Rail relocation Winnipeg

[bodaggin]

Originally Posted by FactaNV

If you think the rail relocation will cost 1.5-2 billion, I've got an Arlington Bridge to sell you. The remediation alone will probably double that.

Completely fake news. Quantify that number. I don't think most people understand the difference between a million and a billion on a government level. In real context.

[bodaggin]

Originally Posted by rivercity

Keep in mind, you would have to convert the existing tracks, install electrical infrastructure, construct and extend services for various stations, purchase of the rolling stock, construction of a maintenance facility..

100%. Valid points. So I would stick to diesel to avoid electric infrastructure conversion. It seems cheaper for now. The tree-huggers won't like it. But ohh well. You're 100% pantograph conversion is pricey. Debate it out.

Rail cars, stations, maintenance yards, mega transfer hubs, and minor spur connectors are absolutely a cost. Back in my budget on post 56 I allotted $500m. Number out of the sky. Let's cost it out!

Regarding stations/stops. A full cross city line should have at max 10 stations. Including the 2 transfer hubs if the line runs through them. Minimum 2-3km per stop. But 6km+ in the boonies.

This 400 meter stops on a Bus "rapid" transit line are the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. The point of rapid is direct, frequent, fast (80kph+), and stopping only at high volume and high catchment locations.

[WildCake]

Originally Posted by bodaggin

Completely fake news. Quantify that number. I don't think most people understand the difference between a million and a billion on a government level. In real context.

The St Mary's interchange is estimated at 135m, and both the McGillivray project and St Anne's road+rail overpass project are looking around the same price tag.

Benefit of the doubt, let's say every new rail bridge or overpass needed comes in at 75 million. It's absolutely a low number, but hear me out.

CN Running south of the city now needs bridges/overpasses at: 59, Red River, 75, PTH 3, Assiniboine. 375 million

CP running north of the city: Floodway, 59, Red River, 9, 8, 7, 6. 525 million

Then you have to consider the spur lines that will have to lead back into the city, with at least an overpass at Perimeter. Let's say we can do everything super efficiently and CP and CN only need one bridge each. 150 million

So 1.050 billion on a low-ball for the required bridges. '

Next, land expropriation. A lot of farmland, yes, but ESP and WSP, Grande Pointe, the houses along the Red south of the city are all sizeable clusters of homes that will cost an arm and a leg. I'm not a land assessor so I can't price this out too accurately but Centre Port cost about 35 million for expropriation for 10 km of highway that was entirely fields. So 3.5 million per km. I'll keep that number the same, since that was in 2015 and inflation exists, but the land probably costs less outside the city.

I ballparked your proposed CP and CN routes at roughly 45km each, let's round down to 40 just to keep the low ball theme going.

80km*3.5 million = 280 million

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/br...ved-with-money

Then the rail lines will need to be built, and the CN line running south of the city will need to be floodproofed (aka elevated above flood levels). Let's assume no floodproofing. 2017 costs per km for double track rail is 1.44 million per km.

80 * 1.44 = ~ 115 million

https://compassinternational.net/rai...st-benchmarks/

Then each rail line needs to pack up and rebuild their entire operations outside the city from scratch. Land acquisition, permits, construction. There's no way it's not less than 500 million per company. 1 Billion.

So my absolute low-ball running total is 2.445 billion before we even moved the rail lines out of the city, before we even fought the lawsuits from people and municipalities facing expropriation or having their community cut by a new mainline, before land remediation. And this type of project has cost overruns written all over it.

This also doesn't include any LRT infrastructure which would be a couple billion.

To date, Manitoba's most expensive public work project was the Floodway projects, with a combined estimate of 1.316 billion when adjusted for inflation, and has a proven track record of saving billions of dollars repeatedly. The economics of this project are questionable at best, scary at worst. Freeing up land in the most undesirable spot in the city will not become a cash cow.

[bomberjet]

Nevermind.

[bodaggin]

Originally Posted by WildCake

CP running north of the city: Floodway, 59, Red River, 9, 8, 7, 6. 525 million

Then you have to consider the spur lines that will have to lead back into the city, with at least an overpass at Perimeter.

Next, land expropriation. A lot of farmland, yes, but ESP and WSP, Grande Pointe, the houses along the Red south of the city

Good post Wildcake. This is why I'm convinced a shared southern bypas for BOTH CP AND CN, is the best option. CP to the south alongside CN. NOT CP to the north.

One corridor, one set of land acquisition, 1 set of Hwy overpasses (same bridge for both lines), one set of problems. So that's 4 trackways total on the same bypass: 2 CP, and 2 CN.

[bodaggin]

An expansion on why a Shared CN/CP South ONLY Rail Bypass is best. Most of the 3 rail lines crossing the North Perimeter are relatively dead lines:

-Stonewall Line: Ends 2.5 miles north of Perimeter at Richardson Elevator. This line has 1 customer only. Does that justify a $100-150m Perimeter overpass over this rail line? Does it justify a CP North bypass here? No IMO.

-McPhillips/Main St Line: This is the busiest of the 3. The biggest customer is the Selkirk Steel Mill. It also extends to the Distillery in Gimli. I couldn't find any other customers by map.

So OK, it's worthwhile bridging the Perimeter over this line. But not building an entire rail bypass to it. The few times it has freight, it can go through the city lines in between LRT.

Wenzel Road Line: Again, only 1 main customer, the Imperial Oil Terminal. A very busy one.

But again, does building a $150m Wenzel/Rail overpass at Perimeter and a potential other one over Hwy 59 make financial sense? Does storing fuel in a residential area, and running fuel trucks up Henderson Hwy make sense?

Maybe it makes more sense (logical + financial) to move the Imperial Terminal to a buffered area with better road access for hauling to gas stations. 3 birds, 1 stone. It certainly doesn't make sense to intersect Hwy 7, Hwy 8, Hwy 59, and require a Red AND floodway bridge AND 3 Perimeter Overpasses for basically 2 rail customers: the Imperial Oil Terminal and the Selkirk Steel Mill. That's insane, we've misplaced our premise.

TLDR: The shared South Bypass makes sense. Also everything is LINKED. The Winnipeg Rail Move. The Perimeter expansion and grade separation. The Arlington Bridge. Rapid Transit. Everything ties together. If silo our vision instead of looking big picture, we overspend and poorly plan.

[FactaNV]

Originally Posted by bodaggin

An expansion on why a Shared CN/CP South ONLY Rail Bypass is best. Most of the 3 rail lines crossing the North Perimeter are relatively dead lines:

-Stonewall Line: Ends 2.5 miles north of Perimeter at Richardson Elevator. This line has 1 customer only. Does that justify a $100-150m Perimeter overpass over this rail line? Does it justify a CP North bypass here? No IMO.

-McPhillips/Main St Line: This is the busiest of the 3. The biggest customer is the Selkirk Steel Mill. It also extends to the Distillery in Gimli. I couldn't find any other customers by map.

So OK, it's worthwhile bridging the Perimeter over this line. But not building an entire rail bypass to it. The few times it has freight, it can go through the city lines in between LRT.

Wenzel Road Line: Again, only 1 main customer, the Imperial Oil Terminal. A very busy one.

But again, does building a $150m Wenzel/Rail overpass at Perimeter and a potential other one over Hwy 59 make financial sense? Does storing fuel in a residential area, and running fuel trucks up Henderson Hwy make sense?

Maybe it makes more sense (logical + financial) to move the Imperial Terminal to a buffered area with better road access for hauling to gas stations. 3 birds, 1 stone. It certainly doesn't make sense to intersect Hwy 7, Hwy 8, Hwy 59, and require a Red AND floodway bridge AND 3 Perimeter Overpasses for basically 2 rail customers: the Imperial Oil Terminal and the Selkirk Steel Mill. That's insane, we've misplaced our premise.

TLDR: The shared South Bypass makes sense. Also everything is LINKED. The Winnipeg Rail Move. The Perimeter expansion and grade separation. The Arlington Bridge. Rapid Transit. Everything ties together. If silo our vision instead of looking big picture, we overspend and poorly plan.

Dude, good on you for being passionate about this. In principle, I agree on a few things you're dropping and you've changed my mind on a couple things. That said, you keep making the same critical assumption, that these places will just move. A couple examples, you mentioned further up that CN will have to take a loss as a company to pay for the move. Good luck forcing that where they don't just move away to a friendlier jurisdiction taking some of the highest paying private sector jobs and investment this city has. Move imperial oil? Who says they want to move? You treat this like SimCity, when things are much more difficult and static than you realize. To build an oil terminal will costs hundreds of millions if not more. You think Imperial wants to invest that when interest rates are at a 30 year high? The same goes for CN. Hell, the same goes for CP, who says they want to move off their well established, privately owned property right next to an ample workforce?

[FactaNV]

Originally Posted by bomberjet

Nevermind.

Probably best to avoid this one lol

[harls]

When does smack wear off?

[bodaggin]

Originally Posted by FactaNV

A couple examples, you mentioned further up that CN will have to take a loss as a company to pay for the move. Good luck forcing that

You're 100% right. CN won't accept a deal where they lose. This is pure deal negotiation. A deal only occurs when ALL parties get something they want.

Right now I'm demonstrating we can make 3 of 4 parties happy (MB, CoW, CP). Can we make the 4th (CN) happy, without causing one of the other 3 to turn unhappy? Maybe. Kind of. We're working on that. Four happy parties = a deal.

[cllew]

Originally Posted by bodaggin

An expansion on why a Shared CN/CP South ONLY Rail Bypass is best. Most of the 3 rail lines crossing the North Perimeter are relatively dead lines:

-Stonewall Line: Ends 2.5 miles north of Perimeter at Richardson Elevator. This line has 1 customer only. Does that justify a $100-150m Perimeter overpass over this rail line? Does it justify a CP North bypass here? No IMO.

-McPhillips/Main St Line: This is the busiest of the 3. The biggest customer is the Selkirk Steel Mill. It also extends to the Distillery in Gimli. I couldn't find any other customers by map.

So OK, it's worthwhile bridging the Perimeter over this line. But not building an entire rail bypass to it. The few times it has freight, it can go through the city lines in between LRT.

Wenzel Road Line: Again, only 1 main customer, the Imperial Oil Terminal. A very busy one.

But again, does building a $150m Wenzel/Rail overpass at Perimeter and a potential other one over Hwy 59 make financial sense? Does storing fuel in a residential area, and running fuel trucks up Henderson Hwy make sense?

Maybe it makes more sense (logical + financial) to move the Imperial Terminal to a buffered area with better road access for hauling to gas stations. 3 birds, 1 stone. It certainly doesn't make sense to intersect Hwy 7, Hwy 8, Hwy 59, and require a Red AND floodway bridge AND 3 Perimeter Overpasses for basically 2 rail customers: the Imperial Oil Terminal and the Selkirk Steel Mill. That's insane, we've misplaced our premise.

.[/B]

In 2022 the Gerdau steel mill in Selkirk received around 1000 rail cars for scrapping. Its apparently more cost effective to ship them there intact for scrapping, than to cut them up where ever they were located in North America and send them by truck to the mill. Plus it receives gondola cars full of assorted scrap for melting.

The same line that services the Selkirk steel mill/Gimli distillery has a spur line that services a specialty Silica plant and a few other businesses in the east side of Selkirk.

To move the Esso terminal would also require moving the Esso/Shell pipeline that curves through the east side of the city from Gretna. Somehow I don't think getting the land for a new terminal and pipeline would be easy. Also a rail line would be required as fuel for places like Thunder Bay come from Winnipeg via tank car.

[The Jabroni]

Originally Posted by WildCake

The St Mary's interchange is estimated at 135m, and both the McGillivray project and St Anne's road+rail overpass project are looking around the same price tag.

Benefit of the doubt, let's say every new rail bridge or overpass needed comes in at 75 million. It's absolutely a low number, but hear me out.

CN Running south of the city now needs bridges/overpasses at: 59, Red River, 75, PTH 3, Assiniboine. 375 million

CP running north of the city: Floodway, 59, Red River, 9, 8, 7, 6. 525 million

Then you have to consider the spur lines that will have to lead back into the city, with at least an overpass at Perimeter. Let's say we can do everything super efficiently and CP and CN only need one bridge each. 150 million

So 1.050 billion on a low-ball for the required bridges. '

Next, land expropriation. A lot of farmland, yes, but ESP and WSP, Grande Pointe, the houses along the Red south of the city are all sizeable clusters of homes that will cost an arm and a leg. I'm not a land assessor so I can't price this out too accurately but Centre Port cost about 35 million for expropriation for 10 km of highway that was entirely fields. So 3.5 million per km. I'll keep that number the same, since that was in 2015 and inflation exists, but the land probably costs less outside the city.

I ballparked your proposed CP and CN routes at roughly 45km each, let's round down to 40 just to keep the low ball theme going.

80km*3.5 million = 280 million

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/br...ved-with-money

Then the rail lines will need to be built, and the CN line running south of the city will need to be floodproofed (aka elevated above flood levels). Let's assume no floodproofing. 2017 costs per km for double track rail is 1.44 million per km.

80 * 1.44 = ~ 115 million

https://compassinternational.net/rai...st-benchmarks/

Then each rail line needs to pack up and rebuild their entire operations outside the city from scratch. Land acquisition, permits, construction. There's no way it's not less than 500 million per company. 1 Billion.

So my absolute low-ball running total is 2.445 billion before we even moved the rail lines out of the city, before we even fought the lawsuits from people and municipalities facing expropriation or having their community cut by a new mainline, before land remediation. And this type of project has cost overruns written all over it.

This also doesn't include any LRT infrastructure which would be a couple billion.

To date, Manitoba's most expensive public work project was the Floodway projects, with a combined estimate of 1.316 billion when adjusted for inflation, and has a proven track record of saving billions of dollars repeatedly. The economics of this project are questionable at best, scary at worst. Freeing up land in the most undesirable spot in the city will not become a cash cow.

This is perhaps the best thing I've read on why rail relocation will be more costlier and time consuming than originally thought.

I was all for rail relocation and as much as I would like to see the yards moved, this proved why relocation will never happen.

Way too much headache to deal with. We might as well continue to embrace it and deal with it... at least until CPKC decides to go t**s up overnight, if ever, leaving us with a chunk of land full of steel and over a century's worth of pollution.

With all that said, we can always dream. The railyards at both CN and CPKC will always remain part of Winnipeg's DNA. Whether all 3 levels of government, plus CPKC, finds a combined amount of $10 billion as what someone here previously said, maybe this plan may go ahead after all.

Even if it does, it will take a lot of time and effort to go through, and by the time all of that is completed, it would be a span of at least 20 years, and this doesn't factor anything that would be beyond the control of the parties involved, such as natural disasters, unprecedented world events, etc.

[bodaggin]

Originally Posted by cllew

the Esso/Shell pipeline that curves through the east side of the city from Gretna. Somehow I don't think getting the land for a new terminal and pipeline would be easy. Also a rail line would be required as fuel for places like Thunder Bay come from Winnipeg via tank car.

Always wondered about this. Thought Winnipeg got Gasoline by pipe, but the Gov Pipeline map hasn't worked for like 3yrs so the route was never visible.

What comes in on that pipe? Just Motor Gasoline? Diesel is by rail car only? Can you map the rough route that pipe takes through the NE side of the city? I assume it continues from Shell's Terminal?

[cllew]

Originally Posted by bodaggin

Always wondered about this. Thought Winnipeg got Gasoline by pipe, but the Gov Pipeline map hasn't worked for like 3yrs so the route was never visible.

What comes in on that pipe? Just Motor Gasoline? Diesel is by rail car only? Can you map the rough route that pipe takes through the NE side of the city? I assume it continues from Shell's Terminal?

There are two lines in the right of way from Gretna (Endbridge Pipe line) to Winnipeg. One for Shell and one for Imperial. Years ago they were crude oil pipelines when both refineries were running, now I believe they are just transporting gas.

I don't know the exact route thru the southeast part of the city but the line does run along the east side of Plessis road. On Regent Ave West it appears to be running between 2 houses. As you get further north it gets closer to the Plessis right of way.

The Shell lines branches back west just north of the CN Plessis underpass from a valve station by the rail tracks.

CEMR has some sort of award winning Bio Diesel blending operation for Esso at their North Transcona rail yard. They have a custom mobile machine that takes a feed from a bio tank feed car and a feed from a normal Diesel car and mix them into a 3rd car which is then taken to the Esso terminal for distribution

[Riverman]

Originally Posted by bodaggin

Always wondered about this. Thought Winnipeg got Gasoline by pipe, but the Gov Pipeline map hasn't worked for like 3yrs so the route was never visible.

What comes in on that pipe? Just Motor Gasoline? Diesel is by rail car only? Can you map the rough route that pipe takes through the NE side of the city? I assume it continues from Shell's Terminal?

Gasoline, diesel, aviation gasoline and jet fuel. Ethanol is added to gasoline when the delivery trucks are being loaded.