(The following article by Jeremiah McWilliams was posted on the Virginian-Pilot website on August 5.)
NORFOLK, Va. — A series of rail projects that will help Hampton Roads compete with other East Coast ports, boost Norfolk Southern Railway and remove worrisome rail crossings in Portsmouth and Chesapeake will receive $143 million from the federal highway bill passed last week.
They’re all pieces of the Heartland Corridor, a $266 million project both the Virginia Port Authority and Norfolk Southern
Corp. have promoted as a necessary upgrade to Virginia’s rail system.
“This is an incredible opportunity for the Port of Virginia to expand its reach,” said J. Robert Bray, the port authority’s executive director, in a statement. “I can’t begin to say how pleased we are about this.”
The federal government will provide $90 million to raise overhead clearances in 29 tunnels and modify 24 bridges, wire lines, and other obstructions along Norfolk Southern’s rail lines between Hampton Roads and Columbus, Ohio, a major freight center along the route to Chicago. The total project may cost $40 million more to complete.
The changes will open a more direct route for double-stack container trains, which require more than 20 feet of clearance. Such trains currently have to detour to Harrisburg, Pa., before heading to the Midwest, and port officials say the changes could cut a day and a half and 235 miles off the trip to Chicago.
“That’s huge,” said Jeff Florin, chief engineer and director of port development for the port authority, which owns marine cargo terminals in Norfolk, Portsmouth and Newport News. “It puts us on the same time frame to get rail boxes from Virginia to Chicago as it takes the Port of New York to get boxes to Chicago,” he said.
A related project to replace rail lines that cut through Churchland-area neighborhoods of Portsmouth and Chesapeake with new rails in the median strip of Interstate 664 and Va. 164, received $15 million in federal money – a quarter of the final estimated cost of $60 million.
The relocation would eliminate more than a dozen railroad crossings that the port authority and local residents have said are dangerous.
“That absolutely has to be done,” said Jim Thomson, a resident of Chesapeake who serves as the president of a neighborhood civic league.
Portsmouth city engineer Richard Hartman agreed.
“This is a big deal for us – it’s a safety and daily convenience thing,” he said.
The new lines are expected to support the new terminal now being built on the Elizabeth River waterfront in Portsmouth by the A.P. Moller Group, which runs Maersk Sealand, one of the world’s largest ship lines, and the port authority’s proposed Craney Island terminal.
“That whole median rail will help quite a bit when those terminals are built,” said George Conner, director of rail for the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation. “Over time, it’s definitely going to be needed.”
Thomson said moving the rail lines would temper fears of major traffic jams and disruptions when the marine terminals open.
The Maersk terminal is expected to generate as many as six long trains a day when it opens in 2007, and perhaps twice as many once it is fully operational. If and when the port authority’s fourth terminal is built at Craney Island even more trains would use that line.
“We’re pleased to see the port expand, but the price we’d have to pay in traffic and safety would be really high,” Thomson said.
The $286.5 billion Transportation Equity Act leaves $123 million of the corridor’s $266 million estimated cost unfunded. The states of Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio, along with Norfolk Southern and the port authority, will have to figure out how to make up the rest. The transportation bill itself may contain other, more obscure grants for the projects, officials said.
“We would pitch in a certain amount, and we’d be looking for the state of Virginia to contribute,” said Robin Chapman, spokesman for Norfolk Southern, the Norfolk-based freight rail operator, which owns most of the rail lines that make up the corridor and is expected to be the only freight railroad to use them.
“But how much each party contributes, that remains to be seen. It’s appropriate for the public to pony up for the project, because there are public benefits,” Chapman said.
The port authority and other players, including Virginia’s Department of Rail and Public Transportation, have billed the project as key to helping Hampton Roads capture more international trade, especially as shipments from Asia continue to increase.
The federal funding includes $33 million toward a $76 million construction fund for new rail terminals near Roanoke and in Prichard, W. Va.
Because Norfolk Southern moves cargo from the Port of New York and New Jersey as well as from Hampton Roads, it is not aiming to steal business from northeastern ports when Virginia’s rail lines are enhanced, Chapman said.
“We’re not trying to have one port to compete against the other, but we are trying to attract shipping to Hampton Roads,” Chapman said. The corridor “would give us greater capacity to handle that.”
Such projects, tacked onto bills by legislators for their constituents, are often criticized as pork. And the federal transportation bill is no exception, passing with more than 6,300 special projects – an all-time high – including the partial underwriting of the Heartland Corridor.
“The overall process was absolute chaos – there was no rhyme or reason as to why projects were added to the bill,” said David Williams, vice president of policy at the Washington-based Citizens Against Government Waste, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Williams said a stronger case could be made for the Heartland Corridor than for many other taxpayer-
funded transportation programs. But he said companies such as Norfolk Southern need to be responsible for the cash they get from the federal government.
“If you’re getting a handout from the federal government that’s going to help your business, increase your profit margin, pay it back,” Williams said.
“I’m not saying give the whole $90 million back in the first year. But if you’re going to accept this money, at least give the taxpayers something back.”