(The following article by Paul Dellinger was posted on the Roanoke Times website on October 10.)
CHRISTIANSBURG, Va. — Norfolk Southern officials insisted Monday night that rural Elliston in Montgomery County is the only place the railroad can build its intermodal facility.
Rob Martinez, NS business development representative, said that among seven sites studied, it is the only one that fits the needs.
Lee Cochran, NS intermodal development manager, said the facility for taking containers off trucks and shipping them by rail would require about 67 acres.
But most of the nearly 100 people who showed up to hear the NS presentation still appeared to oppose the idea. More than 20 who addressed the county board of supervisors said so.
“Please don’t let them do this,” pleaded Elliston resident Regina Vassar. “Why let them come in here and tear it up?”
Others expressed the same concerns heard before, about destruction of the community’s rural nature, increasing truck traffic, heightened safety concerns and harm to the environment.
Supervisors had gone on record two weeks ago as opposing the project. But, as Martinez said, “We do have the authority under federal pre-emption to put in this facility.”
He said it would have been impossible without a state grant covering 70 percent of the costs.
Not all the speakers were against the project. Ken Anderson, a Blacksburg engineer long involved in transportation issues, said an intermodal facility is needed to relieve truck traffic on interstate highways and Elliston is about the only place it can go.
Martinez elaborated on why Elliston was the chosen site. He said it is on NS’ east-west rail corridor, which is necessary for a shorter route from the ports at Hampton Roads to Midwest and West Coast markets as well as those overseas. A Pulaski site was ruled out as being too far out of the way.
It had to be close to Interstate 81 so that trucks would have easy access to it. It had to have more than 60 flat acres. It couldn’t get in the way of existing rail traffic. It had to be a long, narrow tract accommodating a long rail siding, and it had to be away from congested urban areas such as Roanoke, he said.
“At the end of the day, it’s all about jobs,” Martinez said.
He did not mean the 15 jobs at the intermodal facility, he said, but the investment that the facility would generate all around it. It is also vital as a rail feeder to markets in other parts of the country and for shipping overseas, he said. “You would be able to attract a different type of investor,” he said.
Ken King, with the Virginia Department of Transportation, said projected traffic to the facility would be 87 trucks a day during 2010 to 2020, and 235 when it reached full operation after that. He said the additional truck traffic was not enough to require a traffic impact analysis.
He said the vehicles would be larger trucks, but not that many more of them.
Richard Caywood, Salem District VDOT administrator, said Interstate 81 already needs more capacity but the intermodal facility would not make it that much more urgent. However, he said, substantial development occurring because of the facility could have an effect.
Some supervisors raised environmental concerns about fuel or chemical runoff, perhaps affecting the Roanoke River.
“We’re going to contain anything on the site,” Cochran said. “We have about 1,000 employees who live in Roanoke. We are as concerned about clean water as anyone.”
Martinez said the so-called Heartland Corridor between the Hampton Roads ports and the Midwest would cut about 200 miles off two other existing rail corridors, and time was money.
He said some work would have to be done on tunnels in Virginia and West Virginia to accommodate double-stacked rail cars, which would carry containers from trucks to other parts of the country.