‘Exciting news’ on rail relocation coming

Premier Wab Kinew is expected to make an announcement concerning long-awaited Winnipeg rail relocation later this week.

Former federal transport minister and Manitoba MP Lloyd Axworthy, who Kinew tasked in October 2024 with leading a two-year rail relocation feasibility study, confirmed there would be an announcement Wednesday.

“We’ve had this rail study group which I’ve chaired and we’ve been responsible for developing recommendations,” Axworthy said Monday.

The longtime champion for Winnipeg rail relocation, who is vacationing at his cottage on Lake Winnipeg, deferred to the premier’s office for information, but confirmed he will attend Wednesday’s news conference.

A spokesman for Kinew would say only that there will be “exciting news to share.”

The two-year review by Axworthy’s team looked at rail systems in and around Winnipeg to identify lines or yards that could be moved out of the city or decommissioned incrementally, at what financial cost and level of complexity and what freed-up land could potentially be used for.

An early proposal is a four-kilometre pedestrian and cyclist corridor that would replace a track that’s no longer used between Brooklands and the Polo Park area. There has been talk of a possible commuter corridor between Winnipeg and Gimli.

There have, for decades, been calls to relocate rail lines and yards to Winnipeg’s outskirts that haven’t gone anywhere because of the high cost involved and the political will needed to do so, Paul Thomas, University of Manitoba political studies professor emeritus, said Monday.

Thomas pointed to a paper Axworthy presented on rail relocation in 1976 when he was the director of the Institute for Urban Studies at the University of Winnipeg.

“Rail relocation would require buy-in — including significant capital expenditures — from a wide range of stakeholders: the three levels of government, the rail companies, Indigenous groups, community organizations in the city and others,” Thomas explained.

“There is an old saying, ‘When everyone gets into the act, often no action is the result.’ Finding and maintaining a consensus on such a major project that involves multi-year planning and execution is inherently difficult.”

Thomas said Kinew and Axworthy are bold thinkers with big ideas. The premier is “confident in his capacity to broker a deal among divergent interests and to build political support for action,” he added.

The public has been supportive but skeptical of rail relocation becoming a reality.

A Probe Research survey in 2015 found that 59 per cent of respondents were in favour of moving rail lines and yards out of Winnipeg, and 54 per cent thought it was very or somewhat unlikely to happen.

In 2016, the former NDP government hired former Quebec premier Jean Charest to lead a relocation task force that was scrapped after the Progressive Conservatives won that year’s election.

After Kinew’s NDP formed government, it revived the relocation task force in 2024 with Axworthy at the helm.

In November 2024, a Probe Research poll found that 63 per cent of respondents strongly or somewhat supported rail relocation, 27 per cent were opposed and 11 per cent were unsure.

The majority of respondents in 2024 — 73 per cent — said relocation is very or somewhat unlikely to happen.

University of Manitoba supply chain management professor Barry Prentice, who is part of the rail study group, said Monday that he couldn’t comment. When asked if Wednesday’s announcement will be the release of another government-commissioned report that goes nowhere, the U of M Transport Institute director would say only that it will be news worth covering.

The rail study’s key objectives included improving safety around existing rail lines and yards, and enhancing emergency preparedness. Freight trains with hazardous goods and passenger trains regularly travel through the city.

Axworthy’s team has reviewed rail disasters, including the runaway train derailment that killed 47 people in Lac-Mégantic, Que., in 2013.

Axworthy has met with officials from CN Rail and other railways, and said earlier that officials have paid a lot of attention to safety during discussions.

In December, a train derailment involving tank cars near homes and businesses provided a clear example of why a review of Winnipeg’s urban rail system is needed, Axworthy told the Free Press at the time.

The derailment happened on a CN Rail main line section that is sandwiched between newer condos and the Jubilee rapid transit station to the east, and businesses near Pembina Highway and Taylor Avenue to the west. Ten rail cars derailed — eight on their side, two upright — with no dangerous goods involved. Nothing leaked, no one was injured and there was no threat to public safety, CN Rail reported.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Notes on urban planning and railroads by Lloyd Axworthy