(The following story by Tim Thornton appeared on the Roanoke Times website on April 9.)
ROANOKE, Va. — Putting Norfolk Southern Corp.’s intermodal rail yard in Elliston may take 15 million more taxpayers’ dollars than the estimate the state released Monday.
Pierce Homer, the commonwealth’s secretary of transportation, said Tuesday that the state is willing to do a “significant upgrade” of North Fork Road between the intermodal site and Interstate 81.
“That would be an appropriate mitigating measure,” Homer said.
One potential path for the road would pass through Elliston-Lafayette Industrial Park. That would line the road up with a relocated Cove Hollow Road, so trucks would be able to access the rail yard from the interstate without traveling on U.S. 460 at all.
That route isn’t definite, Homer stressed. There are still engineering and environmental studies to be done.
Called the Ironto Connector, the road would cost $10 million to $15 million. The secretary said the money would come from state and federal coffers. That would make the cost of the intermodal rail yard as much as $50.5 million. About $40 million of that would be public money.
That does not include the $9.75 million the commonwealth has agreed to spend to increase tunnel clearances along the Heartland Corridor or a $68 million project to relocate rail lines in Tidewater.
An intermodal rail yard transfers trailer-sized containers between trucks and rail cars. The Heartland Corridor is a $249 million project that aims to move doubled-stacked freight containers along the rail line between Columbus, Ohio, and Norfolk faster and more efficiently.
The Elliston site was chosen, in part, according to NS executive vice president James Hixon, because it sits on the Heartland Corridor and also lines up well with plans for improvements in the railroad’s north-south lines along the I-81 corridor. But that north-south project is far in the future, Hixon said.
According to a state report released in January, the rail yard would employ about a dozen people and generate $3.5 million to $5.3 million in annual economic activity. Its spinoff effects could spread 740 to 2,900 jobs, annual economic output of $140 million to $550 million and $18 million to $71 million in taxes over a nine-county, five-city area from Lynchburg to Radford, from Franklin County to Monroe County, W.Va.
Mickey Apgar, who lives across U.S. 460 from the proposed intermodal site, said the Ironto Connector may make it a little easier for him get onto the highway, but it won’t make living with the rail yard any easier. Still, he sounds resigned to the eventuality.
“This is where the railroad wants it and this is where the state says it has to go; it can’t go anywhere else,” Apgar said. “Which I think is a bunch of bunk.”
Meanwhile, elected leaders throughout the region are trying to figure out what Gov. Tim Kaine expects them to do. Along with Monday’s announcement that Elliston is the only feasible site for the intermodal facility, the Department of Rail and Public Transportation released a letter from the governor. Dated Friday, it called for 15 heads of local governments from Franklin County to Covington to “convene as a region within the next thirty days to discuss your shared vision for transportation and economic development.”
Salem Mayor Howard Packett said, “I don’t know what that means. … I just want to know what they want to accomplish out of it. From the letter, I can’t really tell.”
Richard Flora, chairman of the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors, said it appears that the communities who publicly supported the concept of an intermodal facility in the Roanoke area two years ago are being asked to come together and restate that support. Noting that no one on the list is being asked to contribute money to the project, Flora called the meeting a bid for moral support.
No one seems to know who would call the meeting together. Packett and Radford Mayor Tom Starnes suggested the Roanoke Valley-Alleghany Regional Commission.
“He’s not going to call the meeting himself,” press secretary Gordon Hickey said of the governor. “He wants to get some feedback is what he’s saying. He wants to get some sort of response that’s representative of the region.”
Of the eight people listed on the governor’s letter who were contacted Tuesday, only one endorsed the Elliston site outright.
“I think it must be a good site,” said Don Assaid, chairman of the Botetourt County Board of Supervisors. “I mean, it’s the one that they’ve identified as the only appropriate site. … They’ve done a lot of study to determine that.”
Joseph Sheffey, chairman of the Pulaski County Board of Supervisors, said he’d be happy to see the intermodal site in his county, but governments should have the right to decide what kind of development they want.
“That’s up to Montgomery County to say whether they want it or not,” Sheffey said. “That’s their decision. I’ll support their decision.”
Neither Annette Perkins, chairwoman of the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors, nor Gary Creed, the Montgomery County supervisor whose district includes Elliston, could be reached for comment Tuesday.
Several of the letter’s intended recipients said they still hadn’t gotten their copy Tuesday. Some wondered why they would get a copy.
“I don’t know how in the world it pertained to Craig at all,” said Helen Looney, chairwoman of the Craig County Board of Supervisors. “We’ve got no rails.”
Starnes compared finding a site for the intermodal yard to finding a place to put a landfill. Nearly everybody sees the need, but no one wants to have it near them.
“It’s going to bring somebody, one county or another, a lot of tax money,” Looney said. “But it also sounded like it’s going to bring some residents a lot of grief.”