advertisement

---

Transport Canada recently granted funds to 14 transportation projects — including four rail-related ones — under the agency's Freight Sustainability Demonstration Program.

Launched in November 2001, the program provides about $4.5 million over five years for freight transportation projects designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Transport Canada provided a $250,000 grant to Canadian National Railway Co. to analyze distributed power's fuel consumption. The Class I plans to equip six units with GE Transportation's Locotrol Distributed Power systems. In addition, CN received a $198,213 grant to test three locomotive idling-control systems.

Transport Canada also granted New Brunswick Southern Railway Co. Ltd. $60,000 to create an express intermodal service using trailers on modified flat cars between Saint John, New Brunswick, and Farnham, Quebec; and RailPower Technologies Corp. $250,000 to continue demonstrating its 2,000- and 1,000-horsepower hybrid Green Goat and Green Kid locomotives, which are designed to reduce emissions compared with conventional switchers.

"The innovative tools, technologies and best practices [these projects] generate will not only decrease greenhouse gas emissions but will also increase the efficiency of freight transportation," said Transport Minister Tony Valeri in a prepared statement.