(The following story by Tim Thornton appeared on the Roanoke Times website on July 27.)
ROANOKE, Va. — Roanoke County is back in the intermodal mix.
Land near Glenvar that once belonged to the Virginian Railway is among three sites being studied as a potential home for a new $18 million Norfolk Southern Corp. freight rail yard, state officials confirmed Wednesday. The two other sites are in Salem and near the Montgomery County community of Elliston.
NS is conducting the engineering study and the state is paying 70 percent of the cost. The state will hire an independent contractor to verify the railroad’s work, according to Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation spokeswoman Jennifer Pickett.
The study could cost as much as $210,000 plus the independent contractor’s fees, Pickett said.
Roanoke County Administrator Elmer Hodge said he learned Wednesday evening that the already rejected Garman Road site was back under consideration when Kevin Paige, the state’s director of rail transportation, called him.
The study has been going on for some time, Pickett said, but area officials had no idea until Wednesday night.
That was several hours after The Roanoke Times attempted to contact Paige about the new study. Paige has not returned a phone message.
“Quite honestly, I personally don’t think it’s going to rank very highly,” Hodge said of the Garman Road site. “It has a lot of issues.”
The site is in a flood plain. It’s on the wrong rail line. The roads leading to it weren’t built for lots of truck traffic. And two roads would be blocked by trains stopped to load and unload.
Nevertheless, it meets many of the criteria NS set out, according to Pickett.
The site is flat, mostly undeveloped, allows double-ended access and could encompass as much as 110 acres — 35 acres more than NS says it needs.
Montgomery County Supervisor Gary Creed, whose district includes the Elliston site, found out about the new study on Wednesday when County Administrator Clay Goodman called him. Goodman had just talked to Paige, Creed said.
Creed talked with Paige on Thursday.
“He tells me the only reason they’re doing this is to get them all up to the same level,” Creed said. “Of course, my question to him was if the Salem site will work, why do you want to look at any others?
“He didn’t have an answer.”
It’s been nearly 16 months since Gov. Tim Kaine and NS officials announced plans to build a freight yard where cargo containers can be moved between trains and trucks. Perhaps because it’s officially called the Roanoke Regional Intermodal Facility, many people assumed it would be built near Roanoke.
“This is the biggest economic development announcement in the last 20 years for Roanoke,” Del. William Fralin, R-Roanoke, said when Kaine made the announcement at downtown Roanoke’s O. Winston Link Museum.
But NS was looking farther west — one county and 18 miles west of Roanoke by rail, according to the site description the company eventually released.
The Roanoke Regional Intermodal Facility is part of the Heartland Corridor plan, which aims to move freight rail traffic between Columbus, Ohio, and Norfolk faster and more efficiently. It is also supposed to reduce truck traffic. About 200,000 trucks per year would be taken off Virginia roads, according to an agreement between the state and NS. But it won’t reduce traffic on Interstate 81. In fact, an intermodal yard in the Roanoke Valley is likely to put more trucks on that interstate, according to NS.
About two-thirds of the project’s $249 million cost will be borne by federal and state governments.
Virginia has agreed to pay more than $12 million toward the Roanoke area terminal, nearly $10 million to increase tunnel clearances to accommodate double-stacked freight containers, and about $15 million to relocate tracks leading into Virginia’s Hampton Roads ports.
The state also plans to build an interstate-quality highway parallel to the Heartland Corridor and U.S. 460 between Hampton Roads and Petersburg to help relieve truck traffic on U.S. 460. The price of the new highway — which might be a toll road — could top $1 billion.
News that NS had set its sights on land in the eastern edge of Montgomery County leaked out 13 months ago, igniting protests from residents of the neighboring communities of Elliston, Lafayette and Shawsville. Montgomery County supervisors discovered federal law exempts railroads from local land use regulation and state law allows railroads to obtain land through eminent domain — the power to buy private land even if the owner doesn’t want to sell — as if it were a government entity.
A group called Citizens for the Preservation of Our Countryside lobbied the supervisors to pass an ordinance making it illegal for corporations to use eminent domain in Montgomery County. It would declare “natural communities and ecosystems” to be “persons” in legal issues and declare that corporations are not “persons” in Montgomery County.
It would also forbid corporations — along with their agents, directors, officers, owners or managers — from contributing to political candidates in the county. It would also make it illegal for corporations to sue for “future profits.”
The supervisors declined to adopt that, but did pass two more general resolutions opposing the rail yard in Elliston.
Supervisors in Botetourt County also said they didn’t want it. So did supervisors in Roanoke County.
Roanoke County Supervisor Butch Church, whose district includes the Garman Road site, said, “I haven’t talked to a single citizen who’s in favor of it.”
The state asked for alternatives. No one except NS offered any — Elliston and nine sites the company had already considered and rejected. The state sent Paige to visit with governments in Salem, Roanoke and Botetourt, Montgomery and Roanoke counties. Eventually, Salem suggested that a site on Colorado Street be reconsidered. The state announced in April that it would ask for more engineering studies on that site.
“I haven’t heard anything from the state or Norfolk Southern in a couple of months,” Salem City Manager Forest Jones said Thursday.
Jones said state officials told him the review of the Colorado Street site would take about 90 days — which means it should be finished any day now. Pickett said it’s not clear when the Garman Road study will be complete.
“That’s news to me,” Jones said of the Garman Road study. “I didn’t know they were looking at other sites.”
But that doesn’t bother him, Jones said, because an intermodal facility anywhere in the region will be good for the whole region.
Pickett said all 10 sites on the list are still being considered.
“I do want to stress that the other sites are still on the table,” she said. “This is all part of the site review process.”
But detailed engineering studies are being done on only three sites — Garman Road, Colorado Street and Elliston. Elliston is the only place where the railroad has bought options on any land.