the year’s end.
The high-technology trailer-on-train service is unique in that it offers truckers a chance to work in partnership instead of in competition with truck operators. It reduces truckers’ fuel and tractor investment costs, and is an effective way to deal with driver shortages by reducing the need for unpopular overnight runs, and allows big highway trailers to avoid crowded roads.
It also supports the dock-to-dock trucking industry with scheduled, fast train runs that approximate truck transit times between cities, 15-minute terminal turn-around times for drivers picking up and delivering trailers, and the ability to carry highway trailer bodies as they are, without heavy and expensive reinforcement.
Truckers can make reservations for the next available train departure by phone, fax or the Internet, with terminal check-in via hand-held computers.
CPR is a North American carrier serving ports on both coasts of Canada and all regions in between, as well as the Midwestern U.S. into the Chicago heartland and the most industrialized and populous sectors of the U.S. Northeast. CPR’s western corridor is the shortest rail route for commodities moving from key producing areas in Western Canada to the Port of Vancouver. Through its southern corridor, CPR moves freight from Vancouver to Chicago direct over its own rail line.