I've never been a fan of the idea of using the rail cut for truck traffic. It never made a lot of sense to me, to give up dedicated grade-separated rail service lines to a less-efficient means of transport. The idea of moving the containers meant for Maritime distribution by rail to a trucking depot located outside of the city (like Elmsdale or Truro) had always seemed like a better idea.
It's great news that CN is investing in reinstatement of tracks that it had torn up years ago. It's good to see that they have confidence in the future of container shipping and rail service in general. Moving more containers by rail instead of trucks is always a good thing, with positive benefits to our road system and the environment.
I had completely missed the 2019 CBC article that you linked to. It's interesting in that it appears that the plan is to move some containers from the downtown port by rail to Fairview, and transfer to trucks (presumably for delivery to Maritime locations?) there, which would serve to remove most of the heavy truck traffic from the downtown.
I also was amused by the city's overly-optimistic reports of progress for the Fairview overpass and Cogswell:
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Construction is expected to begin in 2020. That would mean the realignment project for the Windsor Street Exchange will take place at the same time as the redevelopment of the Cogswell Street Interchange.
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Here we are almost into 2022 and construction hasn't started on either, to the best of my knowledge. Perhaps you can attribute some of it to the Covid situation, but I'm not sure...
Also apparent is that the idea we have been tossing around about moving one of the container terminals to the old Imperial Oil refinery site is not likely to happen, with the rail investment happening on the Halifax side. It probably wasn't a practical alternative anyhow.
It will definitely be interesting to watch the changes happening over the next few years in this regard.