Plans to develop transportation hub speeding up.

A plan to establish the Sault as a multi-modal transportation hub is picking up speed.

The City of Sault Ste. Marie is engaged in talks with two companies, including a "major automotive maker" from Michigan, considering shipping parts from Asia through Sault Ste. Marie to the U.S. Midwest.

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Sault Mayor John Rowswell says two private companies are investigating the feasibility of shipping goods through Northern Ontario and, thereby, bypassing the congested container transfer yards and border crossings in southern Ontario.

While Rowswell will not disclose the identities of the companies under the terms of a confidentiality agreement, he says one was in the auto parts business and another proponent has come forward with an offer to build an intermodal (rail-to-truck) freight transfer yard.

Discussions remain in the early exploration stages and the companies have hired consultants to do their own feasibility studies.

Rowswell says there is also "serious interest" from State of Michigan officials concerned about commercial traffic being "choked off" due to tie-ups at the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit and Bluewater Bridge in Port Huron in the east and transfer yard bottlenecks at Chicago in the west.

The mayor has met with David Hollister, the State of Michigan's director of Labor and Economic Growth, to discuss the concept and plans to meet sometime soon with Gloria Jeff, the state's director of the transportation department.

The Sault has been banging the drum to promote the city's strategic border location as an underutilized transportation corridor and gateway to the U.S. that is accessible by air, ship, rail and road.

"We know, in discussions we've had with companies that are not getting their product on time, that this is a viable solution," says John Febbraro, the city's industrial marketing director. "In setting up this multi-modal transportation hub, it will create economic activity for Northern Ontario.

"We've got all the pieces of the puzzle to make this work."

The city is pressing ahead with its multimodal strategy and is encouraging Ottawa and Queen's Park to do the same.

Council has committed $75,000 to develop a marketing and business case to take to senior government levels by statistically documenting goods that don't need to be routed through southern Ontario and can be sent through the Sault.

The contribution includes developing a multi-modal Web site as part of the city's industrial marketing program.

Rowswell says the border gridlock that presently exists at Windsor and Sarnia stems from a lack of proper national and provincial transportation infrastructure planning.

Goods arriving in Vancouver and Prince Rupert, B.C. by container, destined for Michigan markets, are railed across Canada and routed through transfer yards in Toronto for offloading onto trucks that travel through congested border points in southwestern Ontario, he says.

The city's Toronto-based consultants, the IBI Group, identified about a half a million containers that could be diverted through the Sault into the State of Michigan on an annual basis. For a facility to succeed, an intermodal yard would need to handle a minimal operation of 25,000 containers, he says.

Rowswell says the country's two major Class I rail carriers, CN and CP Rail, reaching into the Sault through regional railways like Algoma Central and Huron Central, provide an ideal environment.

"We're a perfect apex to receive containers; we just have to do the transfer yard and we could be in business."

He believes the transportation corridor can be spun out to include all of northeastern Ontario, feeding U.S.-bound goods by rail through the Sault for transfer onto trucks.

Already many transport trucks from Quebec use the International Bridge, Rowswell says.

With industry trends indicating container traffic through the GTA is expected to double over the next decade, Rowswell believes the Sault can alleviate the squeeze on southern Ontario's highway and rail infrastructure by siphoning off about 10 per cent of that traffic. However, senior levels of government need to be willing to make the necessary investments in infrastructure, he says.

The Sault is already making preliminary moves to build up its infrastructure with a planned truck corridor.

The city is finalizing a land acquisition on about 70, mostly residential, properties to build a three-kilometre section of two- and four-lane road linking Highway 17 (the Trans-Canada Highway) via Second Line Road, with the International Bridge and Interstate 75 in Michigan.

The route eases a 40-year-old problem--since the International Bridge was built--of heavy trucks rumbling through the downtown core of the city.

The $15.1-million project is expected to be open by spring-summer 2006.

"We are in a tight time frame in terms of construction and the design work is underway," says Jerry Dolcetti, the city's engineering and planning commissioner.

Two consulting firms, Walker Engineering and Totten Sims Hubicki Associates, are doing the design work and site supervision, with tendering for construction work and contracts for residential demolition to be advertised before year's end.

Some new multi-modal activity is already taking place in the city's north end where National Supply Ltd. operates a 30-acre reload facility for logs and forest products at the Odena Industrial Park.

With government funding assistance, a 592-metre rail spur connecting the north-end industrial park to the Canadian National rail line has been built.

Company president Albert Giommi foresees the Sault's multi-modal concept creating many off-shoot employment opportunities from forklift operators to additional positions in the rail system, for trucking companies, servicing and maintenance jobs, and for industrial suppliers.

His company lost contracts a few years ago in a municipal zoning fight to open up Odena, but the company is back in negotiations again to have products such as drywall, panelling, wood byproducts and other finished goods brought to the Sault.

On the marine side, the plan to gain greater access to Algoma Steel's deep-water export dock with a port authority concept appears stalled. Some Sault businessmen involved in discussions with the steelmaker say there is not enough interest from the Northern Ontario business community to support purchasing the dock from Algoma and securing federal government funding to build the steelmaker a new structure closer to their operation.

By IAN ROSS

Northern Ontario Business