TORONTO, Ont. — Canadian National Railway revealed plans for a $12-million program to increase the container-handling capacity of its Brampton Intermodal Terminal (BIT) by one-quarter.

Planned improvements for the Toronto-area facility will include additional pad capacity for loading and unloading intermodal trains within the terminal, and steps to improve truck throughput. Work is expected to be completed by late summer of this year.

This project reflects CNs intense focus on asset utilization. Were targeting capital on key capacity and process improvements that will allow us to take an existing asset and boost its capacity by one-quarter. Thats smart railroading, stated James Foote, CN executive vice-president of sales and marketing.

In another CN productivity initiative, BITs chassis pool for local delivery and pick up of containers has benefited from improved cycle times as a result of the installation last year of radio frequency identification tags on the 2,000-unit fleet.

BIT Canadas largest intermodal terminal handled almost 660,000 intermodal units in 2006.

Intermodal rail transportation of containers and truck trailers is CNs fastest growing business segment, said Foote. Our investments in new terminal capacity at BIT will allow CN to capture more of this business and deliver better service to our customers through more timely availability of loads at the terminal.

CNs IMX (Intermodal Excellence) program, launched in 2003, has improved the efficiency of CNs intermodal product and throughput at BIT. IMX includes gate and train slot reservations for containers and trailers at BIT, along with alternative storage locations for import/export containers.