(The Chambersburg Public Opinion posted the following story by Jim Hook on its website on April 18.)
CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. — CSX Transportation Inc. is eyeing more than 100 acres in Guilford Township near Wayne Road and Interstate 81 where the company could build a truck terminal with access to rail service.
CSX recently purchased 52 acres of farmland from Laban, Loretta, Lester and Mary Garber for $3.4 million, according to a real estate transaction recorded Monday in the Franklin County Recorder of Deeds office.
“We are looking at the area, but we don’t have any concrete plans drawn up at this point,” CSX spokesman Bob Sullivan said earlier this week. “Anything we decide to do in that area will be in close communication with the community. There are no specific plans drawn up to take us to a specific terminal.”
CSX Transportation (CSXT), owner of the largest rail network in the East, is a subsidiary of CSX Corp., Richmond, Va. CSX, an $11 billion global transportation company, employs 41,000 people — 34,000 of them at CSXT. Another CSX subsidiary, CSX Intermodal (CSXI), provides coast-to-coast service through a combination of trains and trucks.
Tractor-trailer-sized containers would be lifted between trucks and trains at an intermodal terminal proposed for Guilford Township.
“This thing is still very preliminary,” Sullivan said. “We have nothing to announce. There’s still a lot of work to be done. We’re still trying to put together what the terminal would look like. You’re not looking at something that huge.”
A CSX official visited the Guilford Township office two months ago, asking what would be needed to develop about 115 acres of farmland on which CSX had taken an option, according to Guilford Supervisor Greg Cook. The man showed a sketch plan of an intermodal terminal in Virginia where containers are transferred from trains to trucks at a rail siding. The official indicated neither the size of the terminal nor the amount of traffic.
The initial issues for the project in Guilford Township would include handling truck traffic and noise, Cook said. It also appears the land must be rezoned from agricultural-residential to commercial-industrial.
“We don’t know what they’re proposing,” Cook said. “No one has been to a planning meeting with anything. No official plans of any type have been presented to the township. I guess we’ll sit tight until someone goes through the proper channels.”
The land is along the CSX railroad between Country and Kriner roads, just off Wayne Road near I-81 Exit 14.
“We don’t want traffic to go out Country Road,” Cook said. “We want traffic to go out Kriner Road … (which) was built for trucks.”
Neighbors who live near the farms in Guilford fear continued expansion of the commercial zone near the I-81 exit, according to Michael Shearer, a home owner on Country Road.
“We’re concerned it’s going to go from agricultural-residential to commercial,” he said “We’re not going to stand much chance against big business.”
CSXI, based in Jacksonville, Fla., has 49 terminals connecting more than 75% of the nation’s population. The CSXI network does not extend to I-81.
“We have in the past few years taken hundreds of thousands of trucks off the highway and put them on rail,” Sullivan said. “Not all of that is necessarily in competition with trucks.”
Public policy looks favorably on converting highway traffic to rail, he said.
Trains carry about 14% of north-south freight in the East. Trucks haul about 86%.
I-81 is ripe for consideration of an intermodal terminal to handle long-haul traffic, according to Sullivan. He did not know if CSX was looking at other property in the area.
“We think strategically, (Chambersburg) would be a good place for us to locate,” he said.
About 40,000 vehicles a day use I-81 near Chambersburg — more than one-third of them trucks, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
A 2002 report by Cambridge Systematics Inc. projects that I-81 will be severely congested along much of its length by 2020.
PennDOT has undertaken a $2 million study to consider widening the four-lane highway to six lanes. Construction wouldn’t start until 2007. Virginia and Maryland are considering similar projects. West Virginia has begun construction.
Sullivan said an intermodal terminal can be important to an area’s economic development. Intermodal terminals can attract distribution industries around them.
Distribution warehouses have concentrated around Wayne Avenue and Kriner Road in recent years.
Norfolk Southern Corp., a CSX competitor, in 2000 opened a $31 million intermodal hub at the former Rutherford switching yard off I-81 north of Harrisburg. Two 1,000-ton cranes lift containers from rail cars to trucks or to other rail cars.
Dan Robinson, director of Dauphin County Economic Development, said the terminal hired about 25 workers, and is an asset to mention when recruiting businesses that want rail service.
Truck terminals, retail stores and multi-use commercial properties have sprung up around the Norfolk Southern terminal, he said. About 350 trucks go in and out of it daily. About 600 trailers can be parked in the lot.
Norfolk Southern was considerate of the community and installed sound barriers and state-of-the art lighting, Robinson said.
The Rutherford hub is on six train routes — both east-west and north-south — and is near I-81, I-83 and I-76. The location should help Norfolk Southern tap into new markets in the Northeast, according to Dave Osborne, a manager with Norfolk Southern’s intermodal group.