HAMILTON, Ont. — A Railway Association of Canada (RAC) manager says there’s a growing appetite among provinces and U.S. states for programs that will help shift freight away from the highways.

Robert McKinstry, manager of policy and economic research for the RAC, told an audience of transportation academics at the Translog Conference in Hamilton yesterday that plans to help move cargo from trucks to rail cars or marine vessels are increasingly intriguing to governments looking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their regions.

In particular, he said, Ontario, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia are considering modal shift programs like the ones in force in Alberta, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Quebec.

British Columbia recently adopted its own version of the Alberta Modal Shift Protocol, though it is not yet in force.

"What we’d like to see is the Alberta modal shift program implemented nationally," he said. "The way things have developed in recent years, there is more traction at the provincial level in terms of looking at the program."

In a presentation entitled, The Potential Social Benefits of Modal Shift Programs in Canada, McKinstry said there are dramatic rewards to shifting freight away from trucks, and the RAC is actively marketing‚ modal shift plans.

"We’re taking it to the provinces, seeing if it makes sense within their jurisdictions," he said. "U.S. state governments that are part of the Western Climate Initiative [a collaboration of several western states and two western provinces to reduce greenhouse gases] are also looking at the Alberta model."

The Modal Shift Protocol adopted in Alberta in Fall 2008 was developed principally by CN as a means to quantify the social benefits of moving freight off roads. It allows companies to earn credits to offset the emissions that are over their targets, or sell the unused capacity in their targets to other companies. The program involves no public financing.

The Quebec program helps pay the cost of infrastructure required for companies to access modes other than trucks. For example, money is available to help companies pay for rail sidings and marine facilities.

The largest modal shift program in the world, though, is the Marco Polo II program, which has been in place in the European Union since 2003.

All of these modal shift programs supposedly calculate the cost, per million tone-km, of a number of factors including road maintenance, health, noise pollution, GHG emissions, congestion, and accidents.

It’s worth noting, though, that the GHG production attributed to trucking comes from the sheer volume of freight it transports and the amount of fuel trucks require to move a large share of the nation’s freight.

On that front, no transport mode faces the level of emission rules that trucking does or has made the kinds of advancements as the trucking industry in reducing harmful particulates and potent noxious gases from engines. Trucks also use fuel with significantly lower sulfur content than both rail and marine.