CP Rail says its track will be back open between Kamloops and Vancouver as of mid-day on Tuesday.
This comes barely a week after flooding and mudslides caused washouts on highways and railways through southern B.C.
In a news release issued today, CP Rail says crews have repaired 30 sections of track damaged by flooding, saying 20 of those areas damaged caused “significant loss of infrastructure.”
“The following 10 days will be critical. As we move from response to recovery to full service resumption, our focus will be on working with customers to get the supply chain back in sync,” CP president and CEO Keith Creel said in the news release.
CP says it is working closely with Indigenous communities in the Fraser Canyon to deliver supplies of food, fuel, equipment and “critical materials.” It says it has brought food to the Spuzzum First Nation, and secured 10 portable generators for the Cook’s Ferry First Nation, while also delivering essential food items to the Boston Bar Food Bank.
The company also says it’s leading the rebuild of the grade at Tank Hill, where there is a train overpass above the Trans-Canada Highway which was all washed out.
Transportation Minister Rob Fleming says CP Rail reopening is an “important and welcome development” for the movement of goods for Canada as a whole.
“They are making tremendous progress on repairing track that will connect us right through to the Alberta border and with the rest of Canada,” Fleming told a news conference on Monday afternoon.
Damage was reportedly more significant to parts of CN Rail’s line through that corridor, and no formal timeline has yet been announced for reopening. NL News has reached out to CN for more information.
Meanwhile, on our roads, Minister Fleming says temporary repairs will take at least “several weeks” for the Coquihalla Highway between Hope and Merritt and for the Trans-Canada Highway between Boston Bar and Spences Bridge.
“We’ll have an update about the Coquihalla in the coming days. And it will have a timeline and some background on the engineering assessment, and what we propose as a temporary fix versus a long-term rebuild that takes into the account the need to make that infrastructure sustainable and resistant. So that will be in the coming days.”
Fleming also was asked whether people should expect restrictions on non-essential travel between the southern Interior and south coast to still be in place during the holiday season. Fleming says it is still too soon to say.
**Editor’s Note: This story previously said CN Rail had repaired 30 sections of track, when it was intended to say CP Rail had done so. The correction has now been made.**
