I was reading on the yahoo news service that a rail connection is going to be built on land in the next 6 years connecting Alaska and British Columbia. There is one already with the rail barge between either Homer or Seward and Prince Rupert. What benefits would there be connecting Alaska and the Yukon down through Watson Lake to Fort Nelson or down to Dease Lake then to Fort St. James. Is it economically viable to do such a thing?
There are a lot of natural resources ready to be mined, hacked, or drilled out of the earth up there. Not waiting to fill a slow ship to make it to the Provinces or States will speed the movement. Also, in reverse, the movement of men, machines, materials, and merchandise in will be greatly aided. The White Pass and Yukon, incidentley, just turned down the opportunity to be a narrow gauge freight hauler instead concentrating on passengers from the cruise ship trade. A railroad, maybe, also would be able to carry more, get a better return on investment, than would another pipeline. Doing this has long been talked about, so it will be interesting to see how this develops.
The possibility of a rail link through Canada has been thought about and discussed since before World War II. With the terrain obstacles to be overcome, I don’t think it’s likely to happen in the foreseeable future.
So did they say anything specific about who or what investment group is pushing this idea?
Looking at the Yahoo and InterBering company link you can see this is part of a North America to Russia link thru a tunnel under the Bearing Strait. The pretext for this proposed intermediate link is transporting oil from the Alberta tar sands to a connection to the Alaska pipeline (to avoid the controversy of a Canadian oil port.) The line is proposed to be 1600+ miles of double track!!! I guess if you can get Tar sands oil into the conversation, you are good to go. While I think there are good reasons to build to Alaska (Yukon minerals, as Henry mentioned) this version sounds a little (maybe a lot) too fantastic.
http://news.yahoo.com/railway-canada-alaska-ready-built-six-years-143840212.html
http://www.interbering.com/A-railway-from-Canada-to-Alaska.html
Oh come on!. Since they could build rail lines over the Rocky and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges in the 1860’ s with just muscle power, they sure could do it in Canada and Alaska with the big dirlling and earth moving equipment that we have today… All that is needed is the will to do it.
Not to mention the $10 billion (which seems low).
… And a gazillion dollars…and proof that it would be worth the investment…and government approval… and a political climate that would allow it to not be bogged down by those who don’t support it…and a whole lot of luck.
I’d be willing to bet, that it would be more cost effective to build a refinery next to the tar sands source, and ship the refined gasoline out by air freighter
I see another issue, where is the market for the oil from the Tar Sands? To me the logical answer is the USA.
Obama will be out of office sooner or later. If it is sooner, Keystone will have its aproval a couple of days after Romney moves in. If I were an investor, I would be warry.
Mac
here is a promoters proposal including maps and optional routes.
maps
I noticed this site on my earlier research, however, I also noticed their latest news release was June 2007, which makes me wonder how current is the website. At least the State of Alaska is still funding studies:
http://omb.alaska.gov/ombfiles/13_budget/CapBackup/proj58772.pdf
The money is there. The US and Canadian Goverments, the provinces of British Columbia and the Yukon Territories, the state of Alaska and the railroads all contribute money. The US, Canadian, Provincial and state monies would be in the form of loan gurantees, with the railroads putting up cash. The loan gurantews have been done before and works well… The minerals are there and the mining companies would be drooling to get there hands on them with the railroad hauling them out.
I don’t know…lotta unanswered questions, right out of the gate…
What money? Where? We’re probably talking about 10-20 Billion dollars here. What kind of minerals are there, that would pay back that investment, and realize a profit? If the minerals are there and so lucrative, why has this not been built before now? Why did a planned line going to Dease Lake(?) in Canada go into mothballs years ago?
1,600 miles at $10 Million average per mile (wild guess) = $16 Billion.
And for instance, repayment over 30 years at 6% interest would be about $96 Million per month, $1.15 Billion per year. Broken down further, about $3.2 Million per day, $133,333 per hour, $2,222.22 per minute, $37.04 per second.
A while ago I figured that a large freight train could earn a railroad from $3,000 to $10,000 per operating hour at the usual speeds (coal at 20 MPH to intermodal at 40 MPH, respectively). Using $5,000 as an average, this line would have to have something like 27 trains operating continuously - about 1 either way every 60 miles - just to pay the capital recovery costs (like your mortgage), before being able to pay anything for crews, fuel, supplies, equipment, support personnel, facilities, and operations, maintenance, etc. . . . [:-^]
- Paul North.
Aye, there’s the tradeoff. You can build big projects that will do big things, but first you have to do big things to build the big projects.
You’re talking about building a railroad across muskeg and perma-frost in Canada. Alaska, and Siberia. With all the hullabaloo about global warming, your track is likely to sink into the muck in future years and become totally useless unless there is some way of preventing a thaw.
The second link on the first post in this trhread is the current proposal which seems to be from a different development group than the link you mention…
Given that most of the oil currently being shipped from Veracruz goes south to California, I would guess that that is part of the appeal of the project…
not to mention 30 years of government permitting and lawsuits by Sierra Club & Green Peace types.
The trns-alaska highway was built through the same type of terrain in 1942 and has not sunk yet. By using heavy fill and good drainge the tracks can stand up to the freeze/thaw cycles. Yes I agree that the bleeding hert environmentalist will try to tie this up in court for years.