(The following article by Tim Thornton and Ray Reed was posted on the Roanoke Times website on October 11.)
ROANOKE, Va. — Norfolk Southern is convinced Elliston is the only place to build its intermodal facility. Now the railroad has to convince state officials.
Pierce Homer, Virginia’s secretary of transportation, said Tuesday the Elliston site won’t receive any state funding unless Norfolk Southern convinces officials that no other site can work.
Gov. Tim Kaine and Norfolk Southern already have signed an agreement for Virginia to provide $22 million for the railroad’s Heartland Corridor, with $12.8 million of that specifically to develop an intermodal site.
“There are other sites they are looking at,” Homer said. “These are public dollars, ultimately.”
State officials asserted their role in the intermodal site selection in a letter Oct. 6 from Matthew Tucker, director of the Department of Rail and Public Transportation, to Norfolk Southern officials.
“Since public dollars are involved, transparency and openness in the evaluation and selection process for a site is critical,” Tucker’s letter said.
Homer declined to say what prompted the letter, but it was written days after Del. David Nutter, R-Christiansburg, and several Montgomery County officials met with Homer in Richmond.
“I think he was taken aback by the way Norfolk Southern has been handling things and the lack of information,” Nutter said after the meeting.
Homer and Norfolk Southern Vice President Jim Hixon both said the state and the railroad are working together to find other sites, but the options are limited because the railroad has rejected six other locations.
There were three finalists, Norfolk Southern spokesman Robin Chapman said Tuesday.
“I cannot tell you exactly where they are,” he said.
Chapman did reveal that both rejected finalists are north and east of Elliston; he called them “Site A” and “Site B.” Both are already developed, so building there would drive up the project’s cost. Both have problems with access and traffic. One is in a flood plain. The other is too small. One is on the wrong railroad line.
“We’re not opposed to looking at other sites,” Hixon said. “We’re not closing our eyes if somebody else has one.”
Less than three miles from the Elliston site, closer to Interstate 81 and on the rail line, is land Roanoke County’s community plan marks for industrial development. Chapman wouldn’t say if that site was considered.
Doug Chittum, Roanoke County’s director of economic development, said no one talked to him about it.
“Which sites they looked at and which sites they weeded out for whatever reason, I haven’t been privy,” Chittum said. “I don’t know that anyone else has.”
Roanoke County Administrator Elmer Hodge said the county had “very limited involvement” with Norfolk Southern’s site selection.
“We looked to see if we had a site that would fit their criteria,” Hodge said, “and we just didn’t have it.”
Chittum said he didn’t know what the railroad’s criteria were beyond the general information that’s been available publicly — long, flat, near an interstate and beside a railroad.
The planned intermodal site would be part of the Heartland Corridor, which is meant to cut shipping time between Hampton Roads ports and the Midwest. The project is also supposed to reduce truck traffic by moving freight off highways and onto rail cars.
State officials have said the facility could remove 200,000 trucks from Virginia highways. Opponents have questioned how an east-west rail line would help nearby, truck-laden Interstate 81, which runs north and south.
Chapman said Tuesday that it won’t.
“Its purpose is not to take truck traffic off I-81,” he said.
Montgomery County Supervisor Gary Creed represents Elliston.
“We’ve been talking for some time about rail being the solution for interstate. This thing is not going to be the solution for the interstate,” Creed said Tuesday. “It’s not going to help our interstate.”
Creed argued it would funnel more traffic onto the busiest section of I-81.
At a Monday night meeting, Virginia Department of Transportation officials said the increased truck traffic won’t have an appreciable effect on the interstate.
VDOT has been studying plans to improve the highway for the past three years.
The Elliston site is not a done deal, Creed said. But Norfolk Southern seems determined.
“This is where they want to put it,” Creed said. “And that’s where they plan to put it.”