November 25, 2021 | Circular No. 11352

Dear Member,

You will find below an update on the situation in British Columbia following the flooding and mudslides that occured in the Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley regions last week:

Rail operations

  • CP’s mainline reopened on Tuesday – now wrapping up maintenance phase (10 trains eastbound, 14 trains westbound);
  • Next phase is to run 12 trains westbound, followed by 12 trains eastbound (with maintenance in between);
  • CP and CN are sharing slots (5-7 trains per fleet);
  • Ongoing monitoring and maintenance will be crucial to running a balanced operation.

Truck operations

  • Reopening of Highway 1 through Fraser Valley scheduled for Thursday evening;
  • Highway 3 seeing 1,200 movements per day (same as summertime levels);
  • Other routes will take longer to restore;
  • Challenges finding truck drivers (issues include concerns over risks of driving on damaged routes, vaccination requirements at US border).

Marine operations

  • MSC containership pushed aground in Prince Rupert yesterday due to powerful winds; however, vessel refloated with no apparent damage;
  • Anchorage demand remains high across all vessel types;
  • SFC participated in recent stakeholder meeting to assess anchorage availability and discuss options for additional capacity.  This group may continue to meet periodically on an ad hoc basis.

Other

  • Storms expected to sweep across various part of B.C. over the next few days – will need to monitor potential impacts on supply chain;
  • Federal government has announced $4.1 million in funding to Port of Vancouver to reduce supply chain bottlenecks.  Funds will be used to to provide additional storage capacity for empty containers (Richmond area);
  • Trans Mountain Pipeline has still not resumed operations, but this may occur (at some level) by the end of this week;
  • Gas shortages starting to ease, but still some concerns over future availability of bunker fuel;
  • SFC continues to participate in daily conference calls of the Supply Chain Restoration working group led by Transport Canada.

We will continue to closely monitor all of the above and provide members with updates on a regular basis.  We also take this opportunity to thank members for providing their feedback on the B.C. situation, as per our CL 11350.

Sincerely,

Karen Kancens
Vice President