Manitoba - Transportation

Transportation

Transportation and warehousing contribute approximately C$2.2 billion to Manitoba's GDP. Total employment in the industry is estimated at 34,500, or around 5 percent of Manitoba's population. Trucks haul 95 percent of land freight in Manitoba, and trucking companies account for 80 percent of Manitoba's merchandise trade to the United States. Five of Canada's twenty-five largest employers in for-hire trucking are headquartered in Manitoba. C$1.18 billion of Manitoba's GDP comes directly or indirectly from trucking.

Greyhound Canada and Grey Goose Bus Lines offer domestic bus service from the Winnipeg Bus Terminal. The terminal was relocated from downtown Winnipeg to the airport in 2009, and is a Greyhound hub. Municipalities also operate localized transit bus systems.

Manitoba has two Class I railways: Canadian National Railway (CN) and Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). Winnipeg is centrally located on the main lines of both carriers, and both maintain large inter-modal terminals in the city. CN and CPR operate a combined 2,439 kilometres (1,516 mi) of track in Manitoba. Via Rail offers transcontinental and Northern Manitoba passenger service from Winnipeg's Union Station. Numerous small regional and short-line railways also run trains within Manitoba: the Hudson Bay Railway, the Southern Manitoba Railway, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Manitoba, Greater Winnipeg Water District Railway, and Central Manitoba Railway. Together, these smaller lines operate approximately 1,775 kilometres (1,103 mi) of track in the province.

Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport, Manitoba's largest airport, is one of only a few 24-hour unrestricted airports in Canada and is part of the National Airports System. A new, larger terminal opened in October 2011. The airport handles approximately 195,000 tonnes (430,000,000 lb) of cargo annually, making it the third largest cargo airport in the country.

Eleven regional passenger airlines and nine smaller and charter carriers operate out of the airport, as well as eleven air cargo carriers and seven freight forwarders. Winnipeg is a major sorting facility for both FedEx and Purolator, and receives daily trans-border service from UPS. Air Canada Cargo and Cargojet Airways use the airport as a major hub for national traffic.

The Port of Churchill, owned by OmniTRAX, is nautically closer to ports in Northern Europe and Russia than any other port in Canada. The port is the only Arctic deep-water port in Canada and a part of the closest shipping route between North America and Asia. It has four deep-sea berths for the loading and unloading of grain, general cargo and tanker vessels. The port is served by the Hudson Bay Railway (also owned by OmniTRAX). Grain represented 90 percent of the port's traffic in the 2004 shipping season. In that year, over 600,000 tonnes (1.3×109 lb) of agricultural products were shipped through the port.