Brandon Manitoba - The issue of relocating rail lines within Winnipeg has received a great deal of media attention during the past few weeks, but the more pressing need and greater opportunity lies in Brandon, where the issue is being largely ignored.
 
Brandon owes its existence to rail traffic, indeed, its location was chosen by Canadian Pacific Railway planners.
 
But the city is now divided by CP and CN tracks that run through it.
 
As in Winnipeg, Brandon's rail lines hinder traffic flow and response times for emergency services.
 
Vast amounts of dangerous cargo moves through the city each day, often at considerable speed.
 
Over the years, a number of children and adults have been killed while crossing or playing near the tracks.
 
Another concern is that the Brandon Regional Health Centre, the only major hospital in the western half of the province, is located just 20 metres from the CN rail line.
 
Long trains of tanker cars carrying highly combustible Bakken oil, the kind that caused such carnage in the Lake Megantic disaster, rumble past the hospital throughout the day and night.
 
Like Winnipeg, Brandon's rail lines also have huge infrastructure implications.
 
Two of the three bridges that span the CP main line and yard are in need of urgent repair or replacement, and the third bridge is both too narrow to handle existing traffic flow, and approaching the end of its useful life.
 
The total cost of repairing or replacing those bridges could exceed $200 million.
 
Art DeFehr, Robert-Falcon Ouellette, and others have argued it makes no sense to spend millions of dollars to construct bridges above and underpasses below existing rail lines in Winnipeg when it could be more beneficial and cheaper in the long run to move those lines.
 
The argument is even stronger in Brandon's case.
 
Unlike Winnipeg, which has the option of avoiding or delaying such expenditures if it is prepared to tolerate the inconvenience caused by rail lines, the three bridges in Brandon require immediate attention and it is going to cost a lot of money to fix or replace them.
 
Before spending all that money, now is the ideal time to determine whether it would make more sense for the CP line and yard to be moved to another location.
 
There are several arguments in favour of such a step.
 
First, it would eliminate the need for two of the three bridges.
 
While a bridge over the Assiniboine River would still be required on 1st Street, it would be far smaller and much less costly than replacing the existing structure.
 
In addition, such a plan would eliminate north-south traffic-flow problems throughout the city and improve emergency response times.
 
Moving the CP line would free up many acres of land that could be used for housing, recreation, commercial development, and downtown revitalization.
 
It would dramatically reduce the volume of dangerous goods passing through Brandon, and could spur economic development through a new or expanded industrial park within the city.
 
Most importantly, one-half of the cost of relocating the rail line could be borne by the federal government pursuant to the Railway Relocation and Crossing Act.
 
If that happened, the net cost to Brandon and the province (the owner of two of the three bridges) of moving the CP rail yard and line could be lower than the cost of repairing or replacing those bridges.
 
Or, as the local skeptics would argue, it could be higher.
 
The fact is we don't know the answer because nobody has asked the question, nobody has run the numbers.
 
Now is the time to find out.
 
Before spending many millions of tax dollars on bridges that would have multi-decade lifespans, the province and the City of Brandon would be wise to commission a detailed study to accurately determine the projected costs and benefits of moving the CP and CN rail lines within the city.
 
Governments in this province are often guilty of spending public dollars first and asking the appropriate questions later, allowing assumptions to trump due diligence.
 
There are 200 million reasons why that cannot be allowed to happen in this instance.
 
Brandon has a once-in-generation opportunity to transform the city.
 
Before making the wrong decision, we should be asking the right questions.

Deveryn Ross.