The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) is giving a cautious thumbs-up to an announcement from Canadian officials of a $61 million (US $52.6 million) four-year program to reduce environmental and health effects of freight transportation.
CTA said the program is part of Canada's overall environmental strategy and consists of six initiatives, two of which are specifically designed for the trucking industry, while the others are spread across all the modes.
The first initiative addressing trucking is a $6 million (US $5.2 million) effort to reduce provincial barriers to harmonization on the adoption of emission-reducing technologies in trucking. While details are scarce at this time, CTA anticipates this will include most of the proposed measures identified in CTA's 14-point environmental action plan for a Made-In-Canada Clean Air Act. The proposed measures call for mandatory activation of speed limiters and weight or dimensions allowances to accommodate wide-base single tires, alternative power units to eliminate truck idling, and aerodynamic fairings such as boat tails.
The other truck-specific program is an allocation of up to $22 million (US $18.9 million) by Natural Resources Canada training and education, sharing of best practices, anti-idling campaigns, technical analysis, and evaluations to identify opportunities for improvements in fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction.
CTA said that among the initiatives to be shared with the other modes of most interest to carriers is likely to be a $10 million (US $8.6 million) initiative to help defray the costs of purchasing and installing emission-reducing technologies.