(The following article by Gregory Richards was posted on the Virginian-Pilot website on February 16.)
NORFOLK, Va. — Norfolk Southern Corp. expects to complete a $311 million rail project, shaving 225 miles off container train trips between Hampton Roads and the Midwest, by 2009, company officials said Wednesday.
Donald W. Seale, the railroad’s executive vice president of sales and marketing, told rail analysts at a conference in Miami about the project, which also will increase clearances along the route to allow trains carrying cargo containers stacked two high.
The price for the so-called Heartland Corridor has increased from an earlier estimate of $266 million, said Robin Chapman, a spokesman for the Norfolk-based railroad company. The increased price reflects minor changes in the project’s scope and inflation, he said.
The Heartland Corridor will greatly increase Norfolk Southern’s capacity to haul goods arriving by ship in Hampton Roads to important Midwest markets by raising tunnels and modifying bridges to allow double-stacked containers on its railcars.
The improved route will shave a day and a half off the transit time to Chicago compared with the current, longer route via Harrisburg, Pa. The new route winds through southern West Virginia, along Norfolk Southern’s main line serving the coal fields there.
The federal government and the state of Virginia are helping to pay for the project. The federal government will pitch in $140.4 million, most of which was included in the federal transportation act passed by Congress last summer. The state is kicking in $22.3 million, Chapman said.
The federal funding includes $15 million of the $60 million needed to pay for relocating Commonwealth Railway Inc.’s track in Portsmouth and Chesapeake. The line, which passes through numerous neighborhoods, is to be relocated to the median of I nterstate 664 and Va. 164. The line will connect the port terminal being built in Portsmouth for Maersk Line with both Norfolk Southern’s and CSX Transportation’s rail lines in Suffolk.
Chapman said it has not been determined who will pay for the balance of the relocation, but it isn’t going to be Norfolk Southern.
Besides improvements along the rail corridor, the Heartland project includes building new rail terminals in Roanoke; Prichard, W.Va.; and Columbus, Ohio.
The Heartland Corridor will create a “substantial improvement in efficiency, customer service and a growth opportunity,” Seale told the analysts.
The new route is being developed just as the business of hauling cargo containers is booming thanks to the growth in international trade and more shipping lines using East Coast ports for Asian imports.
Norfolk Southern, the nation’s fourth biggest railroad, saw that sector produce 19 percent more revenue in 2005 compared with 2004.