June 2, 2022
Statistics Canada reports that Canadian railways transported 31.2 million tonnes of freight in March, down 6.2% compared with March 2021, marking the seventh straight month of year-over-year decline.
The Federal Agency notes that the overall tonnage was the lowest for March since 2016, but remained just below the five-year average of 32.3 million tonnes for this month.
While grain shipments were down substantially, carloadings of some energy products registered strong gains, tempering the overall decline.
Freight traffic from connections with US railways once again helped to offset the overall decline in loadings, rising sharply year over year by 20.8% to 4.3 million tonnes. This marked more than one year of growth and the highest tonnage ever recorded for the month of March.