Cross-border passenger rail service is one agreement closer to being restored, state officials learned Monday. But even under the best circumstances, it’s still years away.
A crucial agreement has been reached between the U.S. and Canada to establish a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) location in Montreal’s Central Station. American agents on-site would screen passengers before they step on a southbound train. Canadian-bound passengers would not be screened until they arrive in Montreal.
Amtrak’s Montrealer passenger train ceased operations in 1995, and state and federal officials have been working ever since to get it back. The prospects brightened in 2011, when President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper signed the Beyond the Border Accord. For three years, the two countries’ federal governments have been hammering out a proposal for how preclearance inspection at Montreal’s Central Station could operate.
“Preclearance,” as it’s known, now exists for air passengers at 15 locations in six foreign countries, according to the CBP website. The concept simply screens U.S.-bound travelers at their points of departure, rather than at their stateside destinations. Preclearance is not available for commercial transport or non-air travel — yet.
And while three years of negotiations between U.S. and Canadian counterparts are showing fruit, Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) Vermont field representative Chris Saunders cautioned Monday that some “very real obstacles” remain.
First, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection still needs to sign off on the plan.
Karen Songhurst, of Vermont’s Agency of Transportation, told members of the Joint Commission on International Trade and State Sovereignty Monday that she expects the agreement will be ready for their review by the end of the calendar year, or else early in 2015.
Gov. Peter Shumlin sent the new CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske a letter on Sept. 29, asking him to expedite his agency’s review of the preclearance facility in Montreal. But Songhurst said there’s no telling how long its review may take. Saunders told commission members the agency “has not not been encouraging about their ability to review them.”
Whenever the federal sign-off comes, officials in Vermont, New York and Quebec will have to figure out how to divvy up the bill for constructing a “sealed” facility inside the Montreal rail station. Songhurst said a price tag for the project has not yet been estimated, because organizers don’t yet know what the final security requirements will be.
Another step involves Canadian Parliament granting Montreal-based American border agents with full law enforcement authority. Under current international law, the agents would not be authorized to arrest suspects detained at the station. U.S. officials want an exception to that rule.
Meanwhile, two alleged terrorist attacks in Canada in October are likely to heighten that government’s sense of security needs, which could interfere with development of a new program driven in large part by commerce.
As these logistics and security protocols are being worked out, rail officials on both sides of the border also are in touch with Amtrak, with the expectation the private rail carrier will agree to pick up service to Montreal again. Jeff Munger, an advisor on transportation and business matters for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), said he expects that will happen.
Songhurst said that as the Montreal area’s population has grown, demand for swifter travel between Canada and the U.S. has only increased, including from markets in New York and Connecticut.
In addition to commercial markets burgeoning in their own right, pressure to speed and diversify international travel is mounting as both countries send more and more crude oil by train. Purveyors of other goods are finding there’s little room on the rails. They’re turning to truck traffic instead, which in turn is clogging auto crossings with increased truck traffic.
At the same time, federal funding for northern border patrols has been cut. Munger said staffing levels at Vermont’s border still are below 2009 levels. Additionally, so-called NEXUS lanes designed to speed auto crossings for preapproved travelers are underutilized, Munger told the commission. He said the CBP has decided it’s not going to open more NEXUS lanes until there are more cardholders.
