DELTA, British Columbia — The Canadian government announced Thursday it has approved a C$3.5 billion project to build a new West Coast container terminal, subject to some 370 legally binding conditions, the Globe and Mail newspaper reports.
The Roberts Bank Terminal 2 project, which has been in development for more than a dozen years, involves the creation of an artificial island near Delta, about 18.6 miles south of Vancouver, B.C., and adjacent to the existing Roberts Bank Terminal, which includes a coal export facility and container terminal. Canadian Pacific, Canadian National, and BNSF Railway serve the existing facility via the Roberts Bank Causeway; that causeway will be widened to support more road and rail traffic.
The new facility is projected to take six years to build and will increase the facility’s container capacity by 2.4 million 20-foot-equivalent units, or TEUs.
“The approval of this project was not taken lightly,” said Transport Minister Omar Alghabra. “With strong measures, we will protect our ecosystem while increasing Canada’s supply chain capacity to ensure Canadians receive affordable goods on time.”
Robin Silvester, CEO of the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, said in a press release that the approval means his agency “can advance one of Canada’s most important trade infrastructure projects to date, bolster our national supply-chain resilience, and deliver generational economic benefits for Canadians and Canadian businesses.”
It is good to see Canada continue to invest in rail container added capacity. As mentioned trade with China is going down but most of that trade is still being sourced in other Asian countries. So eventually this extra capacity may be needed. As mentioned in the article the construction will take years to complete. So it may be needed by then. If not it at least gives shippers another option for moving their goods. It can also act as an alternative if there are problems at other ports if their are traffic or labor problems.
Good points John Rice. Also makes me wonder about BNSF’s investment in a major container transload facility at Barstow. More competition for a market that may already be mature? It’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out for the railroads.
Keith,
New container terminal is to attract new business. Barstow transload is to better deal with existing business.
With trade to China set to decline over the next 20 years, will the rest of Asia make up for it to justify this? Also this should be a wake up call to the US ports and some of their archaic work rules and green policies.