AI Analysis: Rail transportation, origin and destination of intermodal tonnage

Executive Summary

Canadian rail intermodal tonnage grew 38.7% over 24 years, rising from 24.4 million tonnes in 2001 to 33.9 million tonnes in 2024, with a peak of 39.5 million tonnes in 2017 followed by a notable decline and partial recovery. Containers on Flat Cars (COFC) have become the overwhelmingly dominant intermodal mode, showing a near-perfect correlation of r=0.998 with total tonnage while Trailers on Flat Cars (TOFC) experienced a structural long-term decline, reflected in a strong negative correlation of r=-0.857 between the two modes. Freight activity is highly concentrated, with a small number of origin-destination corridors accounting for the vast majority of Canada's 1.71 billion cumulative tonnes recorded across the full period.

Key Findings

• Total rail intermodal tonnage increased 38.7% from 24.4 million tonnes in 2001 to 33.9 million tonnes in 2024, peaking at 39.5 million tonnes in 2017 before declining.
• COFC (Containers on Flat Cars) dominates the intermodal mix with an almost perfect positive correlation of r=0.998 with total tonnage, while TOFC (Trailers on Flat Cars) has been in structural decline over the 24-year period.
• The strong negative correlation between COFC and TOFC (r=-0.857) confirms a clear industry-wide modal shift from trailer-based to container-based intermodal rail transport between 2001 and 2024.
• The tonnage distribution is extremely right-skewed: the mean of 645,341 tonnes is over 300 times higher than the median of 2,096 tonnes, and at least 25% of all 5,568 records report zero tonnage, indicating many inactive origin-destination pairs.
• Cumulative tonnage across all origins reached approximately 1.71 billion tonnes over 2001–2024, closely matched by the 1.67 billion tonnes recorded across all destinations, suggesting broadly balanced national freight flows.
• A small number of regions dominate rail intermodal activity, with top origins and destinations far outpacing lower-ranked counterparts, pointing to highly concentrated freight corridors within the Canadian network.
• Year-over-year analysis using ±20% change thresholds identified specific years with anomalous tonnage swings, likely linked to economic disruptions, against a backdrop of otherwise steady long-term COFC growth and TOFC decline.