There's an effort afoot to move the Roberts Bank back-up lands more than 300 kilometres inland.
OK, so maybe I'm oversimplifying the situation, but it's interesting to see what's been a gnawing problem in these parts for the last half-century is being actively courted by those in Ashcroft.
Mayor Lois Jackson and others will be heading to the tiny village just west of Kamloops next week to see if the terminal there might provide an alternative to covering prime west Delta farmland with containers and warehouses. They'll be on a fact-finding mission to determine whether it's feasible to handle cargo coming to and from Deltaport some 350 kilometres from the terminal.
The idea for an inland port is certainly not unprecedented, although the desire has been for such support services to be as close to the marine terminal as possible. That's why almost 50 years ago the province expropriated more than 4,000 acres of Delta farmland in anticipation of the opening of the Roberts Bank super-port.
Much of the land has since been returned while other acreage was included in a treaty with the Tsawwassen First Nation, leaving a dearth of upland property to support a growing port. So it's a case of either seeing what was envisioned all those years ago begin to come to fruition or we find another way of providing port logistics.
Ashcroft makes sense in that all CP and CN mainline rail traffic to and from Port Metro Vancouver already travels through the inland terminal as well as the fact the village is keen to roll out the welcome mat. The big "if " is whether this type of arrangement would work for all involved in the supply chain.
I can't begin to comprehend all the variables that go into transporting thousands of containers to points across North America, but needless to say it's complex enough that what seems logical might not always be practical.
Such was the case when efforts were made to spread the 1,300 or so truck trips daily to Deltaport over a 24-hour period, rather than concentrating them during the business day where semi-trailers would be forced to fight for asphalt with the rest of us.
That didn't work because the distributions centres, as well as the outlets they serve, weren't open to accept deliveries during off-hours.
It's certainly worth exploring whether Ashcroft can become a larger piece of the port puzzle, but something tells me the stars would have to align in order for that to happen.
