New transportation hub for the North: Cochrane constructing intermodal terminal to meet mining needs.

• Author: Kelly, Lindsay
• Position: Construction

The Town of Cochrane is embarking on a $ 1.4-million multimodal transportation project that will make it a hub for industry transportation services in the North.

Initially, the Cochrane Intermodal Terminal, currently being constructed at the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission (ONTC) yard in Cochrane, will provide hauling services to Detour Gold, but future plans have the town tapping into forestry and agriculture as well.

J.P. Ouellette, CAO of the Town of Cochrane, said the benefits for the town are innumerable.

"It's helpful for local industry, it supports the ONTC and rail jobs, it's a better end use for transportation, reducing greenhouse gases, and it's less traffic for our roads," he said.

"So, it's win-win all around, and we're quite pleased and excited about the whole idea and the opportunity."

The concept for a multimodal transportation hub originated a few years ago with Detour Gold while the company was constructing its Detour Lake gold mine.

"They had identified a plan and a need to create a multimodal yard at the ONTC yard here, because they anticipated a lot of their supplies to keep the mine operational would be coming in by rail," Ouellette said. "And so they had drafted a conceptual layout."

The idea was scrapped when the plan was found to be too expensive, but it remained in the back of Ouellette's mind.

"It got shelved, but it didn't do away with the need, because the need was always there," Ouellette said. "So we kept talking with (Detour Gold) about what was the low-hanging fruit and what might be useful to their operations."

In particular, Ouellette said, Detour needed an easier way to haul in supplies, such as fuel for their trucks and grinding media for their ore mills. Currently, up to four tanker trucks a day, carrying roughly 55 million litres of fuel, are making their way to the mine.

With the new terminal, supplies will arrive at the Cochrane terminal via rail and be transferred to trucks, which will then take the supplies the rest of the way.

Ouellette said in addition to the benefit to industry, using rail will reduce traffic and wear and tear on Cochrane's roads, providing-some peace of mind and protection around Lake Commando, a source of the town's water supply.

The new terminal will help preserve jobs with the ONTC, which employs roughly 120 people locally, and there will also be some new job creation associated with the terminal.

"We're creating about six new jobs for hauling from Cochrane to the...