Railroad shows intermodal facility plans to public
Written by jrood
Pan Am Southern railroad, which wants to build an intermodal yard in the area, showed the town planning board and residents how it plans to deal with noise and traffic concerns at a meeting at Halfmoon, N.Y., town hall, local newspapers report.
Residents of an area
across from the proposed truck entrance to the yard have expressed concerns
about noise and diesel fumes. They’ve established a Web site,
www.movethebridge.com, to present their case for moving the entrance and a
planned bridge over the tracks to another location. Residents’ concerns about
the project, as well as $3 million in state assistance that was promised but
not yet delivered, apparently are holding up work on the new yard.
The project was announced
in July 2008 by then State Senator Joseph L. Bruno. When it is fully
operational, it will employ more than 80 people, railroad officials said
earlier this year.
Steve Watts, chairman of
the Halfmoon Planning Board, said other concerns with the $40-million project
include lighting mitigation, noise, access to the Zim Smith recreation trail
and the truck entrance.
"I don’t know that
it can be moved easily," Watts said of the alternate location.
Pan Am Southern LLC is a
joint venture of Pan Am Railways, formerly Guilford Transportation and before
that the Boston and Maine Railroad, and Norfolk Southern Railway.
Initially, rail officials
hoped to have new-car distribution operations in place by January 2010, with
intermodal shipments following in April. But delays have pushed back the target
dates. Most recently, rail officials had hoped to begin construction some time
in August, but that also didn’t happen.
A spokesman for Norfolk
Southern said the railroad was still working out some details with Halfmoon.
