(The following story by John D. Boyd appeared on The Journal of Commerce website on August 17, 2009.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — CSX Transportation and state officials broke ground for an intermodal terminal at North Baltimore, Ohio, A spokesman said it will be the “centerpiece” facility for the big eastern-U.S. railroad’s National Gateway double-stack corridor.
The rail-truck transfer hub and distribution terminal will be completed in 2011, create 400 construction jobs until then and more than 200 permanent positions when fully operational.
It will be a western end point for a multi-state corridor that will start in North Carolina and move north adjacent to the East Coast’s busy Interstate-95 route to Baltimore. From there it will head west to Ohio.
The National Gateway concept is projected to cost $840 million in private and public funds, to link the mid-Atlantic region and its ports on a more efficient CSX intermodal network to Midwest consumer centers and cross-country transport links.
Rival Norfolk Southern has been developing its own such doublestack lanes, with a Heartland Corridor project finishing in the next few months to link Virginia ports with Columbus, Ohio, terminals, and a Crescent Corridor just getting started from New Orleans to New York.
CSX said it and an affiliated rail company — Evansville Western Railway of Paducah, Ky. – will spend $175 million to build the Northwest Ohio Intermodal Terminal along Interstate 75 plus make other corridor improvements in Ohio, aided by $30 million in state funding and $30 million more in federal money.
The partners said the public money “will be used primarily to raise the clearances under bridges and tunnels, enabling the movement of double-stack railcars.”
Stacking cargo containers allow trains to haul much more freight than single-stack containers and trailers on single flatcars, in turn curbing highway traffic and diesel emissions from putting those loads on trucks.
The private funds CSX and its partners spend will go mainly to build new terminals, they said, like that in Northwest Ohio.
CSX spokesman Gary Sease said Evansville Western is building an expertise to develop and then operate intermodal hubs in the CSX system, and will run the one at North Baltimore. It will also operate one at Winter Haven, Fla.
On hand for the ceremony were Gov. Ted Strickland, U.S. Rep. Robert Latta, R-Ohio, and CSX Chairman, President and CEO Michael Ward.