(The following story by Duncan Adams appeared on the Roanoke Times website on March 18.)
ROANOKE, Va. — Roanoke’s caboose view of Norfolk Southern Corp. might shift a bit if the company’s hopes for a new truck-to-rail facility in the Roanoke Valley don’t hop the track.
Robin Chapman is a spokesman for the railroad whose predecessor, Norfolk and Western Railway, helped build Roanoke. Chapman confirmed Wednesday that Norfolk Southern officials have discussed locating an intermodal facility “somewhere in the vicinity of Roanoke” to help move container cargo between Norfolk and Columbus, Ohio.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, expressed support for the proposal during an interview Wednesday, saying new investment by Norfolk Southern in the Roanoke Valley and along the railroad’s east-west corridor would be positive.
“This is an opportunity to re-stamp the railroad image on Roanoke,” Goodlatte said.
Chapman said the Roanoke Valley site “would serve as a key intersection between the east-west Heartland Corridor and the Interstate 81 corridor.” Although a Roanoke Valley intermodal facility might take some truck traffic off portions of I-81, “that’s not the intent of the project,” he said.
He provided few other details.
“No conceptual drawings exist, and no specific sites have been identified,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to speculate at this point about any kinds of employment that might result.”
Chapman would not guess when the project might proceed. “Obviously, we’d like to see it happen soon.”
James Houk, a general chairman for the United Transportation Union in Roanoke, also resisted speculating about employment effects. Houk and fellow union members, as well as salaried workers for Norfolk Southern, have watched the railroad company’s presence in the Roanoke Valley shrink in recent decades.
“If they are, in fact, going to build an intermodal facility in the Roanoke Valley, I wouldn’t imagine it would have a negative effect,” Houk said. “But I’ve heard this rumor before.”
Houk said union members might benefit unless Norfolk Southern contracts out intermodal-related labor.
“It could be beneficial to the Roanoke Valley but not necessarily to the union,” he said.
Norfolk Southern has defined “intermodal” to mean “the movement of trailers and containers on rail cars.” But this definition of intermodal transportation is “rail-biased” according to researchers at Mississippi State University, who offered this alternative: “the shipment of cargo and the movement of people involving more than one mode of transportation during a single, seamless journey.”
Norfolk Southern officials also are contemplating a rail-biased intermodal facility near Prichard, W.Va., and expanding capacity at an intermodal site in Columbus.
Why?
Cargo pouring into Norfolk on container ships remains miles away from consumers and distribution hubs such as Columbus.
Norfolk Southern wants to improve its Heartland Corridor route between Norfolk and Columbus to move this cargo more efficiently, to compete more aggressively with truckers, and to capitalize on the growing market for intermodal transportation. The company already moves containers on this route, but its desire to “double-stack” the containers would require increased vertical clearance at many tunnels and bridges.
Railroad officials have said they cannot shoulder all the costs of these improvements and new facilities and that some kind of public-private partnership would be necessary to provide adequate funding.
A study released last year by the Rahall Appalachian Transportation Institute at Marshall University concluded that “the double-stack initiative emerges as a remarkably promising transportation and economic development project.” The study also argued that “the public sector must be a willing participant in joint infrastructure development projects” of this sort.
“That’s something we’re investigating, for sure,” Chapman said.
Goodlatte said he is working with congressional colleagues along the rail corridor to secure a federal appropriation to help pay for the initiative. He said he believes others in Congress can be convinced such funding is justified, noting the potential for related economic development and growing public support for reducing interstate truck traffic.
“I think that case can pretty easily be made. Then the question becomes the availability of funding,” Goodlatte said. “Obviously, we, like everybody else, are facing tight budgets.”
Phil Sparks, executive director for the Roanoke Valley Economic Development Partnership, said he recently talked to Norfolk Southern about its site search.
Echoing Goodlatte, Sparks said, “I think it’s a good sign for Norfolk Southern to be thinking about new investment here. I think the governments in the Roanoke Valley would be very supportive.”
Chapman acknowledged that the ideal intermodal site might be hard to find.
Elsewhere, proposed intermodal hubs have occasionally stirred opposition, particularly in residential neighborhoods destined to abut them. Many residents and local government officials in Cobb County, Ga., fought Norfolk Southern’s plans for its intermodal terminal at Austell, which began operating in 2001.
Robert Quigley, a spokesman for Cobb County, said residents were concerned about increased truck traffic and noise pollution.
“Norfolk Southern worked with us for a while, until we kind of hit an impasse and had to go to court,” Quigley said.
Cobb County lost, an outcome that is not unusual, according to Nancy Beiter, an attorney for the Surface Transportation Board, the federal agency that oversees the railroad industry.
Beiter said federal statutes favor railroad companies in disputes about intermodal facilities. She said Congress seemingly wanted to “allow the construction of badly needed intermodal yards,” which are exempted from such things as local zoning laws.
(News researcher Belinda Harris contributed to this report.)