02-24-2020, 01:59 PM
(02-24-2020, 01:10 PM)panamaniac Wrote:(02-24-2020, 12:33 PM).taylortbb Wrote: The Region's agreement with CN was in a council report. The agreement very specifically includes the region's right to terminate freight service at contract renewal, which is every few years, if it interferes excessively with ION operations.
I think the reason they won't is that ending CN service to Elmira would effectively force the Chemtura plant to close, and everyone to lose their job. The news story would then be "ION causes loss of hundreds (thousands?) of jobs" .
Chemtura is I think the biggest employer in Elmira.
I think Chemtura employs fewer than 200 people at the Elmira plant.
I did not know the Region had the right to terminate freight service. I wonder how that fits in with the laws governing railways? My understanding is that normally if a railway company wants to close a line, they have to go through an extensive abandonment process, which includes the right for somebody else to come along and buy the line for the purpose of operating it.
Also I should mention that it’s not just Chemtura — there is at least one other company up in Elmira that takes tank cars, and the Home Hardware in St. Jacobs (store, not, strangely, the distribution centre) also takes lumber deliveries. I doubt loss of the railway would really make much difference to the store — they would just get more trucks in. I don’t know about the other customers.