Premier signals openness to moving Winnipeg rail yards after derailment of bitumen-laden cars
Heather Stefanson says Winnipeg needs to meet transportation needs for the coming decades
A train derailment in Winnipeg has Manitoba politicians revisiting the decades-old discussion of moving rail yards out of the city.
The derailment happened just before 8 a.m. Friday on the Canadian Pacific Railway train overpass above McPhillips Street, closing one of Winnipeg's busiest streets.
Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson said she heard about the derailment while at an event with Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham, and both agree the city and province should restart discussions about getting the rail lines out of the city.
"I'm willing to have those discussions to see what that might look like moving forward, and you know, what does Manitoba look like 10, 20, 30, 50 years from now as a transportation hub of North America," she said.
Plans to relocate the rail yards were axed by Stefanson's predecessor Brian Pallister, when his government cancelled a task force that was dedicated to the issue. That task force was launched under the previous NDP government.
Gillingham campaigned on a promise to look at rail relocation.
Doing so would be an enormous task, something that could take decades, but there could be incremental changes made such as repurposing underutilized rails or abandoned spur lines, Gillingham said.
"It would be an extensive timeline, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be talking about it," he said.
Relocating Winnipeg's rail yards has been the subject of discussion for decades, in order to allow for redevelopment in the inner city.
Safety concerns
Safety is another concern, as major derailments in other North American communities have caused massive safety and environmental issues.
In February, a train carrying hazardous materials derailed in an Ohio town, causing a massive toxic plume that forced residents to flee.
The cars involved in Friday's derailment were carrying bitumen, a heavy, viscous petroleum oil compound, but there were no obvious leaks after the derailment, said Scott Wilkinson, assistant chief for the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service.
Safety standards for trains coming through Winnipeg are rigorous, so it's unlikely this derailment posed any significant safety issues that people should be concerned about, said rail safety expert Barry Prentice, the director of the University of Manitoba's transport institute.
"The trains are moving slowly. They're very well guarded. The cars that are moving dangerous materials, they have a lot of safety," he said.
The fact that fossil fuels are being transported through the city via rail at all still doesn't sit well with Eric Reder, who leads the Manitoba field office for the Wildnerness Committee, a non-profit focused on environmental protection.
"If it's not these cars, there's going to be other cars on the track in Winnipeg that could cause concern for us or put our community at risk," he said.
"I would say this is a cautionary tale."
But Prentice pointed out that in reality, there are many dangerous materials that need to be transported in some way or another.
"You know, if we don't move around chlorine, how do we purify our water? We need propane. We need ammonia for fertilizer," he said.
"So there's lots of things that are dangerous. Bitumen is probably well down the list."
The Transportation Safety Board said in a tweet Friday that it has sent investigators to Winnipeg, but had no other information to share at this point.
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With files from Bartley Kives, Laurie Hoogstraten and Jeremie Bergeron