History
The Port of Prince Rupert was built upon the completion of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway in 1914 and its development had been promoted by Grand Trunk Railway president Charles Melville Hays as an alternative to the Port of Vancouver, which was serviced by the Canadian Pacific and Canadian Northern railways.
In 1919, the Grand Trunk Pacific fell into bankruptcy and was nationalized by the federal government and merged into the Canadian National Railways (CNR). The port was expanded during World War II to support Canadian and United States military action in the Pacific Theatre, notably in the Alaska Territory. In 1975, the federal government declared the Port of Prince Rupert a "National Harbour", followed by several years of construction of various facilities such as the Fairview Terminal and Ridley Terminals. A 1989 expansion of the Fairview Terminal added a third berth and 6.5 ha of storage area. In 1989, 1,705 total vessels, including 468 deep sea vessels, with 11,332,000 tonnes of cargo move through the port.
In April 2005, it was announced that the Fairview Terminal would be converted into an intermodal container shipping terminal, given Prince Rupert's advantages of having a location along the Pacific Great Circle Route between Asia and the west coast of North America; which makes it the first inbound and last outbound port of call, as well as having the deepest natural harbour depths on the continent. Because the port at Prince Rupert is closer to Asia on the Pacific Great Circle route, and with the city of Prince Rupert having less municipal congestion than other West Coast ports, additional rail infrastructure investments toward Canada's heartland should cut time from East Asian markets to North American destinations. Sea travel time to the West Coast, time in processing the containers in port, and the time in getting products to the Midwestern United States would be more efficient. The overall time from ports like Busan, Hong Kong, Kaohsiung, Shanghai, and Singapore in Asia and to eventual Midwest destinations like, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and St. Louis, should see time and cost reductions.
On September 12, 2007, phase 1 the Fairview Terminal opened for business and is expecting its first container ship (from COSCO) in October. Phase 1 has an annual container-handling capacity of only 500,000 TEUs. However Phase 2, due to be completed late in 2010, will increase the Port of Prince Rupert's capacity to 2 million TEUs, and to 4 million TEUs by 2015, and there is extensive capacity for further expansion. This will provide much-needed relief to the congested west-coast ports of North America. The containerization of the Fairview Terminal is an important part of the Asia–Pacific Gateway and Corridor Initiative of the Government of Canada and the Pacific Gateway strategy of the Province of British Columbia.
The second phase expansion has been protested by some First Nations groups, saying that the PRPA failed to consult them. Another group in Delta is lobbying for the expansion of the Prince Rupert port in order that the port at Delta will not be expanded.
Read more about this topic: Prince Rupert Port Authority
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