(The following story by Tim Thornton appeared on the Roanoke Times website on April 8.)
ELLISTON, Va. — Norfolk Southern Corp., Gov. Tim Kaine and the state Department of Rail and Public Transportation have all said Elliston is the only feasible site for an intermodal rail yard. But Monday’s unveiling of what the DRPT called its final report on the Roanoke Region Intermodal Facility may not be the final word. There’s a regional meeting on the horizon.
“I don’t see where they made any announcement any different from what they made last year,” Montgomery County Supervisor Gary Creed said. “It’s always been Norfolk Southern’s choice.”
Word of that leaked out in June 2006, two months after Kaine announced that an intermodal rail yard serving the Heartland Corridor would be built in the Roanoke area within three years.
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 railroad between Columbus, Ohio, and Norfolk faster and more efficiently.
The corridor improvements will take 250 miles — almost a day’s travel — off the route between Norfolk and Chicago.
The original cost estimate for work in Virginia was $31.9 million, not including $68 million to relocate rail lines in Tidewater. According to numbers released by the DRPT Monday morning, the Elliston site alone is now estimated at $35.5 million. The commonwealth is committed to covering 70 percent of that.
In a letter dated April 4, Kaine urged 15 heads of area governments from Franklin County to Covington “to convene as a region within the next 30 days to discuss your shared vision for transportation and economic development.” Those same governments expressed support for the concept of an intermodal yard nearly two years ago, shortly before the rail company’s chosen site became public.
The DRPT’s news release proclaiming Elliston “the only feasible site” said, “The next steps … will be determined based on the regional recommendation.”
“What the heck does that mean?” Del. Dave Nutter, R-Christiansburg, asked.
Creed said he thinks he knows.
“It seems to me the governor don’t want to say, ‘You’re going to have to do it.’ ” Creed said. “And so he’s trying to get the different counties to get together and come up with something, I guess, to say that Elliston’s got to be the place without him having to say it.”
Creed, whose district includes the Elliston site, hopes it won’t work that way.
“We were kind enough in Montgomery County to vote in favor of it coming here when the Roanoke Valley wanted it,” he said. “So I would hope that the Roanoke Valley would be kind enough to say it shouldn’t go here when the New River Valley don’t want it.”
If that happens, Nutter said, Virginia will likely lose the rail yard altogether.
The economic stakes could be high, according to a state financial report released in January. The rail yard would employ only about a dozen people, generating $3.5 million to $5.3 million in annual economic activity. But its spinoff effects could add 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.
State officials touted IKEA’s Swedwood Furniture manufacturing plant announced near Danville as a company that located where it did, in part, because of the planned intermodal yard. IKEA could bring more than 700 jobs “to an economically stressed region of Virginia,” according to the DRPT’s final report.
Truck traffic between Danville and Elliston would likely travel U.S. 220 and Interstate 81, two roads already crowded with trucks. NS officials and another state report said the intermodal yard is likely to increase truck traffic on I-81 and other roads near the site.
NS evaluated 10 potential sites before settling on Elliston, but when Montgomery County officials and residents rose to oppose the choice, the state called for further evaluation. No one suggested alternative sites, so NS’ list was re-evaluated. Eventually, the state paid NS more than $200,000 to do more extensive engineering studies on Elliston and two other sites. One was in Salem, the only locality to offer to host the rail yard. The other was in Roanoke County, near Glenvar. Neither of those are on the Heartland Corridor, causing some opponents of the Elliston site to call the process a sham.
John Friedmann, NS assistant vice president for strategic planning, said Monday that he didn’t know if the company owned any of the Elliston land. The railroad has acquired options to purchase some of the 65-acre site.
On Monday, Salem Mayor Howard Packett expressed disappointment at losing what he said could have been the city’s biggest economic boost in 100 years. Annette Perkins, chairwoman of the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors, declared in a news release that the board is “extremely disappointed” the state wants to put the rail yard in Elliston.
“This is not the type of economic development Montgomery County wishes to locate here,” she said. “It is not sound public policy to provide public funding for a project that is outside local zoning authority and that the county opposes.”
Perkins said the board will consider all its options and will welcome input from “all our regional partners.”
Nutter said the governor told him last week that the announcement and accompanying letter were coming.
“But he also said more than once that coming from local government he was loathe — I believe that was the correct word he used — to force something like this down on people who don’t want it.”
And Montgomery County’s supervisors don’t want it.
“We didn’t want it yesterday and we still don’t want it today,” Creed said. “And we’ll take whatever steps we have to to defend that.”
The supervisors spent more than an hour in closed session Monday evening, talking about probable litigation involving NS.