(The following story by Eric Anderson appeared on the Albany Times-Union website on October 9, 2009.)
STILLWATER, N.Y. — Richard Chapman is clear on one thing: He doesn’t oppose the $40 million intermodal railyard to be built across the road from his home.
What he’s not happy about is the entrance the railroad plans near his front door.
“It’s the idea of having 300 truck trips a day,” he said. “We just didn’t want to get the full brunt.”
Pan Am Southern, a joint venture of Pan Am Railways and Norfolk Southern Railway, plans to build the yard at the site of the former Boston & Maine railyard, which shut down in the 1980s.
Unlike that yard, which was for rail traffic only, the new facility will generate as many as 334 truck trips a day, according to regulatory filings, as trailers are offloaded from flatcars for local delivery, and new vehicles come in for shipment to dealers.
Pan Am Southern plans a bridge over the tracks carrying traffic onto Route 67. Most trucks will then go west to the Round Lake bypass and the Northway.
Chapman and his neighbors — 25 people in a neighborhood of 17 homes — have asked the railroad to shift that entrance road 700 feet west of the planned site. The new entrance would be across from a construction yard, he said, not a group of homes.
But the railroad has told them that wouldn’t be feasible.
Pan Am Southern officials couldn’t be reached for comment.
The intermodal yard is in Mechanicville, Stillwater and Halfmoon. Chapman lives in Stillwater.
The Halfmoon Planning Board has approved the railroad’s plan.
Now, Chapman hopes Stillwater officials can encourage planners to move the entrance.
“The Stillwater Town Board passed a unanimous resolution supporting our wish to have the bridge moved,” he said.
At least one of the abutments for the proposed bridge also lies in the town’s boundaries, he said.
Construction on the yard, announced with great fanfare in the summer of 2008, hasn’t yet begun. But when it does, Chapman hopes the bridge will be 700 feet west of the current plan.