Saskatchewan's Provincial Budget included $530 thousand for a new Short Line Rail Infrastructure Program.

Infrastructure is one of the biggest challenges for short lines in trying to maintain aging track.

Andrew Glastetter is General Manager of Great Western Railway and says it's a good start, but the province really has a long way to go yet to truly acknowledge the value that short lines contribute to the supply chain.

"I can tell you it was a bit of a pleasant surprise, when we heard about it, we hadn't heard any indication leading up to the budget, that was going to be the case. So, we were certainly happy about that. The province had a Short Line Rail Sustainability Program for many years up until 2017, when we had that real challenging budget year, all across the board and that was one of the programs that got cut out entirely."

At the time, he says, the program was a little over $900,000, and it was spread out amongst all of the short line railways in the province.

Since then, they've been actively trying to work with the province, not only at the Great Western Railway level, but also at the Western Canadian Short Line Railway Association level to educate them (the Provincial Government) and really make sure they understand the kind of importance short line railways play in the entire supply chain.

"The supply chain in Western Canada has been under a lot of pressure and has a lot of bottlenecks. There are a lot of things that the short line railways contribute to help move traffic efficiently and more environmentally friendly than generally the trucking industry and everything else. So a lot of that work has been in place over the last few years."

Glastetter says the funding will be allocated across all13 short lines in the province.

"Every short line is gonna have at least $20,000 earmarked for them, then once that minimum is allocated out, the rest will be kind of divided amongst larger short lines on a ratio, based on the size of the railways, by their mileage. The money is earmarked for infrastructure, which for short line railways, is by far one of our largest challenges that we face in trying to maintain. It's the aging trap, it's always been a challenge to maintain the short line railways, the infrastructure. You want to maintain them to a level, so you can keep moving traffic. I mean that helps a lot of the local communities and local producers move their grain, you know, to buy from the local railway operation instead of having to drive it to the main line. Certainly the goal isn't just to be running up and down the track moving a few car loads here and there. Where our contribution comes in to really assist the supply chain is if we can be more effective at moving the traffic at higher speeds. Carrying higher loaded weights, higher, heavier axle load rates, it makes a big difference where we can be more of a positive contributor to the supply chain overall. So, the infrastructure money does help short line railways to be able to do that it's on a matching basis, so the railways will certainly have to contribute their share to receive the funding from the province."

He says the concept is something that has been proven very successful in the United States.

"They've had a program there since I think, the early 2000s, maybe 2003 or so it's often referred to as a 45 G Tax Credit Program is the way they do it in the US. They have a short line program down there that every short line in the United States is allocated approximately $3500 US per track mile per year. So I mean, in terms of, Canadian dollars, it's in the range of about $2500 Canadian dollars per kilometre per year, it's a hugely substantial. So this program with our province here, $530,000, for all the short lines, works out to probably average about $400 Canadian dollars per kilometre. We are very happy about it, we're encouraged by it. We do think we have a long ways to go in our industry to do a better job of educating and working hand in hand with the province to hopefully try to see those numbers increase as years go on."

He says the example we've seen in the United States is that there is a return on that investment for the government and improving the supply chain as environmental returns.

"You know rail has the ability to move traffic with four times less of an environmental footprint than it does, you know, by truck traffic, eases up congestion on the roads and highways and certainly a lot of people will be familiar with the deteriorating road infrastructure in a lot of the rural Saskatchewan areas. That's something that has expanded over the years, as we've seen more traffic move up to the main lines and trucking has moved traffic off the short line to the main line. So, we'd love to be part of that solution."

Glastetter says the United States program is a federal program, and they've been trying to work with the federal government for many years to see if something similar to that could be developed here.

"We'd love to see the federal government work, you know, towards putting a program perhaps similar to what Saskatchewan has done here but perhaps with a larger financial support behind it."

He notes for short lines safety is always going to be our number one priority, so we always want to make sure we operate on safe infrastructure.