Norfolk Southern moving ahead on Memphis-area facility

Written by jrood

Norfolk Southern hasn't laid down any of the track that will connect its main line to the proposed $112-million intermodal terminal in Rossville, Tenn., but the company is laying down a foundation to keep the project on target to open in two years, The Daily News reports.

The Norfolk, Va.-based
railroad, whose Memphis Regional Intermodal Facility will be built on 570 acres
in rural Fayette County, is developing the terminal to bolster the company’s
Crescent Corridor. It’s a 2,500-mile rail network extending from Memphis and
New Orleans in the Southeast to Pennsylvania and New Jersey in the Northeast.

The railroad has lined up
a host of public and private entities in support of the $2.5-billion project,
which will create a massive supply chain in the eastern U.S. with Memphis as
one of the key gateways. For example, Norfolk Southern’s Crescent Corridor
recently received an endorsement from the Retail Industry Leaders Association,
a trade organization of retailers, manufacturers and suppliers.

The railroad also
received a political spark when 60 U.S. legislators endorsed the Crescent
Corridor concept, including U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker of
Tennessee and U.S. Rep.
Steve Cohen of Memphis.

But it’s not all good
news for Norfolk Southern, whose intermodal revenues fell 15 percent in the
fourth quarter, and fell 26 percent for the year. Still, Norfolk Southern is
committed to the project because the railroad is landlocked at its current
intermodal facility, Forrest Yard near the Mid-South Fairgrounds, and expects
massive growth in intermodal movements as the economy improves.

The Rossville yard,
slated for property that insurance mogul
William Adair sold to the railroad for an undisclosed amount,
will be able to accommodate more than 327,000 containers and trailers annually,
and up to 2,177 parked containers and trailers on chasses.

Norfolk Southern
spokeswoman Susan Terpay said in an e-mail that the railroad is on schedule for
building the intermodal yard, which should be completed by January 2012.
Currently, the Tennessee Department of Transportation and other state agencies
are reviewing draft environmental assessments. TDOT in March will unveil
details on the environmental studies and give residents an opportunity to
comment about the project.

Also, in April the agency
will hold a public hearing to give concerned citizens a chance to discuss the
project in a public forum. After that, the final environmental assessment will
be issued and, if everything is approved, construction will begin in June.

But based on the public
meeting in October, when plenty of opponents stated their disdain for this
project, and some comments from Fayette County residents – both on and off the
record – a fight could be brewing.

One of those residents, Dana Lackey, said a groundswell of resistance has formed to
fight the railroad, but she knows it’s an uphill battle when the project is
being paraded by the company as a "green" project and when politicians are
looking for any kind of economic development in their communities. Lackey, like
many people in the area, is worried the intermodal yard will do more harm than
good for Fayette County.

"My perspective is that
this is going to benefit a publicly traded corporation and it’s not going to be
a lot of good for the citizens around here," she said. "Particularly, it’s not
going to bring in too many inside jobs."

Lackey is leery of the
railroad’s claims that the facility eventually will employ up to 1,000 people,
directly and indirectly. She and other residents also are concerned with the
taxpayers’ burden to build the yard.

The railroad is planning
to fund $31 million of the project’s $112 million price tag, and the state has
requested $81.2 million in federal stimulus money under the American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act of 2009’s Transportation Investment Generating Economic
Recovery (TIGER) Program.

As for the green claim,
residents are wondering how green it can be when trees are being felled, ponds
are being drained and roads are being built over the area’s rolling hills in
preparation for hundreds – and later thousands – of trucks each day. They worry
that their sleepy rural community will turn into another Lamar Avenue and
Shelby Drive, the area of Memphis where warehouses have sprouted near the
BNSF Railway Co. intermodal facility.

This isn’t the first
opposition to Norfolk Southern in the area. Residents last year formed the
South Fayette Alliance to fight the railroad’s initial site plan along Tenn. 57
between Rossville and Moscow. When enough peopled voiced their concern over
that locale, Norfolk Southern struck a deal with Adair to build the facility on
his property.

The new site will send
all of the yard’s truck traffic onto an access road that connects with U.S. 72,
rather than Tenn. 57, and it also is farther away from the Wolf River,
alleviating many citizens’ concerns about truck traffic and potential water
contamination in the community. But as more and more Fayette County residents
catch wind of how close the sprawling facility will be built to local estates,
horse farms and streams, they have begun their protests anew.

It might be too little
too late for opponents, who still harbor hopes of the railroad building the
yard at Frank C. Pidgeon Industrial Park on Presidents Island in Memphis. But
Norfolk Southern has long since ruled out that site and remains committed to
the Adair property, one of six sites the company said it considered for the
intermodal terminal.

Another public meeting to
disclose the results of environmental assessment will be held in Fayette
County, but a date has not been set, TDOT officials said.

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