(The following article by Paul Beebe was posted on the Salt Lake Tribune website on September 21.)
SALT LAKE CITY — As the economy grows, it seems reasonable to presume that Utah highways would be packed with more long-distance trucks than already are there.
On Wednesday, a big reason why that hasn’t happened got its first public showing. Union Pacific officially unveiled its $83 million intermodal container terminal, increasing the railroad’s shipping container capability in Salt Lake by three times.
UP’s 260-acre terminal in west Salt Lake City, which replaces an obsolete 30-acre facility closer to downtown, is capable of loading or unloading 12 to 14 trains a day, each pulling 75 “double-stack” container rail cars.
“Every time I look at a rail container, I’m glad that it’s not on the roadways. . . . I’m glad that it’s not beside me on the freeway,” Courtlund Ashton, chairman of the Salt Lake County Council, said during a ceremony to celebrate the facility, which actually opened in December.
To be sure, truck numbers are increasing on the nation’s roads. But without the explosive growth of intermodal rail traffic, the quantity of long-distance vehicles would be even greater, according to the Association of American Railroads.
“There are fewer trucks than there otherwise would be. Railroads moved 12 million containers or trailers this year, and almost all of them would have gone by highway had it not been for intermodal,” association spokesman Tom White said from Washington, D.C.
The increase in intermodal shipments has been propelled by high truck fuel prices and driver shortages. But the most important factor has been globalization. Imports and exports have sparked a huge demand for rail service, which can move large quantities of products over long distances more cheaply than trucks. Since 1980, the number of containers and trailers moved by rail is up more than 300 percent.
Here is how intermodal works: Shoes made in a factory in China arrive in a shipping container at the Port of Los Angeles. The container is lifted from the boat to a rail car train hauling other containers to UP’s terminal in Salt Lake. Upon arrival, a large global positioning system-guided crane straddles the rail car and lifts the container onto a truck trailer. The truck delivers the container to the customer, where the contents are unloaded.
In Salt Lake, the number of rail containers arriving and departing UP’s terminal is up 20 percent since last year, said John Kaiser, UP vice president of intermodal marketing and sales.
“We’re not uncomfortable with that kind of double-digit growth rate in the future,” said Kaiser, who was at the ceremony.
The old terminal was operated by six UP employees and 19 contract workers. UP still employs six people, but the number of contract workers has increased to 109, UP spokesman Mark Davis said.