The Winnipeg Free Press is reporting that the government of Manitoba has introduced legislation to build an "inland port" around Winnipeg's James Armstrong Richardson International Airport. Intended to take advantage of the city's proximity to the geographic centre of North America, the CentrePort Canada Act would authorize the creation of a corporation to oversee the "port", and to fast track "investment and economic development decisions based upon a single, comprehensive transportation, infrastructure and land-use plan" for approximately 20,000 acres of land around the airport. These improvements would emphasize highway and rail linkages, which would facilitate the shipping of goods flown into Winnipeg on massive cargo planes. In the same paper, Chris Lorenc points out that Winnipeg's rail assets make this proposal so promising: "two major Canadian railways -- Canadian National and Canadian Pacific -- the American railway Burlington Northern Santa Fe and OmniTRAX (serving the North and the Port of Churchill) all converge [here]."
Yet, it is the prospect of those huge cargo planes flying over the pole -- unable to make the flight from Anchorage to Alaska without a fuel stopover in Winnipeg -- which is driving the push to build the "port" around the airport.
However, with rising jet fuel prices challenging the entire business model for the airlines to the point of threatening many of them with bankruptcy, it does beg the question about the long-term viability of this plan. Air cargo carriers are trucking firms are both suffering from spiking fuel costs. This August Gemini Air Cargo filed for Chapter 11 protection citing inflated fuel costs, and this past summer fuelling costs rose so much that hundreds of truckers protested in Washington and it was reported that almost 1,000 trucking firms had gone under in the first quarter of the year alone.
Peak Oil theorists such as James Howard Kunstler have been warning about this for some time. In a posting from earlier this summer, Kunstler wrote,
"Perhaps more ominous is the discontent on the trucking scene. Truckers are going broke in droves, unable to carry on their business while getting paid $2000 for loads that cost them $3000 to deliver. In Europe last week, enraged truckers paralyzed the food distribution networks of Spain and Portugal. The passivity of US truckers so far has been a striking feature of the general zombification of American life. They might continue to just crawl off one-by-one and die. But it's also possible that, at some point, they'll mount a Night-of-the-Living-Dead offensive and take their vengeance out on 'the system' that has brought them to ruin.."
Winnipeg does have great rail assets which will serve the city (and Canada) well in an energy-poor future, and we should do everything we can to build on these. Passenger rail in particular will need a big boost, as Kunstler and others have argued. But, given the city's geographic isolation, there may not be much of a role for its airport in such a future. Air travel -- and in particular air cargo -- will simply not make economic sense when jet fuel costs soar far beyond where they are now. We may in the not-to-distant future be living in a world where air travel is a luxury. As Tom Whipple writes:
"Over the longer run, the development of hydrogen powered aircraft might prove feasible or perhaps lighter-than-air dirigibles might be developed to the point where they can move people and goods efficiently over long distances. In any case, the day of the ubiquitous kerosene-powered jet transport which revolutionized travel for many of us in the second half of the 20th century is likely to be shorter than most realize."
In other words, perhaps Manitoba should think carefully before we invest too heavily in infrastructure designed primarily to facilitate air cargo and trucking. An "inland port" should be built with a long-term future in mind -- and that future may not be up in the air.



