The $5.5-million study looking at the feasibility of building a rail link between Alaska and the Yukon has been completed. But the full results are not yet being released to the public.

When and how the findings are released will be up to the management working group, Kells Boland, the project's manager, told a media briefing this morning.

The group includes Premier Dennis Fentie, Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski and Andy Carvill, the grand chief of the Council of Yukon First Nations.

Boland, however, did provide the media with a six-page index of the contents of the study, which has taken approximately a year to complete.

The index, which Boland described as being the 'lowest level of detail' available, indicates the report includes documents showing findings on the rail link's relation with the proposed Alaska Highway pipeline, freight revenue, mineral deposit inventories, resources, an international land bridge, tourism traffic, political and legal issues and port analyses.

'I remove myself from emotions. It (the report) is an objective evaluation of the markets and the technical aspects of a rail route between British Columbia and Alaska and connecting Yukon minerals to the market,' said Boland.

The joint Alaska-Yukon project was aimed at looking at market, technical, financial and a public interest analysis of building the rail link.

Boland labelled the findings as an 'extensive research program' and 'legacy information.

'It's a piece of landmark research. I believe it's the most extensive review and in-depth look at Yukon's and Alaska's transportation requirements probably since 1942 when the U.S. Army did a railway survey looking at the potential of building a railway in parallel with the Alaska Highway.'

The report examines the rail link's feasibility from a 50-year life cycle perspective, said Boland, and proposes a T-route, which would see Carmacks become a hub.

From Carmacks, the route would have three branches.

The first branch would go south to New Hazelton, B.C., to connect to a Canadian National Railway line.

The second segment would head north to Delta Junction in Alaska, while the third would go to the Inside Passage, connecting to either Skagway or Haines. All three branches would end in deep water ports.

The northern routing would predominantly follow the Robert Campbell Highway, said Boland. There are two options still to be looked at for the northward jaunt.

The first follows the Ladue River valley, while the other cuts off to Beaver Creek.

The river valley would provide low operating costs due to its generally flat terrain, but building the line along the prehistoric glacial lake could raise construction costs due to unstable terrain, said Boland.

The Beaver Creek cutoff would be cheaper to build, but the steep grades and the need for two tunnels could make it less attractive from an operating cost perspective, he added.

The route being proposed is different from Alaska Highway line connecting to Canadian National railheads in Dease Lake, B.C., that was favoured at the onset of the project, said Boland.

'My job was to determine what the best route was. It wasn't necessarily to take the route they identified in the first place and prove that would work best,' he said.

The rail link was seen as an opportunity to connect the project with the pipeline's development.

The current proposal instead follows along the Tintina trench, but would provide logistic rail line-pipeline opportunities in Watson Lake, Whitehorse and Beaver Creek, said Boland.

'From an engineering constructibility point of view, we determined that basically all the routes we were looking at, with a few exceptations...are essentially the same,' said Boland. 'What that says is that we are able to identify a routing scenario from a market perspective.'

Basing the railway around the Yukon's and Alaska's base metals, coal and iron industries makes far more sense than catering exclusively to the pipeline, he said. A rail link in the North can't even be discussed without talking about resources, he added.

'The pipeline market is for two or three years. The mineral market is for a much longer period,' he said. 'Coal and iron ore will not go ahead without a railway. The others will benefit once that railway is in place.'

Boland said he personally believes the project is feasible if it is approached as three separate segments.

'I don't think we want to talk about building the full system all at once,' he said.

'To say it is feasible has to be couched in terms of the timing of the project and the implementation.'

A financial advisory group, which is made up of Macquarie North America Ltd., Ernst & Young Orenda, and Partnerships BC, is now looking at the project in terms of phasing and implementation.

The group is responsible for putting the engineering, technical and marketing research into an investment context, which will include an integrated investment model.

Recommendations are expected to be made in the next several months, said Boland. There is a meeting of the three organizations, which won a public tender last March, scheduled for Thursday in Vancouver.

More than 50 consultants and 10 consulting companies won contracts to conduct research for the feasibility study. Forty-five per cent were Yukon-based companies.

The territorial government contributed approximately $3 million for the project. Canada's federal government has yet to commit any funds.